Dream King by Elise Knight

23

Ididn't move. Uncertainty had me bolted to the ground. I could just about see Dream through the gap in between the doors. He was less than ten feet away from me, but walking the distance was proving difficult. We'd kissed. The thought filled me with horror. Horror because I’d wanted it. God help me, I shouldn’t have. Dream was my enemy. Maybe we didn’t want to kill each other anymore, but we were hardly friends, let alone more than that. But in the moment, I'd let the grief over David take over any common sense I had. And I recklessly leaned into the kiss. How stupid was I? Dream had never wanted to kiss me. He'd never shown any sign of being interested in me in that way at all. Quite the opposite. He'd only ever told me that me and my kind were terrible beings and like the idiot I was, I'd fallen into him like a desperate woman, trying to get over an ex-boyfriend, which is exactly what I was, but it hadn't just been my fault. He'd taken me back to David, even if it was only a dream. He was the one who put me in this emotional state. I'd been getting over my scummy ex. I'd been forgetting the bastard. What fucking right did Dream have to take me back to that place again? None at all. If I had developed feelings for the tortured bastard, it was his own fucking fault.

That was all well and good, but I had to walk back to him and sit opposite him around the campfire and act as though everything was normal and as though my whole life hadn't just been sent off-kilter by a kiss that had horrified him as much as it had blindsided me. I watched as he made a campfire for us, his face showing no sign of emotion at all.

Oh fuck. What if he was only trying to hold me to stop me from flying away in the wind, and I’d misread it and started kissing him. Mortification filled my soul until I ran it through in my mind. He’d definitely kissed me first, not the other way around. So why was it that his face looked like he’d been sucking on a lemon? Fine, if he could pretend nothing had happened between us, then I could too. I wiped away the last of my tears on my sleeve, took a deep breath, and pulled myself up straight.

He poked at the fire with a stick as I sat, purposely avoiding my gaze. I sat in my usual spot, waiting for him to look up at me. The silence was like a chasm between us, offset only by the slight rustling of the leaves above us as Raven shifted his position on a branch.

“Nice...”

“If you say nice weather we’re having, I’m going to stand up and walk out of this clearing.”

Right then, that’s how it’s going to be.

I cleared my throat, my gut tightening. “I was going to say nice fire, actually, but if we are going to be weird about what just happened, then I may as well say what I’m really thinking.”

He stood up, his face taking on a decidedly sour look. “It can’t happen. None of this can happen.”

I took a breath, trying to steady the nerves that were threatening to overcome me. I’d not felt this shy since I asked out Kenny Henderson in eighth grade. At least when Kenny had turned me down, I only had to face the rest of our class giggling at me. I’d take that a million times over the mortification of where this conversation was going.

“Fine. Nothing happened. We didn’t just kiss. You didn’t just hold onto me like your life depended on it.” I stood up and planted a hard stare on his face.

Dream couldn’t look me in the eye. Where was the arrogant bully I’d met only a few weeks ago? “You should go back to your boyfriend. He obviously misses you.”

My mouth fell open. “Are you fucking insane? In what fucked up world is it that someone would kiss you the way I kissed you and want to go back to a sleazeball ex?”

“It’s my world, Ana.” He said, his voice rising in anger. “My world that you are not a part of. A world you have no right to be in and one where you do not belong.”

Anger tugged at me. If he could raise his voice, then so could I. It wasn’t like anyone could hear us this far out in the forest anyway.

“I didn’t ask to be here!” I yelled. “You brought me here.”

His gaze finally landed on mine. The firelight danced in the reflection of his eyes, giving him a manic look. “So go home. The door is right there.”

I stood my ground, hands on hips. I didn’t even know why I cared so much that he kissed me. I barely knew him, and the short time we’d been together, he’d kept me tied up for most of it. I should hate his sorry ass, and I did. I hated him with a passion, but that passion had a flip side, and the flip side was burning me up. “I’m not leaving. I told you. I’m only going through that door if you pick me up and throw me through it.”

My voice echoed through the forest. Dream’s eyes were full of hatred now. I’d not seen him look so cold at me since the first time I’d come through the door. My heart was ripping at the seams from the coldness of his stare. How had I misjudged this all so badly?

“Is that what you want? Because it can be arranged.” he snapped.

I swallowed thickly. It wasn’t what I wanted. None of this was what I wanted.

He walked right through the fire, which didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest, and grabbed me roughly. My world shifted as he whisked me up into his arms. It would be romantic if his eyes weren’t ablaze with anger.

I punched at his chest, which was absolutely fucking pointless. Like hitting a steel wall with a rubber duck. He barely noticed my fists as he carried me over to the red door.

This was it. He was going to throw me through the door, and all of this would be over. He kicked the door with his foot. It flew open to my shitty bedroom in my shitty apartment.

“You are a fucking coward,” I yelled. “One kiss, and you are terrified. The wolveries never bothered you, even though they were maniacal killing beasts, but kissing me has you so scared you only know how to throw me away, just like you’ve thrown everyone else away. You know what. Throw me away like trash. See if I care. I’ll go back to my shitty life, but even with no money and nothing, I’ll still be richer than you stuck here in the darkness with only a fucking bird for company. Why is he even still here? You’ve just not bothered to discard him like every other fucker”

“Stop it!” he roared, twisting my insides further. “Shut the fuck up!”

In any other circumstance, I would have thought his choice of words amusing. Saying ‘fuck’ didn’t suit him at all. He let me go, dropping me to the ground inches from the red door.

“Why do you do this to me, Ana? This is torture. I am alive because of you, and I am suffocating because of you.”

“Me?” I exclaimed. “Me, torturing you? My mother is locked in her own mind because of you. Not just her, but hundreds of thousands of other people, and you have the gall to tell me I’m the torturer here. Why don’t you take a long, hard look in a fucking mirror.”

His eyes widened slightly then he lowered his eyelashes. Without saying another word, he turned and stalked away into the darkness.

My breath caught in my throat as I watched the darkness swallow him up. My heart was ripping in two, and I could barely catch my breath. Behind me, the light from my room shone through the red door, giving the forest a little color. It would be so easy to go back home. The sun was shining in through my bedroom window, and though my room was fairly bland, it was a riot of color compared to the forest. I inched closer to the door. One more footstep, and I’d be home. Back to a world where I could get a good burger and fries and not have to eat charbroiled monkeyrabbit in pitch blackness.

Why the fuck was it so hard to step through that door? It had everything this shit-hole didn’t. Light, color, my job, my friends...ok, friend. Dream didn’t want me. He’d made that perfectly clear, and what was also clear to me was that he was a fucked-up asshole who would never let my mother go. Years of being on his own had turned him into a monster. Maybe he’d always been one, and that was the reason he was on his own in the first place.

I put one foot through the door. Dream was wrong. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to go back to David, but I was going to sort myself out. I owed it to my mom and my sister. I was going to give up the apartment, move back to Winnipeg and finally be the daughter my mother deserved.

Pain and grief overwhelmed me as I took the second step into my room. I was finally home...So why didn’t it feel like it?

The red door began to close behind me. Once it closed fully, my only portal to the Realm of Night would be gone forever. I steeled myself against the grief, waiting for the click that would signal the door hitting the frame. I wasn’t going to turn around and watch it. This was hard enough without seeing my pathway between worlds close.

A deep guttural scream filled the air.

Dream!