Dream King by Elise Knight
4
Ialready knew it wouldn’t open to the forest, even though that was all that was behind it, but I was still surprised to see myself in a room that seemed to form out of the darkness itself. Large floor-to-ceiling windows with thick drapes took up the whole wall in front of me, and to the side, a huge mantelpiece over a real working fireplace held framed photos, all of which were blurry. The view from the window I recognized. My breath hitched in my throat as I saw that I was still in Vancouver. Somehow, seeing the mountains made me feel less alone. Because I was alone. Wherever he was, it was not here. I swore I saw him walk through this door, but then again, the doors had moved, and I was still disconcerted when they had. It wasn’t against the realm of possibility that I’d picked the wrong door. My heart did a race around my ribcage as another door opened, and a man walked in and only calmed when I saw it wasn’t Sexy-Freakshow. I recognized him immediately.
I’d seen him last night at the sleep trial. He was the man that had kicked the blanket from his bed. I scrabbled around my fuddled brain for his name.
“Mr. Collins?”
I waved my hand in front of his face, but he looked right through me with no response. It was like I was a ghost to him. Almost like I was not there at all. As if I’d died and fallen into the pits of hell. All that was missing was the hellfire, though why Mr. Collins would be here was beyond me.
He picked up one of the photographs from the mantelpiece and began to sob. As tears splattered on the glass frame, the picture in it cleared. It was of a woman. She was smiling at someone just out of frame. I watched as Mr. Collins closed his eyes and began to sway. He was no longer crying. The picture began to shimmer, then grow and change shape until it was the woman.
Of course, it was. Nothing weird about that. No, perfectly normal. Nothing to see here.
It took all the willpower I had not to dash back out through the gray door, but I was transfixed. The woman was wearing a red dress just as she had been in the photo. The pair of them danced together as I tried to figure out at what point I’d been slipped a fucking hallucinogenic because there was no fucking way I was sober right now.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my hands over my face. It felt like flesh and blood. I felt alive, but what the hell did I know? In the past twenty-four hours, I’d watched a man in armor jump into the body of a woman, walk through not one but two doors to fuck knows where, and had an orgasm without being touched—Twice. A woman coming to life from a photo was becoming par for the course.
The room began to dim, and the ground rumbled beneath my feet. The couple was still dancing as though nothing weird was happening. Everything began to fold into itself. I dashed out through the door as the scene faded completely to black. The door slammed shut behind me, almost knocking me to the forest floor. Then, because my life wasn’t fucking weird enough, the entire row of doors on one side moved again. The door I’d just been through passed the red door, and I found myself face to face with another one.
The door behind me began to open. Instinctively, I knew it was him. With a reflex action, I scooted around it before he had a chance to see me. I was not ready for him to know I was still here. Not until I figured out exactly where ‘here’ was. I ducked behind the nearest tree and watched him. Only part of him was visible from where I was standing, owing to the angle of the door he’d just walked through. I could see enough to know he was perplexed about something, and I wondered if he knew what I had done and that I was still here.
I held my breath and ducked back behind a nearby tree as he slowly pivoted on the spot. If I didn’t calm the fuck down, I was going to give myself away by my thundering heartbeat. I took a deep breath and tried to relax. Not easy when the self-described devil standing six feet from me could and probably would crush me if he knew I was still here.
He finally turned and walked through the door I’d been face to face with moments before. His raven followed, and I let out a long slow breath and fell to the forest floor. The darkness was all-pervading, sending a shudder down my spine. A pale blue light flooded the place, though the moon or whatever it was that was providing it was nowhere to be seen. Below me, blue-gray leaves crunched beneath my fingers. Dead leaves, although the live leaves in the trees had the same color to them. My own tanned skin looked washed out in the eerie light. The silence around me was palpable. No wind rocked the trees, and no animals skittered along the forest floor. In fact, the only thing I could hear was the sound of my own breathing. The whole place was damn freaky, unnatural. The red door was right there, not ten feet from where I was sitting. It would be so easy to stand up and walk back through it, leaving this place. I could go back to wasting my life being miserable about my shitty ex and not being able to afford to eat like normal people. So easy, and yet I couldn’t. While I’d found myself in a kind of living hell, or actual hell—I wasn’t sure at this point—it held answers. The answers the whole world had been looking for, for a year. The answer to why my once perfectly healthy and active mother had been asleep for a whole year for no discernible reason.
I was so caught up in the memory of the doctor telling me that my mother had succumbed to the sleep sickness that I didn’t notice that he’d come back through the door. He was around the doors and almost on me before I could react, and he looked pissed. Face as dark as night, full-on, bat-shit insane rage. And coming at me the way he was, with his eyes blazing fire, he was terrifying. Jumping to my feet, I turned away from the tree that had done a very poor job of hiding me and raced into the darkness of the forest.
Dead leaves and fallen branches cracked beneath my feet as I ran through the darkness, my breathing ragged with the unexpected rush of adrenaline. He was on me before I knew it. Of course, he was. He was built like an athlete, and my version of exercise was going to the fridge for another beer when I could afford such a luxury. Still, it hurt as he grappled me, and we both fell to the ground, him right on top of me.
I went down with an ‘oof’ as his weight knocked the breath from my lungs. I had literally no chance of escape. The motherfucker was huge and ripped and currently pinning me to the forest floor, face down. I spat out the dead leaves I’d managed to almost inhale as I’d crashed to the forest floor. I was not going to make it easy for him. I clawed my way forward, trying to wriggle out from under him. I managed it slightly, but then my flimsy nightshirt ripped, and I had to add flashing the demon my boobs to my list of problems. At least it would be as soon as I stood up. Currently, I was only flashing him a bit of my back. The question rolled around in my mind. Do I keep trying to pull away and possibly lose my nightshirt entirely, or do I lie still and see what happens?
It took me half a second to weigh up my possibilities and make a decision. I grabbed what was left of my nightshirt, scooping up half an armful of dead leaves along with it, and shimmied around until I was facing him. Then with as much strength as I could muster, I kicked upwards in a move I’d learned from my one and only self defense class. At the time, I’d thought it was a waste of money and not gone back. Turns out it was worth every penny because the swift knee in the family jewels was enough to take his attention from me and enable me to pull myself out from beneath him.
I resisted the urge to shout ‘girl power’ like some teenage Spice Girls fan in the nineties and instead concentrated on running away and holding what was left of my nightdress up.
Twenty seconds later and I was eating dirt again. This time he wasn’t going to let me go. His legs pinned mine down, and his hands clasped my wrists to the ground. I turned my head to the side to be able to breathe as my brain flashed images of my soon-to-be violent and frenzied death.
His hot breath warmed my cheek, sending shivers of fear down my spine. I was well and truly fucked.
Hate shone in his eyes as I tried to claw myself out of this mess. It was a pointless endeavor. He dragged me to my feet and grabbed me by the throat, pushing me against a tree. His fingers were strong as steel, pinning me to the rough bark of the tree at my back. It was only then that I grasped just how tall he was. The way he held me, pinned me to the tree with one hand at my neck, had my feet at tiptoes, and still, he towered over me.
My nightdress was now around my waist, and everything above it was on show, but that was the least of my problems. I was pretty sure the guy was going to kill me. If I wasn’t already in hell with the devil, I soon would be heading there. The way he looked at me, his eyes flashing with anger, his teeth bared, almost feral, left me in no doubt I was lucky to still be alive. Whether I’d still be by the end of the night was anybody’s guess.
“How dare you come into my world.”
There was that voice again. Deep, sensual. I really hated that my mind was thinking that instead of something more sensible like ‘Oh fuck, he’s going to choke me to death.’
“You shouldn’t have been in my sleep study,” I choked out, although it sounded more like youshntbnimasleestuy. My vision began to go cloudy at the edges, but this was no dream. I was on the verge of passing out due to oxygen deprivation.
He lessened his grip on my neck a little allowing me to take a deep breath.
His face darkened, and his eyes flashed with anger. He deliberated for a second what to do with me, and all I could do was stand and wait until he decided if he was going to kill me or not. All he had to do was squeeze a little harder, and I was a goner. I tried to appear tough, as though him pinning me to a tree didn’t bother me in the slightest, but the shivers in my arms were enough to give me away. My body betrayed me, shaking like one of the leaves above us. He was so much stronger than me. No amount of self defense classes could have prepared me for the nightmare I’d fallen into. His muscular arm flexed as he tensed up, and I knew I’d taken things too far as was my way. My mother had always told me that my smart mouth was going to be the death of me, and it stuck in my throat that her premonition, no matter how flippantly she’d said it was going to be proved right.
I can’t die. Not here. Not now. Yes, my life is as shitty as it gets, but that doesn’t mean I want it to be over. I can’t die when I’m literally at my lowest point.
His breath came hot on my cheek, and I was all too aware of my naked breasts, inches from his chest. I’d gotten myself into some ridiculous situations in my time, but this was some real fucked up shit, even for me. I was a lamb to the slaughter, and he knew it. I tried breathing evenly as he deliberated what to do with me. With his free hand, he grabbed one of my wrists and spun me around so that my arm was twisted up my back and my face scraping the rough bark of the tree. Now, I was sure this was another move that they taught me how to get out of in self defense class, but my brain was so foggy that I forgot what I was supposed to do. I knew that you were supposed to shout fire instead of rape because no one shows up if you shout rape, but I didn’t think that was applicable here for two reasons. The first being that I was naked from the waist up with my nightdress hanging on only because of my broad hips, and he had barely batted an eye at me below my chin. The second being there was no one to hear me yell out anyway. Not apart from the bird, but I’d not brought it the birdseed I promised earlier, so it was hardly going to side with me.
He leaned in close, his hot breath on my ear. “I should rip the flesh from your bones and feed you to the insects, human filth.”
Human filth? Rude! “And mess up this lovely place you have here?” I clapped back, waiting for punishment for my smart mouth. I couldn’t seem to keep the bloody thing closed, even when my life was on the line.
“All this time, and it turns out you are not worth it.”
What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
He half-dragged, half-pushed me back to the rows of doors. We slipped between two door frames to the red door. With his bare foot, he kicked it open, and without so much as a ‘goodbye, it was nice knowing you,’ he roughly kicked me through it.