Dream King by Elise Knight
7
Isucked in a breath as the doors moved one space along as they had before. The gap between two doors allowed me to get a good look at him. He was painfully beautiful, majestic, even though there was a roughness to him. Despite his pale skin that glowed almost blue under the strange twilit sky, he had a darkness about him that was beautiful and strange. I closed my eyes to admonish myself for thinking him anything other than dangerous, but that made it all the worse. The prick was going to kill me. The fact he had muscles cut like a god and hair I could run my fingers through shouldn’t matter. Then the doors moved, and I couldn’t see his face anymore. A sliver of disappointment rushed over me until I reminded myself it was a good thing. I heard a door slam, and just like that, I was alone again. He’d not looked my way once.
And so it continued throughout the day if I could call it a day. The light didn’t change once. The misty black and blue with the added purple of my bindings reminded me of a bruise which made it all the more grotesque, and yet when I closed my eyes, the scent of the place reminded me of a flower garden, and though there was no breeze, the air was fresh and clean. Every five to ten minutes, he would exit one of the doors, wait for them to move, and then enter another, ignoring me completely, just as his bird was doing.
My arms ached with lack of movement, and my body felt bruised and battered, even though, as far as I could tell, he hadn’t touched it anywhere apart from my neck. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had a purple hand mark on it. My stomach grumbled, and my throat felt like a desert, not to mention I’d needed to pee for quite a while. Hours of struggling against the purple bindings had not given me any advantage at all. I could move no more after hours of struggling than I could when I first woke up. Maybe that was his plan to kill me. Tie me to a tree and pretend I didn’t exist until I died of thirst. It was easier than any other option and would leave less literal blood on his hands.
I thought of my mother, asleep in a hospital bed in Winnipeg where she’d been since the Big Sleep along with so many others. And the numbers were growing all the time. Literally everyone on earth had fallen asleep at the same time, and most had woken up seven days later. Those that had survived. My mother being one of them. She and hundreds of thousands of others had never woken up, despite being healthy in all other areas. That was only the start. Millions had since succumbed to the sleep sickness. It was unrelenting as it raged through the earth’s population. There was no telling who would get it next. Young, old, rich, poor, black, white, healthy, sick. Nothing mattered. You either got it, or you didn’t. Unlike normal sicknesses, this thing didn’t seem to transmit person to person. Nor was it airborne or waterborne. In fact, the leading scientists the world over had spent a year researching the cause and transmission of it and were no closer to finding results. Governments were spending billions of dollars only for scientists to shrug their shoulders and shake their heads. That’s why people were so scared. No one knew how it was caught, and so, no one knew what to do to shield themselves from it. Many people had been driven crazy by not letting themselves sleep. That was also why McGee was raking in the cash. He was a snake oil merchant. He had no idea what caused the sleep sickness any more than any other person, nor did he say he did. He was cleverer than that. He marketed the Vancouver Sleep Clinic as an overall sleep health center and alluded to the fact that we could detect the sleep sickness. That’s why so many people had come through the clinic and spent so much money on a report that told them little to nothing. The day would come when one of our subjects succumbed to the sleep sickness. It was only a matter of time, something I’d pointed out to McGee, but he was taking his chances and spending his money on fast cars and tropical vacations while he had it.
I turned my thoughts to tropical vacations. If I closed my eyes, I could pretend I was on a Hawaiian beach somewhere, and someone was about to bring me a cocktail. The fragrant forest made it easier to believe. And if I wasn’t in so much pain and so desperate for the toilet, I might have believed it.
I crossed my legs, trying to think of anything but the fact my bladder was about to burst. I cursed myself for all the coffee I’d drank the night before. The way I saw it, I had two options. Either shout to the bastard the next time he emerged from one of the doors and hope he had a better nature to appeal to or sit in my own piss for however long. Deciding that wetting my only pair of jeans was probably not the best idea, I did the unthinkable. The next time one of the doors opened, I called out to him.
“Hey, Fucker. I need to pee!”
He didn’t turn his eyes my way as he slipped through another door.
Fuck!
“Hey, Raven, Can you get your boss and tell him it’s urgent?” The raven actually deigned to look my way, but I swear to all that is holy, the little bastard shook its head. “You can understand what I’m saying. I knew it! Tell your asshole of a boss he needs to let me go soon unless he wants his home, or whatever this shithole is, stinking of piss.”
It didn’t answer because, of course, it didn’t talk, but it did flap its wings and take off into the sky. I watched as it circled a few times then landed on the frame of one of the doors. There it stayed until the bastard came out, and then it hopped onto his shoulder. I liked to imagine that it was telling him about my current predicament, but it was an absurd thought.
Still, he strode over to me, the raven still on his shoulder.
“What?” The way he spoke was all venom and anger. Here was a man that didn’t like to be taken from his job.
“I need to pee,” I said, trying not to bounce up and down on my ass too much.
He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms. “So urinate. I do not see anyone stopping you.”
Bastard!
“I’m not going to pee in my pants. I gave that up when I was a baby. I need a toilet.”
Frustration driven by a heavy bladder had me spitting out my words. I couldn’t believe he was going to make me piss myself.
He remained unflustered. What did he care whether I was wet or not? “There are no toilets. This is a forest.”
No shit, Sherlock.He really was a freakshow. Pleading to his better side wasn’t going to work. It was obvious the guy didn’t have one, so I spun it so he’d want to let me go.
“It smells beautiful here. You wouldn’t want to spoil that, would you?” And it seemed that this was his home. The trees were thinner here than in any other direction, and the remains of the campfire in the center of the clearing told me that he liked to sit here when he wasn’t going through doors.
He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth then held his hand out to me. At first, I thought he was going to grab my throat again, but when the purple light bindings sputtered out, I saw that he was giving in to my request. I was free.
My legs were like jelly after hours of not using them as I tried to stand. As the blood began to circulate, tingles began to flow through my fingers, then arms, as the feeling came back to them. In seconds the tingles became great stabbing pains, and my legs gave out beneath me. Freakshow was beside me in a flash. He grabbed my arm, stopping me before I completely crumpled to the ground. I’d hoped, rather stupidly, that he would help me walk to wherever he wanted me to pee, but instead, he dragged me along the forest floor by my arm. Dead leaves raked at my face, and my ears were filled with the sound of them crunching beneath his feet. When he finally stopped about five minutes later, the crunching noise was replaced by something else. The sound of running water. A stream!
He let me go, and I fell completely to the ground, face down in the dead vegetation.
“Empty your bladder here,” he said simply.
It was clear he wasn’t going to turn around nor give me any privacy, but I was too bursting to care. I fumbled with my jean buttons before ripping them down along with my panties and hovering over the stream. The relief was heavenly, even taking my mind from all my other problems and pains for a second.
When I looked up, he was staring at me.
“Not seen anyone taking a leak before?” I asked sarcastically, pulling my jeans up and buttoning them.
“Only in dreams,” he replied.
“Fucking pervert,” I mumbled under my breath, trying to look as badass as I could when I’d just had a stranger watching me pee. He’d confirmed my theory, though. The doors led to people’s dreams. To the inside of people’s minds. Wherever I was, it wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t anywhere on earth. The thought that I’d wandered so far away from home terrified me, but it intrigued me too. I was in a place that no one knew existed. A realm that, until a night ago, I couldn’t have even imagined because this was where all of humanity converged, even though I was the only human here. If each of those doors represented a person, this is where we all came to dream.
“Your words do not hurt me, girl, though I find it amusing you think they can.”
The fucker heard me! He must have supernatural hearing along with all the other supernatural crap he had going on.
I ignored him and turned back to the stream. It sparkled and shimmered in the blue light, but it was black, like ink. I’d never seen anything like it.
I dipped my hand in then pulled it out again. The black water dripped off, leaving no stain.
My throat rasped at the sight of the water, but my brain told me not to drink it. And yet, I was parched. My throat felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper. Who knew when or if he’d let me go again. I clasped my hands together into a bowl shape and plunged them into the cool darkness. Bringing the ladled water to my face, I lowered my head to drink. Before the inky substance touched my lips, my hands were batted away, knocking all the water from them.
“I need to drink,” I rasped as he hauled me to my feet. This time I was more steady and able to stay upright as he dragged me back through the forest. As was becoming usual, he ignored me.
“I’ll die if I don’t drink soon.”
With a completely unperturbed look, he pushed me roughly against the tree and waved his hands. The slithering rope of purple magic or whatever it was appeared again, binding my arms and body to the dark gray tree trunk. He turned on his heel and squeezed between two of the door frames. I heard the click of a door being closed, and once again, he was gone.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. Anything to take my mind off the burning in my throat and the empty rumbling of my belly.
When I awoke some time later, he was still nowhere to be seen, but there was a bowl of clear water next to me. With me being unable to pick it up as my hands were bonded to my sides, I had to shuffle the best I could to lower my head and drink from the bowl the way a cat would drink milk, by lapping it up with my tongue.
It was only after my thirst was sated that I realized I could have pulled my phone from my pocket when I was free. I had no way of knowing if this place would get a signal, nor if it would connect to the normal world, but I was going to make it my mission to find out. If I could find a way to get other people here, they would be able to overpower the bastard and wake people up. Wake my mother up. With that in mind, I smiled sweetly up at the raven as I concocted my plan.