I shoved my hands against the door, watching the long nails scratch my wrist, leaving thin lines of blood. The creature as snarling on the other side of the door, trying to push past my weight, I smelled the hunger on its breath, saw its long, razor sharp, yellowed nails and wished it was all a dream. It gave a roar and hit the door, almost knocking me over. The pit of fear and hopelessness in my stomach deepened, I couldn’t fight much longer.
“Help!” I yelled.
My younger brother ran down the stairs with a carefree look on his face.
“I’m busy, maybe I’ll help you later.”
“No!” I screamed as he thundered back up the steps.
The creature gave a final heave and the door flew open.
I snapped out of the dream, realizing where and who I was and that it hadn’t even been my dream. I sighed unhappily at the reality of the dream then continued through the dim hallway.
Other nightmares flashed through my mind, searing their selves into my soul. There was a scream to my left and I saw a dream of a young woman pulling back the curtain to her baby’s crib and finding a baby doll, smiling evilly. I grimaced, feeling bad for the woman having the nightmare.
When I reached the end of the hallway I turned and looked back through the darkness, daring any more dreams to appear for me to absorb. None did. I jogged back down the hallway, wanting to get away as soon as possible, wanting to see Nezra’s innocent face, wanting to hear her complain about the boring dreams she’d witnessed. I opened the door into the main hallway of the Insomnium, letting the blue tinged light filter into the corridor. I checked once more down the eerily blue lighted hallway then closed its door.
I walked down the main hallway and opened the door of the Average dream room. The large, circular indent in the middle of the polished white floor was almost empty of the dreams for the night. Nezra stood on the balcony, absorbing insignificant, good, and sweet dreams. I waited until she was done before saying anything, patiently watching her face having peace spread over it as the dreams filtered through her head.
When she was finished she gazed around the room, then ran over to me, the usual determined look on her face.
“Torin?”
“Yes?” I replied, already forseeing our conversation.
“I want to be allowed to watch the nightmares. I want to help you absorb them, I know you need help with them. I’ll be able to absorb half the night mares and half the good dreams, that way you could have half the good dreams too! It’ll be a perfectly balanced night for you and me!”
“Nezra–” I started.
“C’mon Torin, please,” She whined, “You know I get bored with all the sappy happy dreams. It seems like they’re all about the same thing – happiness! It’s so boring!
“I want some war! Some violence! Some despair! Bring it on!”
I could tell she’d reahersed this speech beforehand and I didn’t want to disappoint her but, “No.”
Her face fell.
“Oh,” her eyes filled with tears, “please?”
I hated it when she did that, it made her look so fragile, so vulnerable but, “No Nezra. You’re still not ready, you’re only eleven.”
The tears instantly faded from her eyes and her face adopted a hard look, “Yeah, well you’re seventy three and in my opinion old people shouldn’t be exposed to bad stuff ‘cause they can easily go crazy on you.
“Then I would have to take over the nightmares, so you might as well get me used to this kind of stuff now before you go psycho.”
I sighed.
“Nezra, we have this conversation every night, will you just let it go? I’m not going to let you absorb the nightmares until I believe you’re ready and the way you’re acting tells me you’re not ready.”
“Are you saying I’m immature?” She asked skeptically,” ‘Cause you’re old and immature.”
“I’m Immortal so I don’t get old, so there for I’m not old and you don’t have to worry about me,” I made quotation marks in the air with my fingers, “‘going crazy on you’.”
“Torin…” She whined.
“No. Now go home before your mom finds out you’re not actually out with your,” I made quotations in the air again, “‘boyfriend’.”
She sighed at me and flicked her elbow-length, curly, dirty blond hair away from her face.
“You’re annoying.” She said as she walked towards the door.
“You’re immature.” I shot back.
“You’re old.” She teased.
“You’re pretty.”
Nezra made a disgusted face.
“G’night geezer.”
“‘Night girly-girl.”
Nezra walked out the door, leaving me alone in the Insomnium.
…
When I was younger, my parents died in a freak accident.
As I lay in bed I replayed the scene in my mind:
My mother saying her last goodnight to me. The large wardrobe in my room falling onto her. My father rushing into my room as she screamed in pain. My father picking me up and running me outside. My father dashing back inside to rescue my mother. Neither of them coming out.
The whole debacle was because of what I was now doing, because of where I was now living.
The Insomnium.
The Dream Keeper.
There’s one Insomnium in every city and town, one dream Keeper for every Insomnium. If you have no Dream Keeper the dreams that go to the Insomnium every night have no where to be absorbed to. The city will start to crumble as the dreams fly loose.
That’s what happened to Risine, the city my parents and I (now just me) were living in.
The Dream Keeper was arrested for using drugs and the government couldn’t appoint a new Dream Keeper soon enough so the city started crumbling. Many other houses had collapsed, but most of them had been empty.
My parents had been one of the unlucky ones.
Once my parents had died I was put into a foster home for a short time, I left after only a week.
The government was looking for kids between the ages thirteen and seventeen to be the new Dream Keeper. Nobody older or else the Immortality wouldn’t work as well on them.
Immortality is the government’s biggest secret. Nobody, except for a few select persons, is allowed to have it. Ever. It’s mostly used for Dream Keepers and it works best on humans as soon as they’ve finished puberty. Otherwise the person is too old, so they die because they’re immune system can’t take the Immortality, or the person is too young and the Immortality doesn’t work on them so they keep aging.
Immortality works like this: you take a pill once a day (at night) for a week. The pills attack the again hormones so that the immune system can’t fight them off. If you’re too young there are too many aging hormones, if you’re too old your immune system fights until it dies, then you die.
Anyway, some government agents came to my foster home and picked out 3 kids who were the right age, me, a girl named Brittany, and another girl named Alexandra. Then came the tests.
The government brought us along with about eight other kids to a lab in the city. They tested our fears, our stress, our sadness, and how much fear, stress, and sadness we could withstand. Then they asked us questions about our pasts. The girls definitely were more emotional than the boys and in the end there were just 2 boys, me and Timothy. So, once again, they went through the tests, only this time they tripled the fear, stress and sadness tests and asked no questions about our pasts. In the end, I was the only kid; everyone else had their memories of the tests and government lab taken.
So now, here I am, the Dream Keeper.
I absorb dreams, letting them settle in my soul. I used to absorb both good and bad dreams but now since I got Nezra as an apprentice I only absorb the good dreams when she can’t make it to the Insomnium.
It’s a terrifying job, having to absorb the nightmares of people you don’t know, people who don’t even care about. I’ve never complained about it, but if I could’ve had a choice about becoming a Dream Keeper I never would’ve become one. Never.
Sometimes people say they like something, even if they really hate it. That’s my life. I’m always living with being Dream Keeper, hating it but never showing it, because if I showed it then the government would eventually find out. They’d remove me from my position and then dispose of me. I’m not afraid of being disposed, I’m afraid for Nezra. If I was disposed of she’d become the new Dream Keeper and then she’s have to endure the endless nightmares. Even though there are the good dreams there are always more bad dreams than good. Always.
Sometimes I wonder why I picked Nezra to become my apprentice, why I ever sent that message to the government saying that I wanted an apprentice.
It was because I was foolish 56 years ago. I wanted someone to share all the nice dreams with me, all the happy dreams that went into my soul and lifted me from the darkness of the bad dreams. Then, 56 years later, when the government finally sent me 3 kids to pick from to become my apprentice I had to pick the girl, the one who was the most vulnerable on the inside. I’d picked her then because she was tough looking, tougher than the boys the government had sent. When I finally got to know her though I found out all the problems she had at home. That she had gone behind her family’s back to apply for the job, that her father was a drunk, that her mother was abused, that she was bullied by her mother.
I almost killed myself because of the guilt I felt for pulling her into this hell hole of a dream. But I didn’t do suicide because at that point Nezra needed me, and she needed my guidance. So I persevered and started to grow more and more attached to Nezra, feeling worse and worse about pulling her into the appalling business of dreams.
…
The lights blinded me, unforgivably staring down at me with cold white brightness. Men and women in white lab coats moved around me, silently murmuring to each other then looking or pointing at me. I didn't know why I was here, all I knew was that I didn't want to be here, that these people were doing something unnatural to me and I couldn't stop it.
I tried to scream but my throat couldn't work because of a dryness in it. I looked around fearfully and my eyes fell upon a man with a long knife in his hand. I tried to move away from him but the white table that I was strapped to gave me no moving room. I felt the white, leather straps pushing down into my skin all over me, barely giving me enough room to breath.
The man was close now, grinning slightly at the knife as if it was his pet that had just done something good.
Suddenly the man was upon me and slicing the knife into my skull. I screamed without feeling anything but the pain searing through my head. Suddenly I blacked out, feeling no more pain, just a dull, hot pain and seeing white light behind my eyelids.
My mind burst out of the dream and I remembered again where I was. There had never been a dream for as long as I had been Dream Keeper that had been that horribly real feeling. I continued through the hallway in a daze, reliving the dream in my mind over and over again. Wanting to get it out of my head but wanting to replay it in my mind as well. I was just so amazed at the dream. So confused with it.
Once I left the corridor housing the nightmares I went to the Average dream room where Nezra usually was and started to absorb the dreams there.
I was shown dreams of insignificance but at least they got the one nightmare out of my head.
I went to my bed at 10 am, finally able to fall onto the mattress after a night of work. But I couldn't get to sleep, the dream replayed over and over again in my mind, never leaving and now some characteristics of the men and women in white coats was starting to bring back a memory from long ago in my mind. I didn't know how or why but I somehow knew the type of people that had been in the dream. Somehow.
I tried to force myself to sleep but I couldn't fall into the arms of Morpheus. Not that I would go to Morpheus - the Greek god of dreams - because I didn't dream. Neither did Nezra, we both were dreamless. It was pretty much the only good thing about being Dream Keeper you could just go to sleep and then wake back up again without worrying about a dream that had troubled you that night.
When I finally got to sleep I was awoken by someone walking through the hallway, muttering to themselves.
I eased myself quietly out of bed and called, "Who's there?"
"'Who's there'" mimicked the voice. Nezra's voice, I instantly recognized. "Who do you think is here? The person who has come to cut out your liver and feed it to you?"
"Hey Nez. What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to help you with the dreams you moron what do you think?"
"It's early though..." I looked at my bedside clock and held in a gasp. "Crap."
"Yeah, somebody slept late."
"Nezra, what's up? Did your mom buy you something?"
"No..." I heard a sniffle from outside my bedroom door, probably where Nezra was standing.
"What was it then?"
She walked inside and I saw tearstains down her face.
"Your dad?" I asked calmly.
She nodded and burst into tears.
"Oh Nezra."
I sat on my bed and she slipped into my arms, my little 11 year old apprentice, crying her eyes out while both of us should be absorbing dreams.
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