by Sarah Noffke
“I learned that you’re my soul mate and if I’m not with you, then I’m alone,” she says, with a tender smile. “Take me wherever you go.”
I unleash a smile I feel in my heart, in my entire being. I pull the opener from my pocket so I’ll have it for when we arrive in the next location. Overhead there’s a creaking. Then a crashing sound and then something fucking tears through the roof of the mansion. I grab Dahlia’s hand and yank her to the side, away from the destruction dominating all around us. Realizing this assault on the den is only going to get worse, I yank her down the hallway and to a place that will be safe enough to give us a chance to dream travel. I’m almost dragging Dahlia through the halls when I hear her yell behind me.
Frantically I whip my head over my shoulder. “What?” I say, still running and unable to easily make out her words over the winds and rain.
“The blue light!” she says, pointing at me.
My eyes jerk down at my hand and I realize she’s pointing at the opener, which is bright blue. There’s a wormhole in our house. I halt and shield my head from the rain pouring in through the roof. Without a moment to consider my decision, I push the opener into the space before me and find that it sticks in the air at once. Then I tap the button and pull the chain in one swift movement. A bright circle illuminates immediately, showing us the door.
“Where does it go?” Dahlia yells over the shredding sounds the storm is making.
“I don’t know,” I say back. “But it’s our only chance.”
“And I can go through there with you?” she says.
“I don’t know,” I say again.
Her hand is wet and warm when she slips it into mine. “Let’s go,” Dahlia says and pulls me through the passage.
Chapter Thirty-One
I stumble through the portal. Fall. Land on a hard surface. I’m coughing when I tumble through the door. Rain seems to be caught in my throat and the bright light overhead is a stark contrast to the gloomy house we just left. But I open my eyes and endure the strain to find the best sight of my life in front of me. Lying on my chest, tangled in my arms, is the love of my life. Dahlia and I lie curled up on a ground which is covered in moss and stone. She lifts her head and I recognize at once that she’s not glowing like she did in soul form. Neither am I. Dahlia and I are both lighter in appearance, the form one takes when dream traveling.
“We’re in the dreamscape,” she says, pushing up off me and to her feet. I do the same.
“The key to that statement is ‘we,’” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pulling her into me.
She’s taking in our surroundings, which I notice at once aren’t typical. We are in a walled-in garden which is rich with roses and fruit trees. Medicinal herbs line one wall and a fountain punctuates the center of the space, which isn’t small, but the walls make it feel quaint. However, there’s something not quite right about this place and my mind doesn’t at first find what it is.
“The bird,” Dahlia says, pointing at a sparrow perched on the edge of the fountain. It’s frozen and sits staring blankly ahead. I walk over and realize the coy fish in the pond are frozen too, floating in the water in mid-swim.
“It’s like this world has been paused,” I say, finding a few other animals that are unmoving. Rabbits, bugs, birds.
“So this isn’t the dreamscape?” Dahlia says.
“It is, because we’ve taken on dream travel form, but this isn’t our dreamscape. I think it’s a parallel universe,” I say, taking Dahlia’s hands and leading her through the space. “Maybe it’s a copy of our world. A backup of sorts.”
“I didn’t know that was possible,” she says.
“I didn’t know half of what’s happened recently was possible,” I say, gauging the details of our surroundings. But then Dahlia stops beside me and tugs on my hand.
I tear my focus off this strange world and regard her. Dahlia’s eyes beg for my attention. “Ren, you did it. Somehow you did it.”
I half smile at her, a mock look of offense on my face. “How could you ever have doubted me?” I say.
“It astounds me that after all this time, you continue to stun me. You are absolutely the most amazing man ever,” she says and rises up on her tiptoes and kisses me softly on the cheek. It doesn’t feel like it would in the physical realm or the Land of the Souls, but I feel it still and the fact that forever I have my Dahlia is enough. I did do it, and still the full realization of the future spreading before us hasn’t hit me yet. I have kind of been through a pretty major ordeal though.
Dahlia steps back, her hands still in mine. “You wanted to never lose me and now you have me for eternity or however long we’re granted in this place,” she says, waving at the space around us.
I push her dark brown hair away from her face, my fingers pausing on her jawline. “You’re going to grow extremely tired of me.”
“Ren Lewis, you’re the only person I have never tired of.” Then she takes my hand and leads me to an archway that’s bathed in vines and roses. Sitting on a twig is a ladybug. I reach out and pick up the insect, which is alive, but not alive. It’s like we are, in the in-between.
“What a strange place,” I say, musing on the stillness of the bug.
“What a beautiful place,” Dahlia says and she reaches out and touches the wings of a butterfly perched on the petal of a rose. And then there’s a flicker. An awakening. The wings of the monarch beat, pushing air away. The butterfly’s antennas twitch and then the creature that was frozen takes flight, flitting through the air and away. Dahlia steps back into me.
“Just like in the vision,” she says in a hush.
“Vision?” I say.
She turns and gives me a guilty smile. “Before I died I had a vision that I could touch things and bring them to life. I fantasized then that it was one of my Dream Traveler gifts, but then I died and…”
Her words trail away.
“I think it’s definitely your skill, because I can’t bring anything in this world to life,” I say, taking the ladybug still in my hand and placing it in Dahlia’s. It has barely touched her palm when its wings buzz and then the insect flies away through the garden.
A smile full of her amazement lights up Dahlia’s face.
“It appears you can bring this world to life, if you so desire it,” I say, regarding her with the same amazement she had shown me moments before.
“It would appear,” she says, her eyes dancing over the garden at our backs, the possibilities probably springing to her mind.
“And that means we could make this world as we want it,” I say.
“Giving life to that which is good,” she says, completing the thought in my mind.
I extend an arm to her. “Shall we go and discover what’s out there?”
She wraps her arm around mine with an excited nod.
When we come to the entrance to the garden, I realize what we couldn’t see with the trees and walls of the garden blocking the sky. And I realize how amazing this world really is. The poetry of it creates a tender ache in my chest. Below us stretches green rolling hills flecked with houses and bordered by waters of a lake. Above us the green and blue lights of the Aurora Borealis grace the sky. My thoughts from before circle back around in my brain. The first time Dahlia and I dream traveled we gazed at these lights. And then I had thought that the Aurora Borealis was proof that other worlds exist. My instinct told me they were the bleeding over of these other worlds. And to look back and see how perfect the symmetry of this all is steals my breath. It makes me realize how incredibly complex and beautiful this world with all its realms and dimensions truly is.
I turn to Dahlia. She’s wearing an expression that perfectly explains how I feel inside. Grabbing both her hands, I pull her to me. Her fingers break from mine and she slides them around my neck.
“I love you, Ren Lewis.”
I almost laugh against her mouth as she kisses me. “I love you” does
n’t feel quite like the right thing for me to say in this moment. It doesn’t seem like enough.
I separate from her, but only an inch. “I love you, Dahlia. And I never knew what love was until we met and I lost my soul to you.”
Epilogue
When I was born, the doctors said I wouldn’t live the night through. I was born with a broken heart. And for most of my years on earth I have been certain that God shouldn’t have allowed a healer to save me. I thought I was too powerful. Too wicked. Too cursed. And God and I have battled for all of my life, sometimes finding peace and other times him checkmating me. However, I understand now the reasons he saved me. As a man who has worked to find holistic solutions to the world’s problems for the majority of my years, I understand God better than most. And now I realize why he gave me so much power. I thought he was tempting me. But that was never the case. And from my newly appointed position, I understand so much more. God wasn’t trying to scar me. He wasn’t playing a game with me. This entire time I didn’t realize that God was training me. Preparing me. Ensuring that one day I was ready when I accepted my final role.
Some don’t want to live forever in a world they view as evil. And some want to live forever in a world they know they cannot fix, but they are afraid of what comes next. However, only two will ever live forever in a world of their choosing.
I’m Ren Lewis. And I am a God who has created my own world.
The End
Bonus Content: Dream Traveler Apocalypse Short Story
Prologue
Some say that home is where the heart is.
That’s bullshit.
Just some bullocks that people say to make themselves feel good.
Home isn’t where the heart is. That’s in your chest. Look it up. Every goddamn anatomy textbook will prove that I’m right.
Home, is plain and simply, the place that you like more than any else. It’s where you go when you’re fucking tired of the rest of the world and the shit show it’s constantly putting on for the dumbasses on this planet to watch.
Home is not some warm place where a cozy fire is always burning and pot roast is cooling on the kitchen table.
Sometimes the best homes are cold. Damp. Full of repugnant technology and people who talk too fucking much. Still that can be home despite its annoyance. Despite the frustrations that never seem to end inside those walls. Despite all the jerks who crowd the place, it’s the best god damn place in the world.
A home isn’t where the heart is. I get the metaphor, but it’s worthless. It’s just a cozy little set of words that doesn’t mean anything at the end of the day.
You want to know what home is? You want a definition that you can actually do something with?
Home is the place you’d die to protect.
There. It’s that simple. No frills. No poetry. Just a law. One I stand by forever.
I’m Ren Lewis and if you mess with my home, you’ll die.
Chapter One
What was once referred to as the “crown jewels” of Pasadena sits almost unoccupied on this late spring night. The queen of England, my home country, probably loathes that repugnant Americans stole that phrase to refer to a modern building.
Cars motor by on the neighboring streets and a dog barks in the distance. A baby screams somewhere at my back which sounds like saxophone music. Both should be outlawed: babies and saxophones. Dogs too. And possibly cars, as well. Only the weak need them to travel around.
I shake away this fantasy, of a world without noise disturbances, and focus on one of the few people I know to be occupying the City Hall in Pasadena, California on this night. He goes by the name Yen Tang but I’ve taken to calling him Fuck Face. Sometimes I call him jack fruit when I’m not feeling like my typical hostile self. Today though, I’m tired, so Fucker will have to do.
Fucker strolls out onto the lower balcony under the dome of City Hall. He’s irritatingly early, the fuck face. His black hair is slicked back and his slanted eyes scan the area around him. The person who he has come to meet isn’t there yet. She won’t be showing up on time since I locked her in her office on the second floor. It wasn’t because I wanted her to be late to this meeting, but rather because she annoyed me by throwing a stapler at my head when I spooked her by hiding in the dark corner of her office.
Pamela Bagwell won’t remember that I broke into her office or that she nearly assaulted me with office equipment. And more importantly, she won’t recall that she told me about this meeting time and location. After the mind control I did on the woman, she’ll be lucky to be able to feed herself properly over the next couple of days.
I spared her, not doing any serious brain damage with my mind control, but I don’t feel any remorse nonetheless. She’s a corrupt politician, hence the reason she’s meeting with a man who I suspect to be behind a major conspiracy—one I unfortunately don’t know enough about. Hopefully that will change soon.
Fuck Face checks his watch and visibly sighs. Pamela is late. She’s also a bloody idiot who couldn’t supply me with the details on Yen or the meeting about to take place. For all the bribes she’s taken, she should really know more about the people she works for.
One thing is immediately evident though. Yen doesn’t trust Pamela. Or maybe it’s the other way around. There’s a reason the two are meeting on the first balcony of City Hall where they are out in the open. And although this makes it easy for me to spy on them from the front of the building shaped like a giant boob, I’m going to have to get closer before Pamela figures out how to unjam her office door.
I prepare myself to teleport up to the balcony, a trick I learned so I didn’t have to take common transportation—or really any transportation. I don’t even have to waste my brain cells with the body generator the Lucidite’s Institute uses—also known as the GAD-C. No, gone are the days where I must stoop to such ridiculous methods for getting around. Now, all I have to do is close my eyes, focus and poof, I magically appear wherever I goddamn please. I wished that was my armchair, but alas, duty calls.
Taking a steadying breath, I’m seconds from teleporting when I notice a shadow move on the upper balcony. Another person is up there, but just under the dome on the upper story. I step father into the shadow of the tree blocking me from view and narrow my eyes. My red hair usually makes me stand out. It always has gotten me more attention than I wanted.
A face I wasn’t expecting materializes on the balcony above Yen Tang. The last time I’d see this person I’d been abducted, beaten and left for dead. She looks to have recovered from the excursion we had together.
Stealthily she slides out into full view and then camouflages into the exterior of the railing and statues. That’s a skill she didn’t have the last time I saw here. However, I can still make out her figure if I focus, since chameleons don’t work on me. I’m a master with my mind control, telekinesis linked to touch, teleportation, and ability to produce illusions. One has to be way more skillful than me for their tricks to work and I’ve yet to meet a person of that caliber. For instance, most tricks of the eye don’t work on me. It’s a perk of having seen it all. Oh and also probably because I sold my soul to the devil a long time ago.
I was too distracted watching the wanna-be ninja and almost didn’t see Pamela Bagwell hurry out to meet Yen Tang. She’s breathless, glancing nervously over her shoulder. She must have seen something out of place that I left behind. Oh well, we can’t all be perfect.
Her nervousness immediately puts Fuck Face on edge. His head whips back and forth, but he doesn’t see me in the shadows. He also doesn’t notice the girl who has hooked a rope around the railing above him and is lowering herself over the side so she can get closer to eavesdrop.
Pamela keeps shaking her head, nervousness evident in her every move. This isn’t going smoothly as I would have liked. I would blame myself for potentially messing up the meeting by tampering with her mind, but this is the closest I’ve been to Yen in months. All I need to
do is get a little closer.
I’m just about to teleport when Fuck Face rushes off, disappearing into the building. Pamela follows, not moving as fast but rather appearing disoriented like she’s lost in museum.
Damn it.
Following Yen now won’t get me anywhere. It’s been like this for months. Even though he’s not a Dream Traveler, he knows how to disappear without a trace. Although he’s only a lame Middling, he can move without a trace. I can’t figure it out. And more importantly, I have no fucking clue what he’s working on—only that it is most certainly sinister.
I close my eyes and teleport up to the top balcony. The sensation is always the same. A bit of an inside out feeling followed by a bit of nausea that I quickly shake off.
The view when I blink back to consciousness is different than before. I’m looking out at the grass and trees where I’d been standing, almost at the top of City Hall. In front of me I hear commotion as the girl suspended by the rope struggles to climb back up.
I cinch my hand down on the rope securing her, instantly alerting her to a problem above her. She sucks in a quick breath that speaks of her panic.
I smile.
This really is too easy. Taking my time, I peer over the edge to see Nona Fuller struggling. Her hands reach for the rails of the balcony as she tries to high step. She halts at the sight of me. At first panic crosses her youthful face, followed by annoyance.
“You,” she accuses, spinning in her harness as the ropes dangle underneath her.
“Oh, yes, me,” I say, a proud ring to my voice.
“Are you what ran them off?” Nona asks, again trying to hike herself up. Her long blonde hair is tied back in a ponytail and she’s lost some of her child-like features, filling out her face a bit. Although she’s barely fifteen, I know she’s more skilled than most double her age. Still, I won’t be telling her that. Not in so many words.
