Dreaming
“STOP!” a voice cries out in front of us. I see a man standing there. Myself and the others hold still. The voice is familiar and I recognize it immediately. I had dreamt of him before. The face of the figure in front of us is Chiru, but it is not his voice. Suddenly, we were surrounded by daemons. They came up from the ground. One immediately tried inserting it’s blade inside me while I dodged. I blasted it with my rifle. Another group was grouping around Michael who was still carrying Emily’s unconscious body. Jackson threw me the backpack. In my hands I held a nuclear bomb and I was ninety nine percent sure I was going to set it off. The daemons couldn’t catch me. Time slowed enough I could see their movements and dodge them. I felt like I was moving through water. I ducked, dived, even rolled once moving closer to the angel in front of me. Then the zombie Chiru spoke again. I froze.
“Everyone around you is either dead, dying or sleeping. Is this really how you want to spend your last few moments alive? Fighting? We can set you free - I can give you what you want. You want the girl right, Vee. You want to live happily ever after and you don’t give a damn how that happens. You think that by destroying the rift, the angel that she will wake up. Do you have the heart to kill an angel. If you would kill an angel for her certainly there is something I can offer you now that would be much easier. A deal. Yes. Let us make a deal. Something that befits both of us, both of our species. Tell me have you ever heard the story of Adam and Eve? How would you like to start a new world, I can even save your friends. Yes. The cherry on top. Save your girl, save your friends. All I ask is that you stop. You let go and we will see to it that Vee wakes up. We will return you to your home. We will make sure that humanity survives for a long long time far far away. That’s the deal. All you have to do is shake my hand and we can all go home. Damn this world and save your girl, save your friends. Damn this world and live,” Chiru said. No I recognized the voice now. It was Leer, the man from my dreams and he spoke with a wide grin across his pale white face. Chiru was dead and they were using what was left of his body to speak to us. First contact.
“Don’t tempt me with false promises,” I said shooting Chiru in the chest. He fell to the ground dead. We weren’t here to negotiate. We tried talking to them years ago when they first appeared. We tried sending every kind of signal we could and they attacked. They had burned through most of Europe if they could attach themselves to human hosts and speak then they should have done that then. They were scared. We had them on the run. I was carrying a nuclear device strong enough to level this underground temple and bury myself, my friends, the daemons, and the angel all in one. All I had to do was detonate but Chiru stood up. His body was healed. His wound mended by daemonic skin.
“I uploaded my mind into this body, made a few improvements, our promises aren’t false. This is a mutual decision. We have all decided together that we will let you and several thousand of your kind live. We even have a world picked out for you, a few light years away from the place you call Earth. You and four hundred generations can live in peace and prosperity. All you have to do is stop,” said the voice.
“Sacrifice billions so that few could live, what so you can do all of this again?” I screamed firing my rifle again.
“We have done this before and we will do it again, if not you we will find someone else, another Adam, another Eve, another Cain and Abel, another King and Queen that will lead your people while we feed on the remains of your broken society, you really think your kind deserves the reality in which you live reside? You think yours is the only world in which we feed. You think you are the first to make it this far. Let me show you what you are,” he said.
For a moment I was in the cave and the next I was falling over an island. Below me I could see forests and rivers. An ocean in the distance. I could see older ships, pyramids, ancient artifacts from our world that were out of place. I could see humans fighting daemons. They looked like they were using rifles from World War II. Others looked like they were using weapons reverse engineered from the daemons. I could feel the smoke in the air before I finally hit the ground. I found myself waking up inside a prison. Surrounded on all sides by grey walls with very little light. I could hear crying form inside several of the cells I couldn’t tell one from the other but I stood up and began walking. I felt like I was inside some kind of surreal dream. I walked for what felt like hours in silence. Leer’s words echoed through my head. What would I do? What would you do? I was doing all of this to save you and now I had the chance.
I finally came to a very specific cell. I pressed down on the door and opened it. None of them had been locked. This was a prison only because we chose to believe it was one. Inside I saw you. You stood barely clothed in the corner of the room. You were weak, fragile, you looked like you had barely had anything at all to eat or drink. I stood there staring as you stared back at me. Before I knew what was happening you lounged out at me. I felt your fists beat against my breast. You were screaming. I wrapped my arms around you and began weeping.
I use to believe I was special. Different. Until I was proven wrong. When I lost you. You were so close to me that without you I felt like I could never recover. I tried. I tried to love your brother, to survive after the world had come to an end. The hours I spent sitting by your side talking to you wishing you would wake up and say something back. Anything. The mornings and nights I spent exercising your comatose body and feeding you through a tube. The days I watched you sleep inside stasis. Floating in perfect form. I have changed so much since that time. A man, a student, a warrior, a pawn in a larger game. Yet here I am still chained to the one thing that keeps me human. You.
My worst nightmare had come true. I always imagined that the two of us would unite and kiss and hug. I imagined holding you in my arms, ripping your clothes off and never falling asleep without you staring into your eyes again. Reality is a cruel monster. A waking nightmare in which we live only for hope. Hope for better days. Hope things will change. Hope for something amazing. Hope that the dancing, the loving, the friendships and family will never end. It was all over. You didn’t recognize me. Even when I said ‘I love you’ again and again. My voice which must have sounded so much deeper now compared to who I was back then. You flailed your skinny arms around trying to break away from the hold I had on you. As you pushed I held you tighter. If I just hold you I knew you would come back to me. I felt old. I felt like a stranger in your arms. It wasn’t working. Tears ran down my face and I let you go. You took off like a scared child running away from me into the hallway into the darkness. I fell to my knees. I was alone again.
“She will come back to you, give her time,” said Leer.
He was standing in the corner of the room.
“Would you like some coffee?” he asked a mug appearing out of air.
“What did you do to her?” I said making my hand into a fist.
“We broke her, a thousand times, over and over and each time we reset her. We trapped her inside this dream state, this world were you and the others like you died. She was swimming in the ocean when she figured it out the first time. Her own consciousness began creating a new reality from all of the fairy tales and stories she had read throughout her life. History blended and she sought answers from what she called the Oracle. Obviously we couldn’t let that happen. Sometimes the angel weeps and it’s thoughts mix with ours. It’s something we have been trying to fix. When that happens we keep them here. I think you call them sleepers. They are the key to our psychic link. Their minds allow us to tap into a network that transcends our two realities. We keep their thoughts flooded and we feed. Their fear, their sadness, we feed on their pain just as we find nourishment in your own. This war you have started with us. It has been a feast. It has been centuries since my brethren have fed so much outside our own reality. Let me help you, it is the least I can do as a thank you,” said Leer taking a sip from his coffee.
Leer teleported us back into the room. You stood in the corn
er again. He smirked and pushed me forward. You turned and looked up at me and smiled. You ran into my arms saying how you knew I would come for you. You knew I was alive. You laid your head against my chest and pressed your body against mine wrapping your arms tightly around me as if you were scared out of your mind I would disappear. Tears balled from your eyes as you said thank you over and over and over again. I was hesitant. How could this be you. You had just run away. Leer smiled and pushed me forward with you onto the bed. You began tearing at my clothes and kissing my neck. Then you froze. Time stopped completely.
“Run, reset, run again, while she sleeps we can make her see and feel anything we want,” he said.
It clicked. I let Leer do it again and again. Every time you smiled grabbed hold of my waist and pressed me against the bed time froze. I smiled at Leer.
“You feed off of us, it’s almost like without us you don’t survive. Our two species our two realities run parallel to one another. Without us you don’t get high, without you we lack our powers,” I said.
“Powers? Right those things some of you manage to do ever since we started culling your world. A rather nasty side effect though some of the things your people have done have only surprised us in the best of ways, that fellow that became what you call it a super villain back on your home world, the fear he instilled in those without powers was delicious and we didn’t even have to do any of the work. Perhaps if there were fewer of us about we could feed off you and your flawed for centuries,” said Leer laughing.
“Yeah but haven’t you noticed yet? Since we arrived in your reality our powers have been growing, how many of your kind have we killed,” I said standing up and looking downward at you. Frozen in time I stroked your hair. It felt so real like I was really right beside you. Even your lips felt real.
“They weren’t strong enough, most of them were pretty useless anyway, if anything I should thank you for sorting us out, we were beginning to forget how fun a good war could be,” said Leer.
“Why us?” I asked.
“A long time ago when we first opened the rift we discovered your world and the human mind was such a magnificent palace how could we not resist?” he said.
I began laughing. Leer was right. The human mind was magnificent.
“You got me there, I accept your deal, only a few things I see you failed to notice,” I said.
“What is that?” asked Leer.
“Like you said the human mind is a palace, we don’t need daemons to create fear or villains, we can create our own, the human mind can create wondrous things, entire worlds. I myself am a dreamer, a story teller, hell I’m a master level bullshitter. I paint pictures and pull on heartstrings with the instruments of my emotions. My words. My tales. All birthed out of deep personal love. Even this prison is the result of one human mind,” I said.
“Your point?” said Leer frustrated.
“My point is in your reality our powers have evolved. Michael can turn into a daemon, Todd could transmute an entire starship, Cassandra could drain the life force of hundreds of daemons at one time, Emily could go supernova without losing control. I thought my power was so simple. I thought when my adrenaline kicked in time slowed. I thought I was able to read a room and second guess the movements of everyone and everything around me. Saved me quite a few times here and there but I was wrong. That was only the beginning. I was freezing time. I was reading minds. Seconds at first. Small fragments. Mostly motor functions such as movement. I thought I was dodging a fist but what I was actually doing was reading. I knew exactly where the fist was coming from. Right now you have invaded my mind. Out there in the real my heart is beating, full of adrenaline. I’m no longer dodging fists. No longer just reading movement. I’m in two places at once. Here and there. In one room talking to you. In the other I’m escaping,” I laughed.
“What are you talking about,” said Leer.
“You still don’t get it?” I said. Leer looked over at me confused.
“You aren’t the only one that can invade someone else’s mind,” I smiled.
Awake
Michael, Emily and I were already to the top of the crater when Leer and the other daemons finally woke from their dream state. I had used their own physic energy against them. These powers we had were gifts. In this reality and our own they allowed us to do the most extraordinary things. Jackson had stayed behind. Michael had gone back for him and handed him the nuke while Leer showed me the prison he had built for the sleepers. I kept the daemons locked in a trance, all of them frozen in time while we made our escape. The angel screamed as the nuclear bomb went off. I had never heard anything like it. At first it sounded like pure hell but in the end there was a moment of joy. Freedom. Whatever the angel was whether it was truly an Ema or some other supernatural being it was free. We were barely out of the blast radius when we saw the rift begin to collapse inward on itself. Their reality was beginning to tear itself apart with us inside.
Michael placed Emily on the ground beside me. I ducked over her as he raised his arms in the air. His daemonic body spread out growing around us. He was channeling all of his strength to create a sphere around us. The next thing I knew I lost consciousness. Michael had disappeared. When I finally woke up I was onboard the Perseverance laying in a medical bed. I had an IV sticking in my wrist. I could feel my powers were gone. There was a smell in the air. Vanilla. When I finally opened my eyes I saw you standing there. Smiling.
Five years I had waited to see that smile. Sometimes you have to remember the good times, the happy memories, when life isn’t shitty. Five years I waited. We spent the next few weeks catching up before joining many of the others in stasis. Never had I been so happy. I was wrong to believe that you wouldn’t still love me. I was wrong to think that the new wrinkles on my face would turn you away. I was wrong to think that either you nor I had changed. You could remember everything. The daemons had created a prison that kept your mind full of fear keeping you asleep. They fed off you and the others. You would tell me about it from time to time. Some nights you would wake up screaming. Afraid. Alone. You would poke me hard wondering if I was real. Sometimes you questioned reality. I did too.
I was saved when the Perseverance had broken through the barrier. It had only been a few hours behind us. The massive starship entered inside the rift at the same time we set off the nuke. Unlike the moon rabbit they managed to stay in control. Their dropship recovered Emily, Michael, and myself. We managed to get on board and escape as the reality bridge between our worlds collapsed. The hull of the Perseverance made it possible for us to pass through what would have been impossible otherwise.
When I woke up out of stasis for what I prayed was the last time we were orbiting Earth. Over nine months had passed since we won against the daemons homeworld. Michael and Emily had already made their way back down to the surface of Earth. There was still a war. Europe and parts of Asia were still under siege. The daemons that survived were relentless. Most feral. They were beginning to capture and convert humans to join their army. Michael was the only one of us not to lose his powers. He was a hybrid. Half daemon half human. When I looked up and saw you were already awake. Etching on the walls. Thousands of mathematical formulas and symbols I couldn’t even begin to comprehend. You told me that while you were asleep there was a voice speaking to you. That you woke up and began writing. The crew of the Perseverance said that you had created a new kind of math. You barely understood it yourself after you painted it on the walls. You called it a gift from the angels.
A happy ending isn’t a cliche it is just as real as a bittersweet one. Sometimes in life we are lucky enough to have happy endings.
You are my happy ending.
- - END. - -
Stephen Landry is an avid animal lover and practitioner of chaos magic.
Inspired by the works of China Mieville, Hayao Miyazaki, Hideo Kojima, his worlds combine science fiction, fantasy, and weird fiction.
Selected Books an
d Short Stories
Deep Darkness Series (Pull, Trigger, Wound)
Sleepers
Glimmer, A Throne of Souls
And Co-Author of Project Aspire
Admin for SSF
His work has been published in several online magazines and featured on
Wattpad and Inkitt. He was trained as an art major with a B.A. in graphic design. Creating illustrations and cover art for up and coming authors, video game companies, and film studios has always been a passion of his. An award winning filmmaker and photographer. When not writing most of his
time is used following his other passions which include helping people, hiking, playing video games, and working towards inspiring others.
Amazon Page - hyperurl.co/stephenlandry
Blog - hyperurl.co/stephenlandryblog
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapters
Prologue
First Class
Powers
Withered
Invasion
Ruins
Perseverance
Stasis
Trial by Fire
The Pilot's Gauntlet
Into the Abyss
Unearthed
Sleepers (Convergence Book 1) Page 16
