Kingdom of Dreams: Chapter 1
Unprecedented Humiliation
(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)
The ambush happened at the end of gym class. One bully lured the teachers away, while another scared off all of the boys getting dressed.
Except one.
Jimmy Reve shook all the way down to his cold, exposed ankles. Flocks of goosebumps rose on his bare arms and shoulders as the school’s subarctic air conditioning spilled out of the overhead vent. In fact, all of him was exposed aside from what was covered by his underwear—the only thing that kept any kind of dignity in place.
Long, sweaty arms held Jimmy’s cold arms behind him, cruelly locking him in an unbreakable wrestling hold. Hopeless to do much of anything, Jimmy studied the deep grooves in the abused wooden door mere inches from his nose, ruthlessly carved with primitive-looking initials and misspelled curse words.
What really made his blood curdle were the sounds of excitement rising to a fever pitch on the other side of the door. An army of merciless, middle school students murmured and giggled, gathering just outside the entrance to the boys’ locker room like expectant paparazzi.
Sounds like the entire seventh grade’s out there, Jimmy thought with dread, swallowing hard. Jimmy knew that unless he could stop it, what happened next would change his life forever, with the forecast calling for a strong chance of lifelong ruin.
“I’ll bet their phones are ready to record just like I told them,” a voice whispered in Jimmy’s ear with a disgusting eagerness. By far the vilest of the villains plaguing his school, Bucky Brees had snatched Jimmy from the wild stampede of other weakling boys fleeing the locker room. Now they were alone, just the two of them.
Lucky me, thought Jimmy.
Bucky was a real nut-job who believed he was a professional mixed-martial-arts fighter perpetually sparring in an anything goes enclosed ring. Bucky’s claim to fame was he liked to break weaker kid’s bones for fun and chalk it up to ‘wrestling accidents.’ (He didn’t get invited to many sleepovers.)
The bullies in his life had cranked up their criminal behavior to maximum lately. And that was putting it mildly. It was as if they were trying to letter in a recognized sport. But this? This was the worst predicament Jimmy had ever faced in his short—evidently, not short enough—life. Too bad a falling jet engine didn’t paste him into a sidewalk yesterday—might have spared him his current misery.
“Argh!” Jimmy winced from pain that shot through his nerves at every angle as he flexed one of his arms and pulled, desperate to break free of Bucky’s insane grip. No bueno. The slightest little twitch of resistance triggered too much fire, squashing any attempt at a heroic response.
“Nice try. But better be careful. You might break something,” Bucky warned him, living up to his fearsome billing.
Despite the blaring cold air, Jimmy’s sweat ran freely down his exposed limbs, his chest tightened and his body shivered all over. Jimmy wanted to black out, not able to accept his situation that he couldn’t stop from happening. This can’t be real, his mind raced. The dread of his situation was too surreal, too much. He choked back tears, blaming himself. How could I have been so stupid?!
This isn’t your fault, a calm voice, a voice that wasn’t his own, answered Jimmy. The voice was quite familiar and full of its typical rah-rah cheer and optimism. Burks. Jimmy’s imaginary friend that hadn’t quite gone away like it probably had for other ‘normal’ kids his age.
Get it together, Reve. Don’t panic, just get us out of here. Get to the Emergency Exit in the back! Burks advised.
Yeah…good idea, Jimmy answered. He thought fast, countering his panicked reaction by shifting into survival mode. If he could sell playing possum, he might be able to make a run for it out of the emergency exit doors in the back which would sound an obnoxiously loud automatic alarm accompanied by blinding flashes that just might alert the entire world upon opening.
Here goes everything.
As hard as it was to do in such a stressful situation, Jimmy relaxed his entire body from head to toe, collapsing in a heap so quickly, he heard Bucky grunt from having to suddenly support the full weight of his wilted quarry as Jimmy faked like he became overwhelmed and fainted.
“What the?” Bucky said. “Aw, you little wuss, you better not have passed out on me.” Jimmy felt his body being lowered, followed by the slight creaking of joints just behind his ear as the bully must have crouched to get a closer look at him. Just for a fleeting moment, the arms behind Jimmy’s body loosened their grip.
It’s working! Jimmy thought, a bit surprised. Just hold off for one more second and—
Jimmy sprung to life and dove forward, his temporary ruse allowing him to slip out of Bucky’s once inescapable grasp!
Jimmy rolled to his feet, and was on the run in the opposite direction, his bare feet slapping against the icy, slick floor in full stride, before Bucky could recover.
The chase to the back of the locker room was on.
Flying past rows of gym lockers, Jimmy spied the emergency exit just ahead, bearing an impossible to miss warning sign in glowing bold lettering: EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. DO NOT OPEN! ALARM WILL SOUND! It might as well have said: JIMMY, THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE. DON’T FLUB IT UP! He shifted into his highest gear, running on his toes.
Jimmy extended his hands and flashed a determined grin, preparing to slam against the bar at full tilt to crack the triggered door open to safety and—
Jimmy shrieked as his head snapped back as Bucky drilled him into the ground, tackling him from behind. Jimmy slammed hard into the tiles, his teeth rattling as his jaw and nose rebounded off the unforgiving floor.
His eyes automatically teared up from the shot to his nose and Jimmy spotted the blurry neon exit just out of reach above him; the light from the sign teased him, projecting its shining ‘exit’ across his fallen body like a stamp of failure.
“Gotcha!” torpedoing arms clamped down around him and tightened without mercy as Bucky flexed his lanky limbs again, and like an anaconda, wound around Jimmy, strengthening his constrictive coil so his prey wouldn’t so easily slip away again.
Jimmy yelped as his arms bent back at an angle they weren’t meant to go and was forcefully jerked back up on his feet. Bucky spun Jimmy away from the glowing emergency exit sign to freedom and began marching him back toward the dreaded front entrance to the locker room.
I was so close, Jimmy lamented.
A sickening face flashed into view, sporting a buzzing hive of freckles surrounding beady eyes capped with a hideous lava-colored haircut that looked like a rogue lawnmower had sped one lap around and never bothered to come back.
“Aww, someone wooks so pouty,” Bucky snickered, sliming Jimmy’s cheeks with his disgusting saliva.
“Say it don’t spray it,” Jimmy scolded him.
“Whatever. Time to put you out of your misery,” Bucky said. The bully had toxic breath that polluted the air with a slap your mama’s face tooth-decaying stench that could probably be weaponized.
“Don’t know what’s worse: your breath or the B.O. funk in here,” Jimmy said in an attempt to sound brave, despite feeling like he could projectile vomit paint the lockers.
Bucky intentionally blew a hot stench of fresh rankness on his face, making Jimmy’s stomach turn and legitimately gag. “Ugh! Definitely your breath,” Jimmy confirmed.
“Keep it up, Wittle Weve. Things are just getting interesting—you’ll see.”
As they arrived back in front of the controversial door, a patterned rapping banged so hard against the other side, Jimmy feared the wood might splinter.
“Ah, that’d be Clayton. Bad news for you, good for us. The coast must be clear,” Bucky said with a loathsome smirk.
Jimmy choked as the lump in his throat swelled to the size of a boulder at the mention of that name: Clayton Stones, Bucky’s right arm and then some, the huge troll that made up the other half of the Tyrannic Duo that tormented Jimmy on a daily basis. Even the male teachers were petrified of Clayton’s gargantuan size. He got kicked off the football team for terrorizing his own teammates, for crying out loud.
“Showtime,” Bucky smirked.
Jimmy yelped through the clammy hand covering his mouth; with the other hand, Bucky ripped off his underwear.
Dignity just left town.
“You’re going to help my social media account go viral!”
Jimmy involuntarily shook as the horrible shock of it all set in. Oh…no. NO! GIRLS will see him. And his parents—his big sister, Lem, too!
Bucky let out a gleeful giggle that traveled down the back of Jimmy’s spine with all the gentleness of a zap from a cattle prod. “That’s right, everyone’s gonna see how pathetic you are. They’ll be trolling you around the world—forever!” Bucky continued to rain spit at him through a mess of jagged, yellow-stained colliding teeth that botched any attempt at a genuine smile.
Bucky pounded on the door with his fist. “Count it down!” he yelled.
“10!…, 9!…” the anxious mob began chanting, counting down to the end of Jimmy Reve.
Jimmy resorted to his only option: retreating inside the deepest realms of his imagination in self-defense, as he often did during times of crisis—usually during math tests.
“8!…”
But this time, instead of drifting off into a controlled peaceful daydream, something quite different happened.
Jimmy saw a swath of what looked like black smoke swirl around his head and vanish like like he’d spotted a ghost out of the corner of his eyes.
“7!…”
Next, the strong smell of toxic, burning fumes filled Jimmy’s nostrils, until he was choking and tears welled up involuntarily in his eyes.
“6!…”
Then, as if someone had inserted a pair of unseen earbuds into his ears, Jimmy heard the unmistakable crackling of fire; a snapping and popping, like when flames reached their hottest temperature in a fireplace.
What the?
“5!…”
And quite inexplicably, Jimmy was transported far away from his tragic crisis.
“What do you see?” asked a familiar voice.
Jimmy was stunned to find himself sitting with his mother in a gently rocking boat on a smooth river on a magnificent sunny day with a sapphire blue sky. A gentle current tugged them along while a pleasant breeze accompanied them from behind. His mother pointed to a specific cloud hanging overhead.
Just a daydream, Jimmy thought. But wow, what a powerful daydream at that, like seen as a virtual movie in one of those IMAX theaters.
Jimmy went with his situation. “Oh. Uh… That’s easy.” Jimmy smiled. “That’s a dragon attacking a castle.”
“Yes.” His mother nodded and laughed, her brown eyes sparkling. Jimmy marveled at his mother’s natural beauty as the wind playfully pawed at her long dark hair, billowing it around wherever it pleased. She moved the rascally strands covering her face aside with a delicate hand. Jimmy felt so relaxed in his mother’s presence at all times, like she was a human balm for his soul.
Jimmy pointed to another towering section of clouds stacked like a wedding cake, but there was a much more interesting shape there. “How about that one?”
His mother raised a thin, dark eyebrow. “Really, Jim? Come on. I thought you’d point out one that would actually challenge me. That’s an octopus peeking out from behind a coral reef.”
“Yes.” He laughed again.
She turned her back to him, leaning against the prow. “Here, let’s find one that’s really challenging, something worthy of a master’s creativity.” The cloud-shapes game was their favorite, one he’d shared with his mother since his first memories.
An unusual cloud formed fast above: a pair of fat, swollen, hideous eyes that grinned. But this wasn’t just a cool shape pulled from a cloud; no, this was something else entirely. Something the two occupants of the boat would never expect.
This something else happened to be me, Jimmy’s worst Recurring Nightmare, alive and well.
I thought it best to go with the subtle approach of introducing myself to him as a suspicious cloud at first. For now….
Jimmy said nothing. He studied my cloud’s colorless layers that were in stark contrast with the bright majestic colors beyond the most gifted painter’s pallet that splashed the breadth of the daydream sky. My cloud’s deep, unnaturally dark folds made Jimmy feel a sinister darkness that raked at the pit of his stomach—yet, it also attracted his full attention. He didn’t feel altogether comfortable in deciding what to make of me, but he was oh so curious. The feeling matched the instinctual awareness of slight dread all animals sense with an approaching storm.
I floated down away from the rest of the clouds, settling just above Jimmy’s end of the craft. Jimmy never once took his eyes off me. Good instincts. Jimmy’s mother still had her back turned, surveying a new set of clouds scrolling into view.
Hovering over him, I felt sympathetic at first, and Jimmy acknowledged my empathy with a nod. Though he’d never met them before, Jimmy accepted a strange connection to my eyes—he sensed our understanding with one another but wasn’t quite sure why. In time, he will in droves.
Jiiiim, I tried reaching out by singing his name, my voice reverberated inside of his head.
Unlike his usual daydream’s dullard tones, Jimmy heard my voice once again in exciting, sharp whispers that snapped and popped, and Jimmy began to understand every inflection. His urgent thirst for revenge allowed Jimmy to decode the sacred tongue of Night Terrors, spoken in the language of fire.
Buzzing with amazement, Jimmy checked his mother, she was still occupied with the clouds, with her back turned. He was protective and unsure about sharing me with his mother for some possible selfish reason unbeknownst to him. But he liked my charred, whispering voice—the strangeness and eloquence of the unique words and unusual rhythm of speech fed his confidence.
So much so, Jimmy latched onto and repeated a most unusual word. A magical word full of power and threat.
“What did you call me?” Bucky hissed, yanking Jimmy back to cruel reality again.
The boat, his mother, the mysterious but fascinating eyes—all blipped out of sight.
“2!” the voices on the side of the locker room door continued shouting their ominous countdown in unison.
Completely out of sorts, Jimmy tried to blink away reality again, to return to his mother in the boat in the middle of the fantastic river and mystical landscape, but it wasn’t happening this time.
Just a stinky boys’ locker room and a stinkier Bucky Brees, right in his face. The fiery red-headed fiend glowered down at Jimmy with beady, ferret-like eyes that disappeared into slits when he smiled. He bared his warring yellow fangs in delight.
“1!”
Bucky kicked open the door to the boys’ locker room and tossed a naked Jimmy Reve out to a thunderous roar.
Jimmy closed his eyes, praying he’d break his neck during the fall.
Go forth to Chapter 2!:
Love it! Can’t wait to read more!
Awesome!