Kingdom of Dreams: Chapter 2
A Nightmare Awakens
(Narrated by Kevin Coffey)
You can always find any of this story as it progresses (text, narration, and illustrations) in order on my home page under the Kingdom of Dreams tab up top.
Enjoy! -KC-
Jimmy didn’t break his neck during the fall as he had hoped.
Instead, he skidded across the parquet hardwood, suffering a legion of pointing fingers and laughing faces from his classmates, their phones capturing every second of this awful lapse of time that seemed like it would never end. The florescent lights of the gym ceiling seared his eyes as he curled himself into the tiniest ball possible on the stark, polished gymnasium floor.
Suddenly kids scattered in all directions. A blanket was mercifully thrown over Jimmy’s exposed body as an unidentified teacher heroically scooped him up and made off with him with a purpose. He sensed a woman’s tenderness but wasn’t sure.
The most awkward visit imaginable followed with the school nurse. Luckily, his clothes were retrieved and given back to him so they were on his body at least. His rough collision with the gymnasium floor had given him strawberry burn patterns that would have made Jackson Pollack jealous. Jimmy couldn’t feel his wounds anyway; he was still too numb and deep in shock from the incident of unprecedented humiliation for any pain to set in.
Next came a visit to the principal’s office that might as well have taken place on another planet everything was so alien and out of sorts. Jimmy must have sat on the same uncomfortable wooden bench that dug into his spine, making it throb for several lifetimes. His parents were already there, watching the goings on with spooked eyes and sealed mouths in the worst state Jimmy had ever seen them. They were pale and twitchy.
His big sister Lem was there, too and was an equal mess; he caught she-who-shall-never-cry, wiping tears from her eyes and biting her fingernails to the quick. She regarded him with conflicting emotional stormy glances of disgust and pity.
His father hopped up and began pacing back and forth as they waited in the office for the authorities to join them like a tiger that hadn’t been fed in weeks, randomly shouting out incoherent mutterings like a madman, ready to tear the school down to its foundation.
The police came. An ambulance came. The only thing missing were helicopters and a SWAT team, encircling the school. He thought he heard calls with packs of attorneys. There were threats of lawsuits. Jimmy honestly lost track of what was going on around him and just hunched over, keeping his head down, squeezing his eyes shut and covering his ears with his hands, not able (or willing) to say much.
When they finally got home, Jimmy crawled upstairs to his room and collapsed onto his bed without pulling back the sheets well before the sun was even down.
Jimmy was a shell of himself. He had no emotions left for anyone to wring out of him. His world had gone from bleak to unacceptable.
Somehow, he fell asleep.
Later that night, when his room was dark, Jimmy instinctively woke because he thought he detected a presence in the room.
Bump, bump, bump. PWOP! He came to as loud disturbances in his room tailed off. He had the unsettling feeling of being watched, his senses shifted into high-alert. At first, Jimmy shrugged off a couple of skittering movements around his room to be the normal night mirages he often experienced, like his token pair of jeans folded over his chair or his propped-up hoody doing a mean impersonation of a disembodied head.
As if to prove its authenticity, out of nowhere, a shape blipped right beside Jimmy’s bed, leaving no doubt of another presence. The thing pulsated and writhed, its silhouette in his night light like the shadow of a giant hovering jellyfish.
On any other day, Jimmy would have been petrified, but today? He never even bothered to lift his head off his pillow. He gave the jellyfish shadow a sideways glance, just shrugging it off as more emotional baggage courtesy of the drama of his day.
Jimmy closed his eyes. Just let me sleep, he thought.
A pungent smell of smoke caused him to open his eyes again. A tsunami of shadows crashed down on top of his bed, wrapping around him like millions of little fingers poking at his limbs. Too stunned to react, Jimmy once again heard the crackling and popping of fire. Much more sudden this time.
Something began to grow in the middle of Jimmy’s bedroom; a hole that wasn’t there a second ago opened up. Inside of the opening, Jimmy saw posters, clothes and other items he couldn’t make out: another bedroom that wasn’t his own! It was as if someone had drawn a window in the center of his room that allowed him the ability to spy on other bedrooms.
Curious, Jimmy slipped out of bed for a closer look. Only to his surprise, Jimmy discovered, instead of stepping down, he floated across the room! Just a dream, Jimmy thought. But when he looked back at his bed, he saw his body open-mouthed and sleeping.
Okay…that’s different, Jimmy thought. Strangely, being two places at once wasn’t what freaked him out.
What was looking back at him in the full-length mirror on the back of his bedroom door did.
Jimmy nearly shrieked when he saw his reflection. Jimmy’s body, well, this version of Jimmy, whatever if may be, had become living bands of smoke, with heat waves so intense they were visible, shimmering in ripples across his body. Jimmy vacantly gaped at his nearly lidless, and as a result, oversized, manic roving eyes supported by smoking, detached stalks, and the hint of a misshapen, crooked nose welded together by what appeared to be burning embers. He looked like the mutant lovechild of a jellyfish and a squid.
This must have something to do with that strange cloud that taught me that interesting word. The word I used on Bucky.
Jimmy approached the open window to the other bedroom. A bed loomed in front of him. Jimmy saw an acned, freckled-face adolescent boy just above him, asleep in his bed. Someone that caused his blood to curdle.
Jimmy’s emotional fog evaporated at once. No! Couldn’t be….
The boy in question had a waterfall of drool trickling from his mouth, and a gaped mouth, sucking in deep breaths, like he was attempting to devour the entire atmosphere itself. A red shaggy mop of hair on his head spilled over the side of his mattress like a raging forest fire seeking out new territories to devour.
Bucky Brees, confirmed! This was Bucky’s bedroom!
Jimmy was wide awake now. He felt like a prisoner who had been sentenced to a life term in a maximum-security prison, only to be released an hour later with a chance to win the Super Bowl.
This is the last room in town any fellow middle-schooler would dare to tread. But strangely, Jimmy almost felt like salivating.
Jimmy floated closer to the window accessing Bucky’s room, stopping just short of trying to enter.
Bucky wasn’t particularly stocky; he was tall, lean, lanky, and very quick on his feet. A countless number of times, Jimmy witnessed him race across the playground and dust unsuspecting kids off their feet before they knew what hit them. And based on how easily he lifted his victims and twisted them like a pretzel to his liking until their screams of torment brought a twinkle of delight to his squinty, weasel eyes, Bucky was way stronger than his slim build suggested. Jimmy knew this all too well.
It's payback time, Jimmy thought, giddy with excitement.
Jimmy’s tentacles formed into wafting hands that felt physical, yet he knew they were not. With smoky fingers that trembled with excitement, Jimmy tried reaching though the open portal, plunging into Bucky’s room. He was in! He floated entirely inside of Bucky’s bedroom in the guise of his new persona, now beside his tormentor’s bed.
Jimmy decided to scare the wits out of him for starters. An easy decision.
Jimmy wrenched Bucky’s shoulders down and shoved, forcing him to spring up. Jimmy sank quickly down and thinned himself out so that he was not noticeable, but still able to take in the bully’s reaction as another shadow on the side of the mattress.
Bucky gasped, his eyes full of shock, then terror. The bully scanned the darkness, but failed to find the source of the surprise attack.
With a burst of joy, Jimmy laughed out loud, which came out like a series of irritated hisses.
Upon hearing Jimmy’s hissing, Bucky hyperventilated accordingly, pulling his sheets all the way up to his neck as if they were made of chainmail.
Good, Jimmy thought, gaining more and more in confidence. Now for the full reveal.
Jimmy launched all the way out from his cover below the bed, painting an arch of strong-smelling smoke that had a good chance of melting Bucky’s sinus cavity. Jimmy was really digging his new ability to glide and stop at will. He hovered just the length of an eyelash over his nemesis’ face.
Jimmy clinched Bucky’s shoulders with smoky, gnarled fingers and throttled him fully awake.
Bucky blinked rapidly, sure he was seeing things. This… thing… can’t be real? Jimmy heard his mind race.
I can hear his thoughts, Jimmy realized. How cool was that?
“I’m real all right. I’m the shadow you can’t blink away,” Jimmy answered, but his voice came out as an enhanced, menacing whisper, like it was mixed by a special effects company.
When Jimmy didn’t go away, and his victim was sure this thing was really there in all of its apparent ghastliness, Bucky let out a violent scream that seemed to shake the walls.
Jimmy relaxed and smiled, bathing in the sonorous wake of Bucky’s fear and helplessness.
“Bucky?” a deep male voice called from down the hall. There was a ruckus as Jimmy guessed the spooked parents clambered around and knocked things over in their bedroom.
Bucky didn’t stop screaming; if anything, his shrill screech climbed a couple of octaves. See how it feels? You deserve worse, Jimmy thought, and Bucky heard him, flinching at his words.
Down the hall, a gun cocked and the floorboards squeaked as someone sprinted toward Bucky’s room.
Uh, oh, Jimmy thought, feeling uncertain for the first time since invading his enemy’s room.
Don’t fret, a soothing, smooth voice whispered inside of his head. Again, not Burks but the voice from the clouds! The voice that taught him the powerful, evidently sinister word.
Yes, it’s me, the voice answered, confirming Jimmy’s suspicions. You know, the mystery voice said almost playfully, we COULD stick around to complete our little scare. It would be a treat to savor the parents’ expressions upon confronting us. I, for one, would enjoy watching them fill their son’s walls full of holes with that useless weapon. It’s likely they’ll shoot their own boy, as no harm can come to us. Amusing to see?
Jimmy was unsure. Maybe…
Tsk, tsk, tsk, the voice seemed to reprimand him in answer. But not enough. I’ll take it from here.
Jimmy felt himself floating backwards, being sucked out of Bucky’s room, returning into his own oddly awake body.
As the window to Bucky’s room closed, Jimmy saw the same tentacled jellyfish shadow from before slip out with Bucky through the darkest corner of the bully’s bedroom, leaving Bucky’s spooked parents something far more terrifying than a living nightmare to deal with: an empty bed.
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