“YOU MADE IT, PATRICK!” Steven said, patting him on the back.
Patrick smiled, thankful to finally have someone there to talk to. He’d been standing on his own for what had to be an hour, just listening to the music, taking it all in.
“Hey, you finally showed up,” Patrick said, his speech beginning to slur.
“Yeah, buddy! I texted you letting you know I’d be late, but you never responded!” Steven shouted to be heard over the music and all the people talking.
“Oh, that’s a long story,” Patrick said.
“Well, let’s get a beer and you can tell me all about it!”
“SO, YOU GOT THE SHIT beat out of you?” Steven said.
“Kinda, yeah, but I didn’t bruise or anything! My skin is as beautiful as ever,” Patrick said.
“You know who did it?” Steven asked.
“Two dipshits named Tovin and Harvey.”
“Tovin and Harvey? The hell kinda names are those?”
“I don’t know. They’re dumb as hell. Drove a shitty red car, too,” Patrick said, his anger growing.
“We oughta find them and get your shit back!” Steven said, standing tall.
“Don’t you worry. If I ever see them, they’re gonna pay!” Patrick shouted.
THERE WAS A TIGHTENING behind his eyes. A warmth inside his chest. A heavy fog in his brain.
“WHERE’S VICTORIA?”
“She didn’t come.”
“Damn, that sucks.”
“Tell me about it.”
“You ever gonna ask her out?”
“I don’t plan on it.”
“Pussy.”
“Nah, just smart. Don’t wanna ruin a good thing.”
“YOU SHOULD GO TALK to Wendy.”
“Why would I do that?”
“If you’re never gonna go out with Victoria, you might as well.”
“What the hell. Not like I gotta see her everyday now.”
“YOU’VE HAD TOO MUCH to drink, Patrick.”
“I haven’t had much.”
“You act like you’ve had a whole keg.”
“I think something was in it.”
“I feel fine.”
“Come on, Wendy. Let’s just go hang out somewhere with some privacy.”
“Get your hand off my shoulder.”
“Sorry. I, uh...I don’t know...I don’t feel good.”
“You look terrible.”
“I think something’s wrong.”
A BULLY WHO’D HAD TOO much to drink. A victim who’d had the same. A push to the chest.
Everything swirled. Everything became surreal.
Everything changed.
Blood & Dirt
When Patrick woke up, his entire body hurt. He lay there, groaning in pain. He was acutely aware of every sensation his body felt. The twigs and leaves digging into his face. The rock that jabbed into his side. The wind as it blew across his back. The heat from the dying fire behind him. The metallic, coppery smell that drifted up his nose.
The only sounds he could hear were those of his own breathing, and the crackling of the fire. He felt something sticky on his skin. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, so he opened his eyes.
Two beams of blue light cut through the air, the smoke from the fire making look like twin beacons. Patrick scrambled to his feet, and the beams of light moved in correlation with his head. He placed a foot beneath him, and slipped in something slick. He slammed to the ground with a deep thud, and cracks appeared in the ground around him.
He looked to see what he slipped on, the beams of light still following his movements. The blue beams, along with the dancing light from the fire, lit up the ground around him, revealing a mixture of blood and dirt.
Patrick reeled in fear and disgust, backing away from the puddle on his hands and knees. But the area all around him was wet as well. He looked down at his hands and screamed when he saw that they were covered in bright crimson blood. He looked all around, the two beams of light revealing the horrific scene around him.
Everything was covered in blood. The vehicles, the ground, the trees at the edge of the clearing—everything. Red cups sat in a mixture of blood and booze. A sizzling sound was coming from the spot near the fire where the blood reached.
Vomit rose in Patrick’s throat, and the next thing he knew, he was leaning against a tree emptying the contents of his stomach. He wiped the tears from his eyes, and when he opened them, the two beams of light were still there, lighting up the area around his feet. Patrick screamed in surprise again and backed away from the spot.
His back slammed against a tree on the other side of the clearing. It creaked and groaned from the impact and began to fall forward, right on top of Patrick. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even have time to scream again. He covered his head and closed his eyes.
The tree smashed into him, and stopped.
Patrick opened his eyes again. Now the beams of light wasn’t the thing that surprised him the most. Now it was the fact that he was holding up an entire tree on his back. He shifted to his left, breathing fast and hard. The tree completed its journey to the ground with a thud, sending vibrations through the earth.
Patrick felt his back for any signs of wounds, but he felt nothing. The tree had done no damage.
He had no idea what to think. No idea what to say. He couldn’t process any of what was happening. He wanted to believe this was all a dream, and that he was actually passed out drunk somewhere—but this felt nothing like a dream. He knew it was real.
The beams of light. The tree falling on him. Somehow getting from one side of the clearing to the other in a split second. That had all happened. The most telling of all was the blood, though. Not even in his dreams could he come up with so much blood. Not to mention the smell. There was no way that even in the darkest parts of his mind he could come up with something so horrific.
He just stood there, with no idea what to do.
“Hello?” he finally called out, but no one answered him. “HELLO?” he shouted, feeling his vocal cords shake violently. “Hel...lo!” he said, his voice cracking. Tears leaked from his eyes, cleaning the blood from his face in small streaks. “Can anybody hear me?”
Nobody answered.
He was all alone.
Terror was beginning to set in. There was blood everywhere, something really, really, bad was happening to him, and he had to get out of there. He couldn’t take the smell. He couldn’t take the sight. All he wanted to do was get the hell out of there, so he ran for the tree line.
Within a second he was deep into the woods, nowhere near the bonfire and the apparent massacre, filled with fear and uncertainty.
Face Down
Never in his life had Patrick been more disoriented. He shielded his eyes from the blinding sunlight that shone through the trees at just the right angle and blinded him. He turned and placed a hand on the ground next to him, where he felt something very wet and cold. He reeled backwards, afraid it was blood just as it had been the last time, but he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw it was just water.
Water was trickling all around. He began to put the pieces together, and realized that he’d passed out face-up in a stream deep in the woods. He clothes were soaking wet. Most of the blood had been washed off of him, although it still stained everything he was wearing.
The memories of the night before came rushing back to him, and he sat down in the stream, not caring about the water. His soaking wet clothes were the last thing on his mind. The only thing he could think about was what had happened.
Is everybody dead? he asked himself. Of course not, he thought, shaking his head. If I survived, other had to as well. “That begs the question, what happened in the first place,” he said under his breath as he stood.
His thoughts then turned to the things that he’d done. He brought his hands up to his eyes, covering them enough that it was dark and he could still keep them open. That’s exactly what he saw: darkness. No glowing li
ghts, blue or otherwise.
He brought his hands down to his sides, sighing in relief, but deep down, he felt disappointment. A smile grew across his face as he thought about those things he’d done. They were pretty cool, he had to admit. He’d gone from one side of the clearing to the other in a split second; he’d been able to bring down an entire tree and toss it off his shoulders like it was nothing.
Guilt struck him, sending waves of shame coursing through him. On one hand he felt ashamed about what was happening to him when some sort of massacre had just happened the night before. On the other hand, what was happening to him was equal parts terrifying and cool.
A theory popped into his mind that terrified him. What if what’s happening to me happened to everybody else?
He stepped backwards out of the stream, processing this new train of thought. What if this was too much for their bodies to handle, and they just...popped? He looked down at his hands, his arms, every inch of his body that he could see. He showed no signs of “popping.” From what he could see, other than the few stubborn bits of dried blood, there wasn’t a single imperfection on his skin.
He walked to the edge of the stream and knelt down. Before he did anything else, he needed to get the dried blood off his skin. He dipped his hands into the stream and the cold water rushed over his skin. It felt amazing, waking up every sense inside of him. He breathed in deep, taking in the smell of the woods around him. Birds were chattering in the trees, unaware of the horrific scene that had happened the night before, just...
Patrick realized he had no idea how far from the party he was. He had no idea how far away he was from anything.
“Not now,” he told himself. “One thing at a time.”
He scrubbed at his right hand, getting the blood off his skin. It was being stubborn, not wanting to come off. “Come on,” he said through gritted teeth as he scrubbed. The blood wouldn’t come off. Frustration flared inside him. He fought to keep the anger down.
Whose blood was this? It wasn’t his; he knew that. He had no wounds on him. Wendy’s? Ben’s? Joshua’s? Steven’s? It could’ve been any of theirs. He fought hard the urge to puke. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of who it could be. He was literally washing them off his hands in some stream in the woods.
He scrubbed faster and faster, grunting as tears escaped from his eyes. It was all too much for him to handle.
“Come on, get off, get off, GET OFF!” he yelled. He scrubbed his hand so fast and hard it became a blur. The friction from the speed and force rubbed his skin clean off his hand. He screamed in pain and stopped scrubbing. He looked down at his right hand as the flesh began to web back together, repairing itself. His skin closed over the wound, and after a few seconds of redness, his hand was back to normal, as if nothing had happened at all.
Patrick stared at his hand, with no idea what to do. Had that really just happened? Was he seeing things? Even though this all felt real to him, the things that were happening were so crazy and ridiculous it had to be a dream. There was no other explanation. No matter how real it felt, there was no way all of this could be real.
Slowly, Patrick stood. This isn’t real, he told himself. This can’t be real.
He spun around and found a large tree standing close behind him. It stretched high into the sky, and was so large that it would take two of him to be able to wrap his arms around it. Determined to prove to himself that this was all a dream, he walked up to it, cracked his knuckles, and punched the tree as hard as he could.
The trunk of the tree exploded. It sounded like a bomb had gone off, and flocks of birds went flying into the air. Other wildlife scattered as chunks of wood and splinters flew everywhere. The tree moaned as it fell away from Patrick. It caught on other trees on its way down, but it ripped their branches along with it. Finally, the tree slammed to the ground, creating a thud that felt like an earthquake.
Patrick stood there staring at what he’d just done. He breathed heavily, his eyes wide. “That can only happen in a dream,” he muttered.
A sharp pain stabbed at his side. He looked down and saw that a large piece of wood from the tree had gone straight through him. A little bit of blood had oozed out from his wound before it sealed around the wood.
Still convinced this was only a dream, Patrick panicked only a little. He wrapped his hand around the wood and slid it out of his side. He gasped; the procedure was a bit more painful than he had expected.
Once the chunk of wood was out of him, he tossed it aside. It was covered in blood, but when he pulled up his shirt, there wasn’t even a scratch there. “Thank god that was a dream,” he said as he patted the spot where the wood had been.
He examined the clothes he had on and decided to change them. These were covered in blood and had holes all through them. He closed his eyes and concentrated. He imagined a blue and white striped shirt, a fresh pair of dark wash jeans, and a pair of black sneakers.
He opened his eyes and looked down. He was still wearing the same bloodstained clothes.
He huffed in frustration. He’d never lucid-dreamed before, and wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to do it. But that was supposed to be the best part about lucid dreaming, the fact that there were no rules. There was no “way” of doing things; you just did them.
Why isn’t this working? he thought.
He closed his eyes and tried again. When he opened them, nothing had changed. “Dammit,” he cursed under his breath. He kicked at a rock in the stream in frustration. It rocketed through the air and shot straight through one tree before getting lodged in another.
Patrick smiled as he looked at the hole in the tree. That was pretty cool, he thought. He kicked another rock, sending it through another tree. Then another, and another.
An idea formed in his head, and he picked up a smooth rock from the stream. He turned downstream and began running. He ran faster than he’d ever thought possible. In the blink of an eye he was hundreds of yards away. He was so caught off guard by his sudden burst of speed that he came to a hard stop, sending himself tumbling. He left a large trench in his wake, and heard the now-familiar cracking of a tree above him.
He pushed himself up off the ground and got his bearings. Then he ran downstream. This time it was a little bit easier. He reached the pond that the stream ran into and skidded to a stop. He tossed the stone in his hand, then flicked it toward the pond as hard as he could.
The stone hit the water once before it launched into the air and disappeared from sight.
Over the next fifteen minutes, Patrick perfected his form until he was able to skip a rock across the entirety of the pond before it lodged itself into the dirt on the other side. After doing that for a few more minutes, he grew bored. The dream seemed to be going on for a very long time. Most of the time dreams were over quickly, with only a couple of things happening before he moved on to the next one, or woke up.
Maybe this isn’t a dream, he thought. He chuckled to himself at such a ridiculous thought.
He ran around to the other side of the pond in a split second. “Could I do that in real life?” he shouted into the air.
He decided he’d had enough of the woods. He thought about seeing Victoria, and showing her his dream-powers. He closed his eyes and imagined her house and front yard. He sat in his imagination for a couple of moments, and then opened his eyes.
He was still in the woods.
That was weird. Normally in dreams you didn’t have any recollection of going from one place to the other. You were just there. So why wasn’t he just there at Victoria’s house?
Patrick closed his eyes once again and imagined more of the details. He thought about the red brick pathway that led from the road to Victoria’s front door. The front porch that the two of them had drawn on with chalk when they were younger. The window that looked into the living room that Victoria had thrown a baseball through by accident. The side of the house where they’d found a dead bird that hadn’t flown
when it fell out of its nest. He remembered how sad the two of them had been, especially Victoria. She still didn’t like to talk about it.
He thought about the tree in the backyard where they’d buried the dead bird at the bottom, and would always dare each other to climb to the top. They never had, of course. They’d both been too afraid, and by the time they were old enough to not be scared, they were much too old to do things like climb a tree.
Patrick opened his eyes.
Still in the woods.
A worrying thought popped into his mind.
What if this really isn’t a dream?
He looked down at the blood on his clothes. That definitely seemed real.
He ran through the woods with his newfound super speed, scouring every inch of it so he could find the scene of last night’s party.
After searching for less than a minute, he found it. He stood at the tree line, making sure to stay out of sight, and looked out at the scene of the party, horrified at what he could see in the light of day. There were dozens of police cars, ambulance, and fire trucks parked nearby. Officers were canvassing the area, collecting evidence and taking pictures. Blood painted the entirety of the clearing. There were two trucks completely flipped onto their backs, and another was crumbled up in a ball a full fifty yards from where Patrick remembered it being parked the night before.
Then the stink hit him. The metallic-smelling blood being heated by the sunlight. The smell of gasoline leaking from the destroyed vehicles. The entire thing was like something from a horror movie, or a nightmare.
But there was one thing Patrick knew now: this was no nightmare. The scene he saw before him was very, very real.
Game Plan
Patrick stared at his reflection in the pond, his mouth slightly open. His wide eyes looked back at him, unable to look away from the horrific sight in front of him. He knew that something terrible had happened the night before, and somehow he had survived. The blood all over him was evidence, though, that he had been right in the middle of it.
The First Superhero Books 0-3 Box Set Page 52