Poet Anderson ...Of Nightmares

by Tom DeLonge

  Jonas looked at his brother, his adrenaline kicking up when he saw the stricken expression on Alan’s face.

  There was a brilliant flash of white light. Jonas saw it reflected in Alan’s eyes, the bolt tearing through his irises. As Jonas turned toward the windshield, there was another flash, but this time it came straight at him. He lifted his arm to protect his face and heard the deafening pop against the windshield. Jonas lowered his arm, stunned to see the Mustang’s windshield was fractured, with hairline spider cracks quickly spreading. Jonas and Alan looked at each other.

  “Get us out of this!” Jonas said.

  “I’m trying!”

  Jonas turned to the road, but when the next bolt of lightning struck it wasn’t white—it was emerald green. Jonas had never seen anything like it. He trailed the reflection of the lightning against the sky, trying to find where it started. He leaned forward, but was caught by his seatbelt. Jonas put his hands on the dashboard and strained to look up.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Alan yelled. But Jonas’s eyes had gone wide. Alan unclicked his seatbelt and leaned forward, following Jonas’s line of vision.

  Both Anderson boys stared at the sky, where bright colors streaked across the clouds. And then another strike of lightning hit.

  “Jonas!” Alan screamed, startling him. Alan slammed on the brakes, swinging out his arm to pin his brother against his seat. The tires of the Mustang skidded, finding no purchase on the icy road.

  It all happened so fast. To process all of the pieces at once, Jonas’s mind slowed them down. He was thrown toward one side, his shoulder pressing against the door as the car slid toward the guardrail. He felt the strength of Alan’s arm against his chest, pressing him into the seat. The tires hit a bump, and then there was a deafening metal screech as the car hit the guardrail, sending sparks over the hood.

  The world went silent. Jonas’s body rocked from side to side, his arms rising up on their own accord, his stomach upending. He was weightless. He was falling.

  Jonas gripped his seatbelt to hold himself in place, but Alan’s body shot forward—his head hitting the windshield with a soundless smack. Jonas was silent with horror as the Mustang fell from the cliff, as the ocean rushed toward him, as Alan’s blood streamed through the cracks in the glass.

  He knew it was over—the Anderson boys would die before they ever got their new life.

  The items in the car lifted up, weightless, and Alan’s umbrella became airborne. Jonas reached for it, determined not to let his brother’s hopes be ruined. His fingers closed around the heavy wood handle just as the car suddenly sped up into real time and hit the ocean water, sending Jonas into darkness.

  There was a loud metal screech as the subway train pulled away from the platform. Jonas sat in the hard plastic seat, staring out the window, lost in his thoughts. The train was empty save for his friends Sketch and Gunner who were hanging onto a pole. The two boys watched him, as if waiting for Jonas to acknowledge that they’d been talking.

  Instead, Jonas noticed the subway tiles outside the window, and how impossibly shiny they were. There were advertisements on the wall he couldn’t quite read, but was sure he’d seen before. And he recognized the graffiti painted throughout the car, and the flickering yellow lights above him. The train disappeared into the tunnel, but Jonas was thinking about Alan. He was worried about him.

  “Yo, Poet,” Sketch said, nodding at Jonas. “Gunner just threatened to skull-fuck me. Aren’t you going to say something? You’re supposed to be my knight in shining armor.” Both Sketch and Gunner busted up. Jonas looked them over, still a bit lost in his head.

  Sketch looked like the typical punk who hung out in the subway: skinny, with tight jeans and spiked hair that naturally pointed in every direction. His fingers were always paint-stained from tagging, hence the nickname Sketch.

  Gunner was bigger and block-headed, and when he smiled, the gap in his front teeth made him look almost huggable. He leaned closer to Jonas, as if trying to determine if he was comatose. “Poet,” Gunner said again. “You alive in there, man?”

  Sketch sighed, obviously bored with the train already. He pulled a can of paint out of the middle pocket of his hoodie and shook it, making it tick as he waited for the next stop. “You’d better snap out of it,” he said, glancing back at Jonas. “Two lovely ladies boarded at the last stop, and wow…” He whistled. “They are checking you out.”

  Gunner grinned and Sketch dropped into the seat next to Jonas. “Oo…” He sucked in a breath, staring meaningfully at two empty seats across the row. “I swear to Christ they’re wearing Poet Anderson T-shirts. They must know how fucking cool you are. Wait…they were wearing T-shirts…”

  Jonas finally turned to him. “Poet?” he asked.

  Sketch snorted and looked at Gunner. “I knew naked girls would get him,” Sketch said. He turned back to Jonas. “Yeah, fucker,” he said. “I’m talking to you. Did you forget again?”

  Poet shook his head to clear it. “Maybe,” he said, slightly disoriented. “I’m not sure. I was just…I was remembering this dream.”

  Sketch furrowed his blond eyebrows, running his pale eyes slowly over Poet. “This dream?”

  “Yeah,” Poet said. “I was driving with my brother and then the sky opened up and a storm blew us off the road. Alan bashed his head.” Poet rubbed roughly at his face. “There was blood and then water came up and…everything went dark.”

  Sketch widened his eyes and then exhaled heavily. “That’s intense,” he replied. “I bet a dream analyst would say you need to get laid.” He laughed and slapped Poet on the back. “Look on the bright side,” Sketch added, squeezing his shoulder. “At least you weren’t dreaming about dead parents again.”

  Poet felt a sick twist in his gut and stared down at the train floor, at the dirt embedded in the crevices and bits of bright-colored gum stuck on the ridges. But my parents are dead, he thought.

  “So where are we heading tonight?” Gunner asked, sounding impatient. “I wanted to go into the city.”

  “You always want to go to the city,” Sketch said. “But we do the same damn thing every night. This is a train to nowhere, my friend. Besides, Poet has other things to worry about. Right?”

  Poet stared at him a moment and then nodded, even though he couldn’t quite remember what Sketch was referring to.

  Gunner took out his can of spray paint. “Fine, whatever,” he said. “I just wanted to make some art.” He crossed the car and pulled open the door, stepping out into the space between train cars.

  “That’s not art!” Sketch called after him. “That’s coloring!”

  Outside the car, Gunner leaned his head between the train and the tunnel. On the wall were dozens of spray paint lines, stretching the length of the tunnel, creating a multi-colored mural tracing the train’s path. Gunner sprayed the wall with a steady red stream. The train’s motion shaped the line as it became part of the mural.

  Back inside the car, Poet watched as Sketch shook his own paint can.

  “Anyone can do that,” Sketch said. “Now, this…this is art.” Sketch stood up and started tagging the train wall with a flowing zigzag of lines that took the shape of an astronaut straddling a rocket. Poet leaned forward, staring at the quick blur of Sketch’s arm, the peculiar way he would move—in and out of focus like he was moving too fast to catch. Occasionally, Sketch would look over and grin—slowed down to a normal pace—and then zoom out of focus once again.

  Sketch glanced at Poet and when he saw the bewildered expression on his face, he groaned as if he didn’t want to deal. He set the can on the seat and grabbed the pole in front of Poet.

  “You really are trippin’,” Sketch said, shaking his head. “I swear we go through this every night—I thought you were better. Look, I didn’t want to say anything in front of Gunner since he doesn’t know.” He paused to measure his words. “B
ut Poet…that dream about your brother…you know that wasn’t a dream, right?”

  Poet’s eyes rounded, and sickness rose in his stomach. The image of Alan hitting his head on the windshield. The impact when the car hit the water. Poet’s heart rate exploded, panic set in. He darted a look around the subway train, trying to make sense of everything.

  Sketch winced at Jonas’s reaction, and squatted down at his knees. Jonas stared at him, a thought on the edge of his understanding. A thought he couldn’t quite grasp.

  “What’s going on?” he asked in a low voice.

  “I told you,” Sketch said. “That wasn’t the dream.” He motioned around him to the subway car, and when he turned back, he met Jonas’s eyes and said, “This is the dream.”

  Chapter Two

  Jonas and Alan Anderson were Lucid Dreamers. Both brothers found they had the ability to become aware in their dreams, achieve a consciousness while sleeping. This rare talent gave them control of their surroundings, control of their dreams. While most kids their age would be sneaking alcohol or using the Ouija board to try to contact the dead, the Anderson boys would meet up together in a dream—reliving past memories or recreating them.

  For a while they returned to the beach where Alan failed to learn how to surf. But in the dream, he was able to create the perfect board, able to try over and over without the worry of time. After he mastered that dream, the boys moved on to another.

  Once in a while, they even ended up on a subway car on their way to an unknown city. Sometimes there were other people on the train, sometimes it was just them. These dreams were different from the others, though: the train wasn’t a memory or a place they’d seen in their waking lives. It was entirely new, and that excited them more than anything.

  Back when Alan first realized that he and Jonas were self-aware in their dreams, he set out to spend his waking hours studying lucid dreaming, specifically dream control. He read multiple psychology journals on the topic (and the occasional Wikipedia page). He asked his science teachers, who largely discredited the phenomenon, and he eventually hunted down a college professor at the University of Washington who’d written papers on the subject. Alan would bring back all this information to Jonas, and together they tried different techniques.

  Alan had better control than Jonas. In the dreams, he was able to change their surroundings. He could alter their appearance or take Jonas to parts of the world he’d only read about in books. Alan could even make people appear, plucking them from a memory.

  The professor had advised Alan to channel different feelings for a desired outcome. Heightened emotions affected the brain chemistry, and as a result, the mind would be more active. Using this technique, Alan was able to call up small objects, usually a can of paint, and tried to help Jonas do the same since his control only seemed to extend to the self-awareness.

  Shortly before their parents’ death, Alan and Jonas found themselves on the train once again. Alan was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, whereas Jonas was still in his pajamas, something he found particularly embarrassing. They’d occasionally run into strangers here, other Lucid Dreamers along for the ride. From what they could tell, this place seemed to be its own dreamscape, open to whoever could get here. Which meant it was exciting as hell, even if they had no idea where the train was heading.

  Alan looked over his brother’s pajamas from the seat across from him. “It’s okay, man,” Alan said. “Less than twenty percent of the population is even aware when they’re dreaming. And of that percentage, only one in five can actually impact their dreams.” Alan sounded like the professor, grating deeply on Jonas’s nerves. Alan grinned and climbed up on the train seat, tagging the high corner on the train wall—something he would never do in his waking life. “So I’m officially the coolest fucking dude you know,” Alan added.

  Jonas snorted and stared down at soft cotton pajamas. He wanted to be like Alan. He wanted control, too. Jonas looked at his clothes and thought jeans. Nothing happened. Alan was spray painting a phrase from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, but Jonas clenched his jaw, trying to force his emotions. He tried anger, hope, jealousy—nothing seemed to work. He was getting frustrated, but then he closed his eyes and calmed himself.

  I’m not wearing my pajamas, he thought confidently. When I open my eyes, they’ll be jeans. He gave himself over to the thought, waiting until he was convinced it was true. He opened his eyes—pajamas. His heart sank, but then wisps of blue smoke began to wrap around his legs, covering him in denim until he was wearing jeans. Jonas jumped up from the seat and yelled to Alan. By the time his brother turned around, the smoke had dissipated and Jonas was wearing a completely different outfit.

  Alan looked him over, pride in his blue eyes, but he shrugged indifferently. “So your talent is fashion,” he said with a smile. “We all have our gifts, Jonas.”

  “Fuck you,” Jonas said back, staring down at his clothes. It was a start. I’ll get better, Jonas thought, and he sat down contently, swaying with the movement of the train.

  Alan came over and took the seat next to Jonas, looking sideways at him. “This could help us, you know,” Alan said. “If you get stronger, I bet it will work.”

  Alan was convinced there was another part of the Dream World—an entire city of shared consciousness that only Lucid Dreamers could get to, like some kind of members-only club. It was a reality documented in one of the sleep studies he’d read. He believed that with practice, he and Jonas could get there. And so Alan would get them on this subway train, imagining they were going deeper into their dream, heading toward the other world. But they never got that far; they never got beyond the train. They’d always wake up before the last stop.

  The train rattled along a curve, startling Poet from his memories. He glanced around, realizing that he was on that same car right now, the very same one he and Alan would ride on. He looked up to the far corner and saw the phrase Alan wrote all that time ago: “Big Brother is watching you.” And now Poet knew why he was there, too; he was trying to go deeper into the Dream World. He was trying to find the other part of the dreamscape in hopes of finding Alan.

  “This is the dream,” Poet repeated. In front of him, Sketch nodded, and Poet felt his sense of purpose renewed. “Listen, Sketch,” he said. “I have to find my brother. He’s—”

  There was a deafening bang on the roof of the car, and the entire train shook. The lights flickered. When they snapped back on, Poet saw the color had drained from Sketch’s face. Gunner darted back inside, his mouth hanging open. All three guys lifted their eyes to the ceiling of the train car and waited. No one dared speak.

  There was a thump and the high-pitched screech of nails on metal. Gunner winced, covering his ears, but Poet kept very still. What the hell was on the roof? He tried to remember if this had happened before, but his thoughts were too jumbled. Memories of his dreams often disappeared the moment he woke up, or at least they had since his parents died.

  The sound above the car quieted and the moving train pulled to the platform, hissing and staggering to a stop. The three boys moved down the row of seats, staring at the doors, worried what would happen when they opened.

  “What’s on the roof?” Poet whispered to Sketch, not taking his eyes off the doors.

  “I think we’re about to find out.” Sketch’s voice shook, and he looked sideways at Poet. He nodded down the car instead of toward the platform. “On the count of three,” he breathed out, “run.”

  Poet clenched his hands into fists, his adrenaline spiked. Gunner backed quietly toward them, his chest heaving. How long is this train? Poet wondered. Long enough to outrun whatever was after them? He sure as hell hoped so.

  He swallowed hard, darting a look between Sketch and the doors. The view outside the train window was dingy white subways tiles, no longer pristine and new like earlier. There was no exit on either side of the platform, almost like there was no outside
. Like they were trapped.

  “One,” Sketch said, reaching to put his hand on Poet’s upper arm. Gunner stepped back. There was a hiss in the gears above the door, signaling they were about to open. Poet could barely breathe.

  “Two.” Sketch gave the others a hard look, preparing them. He took a big gasp of air and said, “Th—” The subway doors opened.

  Long silver nails clicked and cut into the metal as a creature pulled itself through the doorway. Its feet thudded on the grated floor, and it turned to scan the three boys, a low growl issuing from its throat. Poet’s eyes rounded as he took in the image of the beast—its composition a mixture of every terrible thing he could imagine. It was huge, a four-legged creature nearly too big to fit in the train car. It had green scales along its raised back—jagged like shards of glass. Its eyes were blood-red, and its double rows of shark-like teeth looked ready to tear into Poet.

  The creature settled its gaze on Poet, as if it knew him. Poet’s stomach twisted in horror, but it wasn’t just because he was scared. He was sure he’d seen this monster before. In fact, he thought he’d seen it every night since the accident.

  The monster rolled back its head and let out an ear-splitting roar, making the entire car shake and the windows rattle. Poet flinched and the subway doors closed, trapping them in with the beast.

  “Run!” Sketch yelled, reading the threat before the monster attacked. The three boys hadn’t taken two steps before the creature was galloping toward them, laying waste to the subway car. Smashing seats and lights, pulling down half the ceiling as it maneuvered its massive body further down the train. Gunner—although a big guy—was out ahead, running faster than Poet thought possible. Sketch was using the pole to slingshot himself forward, his movements fast and blurred, leaving Poet behind with a monster at his heels.

  Poet tried to imitate Sketch, but his sneakers kept slipping on the floor. The monster lunged for him, just missing, sending a hot, foul-smelling breeze over the side of Poet’s face. I’m not going to make it, he thought, his chest heaving as he sucked in air. He turned to look over his shoulder at the monster, hoping it would fall back.