Nightmare's Daughter

by Aurora Smith

  Nightmare’s Daughter

  Written by Aurora Smith

  First and foremost I want to thank my son, Josiah. You are the coolest nine year old in the world and if you hadn’t broken your arm and I wasn’t forced to spend so much time in the waiting room in physical therapy then this book might never have been written. You are loved, little man.

  My Evelyn, you are my personal cheerleader and I’m so grateful for everything you do and every way you help me.

  And as for my two girls who let me use their names and likeness for this book. Christina and Abby, you’re both great gals and I love ya’.

  Contents

  Part One - 5

  Chapter one - 6

  Chapter Two - 12

  Chapter Three - 19

  Chapter Four - 26

  Chapter Five - 32

  Chapter Six - 40

  Chapter Seven - 49

  Chapter Eight - 56

  Chapter Nine - 65

  Chapter Ten - 75

  Chapter Eleven - 82

  Chapter Twelve - 91

  Chapter Thirteen - 98

  Chapter Fourteen - 106

  Part Two - 113

  Chapter Fifteen - 114

  Chapter Sixteen - 120

  Chapter Seventeen - 127

  Chapter Eighteen - 134

  Chapter Nineteen - 141

  Chapter Twenty - 151

  Chapter Twenty-Two - 160

  Chapter Twenty-Three - 173

  Chapter Twenty –Four - 180

  Chapter Twenty-Five - 187

  Chapter Twenty-Six - 195

  Part One:

  Maya

  Chapter One

  My brightly colored rainbow boots stomped through shallow puddles on a black, stone-lined street. The stench of sulfur was thick and nauseating; I put my yellow scarf over my face and harrumphed. This wasn’t real. I knew it wasn’t. When most people were scrambling around, panicked and terrified, trying to find a way out of a leaf lined, man-eating maze or trying to escape from the alien clowns, I would simply look for my rabbit Fred and stew in the reality that was my life.

  “Dad!” I yelled, but the oh-so-typical-and-super-unoriginal-thick-smog swallowed my voice. Neat trick. “Wake up!” I said to myself and began to pinch my arm. No go. My dad wanted me here and I wasn’t going to wake. “Fine, I’ll play!” I said into the night, my voice freely going into the darkness this time, obviously this was what he wanted to hear. I gripped the golden handle of the cage that Fred sat in, sniffing around in his pentagon shaped enclosure. It seemed silly and my dad made sure to mention that a nightmare shouldn’t have a comfort tool but it was the only thing that brought me ease; knowing that no real harm could come to me. The white rabbit with blood shot eyes was my security blanket of sorts. If there was ever a day I was being chased by some kind of two headed monster and I couldn’t summon up my pet then I would be toast.

  “Maya?” I heard a male voice, it was deep and strong and had always made my temperature rise when I heard it at school, although this was the first time it had ever said my name. I splashed forward and through the smoke, unafraid but cautious; just because I was my dad’s little girl, that didn’t mean he held back. According to my dear father I held back on the nightmares I created for someone because of how much I loved that person, this was the wrong thing to do. “You’re doing them no favors, Maya. The world needs to be afraid or everything will fall out of balance,” he would continuously tell me.

  “Maya, where are you?” That same amazing voice, thick with a French accent, was still calling out for me and I was more worried about how Dad knew about that voice rather than what he was going to do to the dream like boy it was attached to.

  I came to a gray cement wall that had cracks running throughout it and had big gouges in the corners; the loose pebbles fell to the ground with tiny plinks that sounded like high pitched, sporadic drops of water onto the stone ground. I didn’t touch it. I learned as a little girl ‘do not touch the walls.’ They usually had something disgusting like sticky, oozing blood or creepy, harry spiders on them. This one looked harmless but all it needed was a palm and some fingers and bam, green spongy moss infested with tiny bugs that ate the flesh clean off your bones. I hated that one. I followed the wall, keeping myself a few feet away, and came to the alley.

  I lifted my chin and rolled my eyes to show a combination of boredom and defiance as I looked into the alley like a good girl. I looked because I knew that this was the only way that I would get out of here. I’ve tried not looking before. Not doing the typical things one does in a nightmare. Trust me; they always turn out worse, so I’ve learned to play along.

  This particular creepy alley was long. It was also foggy and smelly.

  “You’re losing your touch, old man!” I shouted into the alley, my voice bouncing off of the walls and ping ponging around me. I snickered. My four hundred and eighty-three year old father was steaming mad now. He hated being called old. Things may have just changed for me. Instead of my crush being tied up and gagged he was probably headless and cockroaches were coming out of his empty neck. I shivered and put my finger through Fred’s cage; his whiskers tickled, the feeling calmed me.

  “Maya, is that you? Help me, Maya!”

  “Dad, the redundant first name…really?”

  “Maya!” The voice sounded panicked and I hated it.

  “Thank you,” I jeered. I was going to win this mind game. I pushed forward through the muck, forcing it aside with my chipping, purple finger nails and stopped abruptly as a shadowed figure approached. It was him. It was Justin Prevot, the gorgeous junior whose eyes sparkled like a million stars and his lips would have been the envy of most lipstick models. He was tall with broad shoulders and tan with blond curly hair. Oh and French. Good heavens above, his accent could make flies drop to the ground and die happy deaths. He was Perfection. He was also not real, or at least not really here, calling my name and begging for me. Then I remembered something my father had always told me. ‘I only manipulate the mind; the conscious does what it wants.’ I saw this as an opportunity. I could spend some quality time with the elusive, neverspoken to me or even looked in my general direction, Justin and take the piss out of my father as well.

  “Justin!” I squeaked. Actress of the year, folks. “What are you doing here?” His blue eyes softened and he looked at me like I was the prettiest thing in the world. If I didn’t know I was dreaming before, I would have then.

  “I came to see you.” He was stammering and it was adorable. Me, being the girl that made the hot guy at school not know what to say because he found me so devastatingly attractive—these are what dreams are made of.

  “You came to find me in a long alley in the middle of a place neither of us has ever been to?” I asked - innocence. Justin’s eyes flickered for a millisecond with irritation. Hi, Dad.

  “I saw you walking down the street.” He put his big hands on the outsides of my arms and they felt the way I had always imagined they would; warm and silky soft. A smile escaped from my face that I had no control over until it was too late. This all did feel real, after all.

  “So you followed me?” I asked feeling suddenly irritated with Fred.

  “I’ll always follow,” the man of my dreams said.

  “And now that you’ve caught me, what do you plan to do with me?” I imagined my chest being bigger than it was in real life and looked down. Bingo. I gave fake Justin a sweet smile and opened my light green eyes as big as I could, trying for the Puss in Boots look. I batted my super long eye lashes that I didn’t really have and tilted my head to the side.

  Two dark, tanned working hands came out from behind Justin’s head, grabbing the sides of his temples and quickly put all their force
into snapping his head to the right. The crack of breaking bones whipped through the air as he crumpled to the ground, his neck bones sticking out from the skin, his lips going instantly blue. I looked up to where the hands had appeared from and charged them.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I screamed into the night, the words being swallowed up again. I screamed with frustration - nothing. My vocal chords were completely gone and I grabbed at my throat, dropping Fred to the ground, abandoning his comfort. Spinning around I could feel my true temper rising; I told him to never take my voice away. We had fought about it, me not giving up until he agreed and he finally had, but here I was without a voice.

  “What are you going to do about it, little girl?” My dad’s perfectly working, velvet voice came from every direction.

  Little girl? Little…GIRL? Gritting my teeth and kicking the cage to the side, a soft squeak came from my dream pet but I ignored it and stepped forward. My dad wanted to play nightmare games. I could play nightmare games. Closing my eyes I imagined something that scared me more than anything else in the world. I felt the wet puddles at my feet grow into a stream and began moving at my ankles then up my legs and then to my waist. A shark with bright red eyes and razor sharp teeth began to swim around me. I pointed my finger into the end of the alley towards the last place I had seen my father’s shadows. I moved my body down into the water, my eyes the only part of me that was above the waterline, showing the great white shark where to swim. It eased away from me, his giant body moving back and forth, a slight ripple behind its fin as it disappeared into the alley. I tried to sniff out my father, trying to find him with my fishy avatar, but he was gone. I slapped the water with my palm and made an irritated sucking noise with my teeth. A steal cage fell on top of me, trapping me to the spot. I grabbed the rusted metal and growled.

  “Where are you? Why are you hiding?” No answer, of course. I began to imagine that the cage was gone but got distracted by the rising water. I was being forced to swim now and had completely forgotten about the cage until my head hit it and I was forced to go under. My lungs instantly closed as I reached for the bars again, shaking them.

  “Maya. Calm down.” My father’s voice filled my head and I stopped fighting. “This is your dream, you are in control.” I closed my eyes and thought back to all of the endless hours of training my father had given me. My brain was still buzzing and I had yet to take a breath. I pictured myself in my bed right now; my pink flower comforter kicked to the floor and my body flailing back and forth, gasping for air that my dream brain didn’t realize I was receiving. I loosened my muscles and forced my mind to focus, putting all of my energy into fighting my own illusion that my father turned around on me. Air filled my lungs and I sucked in gratefully. I had scuba gear on, feeding me oxygen and now that I thought about it, this cage was keeping me safe from that shark I had let loose.

  “Maya!” My dad sounded irate. “Why are you aiding the problem instead of changing it? You are so powerful; this is not how you should be behaving.”

  “I don’t know how to change it!” My dad’s sigh was dense and full of defeat.

  I was stuck, swimming inside of my shark cage, with my scuba gear on and Fred in my hands again. I waited for something to happen but all that seemed to remain of my dream was stale, unchanging aftermath of a nightmare. I wanted to wake up already. Getting bored and starting to wonder what I could do to get out on my own I saw something floating ahead of me. It was right above my cage where I sat, trapped. It looked like a person, but not Justin, this was a girl. Her long fingers were spread out, gracefully bending at the knuckles. Her long black hair was thick and moved with the current. The body began to turn; I would see the face soon. The heart shaped face and long eyelashes came to view and my body began to burn with anger. I felt the bile rise up my throat and woke with a start, finally. My limbs tingled as they came out of idle. I jumped out of my bed to run full speed to the bathroom down the hall from my room, the soft padded carpet under my feet gave me mild comfort knowing it was over but I was still going to be sick. The look of my best friends limp body, dead in the water, was more than I could handle. I crouched in front of the toilet, retching and cursing my father. I always told myself I was going to win in my dreams but I never did. He always won; no matter how determined I was to not let him bother me. How did he do that? I got my head out of the toilet and brushed my teeth in our porcelain sink, exchanging the acid taste for mint. I turned around and ran into my very tall, very muscular father, my face slammed against his rock hard man boobs.

  “Gahhh!” I yelled but he just crossed his arms at me.

  “Who was that boy?” he barked.

  “You don’t get to ask me about him. I told you to never take my voice and never, ever bring Christina into it!” He cowered slightly under my rays of anger.

  “I needed to get you to think, to react and to care!

  “I did care; I was doing my best, I…”

  “No, Maya, you weren’t.” My dad followed me to my room while scolding me. “When are you going to learn that you don’t scare other people with what you’re scared of?”

  “I know,” I said, drained. I was tired of having the same old conversation over and over. Most teenagers were nagged about homework or breaking curfew. Me, I got badgered about the correct tactics of making people wet themselves.

  I shut the door, harder than I would normally have the guts to, and flopped onto my damp bed. I must have sweat in it. Nasty. I picked up my phone that was on my nightstand and went instantly to Christina’s open text message that we had going at all hours of the day.

  “Morning”

  “Hey!” I got a text back moments later and it made me smile.

  “Three more days!” I wrote.

  “I know! Then we will be free from our parents for the whole summer!” Then seconds later my phone dinged again. “P.S. I deleted that message, please do the same?!”

  I chuckled. That girl was the greatest friend in the world and the two of us would soon be headed to Camp Neverwhere. Parentless and with friends that were just like us.

  Chapter Two

  The halls in my high school were buzzing with excited teenagers as we all ended another school year at Madison High. The seniors pranced around like unicorns, already graduated and extremely important. By the way that wasn’t a compliment, unicorns are really annoying. Like large pigeons that know they’re pretty and are protected by the elders of time, so they get up in your face with their superiority.

  Christina walked next to me toward our homeroom, very alive and very grumpy. Which wasn’t unusual; she was the sweetest grumpy person I had ever met. As a general rule, she stayed sour faced until ten A.M. Her insane beauty was equal to my insane adorableness. Christina could run for Miss America with her light brown, sunny looking eyes and deep black, silky hair that seemed to move even when there was no wind. I, on the other hand, could run for most adorable teenager who confused all teenage boys. Most of my guy friends patted my head and gave me side hugs because what was really special about a stick girl? The front hug was saved for the curvy Christina. It didn’t bother me though; I just convinced myself it was her Siren blood and not that I looked like a twelve-year-old. Instead of a Miss America look, I was too skinny and my eyes were round like an owl, but they were kind of pretty so I felt like that made up for their doe eyed freakiness. At the moment my hair was short, layered around the bottom of my jaw bone and it was a purplish color. I had bleached and dyed my hair so often that it just started doing whatever it felt like doing.

  “So, how did you sleep?” Christina always loved asking me this.

  “Ugh, I hate my dad,” I said, glowering at the memory of Christina floating above me.

  “I don’t understand,” Christina took a large gulp from her coffee that was in a travel mug, littered with faded pictures of the two of us. “It’s a dream. You already know that nothing is real and you can do whatever you want to whomever you want and nothing is going to really happ
en to them. It sounds awesome!”

  “You don’t understand, it feels real. Like really real!”

  “But you know it’s not!”

  “Not always.”

  “Alright, well, it sounds splendid. Whatever I do to anyone sticks with me forever!” I laughed, covering my mouth as Christina glowered at me. Being a siren wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and I knew it. I really did have it easier than she did, but I couldn’t let on that I thought that or she would never stop talking about it. One time in the second grade, before Christina knew how powerful she was, she sang to a little boy who wouldn’t share his crayons with her. Till this day that boy wouldn’t leave her alone. He was her lifelong pal and no matter how mean she was to him he still thought that the sun shone from ever orifice on her body. “Life was easier for my ancestors when they could lure unsuspecting sailors to them and they could kill them on the spot. I wish they hadn’t changed the rules.” Christina winked, and then her face went blank.

  “What?” I tried to turn my face but her hands grabbed my cheeks and she forced my round eyes to her perfectly slanted ones. “Don’t freak out!” My stomach turned to molten rock, I knew what was happening. Justin was behind me, he was probably walking by with a gaggle of equally as gorgeous males and a few female friends, most likely in slow motion. She released the grip on my face and allowed me to turn my look towards him. I did it slowly, trying not to imitate a sling shot, my eyes acting like the stone and embarrassing myself with a whiplash noise.

  Sure enough, Justin was walking by me; his tall figure taking up more room in the neon light hall than anyone had any right doing. My reason for coming to school went too quickly and walked by me without even a glance in my direction.

  “I don’t get what you see in him,” Christina said, banging her locker door closed and rolling her eyes at me as I wiped the drool from the side of my mouth.

  “What?” I asked, shocked.

  “Yeah, he’s gorgeous, but that’s kinda’ boring.”