DISASTER!
Lane has to ride on the dog for a few minutes as the beast stomps over to the bunny tank to bark at it and the guinea pig enclosure to scratch and snarl at it and the cat cages where he’s the one being snarled at. But, but finally, he wanders over to the lizard and snake end of the shop; he’s weary of them.
Ten feet from the first tank, Lane walks over to the side of the dog and slides down, landing hard on her butt, on a nail and a long splinter the length of Lane. It pierces her hand; pinning her to the floor; blood sprays everywhere, even in her eyes. Her first instinct is to scream and cry in pain like a nine year old but, no, she will NOT scream and she will NOT cry. She will get that pixie wing and exit this memory no matter what.
Pulling with all of her might does nothing; her hand is still stuck in the splinter. So she resorts to kicking, hitting the piece of wood with all of her might; kicking until it breaks into pieces. One of them still lodged all the way through her hand.
With her free hand, she breaks off a piece of her shirt and ties it really tight around the wound with the splinter in it. Next, she picks up a shard of the splinter and jams it in one of her belt loops.
Squaring her shoulders, Lane sprints the rest of the way to the lizard rack, narrowly avoiding getting stepped on by the dog as he parades around the store like he owns the place.
Grabbing a rung from the rack, Lane pulls upward towards the Leopard Gecko tank, climbing slowly, climbing even though her hand is nearly numb and she’s still bleeding buckets.
The wing is now mere inches away. Shimmying across the wire top, she looks for an opening; nothing. Crawling over to the side, she finds a sliding door locked shut. Sitting on top of the lever, she pulls up; feeling it pop up and off. The cage is now unlocked. Carefully, she slides back the door and drops down onto a ceramic castle, large enough for the lizard to climb in and hide. She doesn’t see the Gecko but she does see the wing.
Falling off of the roof into large brown sticky wood chips the size of her head, Lane jogs to the wing and picks it up; immediately shoving it in her back pocket. Turning to leave, she’s confronted by a very angry Gecko ready to pounce. Its mouth open wide, its eyes trained on her; she’s moving around like the poor crickets in its cage. The lizard thinks she’s food.
Screeching, she jumps to the side. The lizard misses and hit its head on the glass with a super-sized BONK! Not deterred, the Gecko whips around, and whacks Lane down with its gigantic tail. Terrified, Lane pulls the splinter shard out of her belt loop and stabs the tail.
The lizard, horrified and angry, lunges at her again; catching her boot in its mouth. Frantic, Lane unties her boot and wiggles out of it just in time for the Gecko to crunch down. But it doesn’t taste delicious so her boot is rejected, spat back out instantly. Lane is once again the target.
Defeated and tired and in a whole lot of pain, Lane closes her eyes and pleads and begs for the memory to end, she just wants to be in her mom’s room again sitting next to Corbin and Night holding her mom’s shoe.
Not Always a Dream
“LANE!”
She doesn’t open her eyes. It could be a monster trying to trick her into believing that it’s Night calling her name.
“You’re BLEEDING!”
This time the monster is pretending to be Corbin. She still doesn’t open her eyes. She’s too scared to deal with scary monsters right now.
“Please?”
She smells her mom’s perfume and the distinct scent of her father’s aftershave – when he’d left he’d forgotten the bottle. It is still under the sink, half used; there’s a hole in the cap. Carefully, she opens one eye, tentatively inspecting the room.
There’s a large pink throw over the couch next to the bed and the covers are strewn off in a dilapidated pile to the right of the bed; one pillow with a poke-a-dot motif is on the floor. Seven plain work shirts have been laid out on the bed right next to the cat. There’s a window to the left and the right with the shades up letting in the bright sun. She hears the sounds of cars driving by.
Corbin and Night are sitting across from her; Night is holding the shoe looking like he wants to vomit. Corbin is staring at Lane’s hand; cradling it. Blue blood stains his skin. It’s her blood from the wound. It’s not red; it’s blue. She remembers that she bled blue in the grocery store – that was the very first time; this is the second.
The large splinter is still lodged in her hand; she can’t feel her hand or her arm.
“Oh,” She remembers something. With her good hand, she feels around in her back pocket and triumphantly pulls out the blue wing. “HERE! I found this!” She smiles excitedly. “Where were you guys? I missed you!”
“We were in a different memory. We didn’t know what happened to you. Where were you? We were in a bog filled with gross smelling creatures with tails that rotted and mouths that spat acid.” Corbin continues to stare at her bleeding hand; taking off the shirt band aid.
“I was in a pet shop; I was in memory.” Lane shrugs; now she can’t feel half of her body.
“You’ve been poisoned by a memory.” Night whispers. “There’s a fragment of a memory jammed into your hand; you’ve bled on it and part of it is in you. The second I remove the stick the wound will heal like new but you will NEVER EVER be the same. I gave you my blood and tried to make you a little bit like me but… but this is something totally different. We’re going to have to bring you to the Lord of Memories and ask her what to do.”
“WE,” Lane whispers, not sure what he says means. “Need to put that pixie back together again so you can go home!”
Corbin nods slowly, “I guess we can do that, I guess we don’t have to say anything right away. We just need to make sure we always have our offering and hopefully we won’t run into the Lord of Memories any time soon. It’s a good thing you’d didn’t see her Lane,” He whispers. “You don’t have an offering. Start keeping candy in your pocket at all times. You must have an offering or you’ll be sucked away by the Memory and Dream Worlds and you won’t be able to escape.”
Lane shakes her head in agreement but has no idea what he means; this is all so strange and foreign to her. It’s like they’re speaking a whole other language.
Night takes the little wing and shoves it in his back pocket, helping Corbin wiggle the large splinter out. Blue splats everywhere, fizzling where it hits as it disappears as if it never existed. The second the splinter is out of her hand, it breaks into pieces and shatters and disappears.
“Are we in a dream?” Lane has no idea what just happened.
“Not EVERYTHING is a dream.” Corbin snarls. “I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”
“I can’t leave the house.” Lane pouts.
“But I CAN!” Corbin giggles. “I’m going for a pizza with extra cheese and pasta on it. You two can keep digging around in your mom’s closet, she won’t be home till seven; it’s only nine in the morning.”
After digging in her mom’s closet they decide it’s fruitless, finding nothing but tons of heels and boots and sneakers strewn around the shaggy carpet floor. An old candy wrapper in an ugly brown gym sock and half of a beat up pink fluffy slipper are hidden under an old hat box. And there’s a disgusting moldy thing in the pocket of a blazer her mom must have worn in the late 1980’s. Back in prehistoric times no doubt. Night thinks the moldy thing used to be a piece of half eaten bread.
There’s an old trunk in the back of the closet filled with Lane’s old stuffed animals from when she was a baby living in the City and a baby blanket chewed in half by their dog – he lives with her father. A report card or two from Kindergarten has been shoved in there under an old baby towel with a duck head and duck feet to keep her head and feet warm after her bath.
A formal black dress or two have been hidden away in between her mom’s wedding dress in a special white bag and a line of dresses in reds and pinks and blues and greens. She has to
o many t-shirts to count – most are on the floor. Night and Lane keep on stepping on them.
But not one thing in there is fresh enough to find a remnant of another person. It’s impossible to find someone’s dream or memory to invade. Lane’s closet is a lot cleaner but equally as boring. They give up when Corbin returns with the large pizza pie and a quarter the guy handed him. Now they have a person’s dream to invade. But first, they’ll need pizza.
Graveyard
Graveyard walking was never Lane’s thing but an hour after they’d finished the pizza she finds herself standing knee deep in rain water smack dab in the center of an old graveyard complete with ghosts looming all around her, Night and Corbin. But the specters are asleep, floating around the tombs with their eyes closed, snoring like rabid beasts. A skeleton dog is chasing his tail around and around and around until finally the tail bone breaks off in his mouth. The skeleton dog triumphantly hops off, carrying the bone.
When Corbin climbs out of the murky brown water, he accidentally steps on a grave; a hand shoots out; wrapping around his ankle. Corbin doesn’t scream. He freezes in place instead.
Thirty seconds later the hand retracts, slowly going back down into the earth. Corbin hops over the rest of the grave, landing on another one. This time a slimy tentacle shimmies out of the stones and dirt. Corbin holds on to the
Wake the Dream - Book One Page 10