Theme: Dream

She found herself in complete darkness. Her shoulder-length hair, brown at the top but silver in the last few inches, moved without caution, as if caught in a pleasant breeze. The girl, in that semi-awkward stage between childhood and adulthood, most commonly known as one’s teenage years, was mixed with a feeling of fear and courage. Something was wrong; she knew it. Unaware of what she was wearing in her dreams, the light summer nightgown blew in the non-existent wind as well. Suddenly realizing the feeling of cloth against her dream-form, she looked down to see the short gown, which contained tiny purple- and blue-print flowers patterned across it like a chain link fence. She had noted some time ago the odd design, but now it worried her. She instantaneously forgot what she was wearing, as it was usually unimportant in dreams, when her dream-consciousness told her that something bad was coming.
       Down in the indeterminable distance, a male figure appeared, and slowly grew closer. A faint sense of familiarity came over her as the unconscious part of her mind told her who this man was; altogether, he was not a bearer of bad news, but he was bad in some way.
       “Takeshi Chiaki, are you a dream spirit as well as a bad father?” Her conscious mind did not stir yet as to how she knew this; she just accepted it in getting this over with.
       Takeshi’s dream appearance looked somewhat like a nerd’s. A plaid vest over a white dress shirt and dark slacks showed; yet he contained none of the nerd, geek, or “loser” factor of the outfit he was wearing. In fact, he looked very disturbing, as it seemed like a normal outfit. The man was also offensively overweight. He chuckled at the adolescent’s comment and responded.
     “Come now Melody, is that any way to greet an old friend?” He cleared his throat while Melody instantly replied, denying this friendship existed.
      “Why are you here?” she spat, and tensed her dream body, though hardly felt it.
       “Now, now, no need to be rude.” In the distance, she faintly heard something menacing, but unknown; it reminded her a bit of thunder. “I came here to tell you how displeased I am with you,” he scolded.
      “Oh? And what have I done wrong?” Mel instinctively crossed her arms.  The wind had stopped blowing when Takeshi’s presence was made, but she felt the occasionally breeze ruffled through her short hair.
       “It’s quite simple, actually. You didn’t listen to my oldest daughter! I send her a year or two early to come watch after you and prepare you to rid yourself of that… that… thing, and you’ve yet to obey her! Of course, you have until you’re eighteen, but when she gets an idea into her head, she sticks with it and wants it to come out as she planned”
      Melody felt something tell her that Sakamoto came to her of her own free will, not her father’s command to watch over her early. She also felt a newer, more confusing emotion: the urge to defend Hate, the being that had caused her most of her life’s troubles.
      “Actually, she sent me away to train because I had lacked to find a proper form to bind Hate into. You,” she said, putting extra emphasis on that word by pointing at him, “need to get your facts straight.” Her consciousness began to stir with the urge of a weird thought, as did the question of how she knew otherwise that the statement was a lie.
       “Hmm…” the man said, as if deep in thought. “That may well be, but right now, you’re coming out of sleep. I’ll have to make my, ahem, request, quick.” Melody raised an eyebrow at the man; he spoke entirely business-like, never as one human to another.
       “What is it now?” Part of her was slightly intrigued, but she knew it was from his wording. Damn the man for being so influential, she thought.
       “I can hear your thoughts, young one.” Mel pretended as if she both knew all along and didn’t hear him.
        “It is IMPERATIVE that you finish it this time, BEFORE your body has been spent seventeen years, six months, and one week of existence.” He began to speak in an almost prophetic tone that Mel felt she had to listen.
        “HATE must be gone from your earthly vessel; times are becoming more intimate with you and the one I set you up with.” Melody began to blush in her sleep at the thought, and the man hastened his words.
        “Please, do NOT focus on a thought right now, just listen without reason. If you do not rid yourself of Hate this time, all those you love will perish from both yours and its hands.” Melody was about to make a not-completely thought out counter statement when images began to fill her mind.  One contained the image of two sisters, one around seventeen, the other twenty-one. The younger was a blonde while the older had raven-black hair. Their eyes glistened with the glaze of death having settled in within the hour. Melody couldn’t get a focus on their clothing, but she knew it was Hamano and Sakamoto. Even though it was not in focus, she saw the blood on their clothes, splattered all over an unseen floor and their faces. Dark tendrils were feeding upon their corpses.
        “My daughters,” Takeshi said solemnly, as the image became burned into her mind. Mel tried to gasp, but no sound came out.
        “Your friends,” he continued, as a multitude of images swam forward, each one containing a friend or two that she made ever since she left home. All contained mass gore, and she began to feel bile building up in her stomach. Each had darkness showing in some way or form, each digging into open gashes and broken skin. And the glazed eyes, oh the eyes! They were the worst of all, most showing shock that somehow connected to her.
        “And even your beloved will perish…” His voice had lost any sign of emotion as the last image, one Melody feared the most and tried to close her eyes against, appeared in her mind. It seared through closed dream eyelids as the corpse of a young man with huge spiky red hair laid in a pool of his own blood. Melody shrieked and tried looking away, but she became transfixed by the horror. He showed no signs of a struggle, and the look on his face seemed to be one of betrayal at the hands of the one he loved. As if to confirm that this was indeed the case, one dark tendril had somehow taken control of her left arm and pierced it through the young man’s heart. Mel pulled away and shrieked, clawing at the thing, but it wouldn’t let go. Takeshi finished his toneless, possibly numb with grief and horror, sentence, “at your own hands and its.
        “You will have absolutely no control of this, although it will be your voice they will hear when it happens. Hate has been waiting silently for the day to kill you, not from the inside like one would expect, but on the outside…” At last, the tendril detached itself from Melody as the image vanished into the dark recesses of her mind. Her face showed true horror and anguish. She barely heard anything that Takeshi said, but since this was a dream, those words would lay in the back of her mind. “…And through you.”
        Melody slumped to the floor in her dream. Takeshi came over and laid a hand on her right shoulder, getting her attention and trying to provide some comfort. “I know it is hard to accept this, but it will happen. I thank the heavens every day that my girls are unable to see a future like this, and that they will surely have an impact in preventing this from happening. So has it been written, so will it be done. You have one year left before…” his voice trailed off as Melody gained the majority of her consciousness. She strained to hear them, focusing, but that proved futile. Finally, she jerked awake as sudden realization of what just happen took over.
        It was just a dream, she thought to herself, but the comfort from it failed. It had felt too real for her to ignore. Maybe because it was a bit real, another thought told her. She sat up and took in her surroundings, realizing that she had not woken up in her bedroom in Dentech, but at the Guilty Pleasure bar, the place where she worked and stayed between visits to Japan, her boyfriend’s home. One thought had said, well, can’t consult my family, while another reminded her of his existence.
         Her boyfriend! She looked around and realized that he was safely asleep in the bed beside her. A thought went across her mind, stating the lack of a need to check under the sheets, but it was ignored as she took in the fact that he was safe, and not dead. She breathed a sigh of relief, right before the flood of images came rushing back, all at once, all vying for her attention. Tears escaped from her eyes and would not stop falling, even after she commanded them to stop. She sobbed silently, trying to calm herself down. Her knees were drawn up as close to her chest as she could get to have some kind of support.
          Eventually, her boyfriend awoke to the sounds of her trying to cry as softly as possible. He instantly wondered what was wrong, and embraced her in a hug. Mel jolted from his touch at first, but relaxed as she realized it was him. He began to soothe her while she focused on slowing down her breathing and preventing her teeth from chattering. It was indeed summertime, and while the air in the small room that she stayed was hot, fear gripped her cold. She had finally calmed down and moved away from his embrace, in a somewhat embarrassed and bashful manner.
        “What was it this time?” He asked her softly. Mel looked at him, and proceeded with what she practiced as her lying smile, as well as a lie.
       “World getting dominated, me helpless to do anything; you know, the usual.” He frowned and she looked away, knowing that he didn’t believe her. In a way, it’s somewhat true, she reassured herself.
         “Melody, you don’t get scared like that from those nightmares. You were shaking this time.” Mel bit her lower lip as she mentally agreed with him.
        “Lance, it’s no big deal, okay?” she retorted, then quickly said another sentence to cover up the nasty tone that she noticed in the first. “It was just… just… just a reoccurring event gone wrong. I’ve had them before,” she said solemnly. Absent-minded, she grabbed at a spare sheet for comfort, and half-tried to bury herself within it, without really looking like it.
          Lance grabbed her right hand and she stopped in mid-fumble for the end of the sheet. She met his blue eyes and saw the worry there. Filled with guilt for not wanting to tell him, nor having any intention to, Melody looked away. I can’t tell him that I saw myself with his death on my hands! Her mind screamed that at her while she admitted that it would be near impossible to keep it from him. And if she tried to wait it out until morning, true morning, and hoped that he forget, he most likely wouldn’t. Then she’d have Hamano probing her mind, and she’ll learn Mel’s beloved visit from Takeshi. She felt a slight squeeze on her right hand and looked down, realizing that Lance was still holding her hand. Oh, she thought. She’d forgotten his presence as she thought about Hamano’s reaction, then Sakamoto’s…
       “Melody, you usually blush the tiniest bit or smile when I hold your hand. Something is seriously wrong.” Damn. He’s got me there. She sighed and lacked the will to send him a message through her actions.
       “Lance, please… I just want to forget about it…” She drew closer to him and lightly kissed him on the lips. She then forced a smile and any form of blush she could muster onto her face so he would think she was fine. She almost made the smile look pleading.
      He searched her face and knew that she probably wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. Lance sighed, giving up. A real smile crept onto Mel’s face when she realized that she just won. “Go to sleep,” she said in a jokingly commanding voice, “You may get called for work any day now, and you’ll need your sleep! What would happen if you fell asleep riding your Dragonite and slipped off? You’d have one angry girlfriend, I can tell you that much.” She grinned and settled onto her half of the bed, her face looking towards the middle. Lance followed suit, facing her, and Mel closed her eyes, going back to sleep. Just before she slipped off into unconsciousness again, two things fought for dominance over a bad feeling.
        One was the internal darkness that she had allowed to be sealed within her body, the cause of the images. Another was the image of her boyfriend, bloody and dead at her hands, and she knew that it was unlikely she was going to fall asleep anytime before sunup.