Dream Maker

Prologue

         The room was painted an off white color, had two windows with brown trim, and a border with; magic cards, crystal balls, rabbits’ feet, and magicians facing the inside of the room.  A small girl with silver blond hair, and bright, eager, eyes was waiting in a wooden bed surrounded by a princess canopy done in blue, her sheets and blankets had pictures of magicians on them to match the border of her room.  More than anything else, the child wanted to become a powerful magician and fortune teller just like her Grandma Breezy.  Her mother sat in a rocking chair that was next to one of the windows so that when the wind blew, the blue curtains brushed her face.  The child was dressed in her princess pajamas ready to go to bed, cuddling a stuffed toy raven in her arms. All she needed was for her mom’s bedtime story, and then she could go to sleep.
         “Tell me about Redrawn and the Sweeper woman.” The child demanded.
         “I told you that story last night.” Mom replied quietly, a smile on her face.
         “I want to hear it again please, please, pretty please with sugar on top, tell me.”
         The mother smiled at her daughter from the impossibly high distance of adulthood, and sat down on her daughter’s princess bed.  “I don’t know when their story ends or even how it began, but I will tell you what my mother told me.”
         
         When people dream, they leave their bodies behind and go to a different world that I will call dreamland.  Sometimes they don’t go completely to dreamland and other times they do it depends on how realistic the dream is.  In dreamland, thought makes up the world as matter makes up the waking world.  Thought isn’t enough for a dream that makes sense to the dreamer, people need others to act out their dreams into a symbolic vision of what the mind wants explained. We have dream sprites to act out our chaotic thoughts so that we may understand them.  I should say, so that parts of our mind understand it because I know I don’t always understand why I had a particular dream.
Anyway, the dream sprites are the artists of the dream realm they paint the mind’s desires into pictures that the dreamer can understand.  They are the actors and the dream world is their stage and I suppose that makes us, the dreamers, the audience and part of the stage they work on. 
Now, one of those dream sprites is named the Sweeper Woman, no one knows what her original name was because she doesn’t remember anything from before she became a dream sprite.  All that I know is that she calls herself the Sweeper Woman now. That is all anyone knows about her name.  She seldom speaks and her eyes never seem to focus.  In her hand she holds an old broom, and no one knows why she won’t let it go.
         What I believe she does is, takes away bad memories and good ones by sweeping them away gradually.  You may be able to hold onto parts of a memory like a snap shot out of a motion picture but still, parts of your memories will disappear because the Sweeper Woman doesn’t let you hold on to the memory for long.  I used to think I had a great memory but as I get older I forget more and more, I think that I fought her so much in my youth that I don’t have the strength to hold on to my memories anymore. Or it could be that no one ever remembers the actual event maybe we just remember telling the story over and over again, I don’t know it’s something you have to decide.
         Lordy, do I get off track or what?  Let me actually talk about the Sweeper Woman now, for holding such a strong power, the power to forget, she appears physically weak and frail.  She is an old woman with ash colored hair a mixture of gray and white.  She has dry leathery skin, folded over and over again to look like tree bark, and green eyes that still flash with life.  Her back is bent from age and she never releases her broom.  Redrawn is the Sweeper Woman’s husband and that’s all I know about Redrawn. 
I don’t really know why she is so dedicated to her job, no one really knows.  But I believe she had a bad life so she erased her own memory; once her own was erased she felt happier, so she tries to make other people happier by dulling their pain.  If I was in her position I would do the same thing, there are some things that are better forgotten, like the day my brother was shot in the war that is a day I would be happy to forget.  If the Sweeper Woman was stronger she would have taken that day from me but I guess I’m too stubborn for her, stupid human that I am I keep trying to remember that day.  I have my own story to tell about the Sweeper Woman, what I just told you has been a family story for generations but my next words talk about when I went to dreamland.
It was a summer night, with crickets chirping, and the smell of fresh cut grass blowing in through the open window the night I visited Redrawn and Sweeper.  It was a different world from today, technology was not like it is today, I didn’t hear that many cars or hear planes flying over my head every night, I could still see the stars in the sky but things were beginning to change.  The whole flapper age had come and gone and World War II was looming straight ahead but all I had was a radio to see what was coming.
My mom had just died from lung cancer because she had smoked often and not known the dangers in smoking.  I mean it seems so obvious now but it wasn’t obvious then and even now the government barely recognizes that cigarette smoke is dangerous.  My mom went through the decades and followed whatever craze was in development.  She had loved the early 1900s and the fatalist mentality of war, she was part of the 1920’s and the whole flapper mentality, and she had reveled in the rights of women everywhere after World War I.  She was a much different woman than I was because I grew up when times were harsher and more desperate and fuller of change. 
I lived through the depression and World War II so I knew what it was to be hungry and how necessary it was to save items and to eat when you had food because the next day could bring you nothing.  It was at the start of the great depression that I tried to contact my mom.  I felt like I needed her to reassure me that everything was going to work out. Dad had just been laid off, his wife was dead, and he didn’t know how to be a father, I love my dad but he was a man of that time; hardworking and loving the bread winner of the family and clueless about women’s work.  So that night, I got down on my knees and prayed to my mom to visit me in my dreams.  The dead are always around you, child, all they need is to be acknowledged and loved and suddenly there they are.  So I called my momma knowing that if she had passed quickly to the other side she would be able and willing to help me.
         But I didn’t hear my mother’s voice, I felt all alone and wretched then I smelled her perfume, it was subtle and I almost missed it but I knew it was her way of talking to me, that and leaving feathers.  My mom hadn’t been dead long enough to do much else but to a believer that was all she needed to do.  I dried my tears on the mattress, it’s  best not to cry over the things you can’t change, and tucked myself into bed, dreaming.
         My dream was in a dark world, with lights of every color on different sides surrounding an endless darkness.  One golden, glowing, path was leading towards a dark castle. On the sides of the path the lights had formed moving pictures.  A unicorn stood stamping and chewing grass by the roadside.  A small distance from the unicorn, a small girl sat playing by the seashore and making sand castles that the waves washed away.  A small boy was being chased by a large dog, screaming for help, and running through the seashore unnoticed by the little girl. 
Of course, I was curious; I wanted to leave the path to look at those flowers, and pretty people.  Looking at those flowers, unlike anything we have here, I remembered the legend of Morpheous and wondering if they brought mortal dreams; but I couldn’t leave the path because my feet kept moving forward.  I didn’t feel a hand on mine but I smelled mom’s perfume, I think that mom was watching over me, for once you leave the golden pathway between the dreams you wander forever and never return to the waking world again. 
The path kept going, right up to a tall black castle made from the dark side of dreams; the darkness was hidden with random bursts of lights sort of like fireworks except they formed pictures.  The castle was a canvas of light and dark dreams thrown together in an impressive display of imagination, horror, and beauty.  I felt scared, curious, awed, and happy all at the same time; it was unlike anything I’ve seen on Earth. 
         In the castle a tall king with a silver robe, sat on a golden throne carved with symbols for a moon and sun. Around his hall people were laughing and dancing with one another, having a very good time.  I had seen some silent movies by that time of course and other movies had come out but this was not a 1930s movie.  For one thing people were drunk and kissing, and dancing in ways the movies would never have dreamed of showing.  People were half naked and if I had been older I would have been scandalized.  However, I was a little girl and I didn’t know how bad they were being all I saw were dancing and drinking and two people sitting in the corner. 
The two I noticed were a tall man and an elegant woman.  I saw them the most clearly because the man was obviously in love but there was something off about the woman and I recognized that look of yearning in the man’s face, I saw it in Papa’s face every time he saw mom’s picture.
         The woman danced when the man danced, and ate when he told her to eat but she wasn’t really looking at anything.  Her eyes were distant as though she were staring past everything around her, as though she couldn’t focus. Her eyes were turned inward and she never let go of her broom.  The broom was made from bark and twigs; it was not the slim plastic brooms we have today.  The woman was dressed in a black, elegant dress with a gold belt around the waist, and gold cuffs that connected to a triangular, low cut, collar, shaped like branches to hold up black lace sleeves. Her face was clean but her hands were dirty.  The woman looked old, older than I look and her husband was about twenty in age.  It was strange to see two totally different people so close together. 
         The man was tall and slender but it was hard to see him because shadows twisted around him, hiding how he looked.  What I did notice about this man were green cat shaped eyes.  Then again, I had an evil cat that threw up on my bed constantly back home; the dream realm could have taken that desire from my mind and made the man look like a cat to show how I viewed evil. 
         I heard this slender, mysterious, and disturbing man tell the slightly off woman, “Don’t be so inward, we only get to see each other for this one night in a year.”
         “It matters not.”  The woman replied, refusing to acknowledge the man’s pain.
         “Come be merry, we have the whole evening to have fun.”
         “Why should we party? We have nothing to be joyful for just let me get back to my work.”
         The man grabbed her elegant, dirty, hand without worrying about getting himself dirty and forced her to dance.  The entire time, she didn’t look at him; she looked elsewhere.  The woman never let go of the broom; even while dancing she had it in her hand.  I was curious about them so I talked to a man sitting nearby.
         The man was dressed in a crimson, satin, shirt with dark black pants but the face and body of a lion.  “Dear Sir,” I asked, “What troubles the lady yonder.” I know it sounds so silly now but I used to read about King Arthur so often I couldn’t stop speaking like him, I thought that was the way I was supposed to talk.
         The lion thought I was a dream sprite from a far off land and answered, “The Sweeper Woman never wishes to leave her work.”
         “Why does her husband act so forceful and mean; forcing her to do what she does not wish to do?” I asked still believing in fairness and simplicity in those childhood times, I hadn’t realized that men and women weren’t equal in those far away times.
         The lion man smiled on me not at me, it was as if he wasn’t really seeing me at all, it gave me the spooks “Redrawn wishes for his old way of life, the girl does not and Redrawn is too in love to ever realize this.” His face became blank then as if some other thought had occurred to him and I backed away right quick.  I left that lion man alone and wandered towards a nearby chair to hear what Redrawn and Sweeper would say, the conversation was one sided.
         “My dear, how fairs it with you in the land of the mortals?” Redrawn asked, a glass of wine in his hand, and a forced happy tone to his voice with a fake smile.  His eyes were tense as though he didn’t expect the lady to answer him.
         Sweeper just looked out towards the front door and said nothing, refusing to look at him, focussed on something I couldn’t see.  Sweeper ignored the man with an utter disdain as though he was not worthy of her.  I wanted to slap her for being so mean to this nice looking man but I knew something wasn’t right with her so I held my anger in check.  Redrawn tightened his mouth and continued to question her but the smile slipped from his mouth leaving the tired look in his eyes.
         “Do you remember the garden with the golden apples and the trees of our native land?” Redrawn began but Sweeper stood up and left him alone walking quickly away because she couldn’t stand to remain next to him.
         Redrawn watched after her with the helpless look of a man in love, whose relationship is starting to break, but he didn’t cry, in darkness he drank, watching his wife at the front door as she disappeared; then he stood up and left the great hall alone.
         
         “That is all your grandma ever saw because she left when the Sweeper Woman left.  She talked to one or more people about the incident but all she heard was that Sweeper and Redrawn had two different ideas of reality.  She went back home and woke up, but she felt sure that it was her grandma who had guided her to the land of dreams even if she never knew the reason why.” The mother finished.

         “Mom did you ever go there?” The child asked after a long period of silence, her eyes bright and curious.
         “No sweet Arcadia, I have never gone to the land of dreams and known it was the land of dreams.”
“Why not?  I know you are powerful enough to go if you chose to.”
“I never wanted to. I have always been content with the world around me.  What do I need with dreams?  I have a small child whom I love and a husband who loves me.” The mom then bent and kissed her child, “Good night sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
         “Night mom,” Arcadia replied, and drifted into a deep sleep.
         That night she dreamed that her mother was killed in a car accident.  Two months later, her mom was dead and Arcadia was left to live with her father alone, it was the day she removed her magician bedspread, and border, throwing it outside in the trash, she didn’t want to be a magician anymore.

Part one:

A Maiden’s Power
Chapter 1

Candy sat at the window watching the rain slide down the window turning the world into a land of bumps and rivers.  If she squinted the raindrops turned into a smiling, bearded, man.  Her reflection in the window was vague and indistinct, that of a red haired girl with brown eyes and tan skin.  From the backroom Candy could hear her parents arguing about whose turn it was to do the dishes.  Candy smiled secretly, carefully turning her face towards the window; her parents thought she was too little to do the dishes so they never asked her and that was the way she liked it.  Candy was seven and wanted to be thirteen because that was when she could order off the adults’ menu at the restaurant that would make her a teenager but it seemed to be a long way in the future. 
Candy’s look out the window was soon shattered as a ball from her brother’s baseball game, inside the house, took out the window.  Candy was lucky not to be hurt by the glass but unlucky enough to fall out of the window directly into the mud-puddle that had gathered outside, ruining her new red dress.  Candy turned to glare at her younger brother.  “Dennis!  She screamed, her face turning red and her hands balling into fists.
Dennis was two years younger than she was and bratty only as a little five year old brother can be. “What were you doing in the way of my baseball?”  He countered rolling his eyes.
“My dress is ruined.”  Candy told him, crying in the rain as her parents ran out of the house to see what the matter was.  “I’m all wet and dirty,” she sobbed, remaining on the ground and getting dirtier every moment.
“Look what you did to your dress.”  Mother scolded, trying to push off the black, mud with her hands as the father held his daughter in his arms.
“I didn’t do anything it was Dennis and his dumb baseball that broke the window and then my dress got in the mud.”  The entire time she argued she was also sobbing between words, her words coming out closer and closer together as she worked herself up into hysteria. 
The dad tried to act as the peacekeeper, “I’m sorry Dennis broke the window you were sitting by, I know that he wasn’t supposed to be playing in the house, kitten, but you weren’t supposed to be sitting that close to the window.” He told her this while smoothing her pigtails away from her face, and cuddling her body closer to his heart, making his daughter feel connected and secure.  “The window is off limits you know, windows sometimes act as mirrors.” 
“Since when?”  Candy began indignantly.
“Since I said so,” was the father’s prompt reply.
“Dennis breaks the window and I get yelled at, that’s so unfair.”  Candy was now screaming in-between her tears, trying to get out of her dad’s arms, and after a moment of struggle her father released her with a final caress of her hair.
“Don’t take that tone of voice with your father,” mom broke in quickly.  “Dennis will be punished and now you will too for that tone of voice.”
“It’s not fair,” shrieked Candy as she ran into the house, past her parents and up the stairs to her bedroom splattering mud all over the house as she ran. 
“Don’t go after her Louis,” the father told his wife, “wait for her to calm down or you’ll end up screaming at each other.”
Louis shook her head but stopped going after her daughter, “I guess you’re right, James,” she conceded, her mind drifting to another topic, “Now I’m going to have to replace her dress,” she fretted knowing that Candy had been wearing an expensive, church dress that was worth two hundred dollars; it wasn’t too expensive for the family to afford but it was annoying to pay money for something that had already been bought.  Louis tried to dress her children in the best clothes money could buy because being well dressed was a sign of high society.  Louis found it pleasing to surround herself with breakable, expensive knick-knacks and her children’s outfits reflected her desire for an uncomfortable but classy house.
The father shook his red-bearded-head at his wife, trying to hide his laughter because he knew how angry his wife got when he laughed at her.  “I think we have to worry about the window before the dress and that will cost a lot more.”
The mother’s wraith had been diverted with the father’s comment about cost, and the blunt of her fury fell upon the five year old Dennis. 
Candy heard her parents screaming at her brother and felt even worse.  She was the oldest she was supposed to protect her brother. Besides, her parents were supposed to run after her, yell at her, or even comfort her; she wasn’t sure which she preferred.  “They don’t even notice me,” Candy mourned, “They only care about Dennis.  I wish I could get away from here.”  Candy thought and then for no good reason, her eyes turned to the candle on her dresser’s top.
Candy’s eyes grew large in the light from the flame.  She watched the candle flicker back and forth, watched the shadows gather on the walls, watched the way the smoke formed pictures.  For a minute, the reflection of the candle could be seen in the window.  In the window, a girl who was about nine years older than she was carried the candle into a room that looked liked her parent’s room.  Then Candy shook her head, she didn’t have a candle because she was only seven and her parents didn’t let her play with fire.  “What was I seeing?”  She wondered. 
Candy realized that the room had become darker, the shadows had become the light, her normal night-light was gone and the only light, in the room, came through the open window. The full moon rode the sky with a train of stars that acted as her veil, for a second the moon looked like the woman from her mirror, surrounded in the flames of fire, but soon the image was gone.  Behind her, she heard a rustling in her closet, as if every one of the clothes had been moved aside; Candy turned around and stared at her closet, the doors burst open and in-between her many expensive outfits two eyes glowed blood red.  She felt that the eyes were evil in the deepest pit of her heart so she ran away from the window, jumped in her bed and pulled the covers over her head to protect her from the evil eyes. 
She wanted to be brave and sit in silence, calming herself by pretending the eyes didn’t exist. Candy breathed deeply and lowered the covers but the eyes still stared at her and the rustling sound was getting worse.  Candy didn’t want to be eaten by some monster; the eyes were too scary for her seven-year-old self to deal with so she called for her mom.  “Mommy!” she screamed at the top of her lungs, and the door opened.  Through the door her mom stood in a pink robe, but it wasn’t her mother.  The figure had her mother’s eyes and her mother’s mouth but something was different.
The woman looked at her daughter and smiled an awful twisted smile that hurt to look at, “You are all alone, you killed me.”
“No I didn’t,” Candy cried out.  The figure smiled and Candy realized what was wrong, the woman had two mouths one on her face and one on her neck.  “You aren’t my mom.”  Candy yelled.  “My mom’s right downstairs and she smells better than you do.”
“I was your mom, until you killed me.”  The apparition replied as the wound started to bleed, draining the body of all color but the red. The rustling sound from her closet rose in volume and shadows from the eyes in her closet started to create flickering shadows around her room like firelight.
“You were angry that I knew what you and daddy were doing, I was jealous you thought.”  The mom continued calmly, tauntingly, unperturbed by the blood running down her chin or the huddled mass on the bed that had been her daughter.
“Dad flew a kite with me, that’s all that happened, what are you talking about?”  Candy asked, unable to understand how her mother could change so drastically, not understanding what her mom was talking about but feeling the guilt she always felt when yelled at by her mom, even when it wasn’t her fault.  The mirror showed her mother’s inert body, and the reflection of the candle that had reappeared.
The body had stopped talking and all that was left was blood and flesh.  The body lay inert at Candy’s bed leaving her alone with the two red eyes in her room and the rustling in the closet; the rustling noise slowly subsided as the body disappeared.  Nothing was left in the room but Candy and the two red eyes.  Candy huddled into a corner and cried but she could still see the body in the two red eyes.
“Daddy save me!”  She screamed appealing to her second parent, forgetting that she was supposed to be a big girl, forgetting everything but the smell of rotten eggs in her room, and the feel of evil.  The door opened to show her lovely father with his red hair and blue eyes; her father, who smelled like burned meat; he wasn’t the same either.
The father looked at his daughter with the same strangeness his wife had. “I can’t save you Candy,” his voice was regretful; “You stopped me from helping you by killing me.”
“I didn’t,” Candy, replied, “I would never hurt you daddy.”
The father shook his head sadly, “You aren’t a little girl anymore and you did hurt me. You hurt me badly.  Naughty little girl, we almost had fun.”
“What?” 
The father then stepped into the light shed by the single candle, a candle that had reappeared, and revealed itself as had the sound of rustling in the closet.  The father only had half a face the other half was brown and blistered. The damaged side spread until the entire body blistered, red, and brown.  The image kept changing and soon black encased the body until all that was left of the father was a pile of charred bones.  Slowly, that body disappeared as well to fall back into the red eyes, the rustling sound disappearing as slowly as it had come.  Now, both mommy and daddy were hidden.
Candy didn’t want to ask her brother for help she decided to wait staring into the red eyes.  From the closet she heard the rustling sound return and her nerve broke.  She kept repeating, “I’m a big girl, I’m a big girl, I don’t need help.”  At the end her nerves were too raw.  In desperation Candy cried out for salvation to the last person she would consider as her savor.  “Dennis help!” She screamed, hoping that the two of them together would be strong enough to defeat the evil. 
Her brother opened the door with a baseball in hand and a cocky grin on his face.  “Are you scared sis?”  He asked in his most annoying voice.
“Dennis thank God.”  Candy whispered and hugged her brother then drew back, pinching her nose.  “Phew you smell awful.” 
“That’s what happens when you die.” Dennis replied.  Candy drew back from the ice-cold flesh of her brother.  “Now I don’t need to take showers ever again and I can break the windows as much as I like.”
“Who killed you?”  Candy asked as tears fell down her cheeks because deep in the pit of her stomach she knew what he would say.
“You did sis.”  Was the prompt reply, “You killed me because I was too close to daddy.”  With that declaration a wound in his stomach opened up and blood started to drip.  The blood didn’t finish its trick because the body charred and fell next to the skeleton of Candy’s father, side by side in the red glow of the red eyes, in the red flicker of the eyes, and the sound of rustling that reminded her of a flame for some reason. 
“I didn’t do anything.”  Candy screamed but silence met her screech. A silence that was more powerful than any noise Candy had ever heard.  Candy had no one else to turn to; she had to rely on herself so Candy turned towards the closet and the eyes, slowly.  She picked up the candle, that shouldn’t have been there and shined its light upon the red eyes, realizing that the rustling in the closet sounded like flames; it was the sound of fire.  The flame from her candle was devoured in the eyes of flame from a person who looked familiar and yet didn’t.  Candy’s eyes locked with the red eyes’ reflection in her mirror and she saw how her parents had died.
Candy saw a young woman, in the reflection of the red eyes, slit her mother’s throat as she slept, Candy screamed at the picture, “wake up mom, don’t let her touch you.”  The figure never moved and Candy knew that her mom had been drugged.
The young woman then moved on to her father who had been tied to a chair. Candy watched the woman take a candle and burn her father to death as he struggled and cried, “Please don’t, I’m sorry, I won’t hurt you anymore, let me go, please let me go, you win.” In an endless line but the girl held the candle to different parts of her father and kept burning him laughing as he screamed.
Finally, the young lady in the mirror slit open her brother’s stomach and burned him up.  Her brother was also asleep, so deeply asleep that he didn’t feel any pain.  The young woman then went outside and buried her mother and brother, deep in the moist Earth, in the garden making them food for the worms.  The young woman then stared at the house, still holding her candle and set the place on fire, smiling at the destruction whispering, “Burn, you bastard, burn and suffer the fires of hell, you won’t touch me ever again.” The fire moved to the garden and the young woman still smiled, baring her teeth to the wind, she sank down on her knees and started crying.
Her family’s death upset Candy terribly but there was something that was worse than seeing her family murdered; she had a feeling that she recognized the person.  Candy sat up and went downstairs before she knew who the person in the mirror was because she couldn’t handle the truth she knew nothing except darkness.  The next day, she would be with her family again…

The nurse walked into Candy’s room and shook her head.  Candy had been catatonic since the time she was sixteen and now she was twenty-five.  Candy had been restrained since the time she had turned catatonic; everyone feared that she would be violent, she had a history of violence but she hadn’t moved except in rigid uncontrollable ways, strange grimaces and contortions that hurt nobody, but would scare those who weren’t used to catatonia.
In Candy’s mind the ghosts of the people she killed haunted her eternally.  Candy would always be seven, no matter how old her body became. At the age of seven her parents and brother were loving but also annoying. After seven, her father’s affection had changed from fatherly love to that of a lover.  At sixteen Candy had snapped and killed everyone in her family, she saw all of them as her torturers. Her mother was killed because Candy assumed she knew what her dad was doing and hadn’t stopped it.  Her brother was killed because he still liked his father so Candy had assumed he agreed with what her dad was doing to her as well, he hadn’t believed that stories Candy told him.  Candy had seen all of them as her torturers and so she had ended it but the end had come with a price; her guilt. 
Candy couldn’t face what her father had done to her or what she had done to him so she had retreated.  She was trapped in a cycle of images that wouldn’t stop until she died.  She was stuck at the point before her world had been destroyed, and maybe that was the kindest thing to do.  She would never have to deal with the world that we call real again.  She would never grow old.  She would never realize that moment in which she died.  She had eternal youth and eternal happiness.  Redrawn would make sure of it.

Nick tossed and turned all night, running away from some red-eyed beast.  He saw himself all alone in a room with an unknown enemy stalking him with two glowing eyes that reminded him of camping for some reason.  Sweat dripped down his spine and he was paralyzed unable to escape, his body’s nervous system ignoring his desire to move.  The eyes drew him closer, into the mouth of hell and his fright became so extreme that he woke up.  He jolted awake and sat in the cool darkness of his room.  Sweat beaded on his skin, “another nightmare” he thought.  Lately, he had been having quite a few nightmares.  He didn’t remember the dreams except for a vague feeling of unease.  Slowly, he went about his morning chores trying to shake the feeling of dread that had settled over him after waking up.  After a couple of hours of being awake, he had forgotten his unease from the pervious night and dismissed the nightmare from his mind as something that shouldn't be considered in the light of day.
He walked and fed his dog Milo.  He straightened up the house then he sat down, ready to write.  He started typing and a story took shape.  As always he was amazed at the speed the story progressed.  He didn’t even need an idea; he just sat down and started typing and a story chose him.  Sometimes, the thought that his stories came from another place popped up in his mind but he was always able to convince himself that it was only his imagination. 
         In his story, a small girl was the only one with psychic powers in the house.  She was able to tell the house was haunted and saw strange and unusual sights.  He had written most of the story last year but the ending had eluded him. That day, he finished off the story by making his character confront the lord of all the visions, the creature with glowing red eyes. In his story, the glowing red-eyed beast was another spirit, another creature that was trapped in limbo and could only be freed by his heroine.  He didn’t even realize that his idea was based off of a young girl’s dream world that Redrawn had created.  Nick had created the beginning and Redrawn had supplied the ending but Nick was unaware that he had help.
         The story was not exactly like what Candy had dreamed because he hadn’t understood the dream completely.  The written works were seldom entirely like the dream from whence they originated.  The dreams of others only gave fuel for the writers’ imagination; they inspired.  That was Redrawn’s job, in another time he would have been thought of as a muse.  The reality was not so kind…

Chapter 2

Betsy, a mother in her late forties, clenched her hands over her ears because she knew what was coming.  Her son, Xavier, was about to let loose with a yell to wake the dead.  The son in question had been told he couldn’t do, as he wanted.  He had wanted to spend the day playing videogames and vegging out in front of the TV after a long week of school.  The school bully, Matt, had been unusually mean this weak; his spit wads more constant, and his crude jokes harder to take than usual.
Xavier had friends that he could go do things with but he wasn’t popular, and he preferred sitting in front of the TV to going out and doing something with his friends.  His friends consisted of a mad rabble of intellectuals, people who thought they were intellectuals, dead beats, and intellectuals who pretended to be dead beats.  One of his friends thought that fires were pretty, and had been banned from the house without parental supervision after setting fires in the back woods that surrounded Xavier’s house.  Another friend liked to make up dirty lyrics for already known songs that Xavier found hilarious, while his mother and sister found them stupid.  He had another friend, who actively made fun of him in school, but Xavier didn’t seek new friends because he felt lucky that anyone liked him. 
Xavier was a dark-brown haired boy with large gray eyes and the beginning of a mustache.  He was about five foot five and most likely would be six foot when he grew up.  He was an awkward teenager but most likely he would be a handsome man if he survived his teenage years.  Until he grew up, which it was impossible to convince Xavier he would do, the rest of the school was poised against him, making threats and making fun of him as he went through the hall to his different classes, making fun of him in the classrooms when the teachers’ backs were turned.  Everyday in school was a nightmare that he wanted to escape but it was his life and no matter how bad it got there’s only one way to escape life that Xavier knew about and Xavier wasn’t suicidal.
When he came home he wanted to have a couple of minutes where nobody told him what to do.  Instead, his mom was nagging him, telling him to do his homework and clean his room. Angry with his mom for bothering him, he screamed as loud as he could, “Leave me alone!” 
His mom, Betsy, did not appreciate being yelled at, and if Xavier had taken a moment to think he would have realized that screaming at his mother wasn’t the best way to get his way.  Betsy lost her temper as well and screamed back, “Xavier Francis Lee, get your butt to your room now.”  She was a gray haired woman who insisted on dying her hair a light brown color, her eyes were sort of green but often looked gray.  Right now those eyes flashed with anger. Betsy tried hard not to swear at her children but sometimes Xavier made it difficult for her to keep herself under control, she had a temper and her two other children knew better than to bother Betsy to the point where she lost her temper but Xavier never thought.
Xavier became angrier and angrier and in his mind he started to reason with her.  “Mom, just let me spend some time on the computer later.”  He argued, thinking that his calm words would penetrate her fiery rage and make her see the light.  In reality, his calm words were screamed as loudly as a piano falling down the steps, scratch that, he was louder than a piano falling down the stairs.
The mother was in no mood to listen to her son’s screaming and complaining so she ordered him off the computer at once, clenching her fists to make sure she didn’t touch her son physically.  Xavier was playing some sports game on the computer and he couldn’t really pause the game, if he got off the computer the game would be ended, it couldn’t be saved for the next ten minutes.  If Xavier had been thinking he would have asked for ten minutes then gone and done his chores, moving quietly so that he wouldn’t attract his enraged mother, but instead he started arguing with his mother, calling her insensitive and a Nazi prison lord but being careful not to swear, at first.  Xavier didn’t always think but he knew better than to swear at his mother when she was already angry.
Xavier’s heated argument was one in which he was reduced to sputtering like a fish and repeating himself over and over again.  “Just let me explain,” he kept chanting thinking that he was the epitome of grace and virtue.  Of course, his method of explaining was saying the same thing over and over again even if it hadn’t worked the first five times with his mother and calling his mom names when she didn’t listen to him. The mom replied, “I’ve heard your side of the story now start cleaning.” Her teeth were clenched and she knew she had to leave the room soon or she would start swearing.
Xavier ended up cleaning as punishment, more than he would have had to do if he hadn’t argued with his mother, and muttering under his breath all the swear words he wanted to say out loud but didn’t have the courage to say to his mother. He felt anger but the anger was second to his sense of betrayal, his mother hadn’t listened to him and she should have, at least that was Xavier’s view of the argument.  “They just don’t understand me,” he lamented, “it’s so unfair, all I wanted to do was play on the computer…” and on and on, he complained trying to be quiet but actually being heard by everyone.  His mom listened to his swearing and read her romance book, not caring if her son swore as long as he finished his chores, escaping like her son had wished to do earlier.
After his chores, and a long ‘talk’ from his father, who was equally as clueless to what came out of his mouth as his son, Xavier sat down in his bed to try and sleep off the day.  His sister, Victoria, she never went by Vicky, came in and started teasing him. 
Victoria was dark haired, and gray eyed like her brother, but unlike him she was feminine, highlighted her hair, and painted her nails.  Victoria was one of the most popular girls in school and it embarrassed her to no end that her brother was such a loser. Here was her lazy, unpopular brother, who was supposed to work seemingly slacking off, she told him he was lazy because he wasn’t cleaning when and how he was supposed to. Victoria then noticed his hygiene, told him he was dirty because he hadn’t bothered to wash his hands and his fingernails hadn’t been cut in about a month.  Victoria just kept on nagging at him just like his mother had, trying to make him into her version of the ideal brother.  Xavier couldn’t take her constantly negative attitude and went crying to his parents so that they would tell Victoria to leave him alone.
His mother often interceded for Xavier by punishing Victoria, but not that day because the father was home.  The father had these ideas about men not crying and he didn’t want to be bothered with actually raising his kids.  He didn’t like to interfere with arguments because he worked all day and had no time for the kids he brought into the world; or at least that was how Xavier saw his father.
Xavier’s father, John, yelled at him for being a wussy and ignored Xavier’s loud and wet sobs for help. John was too busy reading the paper to care what happened in the home unless it affected him directly.  John was physically imposing with dark black hair that bushed out over his head in every direction and clear, gray eyes.  He stood at about seven feet tall (it was actually only six foot seven but Xavier thought he was seven foot.) so Xavier always felt small in comparison.
Xavier went back to his room and dead bolted the door.  He shared the room with his brother Simon.  The bedroom was meant for a much younger child, the computer was a white monster; the biggest his father could buy because electronics weren’t worth the money unless they were big. The bed was a red bunk bed with train sheets and blankets on it. The wall had a big mirror with clowns and the wallpaper was a bunch of happy trains with painted on smiles.  The rug in the middle of the floor was the worst part about the room because it was a white and black picture of teddy bears at a picnic. The room needed to be redecorated but his parents hadn’t gotten around to it because they both worked and the room wasn’t broken so they hadn’t gotten around to fixing it yet.
Simon, simian as a joke, ran to the door knocking for entrance.  Xavier refused his brother entrance even though it was Simon’s room as well because he needed time to think.  John ordered Xavier to let Simon into the room.  Xavier tried to argue but to no use, his father could not be swayed and arguing only made his father angrier.  Simon was admitted into the room and Xavier was teased by another member of his family. 
Simon just had a knack for annoying people.  He would sing songs like, “It’s a small World”, or “Kumbaya” or anything that was suitable irritating.  He also would talk endlessly, asking pointless questions.  Simon had large gray eyes and sandy hair that always stood up in back. Simon wasn’t just annoying, he worked at being annoying and he never let up. He wasn’t content until the other person broke.  Xavier did not have enough patience to deal with his annoying brother, no one did; Xavier didn’t really know how to handle his anger so he punched his brother in the nose.  Simon ended up going to the hospital with a broken nose.  Xavier was grounded for three years because his father was the king of overkill.
         Xavier had to listen to his parents argue about what to do with him, thinking he couldn’t hear their frantic arguing.  Xavier looked at the ceiling with tears rolling down his eyes praying, “make it stop, make it all stop.”
         What Xavier didn’t realize was that his oldest sister Marina could hear him.  Marina had died when Xavier was only five but she had been the only family member that understood him, his hot temper, his need for acceptance, and his need for time that was his. Victoria and Simian were too close to Xavier in age, and unpopular enough to be an annoying embarrassment to them. 
         Marina had been sixteen when she died eleven years ago but Xavier’s parents still grieved for her. Marina had been far enough removed in age to see Xavier as someone she should take care of and protect because he was younger and she took her role as oldest sibling seriously.  Marina’s room remained vacant left alone as a living tomb in her memory.  The parents had wanted to get rid of her possessions but they couldn’t let go of her things because they still hoped she would come back.  The room was haunted by her childhood but there was no ghost living in the room, just memories.
         It was only fitting that she should watch over her younger brother Xavier now that he was thirteen and inarguably a teenager and she had died, destined to be a teenager forever.  Marina heard his fervent desire to take a vacation from life and smiled because she knew his wish could become a reality, with help from her friend Redrawn.