Into the Darkness

In the shadowy crevices where no ordinary human dares to venture, exists a breed of the most sinister creatures ever to walk the planet: nightmaeres

[knight-maeres]

[knight-maeres]

Thirteen

There is a reason that Cain does not normally go to class. The few times he does, he manages to wind up in the most dangerous situations known to nightmares.

  Well, perhaps that was a slight exaggeration, but the sixteen year old has no intention of entering the mind of a human right now. He would much rather sit in the comfort of the radio department where the only potential danger is his eardrums getting blasted to pieces by his fellow radio jockey, Serene Dawson.

  Professor Cabage is still waiting for him to step up and with trembling knees, the boy does.

  “Alright,” Cabage says, plastered on his face what seems to be an encouraging smile. To Cain, it looks like one of those advertisements for toothpaste: extra white, extra shiny and extra intimidating.

  “First, pick a person whose mind you wish to enter.”

  The boy scans the rows of sleeping humans, hoping to find one that looks relatively easy to manipulate. He spots a girl in a corner, around his age. She doesn’t look too strange, not snoring or mumbling like some of the other humans. Nodding to indicate that he picked his target, he swallows the lump forming in his throat.

  “Now, focus your attention to shifting out of your human form. You need to be able to break away from your usual shape. Think of something open, endless.”

  Endless? Cain resists the urge to wring his teacher by the neck. How on Earth is he supposed to think of something endless when a pack of teenage Dreameaters and a salmon tin of humans surround him?

  Focus, a voice in his head reminds him. Had he put that word in his mind or is one of his classmates trying to calm him down? Regardless, he follows the advice, forcing himself to think of the ocean that’s barely a mile away from the school. The sludge coloured waves that ceaselessly crash onto the stony beach usually calm him down.

  That’s when it happens. The boy resists the urge to shriek as his body begins to feel lighter. He cannot feel his limbs.  It’s almost as if he drank so much soda pop that his body is entirely composed of bubbles of fizz.

  “Very good,” he hears his professor’s voice, although it sounds lighter, as if Cabage is speaking to him from another room, “Direct yourself towards your target human as fast as you can. Only then will you be able to pick up enough momentum to penetrate the human’s mind.”

  Cain tries to move, but he gets the sensation of him trying to run in a swimming pool. Something his holding him back and he can feel his lungs (or whatever they’ve become now) burning as he pushes forward. It gets easier as he reaches the glass barrier behind which the humans sleep. To his amazement, he passes through glass as if it was air. He moves faster and faster towards the girl, the world around him becoming a blur. It takes much longer to reach her than he had anticipated. When he does, he zooms towards her head.  He gets closer until he’s a breath away. Passing through her head causes a burst of light to sear his eyes, and he blinks.

  Then everything is white. 

[wearetheparadise]

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[knight-maeres]

Myra's theme song

[knight-maeres]

[knight-maeres]

Twelve

The moon rises up into the dark sky embedded with glittering stars. Something about the full moon on this particular night seems to insinuate something mystical. Samantha is afraid to let her head hit the pillow, she is dreading the return of the night terrors that have seem to become a common occurence.

Sam decides to substitute sleep with a trip to the kitchen because a cup of black coffee seems so appealing. She puts down the book she has been reading and tries to ward off the paranoia she has been feeling. “You are not being watched!” she reminds herself for what seems like the hundredth time. She switches on a lamp in the kitchen and brews her coffee in silence. However, the stillness breaks with the voices that can be heard from the next room. Samantha startles and spills the dark caffeinated liquid on the floor.

The voices seem to be that of her parents. “Who are they talking to at 1:15 a.m.?” She is too curious to pass up the opportunity to eavesdrop. She guesses it to be a video conference of something work-related, but hearing the words “Dream catchers” and “Nightmares” in repetition brings up a red flag. Her eyes narrow at the spilled coffee on the kitchen floor, thoughts going haywire in her brain. Samantha is now queationing whether everything she has heard are nothing but figments of her frazzled state of mind. She is alternating between curiosity and thinking about death and outright worry over the fact that she might be going completely insane.

For the first time in a long time, Sam feels a pang in her chest that results in her sobbing uncontrollably. “Why are they talking about Nightmares as if they are real actual people?” She asks no one in particular. As if answering her in an ambiguous way, the leaves on the tree outside rustle as a gust of violent wind hits the vicinity.

[image - abhorsen@tda]

[knight-maeres]

Eleven

Knill sits up, confused. Waking up from a decade long dream tends to make one do that. Knill looks at the glittering, purple stone he still has in his hand. It seems to glow against the unending white of the room and the monotonous grey of Knill’s skin. The white room is a prison of sorts, a place where one is tortured. The walls are too white. Indeed, they are so white that one cannot decide where the wall ends and the floor begins. It is almost as if one could go on walking forward forever. But obviously, Knill cannot; he can feel the solid wall in front of him. It is undoubtedly a wall. 

  He sees a small speck purposefully striding towards him from beyond the wall. The figure comes closer and closer until it is a few feet from Knill. He drops a piece of paper in front of him and begins to walk away. Knill watches him incredulously for a few minutes before deciding that he must follow this man. He starts off at a sprint, only to crash against the wall in front of him. Cursing and rubbing his head, Knill picks up the piece of paper and reads it. For some reason, he has been given his ticket out of there.

[knight-maeres]

Ten

Knill’s dreams are foreign. Gone are the days when he could embrace his slumber with alacrity; his dear friends are perfidious. He opena his deep purple eyes to look at the clock on his ceiling: half past six, time to get up. Still lying down, he draws the curtains next to his curved bed against the circular wall. The orange light of dusk falls on his face, amplifying the power of his laser-like gaze.

There is a scratching at the door. Knill’s world flickers as he lazily drags himself to the other side of his small, wooden cylindrical room. He opens the door. A small, orange fox stares at him expectantly with its large yellow eyes, camouflaged so perfectly against the orange snow that it seems as though the two eyes were floating in midair above a small black spot of a nose. Knill slams the door shut.

  A few minutes later, the door reopens. The fox regards Knill with a polite curiosity mingled with a triumphantly smug air.

“Just get in, would you?” snaps Knill.

“I haven’t got anything for you to eat.” he adds as the fox trots in. Wasting no time, the fox ceremoniously positions himself at the centre of the room. Then with a gag, a great retch and a disgusting sound, he vomits a small amethyst onto the floor. Seemingly unaware of Knill’s remonstrations, he then promptly jumps up on Knill’s bed and pretends to go to sleep.

Curiosity gets the better of Knill. He picks the stone out of the pool of drool. A light playfully dances and beckons within it. He looks up, only to see the white walls of the room mocking him once more.

[image - PhoenixAlthor@TDA

[knight-maeres]

Nine

Mariana's eyes snap open as she stumbles out of bed, hands curling around the gun kept under her pillow. "It's just a nightmare," she tells herself, "you aren't in a war zone, you're in a dingy flat you paid too much for." The strategy of using cold, hard facts and sarcastic comments to cope had been approved by her therapist and often worked. Her breathing slows down and her grip on the weapon in her hand relaxes. The violent images in her mind start to disappear. Just before she can lie down once again, her phone rings and she hesitates brifely before picking it up. She doesn't have many friends or family that would feel inclined to call her at 7 A.M. "Hello." she answers, her voice showing no sign of the terror she felt only minutes before the call. "Mariana Beckett, I'm calling on behalf of the Dreamcatchers. We have an assignment for you." An hour later, she walks to the address sent to her and waits patiently outside the door of the house to collect "the asset". She had been sent a picture of the man, but no other information. She has no qualms about this mission, since she would prefer kidnapping over killing any day. As soon as he steps outside, she silently follows him and just when she is close enough to place a rag over his mouth, he whirls around, shocking her into stepping away. "Who are you?' he demands, 'Why were you following me?" "I was hoping it wouldn't have come to this," she sighs, "But I am in no mood to answer your questions." His forehead creases in confusion and just before he can open his mouth to ask another question, her fist connects with the side of the head and he crumples to the floor. "Time for my favorite part. Dragging the body back to the headquarters," she says dryly, looking down at the unconscious man at her feet.

[knight-maeres]

Eight

“Attention class!” the nasally voice of Professor Cabage resonates around the classroom. A couple of groans come from the students around him but are quickly quieted, lest the professor raises his voice even further.

  Cain winces and rakes a hand through his dark hair, wondering if the balding man before him has an inbuilt loudspeaker in his thorax. There is absolutely no way a normal nightmare could speak so loudly.

  “Welcome to your first lesson of entering minds!” the professor beams, seemingly oblivious to the effect of his voice on his class. He pauses, as if expecting a bit of applause.  Noticing that the pin-drop silence, he awkwardly continues.

  “Entering the minds of humans and feeding on their thoughts is not as simple as it appears to be,” he says, “It definitely isn’t like entering a fast food restaurant. You can’t just saunter inside; pick up your order and leave. Human brains aren’t like burgers that can be devoured at whole. Only Frankenstein’s monster can do that.”

  Professors have extremely poor senses of humor, Cain mentally notes, observing the uncomfortable silence that ensues. For someone whose name sounded so similar to a vegetable, the sixteen year old expected better.

  “Er, think of the mind as a multilayered, extremely complicated structure. Humans fill it with all kinds of thoughts. As dreameaters, you need to be able to pick out only human dreams, nothing else.”

  “Like, picking out cabbage from a hypothetical salad?” Cain pipes up, an innocent smile plastered on his face. The rest of the class doesn’t get it, of course, for their brains are probably still trying to figure out what hypothetical even means. Only a ruby smile peeks out in the crowd, an acknowledgment of his double meaning.

  Cain can always count on Deia to understand his horrible jokes.

  “Well, yes Mr. Devrill,” the older man says uncertainly, squinting at the teenager, “Although that is a bit of a crude example. Anyway, it’s time to reveal your practice subjects!”

  A monitor on one of the classroom walls flickers to life, sputtering an image of twenty something humans trapped in a room. They would normally be panicking, of course, but at the moment all of them were curled up on the floor. Some of them are snoring.

  “They are all asleep,” the professor explains, “Which provides the perfect conditions for this practical lesson. Who volunteers to try entering a human mind first?”

  Cain was hoping for a brave dreameater, unlike himself, to selflessly volunteer. Unfortunately, the room remains silent. The professor sighs and proceeds to pick out a random teenager from the lot.

  “Mr. Devrill? Why don’t we start with you?”

  Oh rats.

[knight-maeres]

Seven

Myra flings the covers off and strolls to the window. She tries to pierce through the midnight darkness with her eyes. She takes in the silence of the night, savouring it. Letting the serenity envelope her senses, and slowly lull her back to sleep. She breathes in releasing the thoughts that shattered her sleep, leaving her abuzz. She starts at the sudden rapid banging at the front door.

A cool gust of wind hits her face as she yanks the door open. A tall hooded figure pushed her through the frame, quickly stepping in and slamming the door shut behind them. Myra reaches for the blade at her waist, her jaw clenching. The figure hastily pushes the hood back revealing a mop of dark hair.

"Cool it!" he exclaims.

"Byron!" Myra hisses shoving him into the wall, "Where the hell were you?"

"We need to talk," Byron replies, "I have some new information. This could be a game changer."

Myra glares at him, turns on her heel and storms out of the room. Byron follows her to a dimly lit table and sits down, across her. Myra notices the bags under his eyes, the new lines of worry, now darkening on his brow.

"What is it?"

Byron slides a yellowed envelope across the table.

"This. We already know about the existence of an alternate species which feed on the energy of humans while they sleep. The very cause of nightmares. But these documents, they explore how they use that energy, how they extract it!" he says his voice rising.

Myra rises, pushing the table away from her. She paces the room.

"The origins of DreamCatchers are buried too well for it to be rediscovered. The failure so great that for decades no one has dared to bring it up. But now, now it's different. Nightmares are increasing, other humans have no idea about the true causes. It's up to us to get on top of this."

She pauses too push a strand of hair out of her face. She glances at Byron.

"Here," she flings a blanket into his face. "Sleep."

"Naw. I'm good!"

Myra silences him with a look, the next thing Byron hears is the front door slamming shut.

"Ivy. What news on the recruitments?"

"Uhhh. All of them seem good enough. One stands out, though. A Mariana Beckett. I interviewed her myself," Ivy replied rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

She clenched her fists, trying to ignore the cool air nipping at her skin.

"Good how?" Myra pressed.

"Oh. There may be a slight problem though.. She may sort of think that I am you," Ivy cringed.

She just hadn't been able to help herself. The thought of imitating Myra and messing with a new recruit at one go? Who would say no to that? Thinking back on it though, it was such a Phoenix thing to do.

Myra glares at Ivy, making her shrink back into the door frame of her room.

"I will speak with you in the morning," Myra says before turning and disappearing into the dark night, leaving Ivy with a sense of impending doom.

[image - Verloren@tda]

[knight-maeres]

Six

Samantha lay on the soft green grass of Deianara Nixx’s backyard in a comfortable t-shirt and jean shorts. Her blonde hair is tied into a ponytail and bounces up and down and she nods, listening to Deia talk about things she is passionate about. The thing about Deia is that she’s not only Sam’s best friend, she comes close to being a sister which is a role that April could never begin to fit. Besides, April never was accepting of Deianara.

The conversation began as mindless babble about their days at school. Samantha wonders why Deia is always quite stingy when it comes to dispensing details about her classes, friends at school and teachers. Sam shrugs it off as Deia’s bigger ploy to appear mysterious.

“Are you okay?” Deia asks in between her rapid sentences.

Sam is most definitely not okay. Though, she is hesitant to tell Deia about her mind in its primal frazzled form but she blurts it out anyway “Well, I’ve been having these… um… these nightmares that have been giving me a killer headache…” her voice trails off. “I don’t want to bore you, Deia”

Deianara’s mind gloats in victory but her facial expressions portray a stark contrast to this. “Of course not, Sammie, you can talk about it, you know?” her hand, cold, fingernails painted jet black go around Sam’s shoulders.

“I’ve been dreaming a lot about death, Deia. And it’s worrying me. And I can’t stop thinking about him. Ethan” her eyes become glassy and a prominent lump forms in her throat.

Of course Deianara Nixx knows about little Ethan, the sweet innocent brother, went missing at age three, declared dead last year.

The inevitable occurs as Samantha begins to cry, Deia strokes almost-hysterical Sam’s back comfortingly. Externally, an elegant façade is up. Internally, however, Deinara Nixx now knows that she has hit a jackpot. She is preparing to be a goddamn legend at school after she is through with this.

Let the nightmares begin. 

[image -visenya@TDA]

[knight-maeres]

Five

"Mariana Beckett!" A bespectacled man with a clipboard announces. A petite woman stands up in the waiting room, smoothens the creases in her pants and walks towards him. "You're the soldier?" he asks, his eyebrows rising in shock and disappearing into the hair hanging over his forehead. "Is that a problem?" Her grey eyes narrow at him, daring him to further comment about her appearance. Something about the set of her jaw and the glint in her eyes makes him shake his head furiously and guide her to the meeting room. Before she can enter, a woman stops her and runs a hand-held metal detector over her. It emits a shrill noise that causes Mariana to sigh and roll her eyes. "If you have any weapons on you, I suggest you hand them over. They will be given back to you after the meeting." She pulls a semi-automatic pistol out of the waistband of her trousers and a dagger from her shoe. After depositing them in a box that is offered to her, she pushes the door open with a little more force than necessary and walks in. "Good morning, my name is Myra Wolff. I'm assuming that you're Ms. Beckett?" A woman sitting behind the desk asks, looking utterly unimpressed. "I think you should know, since your organisation is the one that's interested in recruiting me." "I'm going to get straight to the point.Do you know why we selected you?" "No, as a matter of fact, your letter was quite cryptic. I must say though, I was quite intrigued by the fact that an organisation that calls it's members DreamCatchers," she says, her amusement about the word evident. "wanted to recruit someone with my... skills." "Yes, I've heard quite a lot of interesting things about your work in the Anti-Terrorism department. But to be frank, Marinara, you don't look particularly impressing to me." "My name is Mariana." she responds, her voice calm and controlled. "I don't even know how you got through the first few rounds, Macarena," Myra continues, the smile on her face growing more and more by the second. "I said-" "With the kind of work we do here, we need our members to be of a certain caliber, and I need proof that you have it. Can you give me a reason to recruit you, Marijua-?" Before the last word even leaves her mouth, a silver letter opener whizzes over her head and embeds itself in the wall, where it stays quivering and lightly brushing Myra's hair. "I said, my name is Mariana. Thank you for giving me your undivided attention." There is a silence as the women stare at each other, until finally Myra (who's smile reappears with a vengeance) says, "Well, I believe you just gave me a reason."

[knight-maeres]

Four

Suddenly aware of the dim light now casting a shadow across her books, Myra Wolff glances out of the window. The sun has dissolved into an amber haze, while night fights the horizon sending streaks of pink and purple shooting across the sky.

“Oh shoot!” she mutters, hastily slamming shut the array of books strewn across the table in front of her. She grabs her navy blue rucksack and begins to stuff the books in, throwing on her black jacket.

The sound of her footsteps echo through the basement level of the library. Not another soul is in sight. She nods at the librarian and hurries out the door, her bag banging against her shins. Pulling her hood over her head, she navigates her way through the cobblestoned path, keeping to the shadows.

“Whoops! Sorry miss," exclaims a little boy as he runs right into her, dropping his little bag of groceries.

“Stupid kid,” Myra mutters as she hurries on, not even bothering to turn around. Her thoughts drift to the events scheduled for that night.

“The rest of them better be prepared for the meeting,” she thinks, relishing the thought of what would happen to them if they weren’t.

The DreamCatchers had already failed once, years ago. A defeat so bad, that the very existence of the DreamCatchers was denied. No way is that going to happen again. And definitely not while she is in charge.

As soon as the guard sees her tall, cloaked frame approaching the gates, he hastily throws them open, saluting her as she strode past him without so much as a glance. She glides into the Oval room and turned to face the table seating three of her trusted underlings.

“What first?” she says, her voice just audible as she glances around the table her dark eyes searching for anything they could be trying to hide.

“Tomorrow is recruitment day,” pipes up Ivy, “We’ve compiled a list of the stronger contenders already, and they will go through some preliminary tests before being sent to you.”

Myra nods.

“I presume all of you will be involved in this preliminary testing? Select only the best. We need strong dedicated people on our side. There must be no doubts as to exactly what each is capable of doing.”

The others nod solemnly.

“The reports of nightmares have also been increasing," says Hunter. “People are beginning to talk about them more, especially since they are getting even worse. Some can’t even sleep at night fearing what they will see.”

Myra turns, her eyes piercing through him. 

“Are they beginning to suspect anything?” she asks.

Hunter shakes his head, “Nope. Nothing close to the truth anyway. Psychologists attribute it to repressed memories that the subconscious mind is trying to remember.”

Myra's face remains impassive. “Where is Byron?” she asks.

“We haven’t heard anything from him since he left this afternoon,” replies Phoenix.

“Where is Byron?” Myra repeats.

Nobody dares to break the silence following her words.

“Ivy,” Myra snaps, “Where is Byron?”

Ivy swallows.

“He didn’t tell us where he was going..”

Myra rises and storms out of the room.

Phoenix gives an awkward titter in her wake.

“Whoops,” he jokes.

“Shut up Phoenix," Ivy snaps.

Phoenix beams.

“Hunter, are you saying that the humans have no clue as to what is causing their nightmares? They still haven’t figured it out?” Ivy asks disbelievingly.

Hunter shakes his head, “They don’t have a clue.”

[image - amaris@TDA]

[knight-maeres]

Three

Sam, what’s wrong?” Samantha Flynn’s best friend, April, asks suspiciously.

Samantha’s make-up from the previous night looks smudged over her eyes, giving her the panda look. Her usual hazel-green eyes look droopy and she’s pretty sure the bags under them are unattractive as hell.

“My head is killing me, I just….” she doesn’t want to tell her best friend about the nightmares. After all, nightmares are usually associated with those under the age of six.

The girls are at morning practice, doing stretches. Cheerleading is a big deal at Maple Oaks High School, as it is in almost all American high schools and being a part of the squad is definitely a privilege.

April raises an eyebrow.

“I hope you’re not spending too much time with that girl…,” she strategically avoids saying the name as if ‘Deianara Nixx’ rolling off her tongue would contaminate her mouth.

Sam eyebrows knit together as she says,“I don’t see why you have a problem with Deia. As a matter of fact, her family was over for dinner last night.”

April touches her toes easily without bending her knees and flips her auburn hair away from her face as she replies, “That girl gives me the heebie jeebies. She’s a creep!”

Sam scowls at her best friend, “I happen to like Deia, stop calling her a creep!”

The cheerleading coach, a muscular woman with perpetual frown-lines approaches the two girls.

“Flynn, you better shut that cute little mouth of yours and you too,” she glances at April and her frown lines deepen. As the coach walks away, April responds to Sam.

“Geez, you don’t have to get so defensive. Do you need a paracetamol for that headache?”

Samantha then feels the throbbing in her head more pronounced but ignores it as she says, “No, I’ll be fine.”

Little did she think to see the darkness that lurked above the horizon.

[image - quixotic@tda]

[knight-maeres]

Two

Deia Nixx. Sounds ridiculously pompous? Show her one person ballsy enough to ridicule it. She is named Deianara Nixx in honour of Deino, one of the sisters of Scylla and Gorgon. She chose Nixx as a reaffirmation of her allegiance to the darkness and also because 'x' is one of the more exotic letters in the alphabet. 

Some voices talking shrilly interrupt her mental chatter.

"Jared's scans show a growth in his lung! I'm hoping it will all be okay. Results of the biopsy come tomorrow. All we can do is pray."

Deia scans her mind for a march to that voice. It is Anna Ling, the almond eyed beauty dating Dream Eater quarterback, Jared Jenson. Half of Deia's mouth curves upwards, twisting itself into a smile that was too venomous-too raw- to be beautiful. She has plans this evening. 

There is no doubt that Deia is attractive. It isn't just her wild, jet black hair. Everything from her dark eyes, tall frame to her tan skin makes her as bewitching as the temptress she is.

Deianara Nixx is far from pleasant. Yet, she has the capability into the most charming thing ever to descend from Eve. And that, people have long learnt, is when Deia is most dangerous. Once she chooses you as worthy of her company, you did not have a say in it. And even if you did, you only said yes. Because if you displeased her, Deianara Nixx would soon become your worst nightmare.

[image - Idiotique@TDA]

[knight-maeres]

One

The mic crackles as the boy clips it to the collar of his T-shirt and he can feel the entire academy cringing at the sound.

  "Sorry about that, folks!" he says in a laid back drawl people have become accustomed to hearing every morning.

  "Welcome to another lovely morning at Dream Eater academy," he continues, "The sky is a perfect shade of charcoal and, if we're lucky, there'll be a fair amount of lightning this afternoon."

  He remembers that some of the faculty advised him to make his openings a little less morbid.

  "So while you take a short break from learning how to devour the dreams of ickle little humans..."

  Yeah, maybe that was a bit too morbid.

  "...here's the latest news from around the school! The SATs are happening this Saturday- that's the Scaring Abilities Test- so if you haven't started preparing for it yet, now would be a good time to start. Getting that 2400 tends to be easier the more you practice. Just food for thought, of course."

  "On a much brighter note, nomination boxes for junior prom royalty are opening up today, so it's time to get those nomination slips ready. I'm guessing Deia Nixx will be  making a return to defend her title of prom queen, so other contestants beware."

  Smiling slightly to himself, he notices a professor motioning for him to wind it up.

  "And that's all for today," he says cheerfully, "This is Cain Devrill from the school radio wishing you a perfectly awful Monday."

  He gently unclips the mic, glad that the static is absent this time, before springing up from his seat.

  A tall, slender girl is waiting at the door of the radio office, draped against the doorframe. She shoots a cat-like smile in the boy's direction as he approaches her.

  "Nice job," she comments, dropping a gold coin in the boy's outstretched hand, "Although I would tone down on the sarcasm if I were you."

  "I thought we agreed on two drachmas," the boy says, inspecting the coin in his hand.

  "The second one was to declare that I am the most awesome, beautiful candidate in the school and that anyone else has little to no chance of winning," the girl said sweetly, "Since you failed to mention that, you only get half."

  "So saying 'Beware of Deianara Nixx' was not enough?" Cain jokes, pocketing the coin, "And I suppose you intend on turning the radio department into your fan club."

  "I don't see why not," the girl smirks, "It's not like you guys do much anyway."

  "Oh yes, broadcasting current events to highlight the unity and equality of the school is not very useful," Cain mutters.

  "Sarcasm in excess takes away its sting," is the only response he gets.

[image- aim.moon@TDA]