Just a forewarning—this chapter was not intended as one of those cheesy "oh the whole damn thing was really just a dream..." I just thought it would be fun to do and sort of give some closure to little Riley, as well as kinda set up something else I've been working on.

Chapter VII: The End

1988

Riley forced his eyes open and for a moment he felt lost between his real world and the strange dream he'd just had. When he blinked lingering sleep from his eyes he found that he was staring up at a ceiling adorned with plastic stars whose collective glow was waning in the pre dawn light. A further glance around revealed a moderately messy room with a desk against one wall and a small toy chest against the other. The floor was littered with toys of all different kinds that he quickly recognized from having played with them what felt like days before.

He eventually concluded that he was definitely in his own bedroom, as his bed and all of his belongings were comfortably familiar, but he still felt very, very strange.

Riley laid there until the sun had fully risen and his mother came bustling in to wake him up for school like she did every other day. He shuffled his way into the kitchen and took a seat while she poured him his favorite breakfast cereal. Then she was off, darting up the tight staircase to her bedroom then down to the kitchen and back again as she rushed between getting herself and Riley ready for the new day.

She had turned off the coffee pot and was just about to hurry back to her room to finish her makeup while the liquid cooled when she noticed that Riley was just sitting there. She paused in her routine morning rush and watched him while he stared intensely at his uneaten cereal. She knew that look—her boy was deep in thought about something.

"What's the matter, kiddo?" she said as she returned to their small kitchen table. "There something, uh, funky in your cereal?"

He glanced up from his bowl sluggishly and blinked at her. He looked exhausted and pale with dark bags under his eyes, like he hadn't really slept well the night before. "What?"

She frowned as she took a seat next to him and gently put the back of her hand against his forehead. "You feelin' okay, Riley?"

He batted her hand away with a roll of his eyes. "I'm not sick," he insisted. "I just feel...weird."

She pulled back and gave him a funny look. "Oh yeah? Weird like how?"

"I dunno." He was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment before looking up at her with that annoyingly curious expression of his. "Mom, what are dreams exactly?"

"Dreams?" She blinked at the surprising question for a second before realization struck and the corners of her mouth turned into a sly grin. "So you had a dream, and because of it you feel…weird?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Uh huh. Let me guess-was there a pretty lady in it?"

"Yeah!" Riley exclaimed.

His mother giggled a little behind her hand in response which only served to confuse him further. "I think you're too little to be having dreams about pretty ladies there, Riley."

"But there was a man, too. And you were in my dream, but I dreamed that you were old."

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Old? What, like thirty old or old old?"

Riley shrugged. "I dunno. Just old. But I was scared because I didn't know the other people but then you were there and everything was okay."

"Oh, well that's good."

"Yeah but it felt like I really did all the stuff that I did in my dream. We went on adventures and there were bad guys and we went to Disney World and stuff! It was sooo real."

"That's cool, kiddo," she said with a smile as she took down a mental note to try to take the kid on a much needed summer vacation. "What else did we do in your dream?"

He screwed his face up in thought before exclaiming, "treasures! The man said stuff about finding secret buried treasures!"

"'Treasurers'?" she gasped dramatically. "So did we fight pirates in your dream?"

"We did!" he squealed as he practically jumped out of his seat with excitement. "So my dream was real? It was really real?"

"No, Riley," she said with a chuckle. "It's just a coincidence I guessed that we were fighting pirates in your dream."

"But where do dreams come from?" he pouted.

"From right...about...here." She jabbed her pointer finger lightly against his forehead.

"But why?"

"Because, Riley," she explained. "When you sleep your brain thinks about a whole lot of stuff, like things you see and do and learn about in school, but it thinks about all these things at once and sometimes your brain gets all jumbled up and comes up with weird stuff. And then you dream the weird stuff."

"Really?"

She shrugged. "Something like that. Where do you think you got the pirate from?"

"I dunno."

"Remember when we watched that movie the other day? The one about the princess?"

"Uh huh..."

"The guy in the movie was a pirate. That's probably what you remembered and then your brain filled in all the rest. And do you know why you thought mommy was old?"

"Why?"

She fingered through a few strands of her dark hair and yanked one out for him to see. Instead of the dark, almost black brown color it was supposed to be it was a shiny gray.

"Because child and work stress is driving mommy slowly insane and causing her to get gross old people hair before she's even twenty-five. Remember when I told you that? How you drive me crazy sometimes?"

He sighed indifferently. "Yeah."

"See? That's how you came up with your weird dream."

"But what about those other people? The man and the lady? They said they were my friends, but they were old too."

"Did they look familiar?"

"I don't think so."

"They weren't from TV or our books or anything like that?"

Riley shook his head insistently. "No! I really really'd never seen them before!"

"Huh, that is weird."

"I guess I liked them though," Riley continued. "The pretty lady was really nice and she bought me presents, and the man saved me from the pirates!"

His mother pulled back and cocked an eyebrow at him. "Well should I be jealous of these dream people? They seem really really cool. I wouldn't want them to be luring my Riley away from me with like adventures and presents and stuff."

"Mommm, the man and lady were dream people," he said matter-of-factly. "They're not real."

Darla gestured in over exaggerated relief. "Phew! That's good. I would hate to have weird dream people hanging around all the time." She suddenly grabbed Riley right out of his seat and hugged him tight while he squealed with delighted surprise. "I wanna keep my little Riley aaalll to myself."

She gave him a big, wet kiss on the cheek and he giggled in response. She smirked, triumphant that she had cured him of whatever dream related funk he'd been in just moments before. If only every other confusing or depressing situation he found himself in would be so easy to fix.

"Aah, Riley!" she suddenly exclaimed when she glanced at the clock on the wall. She set him down in his chair again and forced the spoon back into his hand. "Hurry and eat your cereal! You're gonna miss the bus!"

Riley slumped in his seat and she dashed away again to finish getting ready for work. The seven year old somewhat reluctantly shoved the cereal filled spoon into his now frowning mouth as he muttered, "I hate the bus."


Btw, gray hair in young people is caused by genetics not annoying children :)

Hey thanks so much everybody for reading my random little story! I know I've left it kinda unresolved as far as the Darla/Riley relationship goes-sorry 'bout that, but if I didn't keep this short I would never know where to end it-but I do intend on expanding said relationship through that series of one shots I mentioned in the Foreword of this story. So if people are interested I'll start that soon, and then see where things go from there! And thanks once again for all the wonderful reviews :)