Author's note: Just wanted to say thanks to Maren Sou (my first reviewer) for explaining the 'Karen' thing to me... ;D
"NO!" Katie sat bolt upright with a blood curdling scream still echoing round her room, the dream which had caused many sleepless nights still playing out in her head. "NO! It can't end like that.... wished out of existence... just like that!"
Her door was flung open, the light flared on again. Her mother, father, brothers, and sister all crowded inside and hurried over to her bed where she sat with tears streaming down her face.
"Katie," Aileen called softly, "Katie!" more loudly when she didn't seem to realize anyone was there. She shook her daughter slightly, "Wake up honey, you're having a nightmare." She noticed the pupil of Katie's right eye was dilated slightly while the left seemed to contract just fine when light hit it. "Geoffrey, I think she has a concussion but I don't know how she got it. We need to take her to the emergency room immediately."
"Mom...I'm fine. I fell out of bed while reaching for my lamp and bumped my head a little. I just need some sleep. I've had worse concussions before, trust my judgment, please?" Katie wiped her face with her sheet, found a fairly unused tissue and blew her noise, leaned back against her pillow and smiled a little. "I'm sorry to keep waking everybody up. It was just a nightmare." she croaked as reassuringly as possible.
Aileen looked long and hard at her daughter, who was wearing her most stubborn I'm all right don't bother me face. She knew from experience as Katie got older that making Katie do whatever Katie did not want to do, as far as health care was concerned, often caused more harm than good.
"All right, I won't rush you down to the emergency room but I am going to insist you not go to school until Tuesday. I'll call the school and get your presentation postponed. I'm sure your teacher, your guidance counselor, and the principal will agree that you need to recuperate from this little incident."
Katie grimaced. She hated putting off her most unpleasant assignments, usually those which entailed having to get up and make public speaking presentations as it meant she had to make them up at some later date when there was no one to compare or compete with, but she knew that if she was taken down to the emergency room she'd miss it anyway, and her return to school would be much later than Tuesday.
"Okay, I'll stay home, and in bed as much as possible."
Aileen glanced at the clock.
"5:30....everyone under the age of 20 back to bed for at least another hour. SCOOT!" she ordered.
She kissed Katie and left, pulling the twins out with her who had wanted to stay and keep Katie company for a while.
"Terry, you need to come out as well, I need to talk to you. Geoffrey, are you coming?"
He shook his head. "I'll be out in a few minutes dear, I want to talk to Katie before she goes back to sleep."
Once they were out in the hallway, Terry leaned against the wall yawning until it looked like his face would split open and his eyes began to water.
"Change of plans," Aileen barked softly "Terry, I'll need you to stay home and keep an eye on Katie. It looks like you need your rest. I'll take the twins to school as was originally planned. First, I'm going back to bed for about an hour or so or I won't be able to get anything done. You don't have class today, do you?"
Terry shook his head. "Not until Tuesday, which is also when they said it'd be safe to move back to my apartment, the chemicals should have dissipated by then."
"But Mommy," Alan and Elza whined, "we wanted Terry to come to school with us."
Terry knelt down in front of them. "I'll take you to your school carnival. It's better if Mom goes with you to school today. You'll still be on your best behavior, right?" He picked them up and carried them down the stairs to their room, Aileen following close behind.
When everyone had gone, Robert Geoffrey Williams knelt down by the side of his second eldest daughter's bed. "How are you doing? Really, I mean. I know you like to tough things out and don't like to confide much in anyone, but you know we are here for you, right?" He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
"I'm fine, Daddy, really I am." Katie assured him. "How are you doing? I didn't mean to wake you or anyone else up."
He stroked her hair. "You didn't wake me. I was in the kitchen just about to make breakfast. I hope your mother doesn't mind the eggs being dropped on the floor, something I'd better make sure I clean up before I leave. By the way...." he pulled out a crystal globe from his pocket and handed it to her. "I've been meaning to give this to you."
Katie held it in her hands and watched the changing scene. There was the figure of a barn owl floating around inside, when shaken it changed into smoke and vanished, but once the liquid calmed the owl reformed.
"Where did you get this?" she asked, stunned that her recurring dream had some type of physical manifestation.
"I came across an old peddler by the park's footbridge. He had this strange trained bear with him and offered this to me for what I considered a reasonable amount of money, telling me he needed funds to buy food, he wouldn't have sold it otherwise. He asked if I had any daughters, I replied I had three. He told me, 'the eldest rejected it, the youngest is much too young, and the middle___perhaps she'll know and do something about it.' I felt I had to buy it."
He pushed himself up and walked slowly to the door. "I don't say it often enough I know, but I love you, child. I'm proud to be your father, and you did wonders with this room." He turned off the light and shut the door behind him.
Katie listened to his footsteps retreating across the landing and down the stairs. She snuggled down beneath her covers and went back to sleep, holding the globe securely in her hand.
The house was empty by 9:00, except for the two sleeping beauties.... Geoffrey having left for work at 7 and Aileen and the twins having left at 8:30 for their school.
It was very peaceful, very quiet..... almost too quiet for the commotion which had erupted only a few hours before.
Katie stirred back into wakefulness. She wasn't used to being asleep at this time of day, at least, not in her bed asleep. Usually by now she was in her second class of the day, once in a while she dozed off when she had had an especially wakeful night and there was one time when she accidently toppled all her books off her desk while sleeping, which caused the whole class to turn, look at her, and rouse her from her dazed state with loud laughter....but enough of that memory.
She shook it off.
Getting up out of bed she carried the globe over to the window where she could study it in better light. Now that there were no more interruptions, no extra people to distract her...she could see that between the owl and the wisp of smoke was the briefest shimmer of a man's form, a most unhappy man, the same one who had been inhabiting her dreams for years, and these dreams were never ones she could quite remember, nor did she feel she wanted to remember.....
"Those eyes, I've been haunted by those eyes. And what am I supposed to do with you?" she asked the globe.
Just then, her stomach gurgled, and she broke off her hypnotized reverie to realize she hadn't eaten in a long time. Low blood sugar, no wonder she wasn't coming up with anything. Over the years she'd found that her best ideas often happened on a full stomach, and there was something inspirational about the kitchen which helped her find solutions to odd problems.
Not wanting to leave the globe alone in the room, she carried it down to the kitchen with her and put it on the table. It began to roll towards the edge of the table, so she turned a bowl upside down and placed the globe inside of the bottom edge.
"Sit still." she snapped, and stomped towards the refrigerator, muttering not quite inaudibly about dreams interfering with real life, meanings being too cryptic, and how was she supposed do her part in taking care of the problems presented if the dreams never stuck in her conscious mind long enough for her to figure out solutions.
She flung open the door dramatically, almost ripping it off its hinges, and scanned the contents. Nothing interested her stomach. She tried the freezer. Nothing.
"Terry!" she hollered up the stairs. No answer. She increased the volume.
"Terry!" Still no answer.
She increased the volume still more and varied the pitch, her secret weapon.
"TE_AH_RREE?!!!" she shrieked.
When there was still no response she ran upstairs and checked his room. He wasn't there.
"AAAAGH! Why is it you're never here when I need you?"
Shifting into adrenaline overdrive, not a good thing to do with low blood sugar, she went back down to the kitchen and examined the cupboards, slamming the doors shut after each one disappointed her. Nothing appealed to her.
Closing her eyes she took several deep breaths managing to clear her head somewhat.
"Okay, Terry's not here so that means I need to cook something, since I can't ask him to pretty please go get me some Chinese, fried rice that is. I'll have to hold it together and put together my own version. Not something I was looking forward to doing on a too empty stomach. I've gotten to the point that if I don't eat soon, I'll pass out, but nothing else is appealing right now and if I eat just any old thing my stomach won't hold it down."
With a slightly calmer attitude, Katie examined the refrigerator once again. She found some leftover rice, was slightly tempted to make rice pudding but realized it would boil over too easily if she didn't keep a close eye on it and she wasn't willing to split what little focus she had.
She also found some carrots, celery, a couple of garlic cloves, green onions, a red pepper, a nub of fresh ginger, a few pieces of broccoli, a little left over steak which still smelled good, a jar of water chestnuts she'd squirreled away as they were her ultimate favorite crunchy thing to munch on and she'd wanted to save them until the next time she threw her concoction together, and a nice small yellow squash.
As quickly but carefully as she could she snipped up the onions, cut the carrots and celery across the diagonal as thinly as possible, diced the pepper, the broccoli, and the squash, chopped the water chestnuts and the garlic, then grated the ginger.
She got her favorite pan off its hook, put it on the cook top, added some olive oil, turned the heat knob to medium, waited impatiently for the oil to heat up, added the garlic and ginger, sauteed them about a minute, added the rest of the vegetables, stirred them, lowered the heat and covered the pan while she briefly left to pull out ingredients for her sauce.
On her return she dumped out the vegetables onto a plate, added the steak to the pan, stirred it around to heat up, added a bit of soy sauce, honey, molasses, a teaspoon of Chinese Five Spices powder, added the rice, stirred that around to warm and coat it, and then returned the vegetables to the mixture and carefully stirred them in.
Once she was satisfied she dumped it into a bowl, covered it, put the bowl on the table, turned off the burner, placed the dishes she'd used into the sink, dumped the vegetable trimmings into the compost, put her sauce ingredients away, then sat down to regroup her thoughts and regain some energy. She'd expended more than she had available and was decidedly light headed, but it took energy to be able to eat.
Briefly she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the counter. A few moments later she heard thumping and rattling. Reluctantly opening her eyes she saw the globe bouncing against the bottom edge of its containment and it was moving towards her food.
She exclaimed as she rushed into action "Oh.....no you don't, buster! Stay away from there. I worked much too hard to have that get pushed off the table, and you can't see to say whoa." and grabbed the globe. Some fragments of dreams suddenly coalesced in her head, so in the same motion she quickly bent down, spun the globe on the floor, and said, "I wish that the being contained in this globe was restored to his proper self."
Katie slumped down onto the floor, just missing her chair, and leaned against the lower cabinets. She didn't witness the globe splitting open, but she could hear the crystal break, the hissing of gas being released, the flap flap of wings, a high pitched squeal, the sound of flesh slapping against the floor and a muffled "Ooooph."