A/N: I've split this into two parts because, well, it's long. Enjoy, and
tell me what you think!
~Kira!
He didn't know how he got home.
Of course, he knew how he got home. His car was parked downstairs in the climate-controlled parking garage; the keys heavy in his pocket. He'd walked to his car - rainwater flicked off his dark tan suit coat as he peeled it off and tossed it on the back of his couch. But these were observation made from his present, alert state, not things he knew from retrieving the clues in his short-term memory. The actual drive was nothing more than a fuzzy memory, the gaps filled in by the memories of trips made from the self-storage facility to his home so many times before. He paused for a moment, trying to reach out and grasp some kind idea of what happened, but paused after a few seconds. There were no police knocking down the door, and he didn't remember any kind of damage to his car, so he assumed he got home okay and left it at that.
It wasn't entirely uncommon for him to forget the particular details of a drive, though when his strict attention was needed he was able to lend it. It just seemed, since the time when he began driving, that sometimes, his mind would wrap itself around his troubles of the day, things he never voiced nor showed while around others. He had to appear to be in total control at all times - he had only come this far in life by showing nothing around superiors, who took it as a sign of a man who could take care of everything. And he could. To do any less was to fail. If he were ever going to complete what he was there to do, he would have to deal with things he'd rather not before rising up high enough to *do* something about it.
Vaughn could feel another sneeze creeping up through his sinuses, reminding him that there was a world that existed outside his head. He'd gotten sick maybe, what? - 3 times in the last few years? Did he even have any cold medicine in his apartment?
He kicked off his shoes and made sure they reached the general area of his front door before heading towards the small, industrial-looking bathroom. The lighting was always so horrible in there, no matter what he did to try and fix it. The light always seemed to make him look yellow, sickly even, which was why he didn't like using it during hours in which the sunlight wasn't available to lend some good lighting. It didn't help that, when he flicked on the light, it popped before sending him into darkness. He swore under his breath while bending down to search the cabinet beneath the sink for a replacement bulb. Or two.
"You're never going to find them that way."
Vaughn whipped his head around so fast, he swore he had whiplash. His clouded eyes frantically searched the room for the voice's owner. Who was it that had spoken?
"That's right, Mike, now your loosing your mind," he mumbled to himself, returning his focus to the bathroom lighting and the overwhelming need for some sort of cold medicine. Maybe Alice had left some - she was always contracting something or another to the point of bordering on hypochondria. She had, however, been quite adamant on making sure she retrieved *everything* from every nook in the entire apartment, demanding a telephone call the instant something left behind was discovered. He wondered, only briefly, if she would want her medicine returned despite her ex's health. Her response would certainly shed some light on the current status of their friendship. Such as if they even had one.
It would be nice to have a caretaker, Vaughn thought as he pulled a lone flashlight from the nearby nightstand drawer. Some kind person who would not only find and replace the offending light source, but then proceed to scrounge through the uncharted territory of the bathroom cabinet for left over cold medicine. This was why people had roommates - unemployed, there all the time roommates. That was key, so they would be home in the middle of the day. Then, he wouldn't be digging one-handed to the back of the semi- organized cabinet hoping to lay a hand on a box.
He never made it to the box.
Vaughn's hand happened upon a bottle, a plastic bottle with a childproof cap, half-way to the back of the small storage unit. His eyes lit up, as much as they could in the dim light. His other quest forgotten, Vaughn liberated the medicine and leaned back to sit on the cold tiled floor, his back up against the door. Drawing his knees up slightly, he examined the bottle. The red liquid inside sloshed around a bit, and according to the expiration date, it was still good to use. A bemused smile on his face, he turned the bottle around in his hands, the plastic cold against his warm skin.
"NyQuil," he breathed. He promptly drank some, turned off his phone, and fell asleep.
. .
The dream had been created by a child's mind.
Sure, the mind had long since grown out of that awkward stage, matured into that of a grown man. Inside it was stored the knowledge of one who had seen the world, had worked his way through school, who loved to read but never had the time anymore. There were bits of information he longed to forget, other pieces he wish he knew more about. Names and dates came easily, geometry grasped easily, ready when he needed it. Sometimes, he could claim to have a photographic memory, other times, he would forget but make his way through it.
But at the core was the child's mind.
It was a mind filled with the names and powers of comic book heroes, the wonderful adventures of childhood characters, memories of afternoons spent running through backyards with odd clothing on and an old wrapping paper tube for a sword clutched in his hand. Happiness filled the child's mind as sunshine nurtures the world to grow and live. But the sun sometimes goes down in life, but always seems to rise again after the darkness. But in this child's mind, the sun never rose. Instead, it turned the shade of red, prompted by a story his mother had told him at a young age. With this overactive imagination, the story had spun into something more; a haunting red-tinted disk that hung in the sky just out of reach. It was hard to avoid the reddish light it cast.
The adult mind knew the moon had turned red because of the sun's influence and hoped it would rise soon. But the child was still there, occupying the same space in time, and cringed away from the disk. 'Blood on the moon,' his mother had told him, all those years ago as a response to a question, 'it means something bad is going to happen. Be careful when you see it.' The child turned away. The adult stood his ground.
The sand was soft beneath his feet, as fine sand is, ground down by the awesome power of the ocean before washing up onto the beaches of the world. Who knew where this substance had originated, was he standing on the remains of a seashell from across the ocean, or his own shores? It had traveled so far just to be put under his bare foot, squishing between his toes as a light breeze rushed across his face. It smelled of decay.
His eyes traveled from the red disk in the sky to the site where the boardwalk had once stood. Now there was nothing but a gaping hole, the landscape fading off into nothingness as it continued on into space. The happy people were gone with the sunshine, the lone balloon floating off into the void.
The sound caused him to focus on something down the beach from him. How could he have forgotten! His head dictated his body to move, to rush in the direction of the sound. This time, instead of moving in place, he kicked up sand behind him as he ran, seashells that dotted the shore cutting into his feet as he made his way. Not that he would have noticed, for he came upon the two figures in a matter of seconds, one standing on the sand, the other figure crouched with his feet on the dark black pavement that butted up against the sands. For the past few weeks, the standing figure had blossomed into a recognizable person, a person instead of a disfigured monster. But for some reason, he wished she had remained a monster, something he could never approach or see.
Her cackles carried on over the crashing waves like a sonata flowed from a piano - beautiful yet deadly. There was joy in her eyes, the red of the moon reflecting in the dark brown orbs. She never saw him, only her victim, her eyes focused on him as he looked up at her. He could see the dreamer, but tended to look through him. Blood leaked down the side of his head, from what wound, he did not know. The woman was approaching him now, but the eyes, oh, the eyes! They never left the dreamer's direction. Never. Even when another shot was fired.
The dreamer screamed.
Vaughn awoke with a start, his green eyes snapping open as he subconsciously launched himself into a sitting position. The drizzled that had started when he'd fallen asleep had grown into a rainstorm, the drops beating on the window behind his bed in a disarrayed pattern, the thunder acting as a sporadic bass in a song scripted by the powers that be. He wiped a hand down his face, his eyes closing in self-pity as he took away the sweat with his hand. There he was, a grown man lying above his covers still in his work attire who still suffered from the same nightmare as he did as a child. And to what end? To work until the nightmare disappeared? Would it ever disappear, or would he be haunted for the rest of his life?
Letting out a sigh, he let himself fall back, his head almost missing the pillow. He found himself staring at the ceiling once again, examining the roof above his head. A watermark had settled near the wall to the bathroom, no doubt caused by his neighbor above him and their leaking shower. He'd complained so many times and yet nothing had been done. His eyes slipped closed as he relaxed.
He was first warned by a feeling. It sat oddly in the pit of his stomach, telling him something wasn't quite *right*.
A swift wind quickly blew through the room, tickling his face before disappearing. This caused his eyes to snap open, the thoughts of a moment before fading with the breeze. A chill ran through him, caused by the wind or the cold he did not know. But his curiousity was deinatly peaked, giving him, if only momentarily, the energy to find the source and close it. He did not need to give his cold any more fuel - precicely what the damp rain soaked wind would do.
He spied the open window across the small living room. "How did this get open?" he asked of himself, crossing the small room to pull the window closed. With a final woosh the air was cut off, laving a damp feel to the air behind. And yet, he still felt as if something was off. As he headed for the kitchen, his mind on something to soothe his parches throat, his eyes came across something sitting on the table standing between himself and refreshment.
His father's travel-worn journal, lying open in the center of the dark maple table.
The previous line of thought was pushed to the back of his fever-fogged mind, Vaughn advanced, almost afraid of what he was going to see. Fear caused by the undeniable fact that the journal had been placed in the top righthand drawer of the desk sitting on the other side of the room. His steps were heavy as he approached for a closer view, his head calm, searching for a logical explination - had he forgotten to put it away last time? His instincts screamed at him, warning him against moving on inch closer. He almost succumbed to the instinct, hesitating a moment. But his head won out, and the last steps closing the gap were taken quickly, almost angerly. His eyes quickly scanned the page, wondering which entry was the last he read, then stopped.
Time stopped in the apartment. Vaughn stood completely motionless, the rain slowing outside the window. For all the years the journal had been read and examined by the writer's surviving son, never had the final entry been seen, read. To do so was to finally acknowledge the end of the life, the blank white pages flickering into nothingness. By leaving the entry unread, there was always more, always a continuation of the controlled handwriting.
Attention was brought back to the present by a large boom of thunder, the windows rattling from the force. It was close, now, the storm's force centering over the area. Vaughn sighed, running a hand through his messy dark blond hair, his face worry-stricken. This is crazy, he though as his suit coat slipped from its perch setting on the back of the couch, obviously knocked loose by the vibrations through the small home. First things first. The journal was going back in the drawer where it belonged, placed out of sight and mind where it belonged. And this time, he was going to lock it in there just in case he ever wondered about how it got somewhere. The key to the desk was on his key chain, which, if he remembered correctly (something which he was actually questioning at the moment), was on the sideboard near the door.
Food. He needed to - ugg. Scratch that. The mere thought of food put his stomach in an upheaval, causing him to pause in the middle of the room as he calmed it down. Damn. Okay, something to drink and some more cold medicine, that sounded about right. He grabbed the keys absentmindedly from the sideboard, but moved slower as a new sound came into his hearing range. He turned, looking down to the ground near the fallen suit coat. Somehow, his father's pocket watch had fallen out of the pocket, his constant carrying of the broken item a cause for ridicule that brought a small smile to his face as he bent over to pick it up. It was the source of the noise.
The watch was ticking.
He dropped it from his hand in an instant, letting it bounce on the floor as he backed away from it. "What the hell," he whispered, his heart beating faster than normal. Okay. There was a perfectly normal explanation for everything that was going on. Maybe he just imagined the watch arms ticking, personified the movement of the broken watch. Just put the journal away, get something to drink, and fall down onto the couch. There must be something good on TV. If he still had cable.
The feeling residing in the pit of his stomach resided just a bit as he turned the key to lock the journal back in the top drawer. As he made his way back into the kitchen he gave the fallen pocket watch only a slight glance before flicking on the lights. This time, nothing popped, and the shadowed apartment was flooded in light. Vaughn leaned against the counter, his head hung, hands flat on the polished white surface. Sleep brought no rest, waking moments unnerving. What the hell was going on?
"Michael." The whisper carried through the small room, sending shivers up his spine. His head came up and whipped around, hoping to find someone standing behind him, a goofy grin on their face as they admitted their little rouse. Instead, his eyes focused on an object sitting on the table.
The journal, opened to the same entry as before.
"What the hell is going on!" he roared, grabbing the closest object - a plate - and throwing it across the room. It smashed against a nearby chair, a few pieces skittering across the tabletop, knocking the journal from it's central position.
"That's what I would like to ask you." Vaughn turned his head to the right only to come face to face with an ageless figure in his mind. His father.
"What - what -" Vaughn backed up, his movements jerky, his arm moving up to point at the figure. "What the.why are you here? How?" His jumbled thoughts didn't help, making his speech odd, erratic. His father, if the figure could be called that, moved around the edge of the doorway. Vaughn was about to break out of the kitchen when the figure faded into the backlit shadows.
"Loosing my mind," he breathed, sliding down the wall behind him. Drawing his knees up to his chest, his hands cradling his head. Books weren't supposed to appear out of nowhere. Watches that were dead weren't supposed to start up again. And apparitions of your father were the hell not supposed to appear in your kitchen. Ever. In a million years.
Ever.
TBC in part 2b.
He didn't know how he got home.
Of course, he knew how he got home. His car was parked downstairs in the climate-controlled parking garage; the keys heavy in his pocket. He'd walked to his car - rainwater flicked off his dark tan suit coat as he peeled it off and tossed it on the back of his couch. But these were observation made from his present, alert state, not things he knew from retrieving the clues in his short-term memory. The actual drive was nothing more than a fuzzy memory, the gaps filled in by the memories of trips made from the self-storage facility to his home so many times before. He paused for a moment, trying to reach out and grasp some kind idea of what happened, but paused after a few seconds. There were no police knocking down the door, and he didn't remember any kind of damage to his car, so he assumed he got home okay and left it at that.
It wasn't entirely uncommon for him to forget the particular details of a drive, though when his strict attention was needed he was able to lend it. It just seemed, since the time when he began driving, that sometimes, his mind would wrap itself around his troubles of the day, things he never voiced nor showed while around others. He had to appear to be in total control at all times - he had only come this far in life by showing nothing around superiors, who took it as a sign of a man who could take care of everything. And he could. To do any less was to fail. If he were ever going to complete what he was there to do, he would have to deal with things he'd rather not before rising up high enough to *do* something about it.
Vaughn could feel another sneeze creeping up through his sinuses, reminding him that there was a world that existed outside his head. He'd gotten sick maybe, what? - 3 times in the last few years? Did he even have any cold medicine in his apartment?
He kicked off his shoes and made sure they reached the general area of his front door before heading towards the small, industrial-looking bathroom. The lighting was always so horrible in there, no matter what he did to try and fix it. The light always seemed to make him look yellow, sickly even, which was why he didn't like using it during hours in which the sunlight wasn't available to lend some good lighting. It didn't help that, when he flicked on the light, it popped before sending him into darkness. He swore under his breath while bending down to search the cabinet beneath the sink for a replacement bulb. Or two.
"You're never going to find them that way."
Vaughn whipped his head around so fast, he swore he had whiplash. His clouded eyes frantically searched the room for the voice's owner. Who was it that had spoken?
"That's right, Mike, now your loosing your mind," he mumbled to himself, returning his focus to the bathroom lighting and the overwhelming need for some sort of cold medicine. Maybe Alice had left some - she was always contracting something or another to the point of bordering on hypochondria. She had, however, been quite adamant on making sure she retrieved *everything* from every nook in the entire apartment, demanding a telephone call the instant something left behind was discovered. He wondered, only briefly, if she would want her medicine returned despite her ex's health. Her response would certainly shed some light on the current status of their friendship. Such as if they even had one.
It would be nice to have a caretaker, Vaughn thought as he pulled a lone flashlight from the nearby nightstand drawer. Some kind person who would not only find and replace the offending light source, but then proceed to scrounge through the uncharted territory of the bathroom cabinet for left over cold medicine. This was why people had roommates - unemployed, there all the time roommates. That was key, so they would be home in the middle of the day. Then, he wouldn't be digging one-handed to the back of the semi- organized cabinet hoping to lay a hand on a box.
He never made it to the box.
Vaughn's hand happened upon a bottle, a plastic bottle with a childproof cap, half-way to the back of the small storage unit. His eyes lit up, as much as they could in the dim light. His other quest forgotten, Vaughn liberated the medicine and leaned back to sit on the cold tiled floor, his back up against the door. Drawing his knees up slightly, he examined the bottle. The red liquid inside sloshed around a bit, and according to the expiration date, it was still good to use. A bemused smile on his face, he turned the bottle around in his hands, the plastic cold against his warm skin.
"NyQuil," he breathed. He promptly drank some, turned off his phone, and fell asleep.
. .
The dream had been created by a child's mind.
Sure, the mind had long since grown out of that awkward stage, matured into that of a grown man. Inside it was stored the knowledge of one who had seen the world, had worked his way through school, who loved to read but never had the time anymore. There were bits of information he longed to forget, other pieces he wish he knew more about. Names and dates came easily, geometry grasped easily, ready when he needed it. Sometimes, he could claim to have a photographic memory, other times, he would forget but make his way through it.
But at the core was the child's mind.
It was a mind filled with the names and powers of comic book heroes, the wonderful adventures of childhood characters, memories of afternoons spent running through backyards with odd clothing on and an old wrapping paper tube for a sword clutched in his hand. Happiness filled the child's mind as sunshine nurtures the world to grow and live. But the sun sometimes goes down in life, but always seems to rise again after the darkness. But in this child's mind, the sun never rose. Instead, it turned the shade of red, prompted by a story his mother had told him at a young age. With this overactive imagination, the story had spun into something more; a haunting red-tinted disk that hung in the sky just out of reach. It was hard to avoid the reddish light it cast.
The adult mind knew the moon had turned red because of the sun's influence and hoped it would rise soon. But the child was still there, occupying the same space in time, and cringed away from the disk. 'Blood on the moon,' his mother had told him, all those years ago as a response to a question, 'it means something bad is going to happen. Be careful when you see it.' The child turned away. The adult stood his ground.
The sand was soft beneath his feet, as fine sand is, ground down by the awesome power of the ocean before washing up onto the beaches of the world. Who knew where this substance had originated, was he standing on the remains of a seashell from across the ocean, or his own shores? It had traveled so far just to be put under his bare foot, squishing between his toes as a light breeze rushed across his face. It smelled of decay.
His eyes traveled from the red disk in the sky to the site where the boardwalk had once stood. Now there was nothing but a gaping hole, the landscape fading off into nothingness as it continued on into space. The happy people were gone with the sunshine, the lone balloon floating off into the void.
The sound caused him to focus on something down the beach from him. How could he have forgotten! His head dictated his body to move, to rush in the direction of the sound. This time, instead of moving in place, he kicked up sand behind him as he ran, seashells that dotted the shore cutting into his feet as he made his way. Not that he would have noticed, for he came upon the two figures in a matter of seconds, one standing on the sand, the other figure crouched with his feet on the dark black pavement that butted up against the sands. For the past few weeks, the standing figure had blossomed into a recognizable person, a person instead of a disfigured monster. But for some reason, he wished she had remained a monster, something he could never approach or see.
Her cackles carried on over the crashing waves like a sonata flowed from a piano - beautiful yet deadly. There was joy in her eyes, the red of the moon reflecting in the dark brown orbs. She never saw him, only her victim, her eyes focused on him as he looked up at her. He could see the dreamer, but tended to look through him. Blood leaked down the side of his head, from what wound, he did not know. The woman was approaching him now, but the eyes, oh, the eyes! They never left the dreamer's direction. Never. Even when another shot was fired.
The dreamer screamed.
Vaughn awoke with a start, his green eyes snapping open as he subconsciously launched himself into a sitting position. The drizzled that had started when he'd fallen asleep had grown into a rainstorm, the drops beating on the window behind his bed in a disarrayed pattern, the thunder acting as a sporadic bass in a song scripted by the powers that be. He wiped a hand down his face, his eyes closing in self-pity as he took away the sweat with his hand. There he was, a grown man lying above his covers still in his work attire who still suffered from the same nightmare as he did as a child. And to what end? To work until the nightmare disappeared? Would it ever disappear, or would he be haunted for the rest of his life?
Letting out a sigh, he let himself fall back, his head almost missing the pillow. He found himself staring at the ceiling once again, examining the roof above his head. A watermark had settled near the wall to the bathroom, no doubt caused by his neighbor above him and their leaking shower. He'd complained so many times and yet nothing had been done. His eyes slipped closed as he relaxed.
He was first warned by a feeling. It sat oddly in the pit of his stomach, telling him something wasn't quite *right*.
A swift wind quickly blew through the room, tickling his face before disappearing. This caused his eyes to snap open, the thoughts of a moment before fading with the breeze. A chill ran through him, caused by the wind or the cold he did not know. But his curiousity was deinatly peaked, giving him, if only momentarily, the energy to find the source and close it. He did not need to give his cold any more fuel - precicely what the damp rain soaked wind would do.
He spied the open window across the small living room. "How did this get open?" he asked of himself, crossing the small room to pull the window closed. With a final woosh the air was cut off, laving a damp feel to the air behind. And yet, he still felt as if something was off. As he headed for the kitchen, his mind on something to soothe his parches throat, his eyes came across something sitting on the table standing between himself and refreshment.
His father's travel-worn journal, lying open in the center of the dark maple table.
The previous line of thought was pushed to the back of his fever-fogged mind, Vaughn advanced, almost afraid of what he was going to see. Fear caused by the undeniable fact that the journal had been placed in the top righthand drawer of the desk sitting on the other side of the room. His steps were heavy as he approached for a closer view, his head calm, searching for a logical explination - had he forgotten to put it away last time? His instincts screamed at him, warning him against moving on inch closer. He almost succumbed to the instinct, hesitating a moment. But his head won out, and the last steps closing the gap were taken quickly, almost angerly. His eyes quickly scanned the page, wondering which entry was the last he read, then stopped.
Time stopped in the apartment. Vaughn stood completely motionless, the rain slowing outside the window. For all the years the journal had been read and examined by the writer's surviving son, never had the final entry been seen, read. To do so was to finally acknowledge the end of the life, the blank white pages flickering into nothingness. By leaving the entry unread, there was always more, always a continuation of the controlled handwriting.
Attention was brought back to the present by a large boom of thunder, the windows rattling from the force. It was close, now, the storm's force centering over the area. Vaughn sighed, running a hand through his messy dark blond hair, his face worry-stricken. This is crazy, he though as his suit coat slipped from its perch setting on the back of the couch, obviously knocked loose by the vibrations through the small home. First things first. The journal was going back in the drawer where it belonged, placed out of sight and mind where it belonged. And this time, he was going to lock it in there just in case he ever wondered about how it got somewhere. The key to the desk was on his key chain, which, if he remembered correctly (something which he was actually questioning at the moment), was on the sideboard near the door.
Food. He needed to - ugg. Scratch that. The mere thought of food put his stomach in an upheaval, causing him to pause in the middle of the room as he calmed it down. Damn. Okay, something to drink and some more cold medicine, that sounded about right. He grabbed the keys absentmindedly from the sideboard, but moved slower as a new sound came into his hearing range. He turned, looking down to the ground near the fallen suit coat. Somehow, his father's pocket watch had fallen out of the pocket, his constant carrying of the broken item a cause for ridicule that brought a small smile to his face as he bent over to pick it up. It was the source of the noise.
The watch was ticking.
He dropped it from his hand in an instant, letting it bounce on the floor as he backed away from it. "What the hell," he whispered, his heart beating faster than normal. Okay. There was a perfectly normal explanation for everything that was going on. Maybe he just imagined the watch arms ticking, personified the movement of the broken watch. Just put the journal away, get something to drink, and fall down onto the couch. There must be something good on TV. If he still had cable.
The feeling residing in the pit of his stomach resided just a bit as he turned the key to lock the journal back in the top drawer. As he made his way back into the kitchen he gave the fallen pocket watch only a slight glance before flicking on the lights. This time, nothing popped, and the shadowed apartment was flooded in light. Vaughn leaned against the counter, his head hung, hands flat on the polished white surface. Sleep brought no rest, waking moments unnerving. What the hell was going on?
"Michael." The whisper carried through the small room, sending shivers up his spine. His head came up and whipped around, hoping to find someone standing behind him, a goofy grin on their face as they admitted their little rouse. Instead, his eyes focused on an object sitting on the table.
The journal, opened to the same entry as before.
"What the hell is going on!" he roared, grabbing the closest object - a plate - and throwing it across the room. It smashed against a nearby chair, a few pieces skittering across the tabletop, knocking the journal from it's central position.
"That's what I would like to ask you." Vaughn turned his head to the right only to come face to face with an ageless figure in his mind. His father.
"What - what -" Vaughn backed up, his movements jerky, his arm moving up to point at the figure. "What the.why are you here? How?" His jumbled thoughts didn't help, making his speech odd, erratic. His father, if the figure could be called that, moved around the edge of the doorway. Vaughn was about to break out of the kitchen when the figure faded into the backlit shadows.
"Loosing my mind," he breathed, sliding down the wall behind him. Drawing his knees up to his chest, his hands cradling his head. Books weren't supposed to appear out of nowhere. Watches that were dead weren't supposed to start up again. And apparitions of your father were the hell not supposed to appear in your kitchen. Ever. In a million years.
Ever.
TBC in part 2b.
