disclaimer: I still still own nothing! And the definition is a joint effort of Webster's 2nd New Riverside Dictionary and dictionary.reference.com.
A/N: Okay, it's exxxtttremely short... and not that great... but it's here... I'm deeply sorry it took so long to write chapter 2. The truth is, it didn't take long to write the CHAPTER, it took long to get back to writing the FIC. What with college breathing down my neck and all... It was the latest review that drug me off my behind and got me to looking for my notes. And it was hellacious searching, but guess what.... I FOUND THEM! And so I hope to sit here and write nearly nonstop until I get to at least the last part written in my notes. (Which is quite a few chappies away.) You see, some of the latter parts of the fic have already been written because I'm a rebel and can't be forced to follow the rules of logic and write things chronologically. That would be logical... and I'm very much an illogical person. YOU! *points at the reader* ENJOY MY NOT-LOGICNESS!
.....as well as the following chapter. ^^
night·mare: noun ; 1. A dream causing fear, horror, or distress. 2. A highly distressing or frightening experience.
3. A demon or spirit once thought to plague sleeping people. 4. A condition in sleep usually caused by improper
eating or by digestive or nervous troubles, and characterized by a sense of extreme uneasiness or discomfort (as
of weight on the chest or stomach, impossibility of motion or speech, etc.), or by frightful or oppressive dreams,
from which one wakes after extreme anxiety, in a troubled state of mind; incubus.
word history: In Old and middle English, mare was a word denoting an evil spirit. Although the spirit was imagined to be female, the word mare is unrelated to the modern word mare meaning "female horse." Nightmare is a compound of the word night and the old word mare; it denoted an evil spirit thought to afflict sleeping persons by sitting on them and causing a feeling of suffocation. Nightmare was also used to denote both the feeling itself and the dream that produced it.
I think the dictionary would be more helpful if it were illustrated.
-excerpt from the journal of Max Mizuhara; dated June 19, 20##
::nightmare # 1::
The only sound reaching his ear was the familiar thud of his feet on the stone floor as he walked down the corridor. The boy was back in the hall again. All the doors... still there. Their signs still unreadable. He reached the branch and turned left. Am I going back to that room? The room with the voice?
He found himself stopping abruptly and he began carefully examining each door within eyesight. He was looking for something. Something... no someone. Someone specific. But all the doors are the same. How am I supposed to know which one.... His eyes settled on a door to his right. The blurriness of the writing on the door's label became more intense and the boy felt his eye's twitch, struggling to adjust. Slowly, the writing returned to normal. Normal... that writing was NOT normal. Various slashes, boxes, symbols... thrown together. They're runes or something. Some foreign language. Probably a dead forgotten language. Something like... The boy blinked hard. Courage. He could read it! He didn't know how, but the squiggles and squares suddenly made sense.
Courage... that's what is in that room? There was a flash of blue light, a familiar shout. I remember this room.
The boy placed one hand on the door and winced. He pulled his hand away and held it before his face. The cut... the cut from the room with the voice. But there wasn't a pink scar there. Not a red scab. It wasn't closed. The cut was very much open... but not bleeding. The boy tried to feel horrified at the black, empty rut he saw in his hand, but calm was all he seemed to know. He placed his sliced hand upon the door again, and there was pain, but he could not acknowledge it. Instead he pushed the door open with the same invinsible strength he had used to open the voice room's door. He walked inside and felt something resembling both joy and disappointment. The boy mentally raised an eyebrow at the disappointment. He had never been disappointed to see him before. Him. And he stood there, in his triumphant stance, with the blue dragon glowing white all around him.
The boy gazed at his friend in wonder and felt himself smirk. Smirk. Completely uncharacteristic of him. A sly smirk formed on his mouth.
His friend smiled at him and gave a thumbs-up. "I'll beat them all. I'm not afraid," The blue-haired boy said. "I'll never back down! You just stay with me and together, we'll show everyone out there that we aren't to be messed with!" And a foreign emotion entered the boy's body as his friend spoke. He felt something inside of himself cry out as he sneered and that cold voice hissed frost into the air.
"I hate you."
The smile disappeared from his friend's face and was replaced by a look of terror. The boy watched as the dragon slowly faded away.
"Please don't hurt me...."
The boy turned to look behind himself. "What? Who's gonna hurt you, Tyson?" What's he afraid of? Tyson's never scared. Tyson is the bravest guy I know. The boy made a move toward his friend and felt a sudden pressure in his chest as his friend tripped over his own feet trying to run from whatever he was afraid of. "Tyson?"
"Please don't hurt me... Maxy."