The fire that night was devastating. Starting at the back door of the duplex and fueled by kerosene, the blaze spread quickly through the old building. When Misty Day came hobbling out of the front door with her arms full of the animals she had rescued, she was met by three individuals in heavy firefighter gear, the middle of which shot her in the head with the .44 he was carrying.

Time seemed to slow as the old witch sank to her knees, then fell face first onto the frozen ground. The rabbits and the cat with three legs that she carried scrambled to save themselves. The man holstered the gun and headed inside while one of the others grabbed Misty's body and hauled it back inside the burning building.

They both emerged shortly, supporting Troy, who was disoriented. He didn't have much of a chance to sort things out: As soon as they were clear of the inferno, the firefighter who'd shot Misty Day injected the young man in the neck with a strong sedative. He was unconscious before he could even ask what was going on. Once he was secured, the three loaded him up in their waiting van.

The New World United church had their prodigal son back.

…

To say Michael was in a bad mood would be an understatement of gross proportion. All week, people and things had been getting on his nerves. That worsened when Troy returned to New 'Salem from his Long Beach mission injured. That's when Michael's bad dreams started.

They weren't nightmares like he'd had as a young child. Those dreams were visions of blood and violence and whispering monsters in dark places. These recent visions were harder to comprehend, trickier to remember, and more disturbing because of that.

The nightmare he had the night that Troy came back from hunting Billie Dean, Michael's dream started in a mundane fashion, set in some other survivors' encampment yet it felt like home the same way New 'Salem did. Everything was fine at first, but a caul of impending doom hovered over the place, leaving Michael with a growing sense of urgency the longer he was there. Some sort of violent storm or monstrous wave was coming that the group there was unprepared for. Swift, organized action was called for but impossible to muster. Michael was left fending for himself as the place was assaulted with fire and hideous creeping monsters. In that dream, he was forced to crawl up into the ceiling just to get out of the overrun place.

In another dream, it was a similar setup: Impending doom in a rundown location, only this time he had Mother Constance and Father Jeremiah with him. Tate was there too, and so were the newborn twins. Everything was fucked up because Michael wanted them all to stay hidden in a safe bunker he'd secured for them, but Jeremiah insisted on going out to look for other survivors and Tate just kept leaving. Worse: Every time Michael would get him back inside, something would happen, and Tate would run off again while Michael's attention was occupied. In that dream, his safe place was destroyed, and he had to flee in an RV with the twins and some young girl he picked up along the way to carry the babies for him.

In the present nightmare, he dreamt of the fire that engulfed Misty Day's dwelling and the van that was heading quickly away from the blaze, toward the perimeter walls of New 'Salem. Michael knew, in the omnipresence of dreams, that Troy was in the van, unconscious. He also knew there were three other people in the van from New World United. He knew their intent and purpose, and their fear.

They thought they were right. That's what made them so dangerous: They had the power of faith behind their actions. They truly believed they were doing good and that Troy would be grateful once they had cleansed him of the evil influence his stay in New 'Salem had on him. They believed Troy was their redeemer, the embodiment of the second coming of Christ. He would save humanity, pull it back from the brink of destruction and restore the old order of things.

It was a sick joke on the sect: Troy was conceived to serve darkness, and his enculturation was nearly complete. Michael was tempted to interfere with the group's escape because he was in a bad mood and wanted to hurt someone. They'd made themselves easy targets. He showed restraint only because he understood that the False Prophet would do even more damage to their group if he was allowed to return to their larger congregation. Troy was the key to the downfall of the last Christian church of the world, and he was exactly where he needed to be.

Michael woke from the dream frustrated and actively angry. He didn't like having to restrain himself, even if it did bring him closer to his goals. In the groggy mindset of near-sleep, he envied dream-Tate his wanton lack of discipline—the freedom to come and go, to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, without serious consequence. No one expected anything of him.

Suddenly enraged, Michael sat up and lashed out, knocking the lamp from the bedside table with a violent sweep of his arm. It hit the hardwood floor and put a dent in the boards. The heavy gilded lamp base was undamaged but the shade broke. The young man sat up and swung his legs out of bed. Planting his bare feet on the floor, he propped his arms on his knees. He was nude but the heat he gave off was more than enough to combat the winter chill.

"Fuck!" he swore, though it did nothing to vent his frustration.

He tried to orient on what he needed to do that day, but his plans eluded him. There was instead a bloated sense of futility about everything. He knew there was some grand conclusion, some major change that was supposed to come eventually, somewhere in the future. He knew he was supposed to help instigate it. But there was no beaten path, no clear road to follow, no final goal. There was just a yawning blank void where a finish line of some sort should logically be.

He had a gut feeling everything would be just fine if he could just figure out the right steps to this bizarre cosmic dance. He would be a prince, wealthy and loved, famous and rich in all ways a person could be. Life would be a blissful dream, filled with satisfaction and pleasure. But there was an equal, very real sense that if he didn't get it right, things would continue to devolve into an ever-worsening living nightmare. Nothing would stabilize. Chaos would reign and he would be left just another faded phantom lost in the fog of pointless eternity, existing to exist.

He sprang to his feet, trying to physically put distance between himself and the unnerving flash of what things might be like if he failed. He realized in that moment that he couldn't allow doubt in. He could feel the essence of the universe shifting with that doubt, polarizing to it. In a world where he could reshape reality with his thoughts, he had to believe in himself. He couldn't afford self-doubt. If he believed he would fail…he would fail. So he had to believe he would succeed, even if he still didn't know what he was trying to succeed at.

He raked his hands through his long hair, pulling it back into a loose ponytail. He didn't have anything to fasten it with, so he just kept tugging and smoothing it, feeling the strands move through his fingers. The strands were real. He could feel them. Even when he shut his eyes and stopped breathing, he could still feel the strands. His hair was real. He was real. There was something tangible out there he could believe in, a path beneath his feet he could walk on; one that starred him as the main character, where he could find the sense of belonging he had never known but had longed for since birth. There must be an order to things, even if he had to force it on the universe. The ordinary people had their chance to do things their way and they screwed it all up. Now it was his time to do things his way.

He felt wetness hit his chest. He opened his eyes and fat tears fell from his lashes. He sniffled but that only made the leaking from his eyes worse. He smudged a hand over one eye but again that just made things messier. He hated crying. Even when it was silent and he didn't have to choke down the weird sounds the impulse made, it still sucked. He didn't understand why faces did that. In a way it gave him a little sliver of comfort, though. Like the tangibility of his hair, he couldn't deny the reality of his state or the inconvenience the mess of tears and snot made. He didn't choose the reaction, it chose him. It was real.

He went to the bathroom to blow his nose and decided to shower while he was at it. Being clean always made him feel better. He turned the water on and went over to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror there. He was surprised to see two thin lines between his brows. He forced himself to stop frowning but the skin remained dented from all the frowning he'd been doing. He smudged the area with his thumb, ironing the skin smooth again. It was similar to what he'd seen Constance do to herself after she died, only she had no physical body. What he manipulated was flesh and blood. It never even occurred to him that such an adjustment was abnormal. To him, it was simply correcting a minor flaw, the same as if he'd wiped a bit of food away.

The building suddenly let out a shuddery groan and the pipes rattled in the walls. The water shut off. Michael's frown came back and he went over to the tub. Fiddling with the knobs did nothing. He frowned harder. He didn't understand why the water wasn't working like it should. Angry all over again, he kicked the tub. It made a satisfying sound and the side caved inward from the force, but the water didn't come back on.

He let out an incoherent yell then, pumping all of his recent frustration and unhappiness into the bellow of rage. The walls trembled, and plaster dust sifted down from the ceiling. The lights flickered wildly for a few seconds then the moment was past, and he was left panting from the exertion of releasing the bottlenecked emotion. In the mirror, his hair was puffy with static electricity and he could see a dim red light still glowing in his eyes. He had never seen himself while he was upset before. It was strange to see and had the effect of distracting him out of his foul mood briefly.

Then he remembered the water and got irritated again, though it was nowhere near the epic level he'd just reached. The townspeople probably thought another earthquake had hit. Leaving the bathroom to go find some clothes, Michael knew he needed to find someone who would tell him where the source of the water was. He knew only a little about the municipal system of LA, but he knew enough to know there was some sort of building in the city where the water came from. If he could find it, he could figure out a way to make the water come back.

…

Author's Note:

Trivia bit: Bad Dreams was the name of a 1988 horror film set in an asylum, starring Jennifer Rubin as a mental patient. Rubin also starred in A Nightmare on Elm Street part 3 Dream Warriors. She played a mental patient in that too, one of the last of the Elm Street children.

So. Folks who are reading this as it's posted may have noticed that I retooled the end of the last chapter to be the start of this chapter. I wasn't fond of the rush job I did on the fire so I wanted to correct that with a second pass. It deserves a little more attention.

As for the rest of the chapter, I have to admit the water thing wasn't in my original story outline. I'm a big fan of Life After People (and similar shows) though, so I couldn't help thinking about what might be happening with the water by that point. It also makes a great way to slip in some more water-related horror. What kind of horror? You'll have to tune in next time to find out.

Have a happy new year!