A/N1: "In Dream World" is one of the silliest things I've ever read. It's a lot of innocent, a little bit of dirty, and loads of fun. It promises us a rollicking ride but doesn't really deliver, and cuts short after just three volumes. So, I took the idea and ran with it. For anyone familiar with IDW, you'll see what I've done differently right away (changing names, changing species and gender, changing storyline, changing all the rules!).
Sometimes, I just need somewhere to put all the ideas constantly bouncing around in my head!
I don't believe you need to be a fan of the series to read this story. I'm proud to say it can stand all on its own as a reboot. So welcome, pull up a chair, and enjoy.
~ Anne
5/11/2019
A/N2: This story will move into M-rated territory. The explicit scenes will be removed here on but posted to AO3 and Wattpad, same username, same story title. There will be alerts so you don't miss anything you don't want to miss!
In Dream World in its entirety ©Jae-Ho Yoon, English Text TokyoPop
Gray clouds piled into a plush blanket that shadowed the two-lane road. Rapidly cooling air cut through Jace's hoodie, raising goosebumps along her arms. The sunlight of the morning faded from memory like a lost child of happier days.
Saturday, US Highway 285 South . . .
Following Rob's bright taillight higher into the pass, Jace leaned through a sharp turn. Her sport bike hummed, reveling, as she usually did, in the workout of a winding mountain road. The darkening day brought the musty smell of damp on the wind that whistled around her helmet. The helmet was the only bit of gear that might protect her from the weather; her jacket and chaps rode rolled up, snug, and useless in the space beneath her seat.
She signaled Rob to pull over. A year ago, he would have initiated a break so they could don bad weather gear. He would have fallen back and made sure she didn't lose control of her bike on one of the loose gravel pullouts. He would have sneaked a kiss or two before insisting she put her helmet back on.
He would not have revved the engine, sped up, and vanished around the next curve.
The mountainside obscured him and his reptile-green bike. Jace downshifted and twisted the throttle. Her bike accelerated out of the turn, its tires flirting with the wrong side of the double yellow lines. She loved to ride fast, but not when the sky was threatening to dump half an ocean on her, like right then.
The wind picked up. With a weak rumble of distant thunder, it began to rain.
Jace lifted her visor. "Rob!"
The wind took her voice and ran in the opposite direction. Rain splattered the visor. Her lightweight hoodie offered minimal protection, her jeans none at all. Rob had to be getting just as wet, but he didn't slow.
He was still angry with her, then. Jace flinched under the marbles-falling-down-stairs rattle of cold, high-country rain, snapping the visor back in place. Her breath steamed it up briefly. She fed the bike more fuel and watched the needle of her speedometer inch past one-ten. One-fifteen.
One-twenty, and Rob entered a turn a full thirty seconds before she did. He pulled so far ahead that she lost sight of him around successive curves. She didn't care. The icy downpour had washed all the fun out of the ride and all the warmth from her heart.
Rob should end their relationship if he no longer felt anything for her, she thought gloomily. He was a coward for not doing it.
And maybe she was, too. Why was this kind of thing so hard?
Full dark descended, more impenetrable than she had ever seen. It seemed to crawl into the corners of her eyes. She glanced in her mirrors. Shadows danced there, too, made deeper by the frost-bright headlights of the cars behind her. Cold light. Cold rain. Cold shadows.
Jace frowned. When she blinked, the shadows fled, a trick of the weather. She should break things off with Rob herself, right now. He wouldn't even notice. He'd jetted off and left her on rides before, a total jerk move that he popped out like biscuits from a can whenever they fought. Once he'd had enough of riding or the rain, he'd head for home, expecting her to make her way alone. If she turned around right now, she'd beat him there. Then she could pack some of her things and be gone before he got back.
Yeah. That would be best.
Decision made, Jace set her sights on the next exit ramp, her thumb sliding toward her turn signal. She was sick of taking the blame for Rob's problems. Such as his increasingly loud threats that one of them would have to get a second job to make ends meet when he was the one racking up three-hundred-dollar bar tabs every week. Or his complaints about her lack of housekeeping, when he was the slob junking up their apartment. Or, which hurt most of all, his verbal abuse over her refusal to suck his dick before he signed online for a night of gaming rather than a night of play with her. She'd made that mistake too often lately and hated how he pushed her aside without reciprocating. Unwanted. Undesirable. Unworthy of the same good feelings he thought were a right.
Enough. She'd had enough.
All of these thoughts coalesced in a flash. Jace had been thinking them for weeks, though they'd been unconnected and confused by leftover feelings from early in their relationship. She'd been thinking them ever since that stupid fight they'd had about brown-haired, blue-eyed, flirty-hipped, beer-swigging, sports-fan Missy, and how much time Rob spent with her, at work, the gym, the bar, while he expected his girlfriend, Jace, to stay home and clean up after him.
Unaware of her thoughts, Rob shot past the exit she planned to take, and then decided the little electric in front of him wasn't going fast enough. He pulled his bike hard left at the start of a blind curve, nearly touching the asphalt with his knee, and whipped across the double yellow lines in a swirl of rain.
Shadows gushed from the cracks in the road. They bubbled like lava in the dark, steaming like fresh tar. A horn blared—not from the small electric, but from an eighteen-wheeler. The urgent, deep-throated sound throbbed in Jace's ears, her bones, her belly. Rob had no time, no space, in which to correct. His sport bike collided with the semi's front grille.
Metal and plastic crumpled. Fluid, some clear, some not, sprayed into the air. It sounded like an entire zoo screaming.
Horror froze Jace in place. Her bike lost speed. What had she seen? Where was Rob? It had happened too fast. She couldn't make sense of it.
Rob wasn't dead. He couldn't be. She'd never known anyone who had died.
She had to be dreaming. Please, someone, tell her she was dreaming!
The rain pounded the road. The shadows absorbed it, opening holes into nothing. The mountain shouldered its way into Jace's path, and the exit sailed by. The road twisted to the right. The electric car blended with the renewed gloom, speeding now, seeking safety.
The semi was still coming. The driver, a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, fought with the wheel. Jace could clearly see the large crescent embroidered on the front of the cap, white against the shadows in the cab, bright as the moon in a clear night sky. Some of the semi's tires jumped over the wreckage of the reptile-green bike, others caught and skidded. The big truck swerved right and then the trailer jackknifed left, blocking both lanes. The horn howled like a terrified animal.
Jace, like Rob, had nowhere to go. Time slowed to an eternity between each breath. The messy, rain-washed grille bore down on her, fitted with a chrome frame of snarling fangs. In slow motion, she yanked her handlebars and felt the bike fishtail sickeningly beneath her. At this speed, the thin film of rainwater formed a slick barrier between the asphalt and her tires. Lights smeared. Shadows crested like ocean waves.
The bike gave a nasty wobble, hesitated, and then toppled, taking Jace with it. She slid over the rain and the road at eighty miles an hour, her left leg trapped by the sputtering machine.
Her jeans and her sweatshirt shredded, as did her skin, so that her blood flowed hot. Her helmet bounced along the asphalt, knocking black and red kaleidoscopic flecks into her sight.
She barely saw the tilting trailer of the semi swing over her, tires juddering, brakes smoking. It passed like a cloud racing across the sun. Jace, dragged by her bike, shot out the other side, impacted the guardrail, and flipped over it.
She was falling. The cliffside rushed up the way the road had rushed beneath her wheels.
The shadows poured over the edge of the cliff. They streamed downward like hands reaching to catch her, or like the teeth of the semi's grille frame closing around a tasty snack. Was she hallucinating?
Please let me pass out, she begged. It hurts so much. I'm scared.
I don't want to die.
She was hallucinating. She had to be. There were things in the shadows.
As though in answer to her desperate plea, they coalesced out of the unnatural darkness. Pale things like ghosts with black pits for eyes. Purple things like smoke with starlight for eyes. Childlike, big-headed, winged things with skin of ebony. Tiny fluttering bat-things. Small lumpy things, each lump encasing a golf ball-sized gem that pulsed like an LED. The things smiled at her. As if in recognition. As if in welcome.
One figure, larger than the rest, hurt her eyes, jet on obsidian, sucking the last of the light. It could be human, helmed, armored, and winged, though it was the size of a building. It appeared below Jace as she fell and fell and fell.
The cloak spread like blood on snow and the wings unfurled, while a deeper blackness yawned in the figure's center. Jace, swooning, labeled it a black hole. She was going to disappear into it. Disappear forever.
A voice of soft twilight sighed out of the massive figure.
I am Anhell, it said. Pleased to meet you, young master.
"Young what? What are you? What do you want?" she moaned. She had to force the words out, to consciously think about forming them with her numb lips and tongue. The helmet squeezed her cheeks and her jaw, too tight. It was like speaking through the paralysis of sleep.
You can save Ephemeros, the voice said. It floated to her through the blackness, soft as willow withies draped in moonlit water. I ask your forgiveness in advance.
For myself, and for—
A/N2:
Please review! I want to know what you think, and I am always open to constructive criticism. Without you guys, I would have no reason to write!
All my love,
Anne