I do not own Hawaii Five-0 or any characters. No copyright infringement intended.
Notes: So yes, some chapters will be much shorter than others ... just gotta be .. but this one is all Danny so that is a good thing.
thank you for liking the first few chapters so very much!
H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O* H5O*
CHAPTER THREE
Not even pre-dawn, Danny woke with a strangled inhale of breath as he bit back a fearful cry. Drenched with sweat and with heart pounding, he was out of his bed in one smooth motion.
Horses. He could smell them in the dark; clean, earthy overlaid with sweet grass scents. The stables had been so very dark, too. He walked down the center aisle carefully and just listened to them. Shuffling, scuffing of hooves deep in bedding compounded by occasional soft nickers as they shifted in the soothing nighttime air.
Content, well-fed with grass-hay mixed with alfalfa. It had all been peaceful enough.
There were three in impeccably clean twelve by twelve box stalls. One was a flea-bitten gray, but it was much too shadowed to see the other two very clearly. It was only obvious that they were darker in color, possibly bay or maybe even black. Neither had even a spark of white on their faces to show any kind of distinction.
The feeling of peace had lasted but a moment and then, something had changed with a startling atmospheric flux.
"Damn it." Danny sat on the edge of his bed only to hang his face in his hands. So damp from sweat, his t-shirt was clinging to his body and he shivered in the chill of the air conditioning.
The horses were fine. The dream had been an easy comfortable wander through his mind's eye until the snakes re-appeared. There the dream nearly mimicked what he'd experienced five months earlier just the night before their Jane Doe had been discovered. Only nearly because there had been some key differences. Besides the horses and the stable, the next was that the snakes were colored precisely in the manner of Max Bergman's much too life-like photographs.
Plural. Not one snake this time, but so many, he couldn't count them all. Eastern coral snakes.
In his dream state, Danny recognized them and put name to them. Max had called them micrurus fulvous but a more common term was the American cobra.
Without a doubt, Danny knew the stables were important to this version of the dream. The stable was associated to the ornate bedroom and the first snake which had once been wrapped so neatly around his right ankle.
He shivered again when he glanced at his cell phone which lay so quietly on the nightstand next to his bed. He almost expected it to light up that very moment to vibrate menacingly across the laminate top.
That peaceful feeling had been crushed in an instant: for the screaming.
She screamed over and over to startle the horses and panic their slumber. He heard her as clearly as they heard her and ... Danny found himself automatically reaching for his phone. He was positive that it would light up at that point. His fingers splayed over the top of it and he waited, feeling his heart slowly resume a more natural beat from its waking stunned pounding.
The room was deadly quiet except for the steady mechanical drum of the air conditioning unit. As cold air gently ruffled a damp shirt, he shivered uncomfortably again.
"Stupid. Damn it." He whispered repetitively while he fisted his hand away from the wireless device and sagged backwards to sit on the bed. When nothing happened, he dragged himself tiredly to his feet for the kitchen and for a cooling drink. He was uneasy and off kilter by what he hoped was not a new, unexpected premonition. Not truly believing that it could be some weird sign after five months had gone by completely uninterrupted. Not believing that anything more would happen since the case had remained stubbornly cold.
Refusing to believe that he could even possibly think that a such ridiculous dream might have a valid meaning.
"But it's so damned real." He didn't mean to say the words out loud.
Danny came to a slow halt just inside the kitchen and closed his eyes. He tried to force it away, but failed. At the very edge of the dream just as the horses heads flew up in alarm at the woman's first terrified scream, he heard their hiss. The ominous noise was deafening and nearly in his own ear.
They were too close.
Knowing that too, the horses had fearfully plunged in their individual stalls with nowhere to go. And then ... the stables had shimmered to morph into half-bedroom and moon-lit, dust-moted stable.
He continued to hear the repetitive screams .. shrill, feminine and truly terrified as the hissing increased in volume. Wanting to help, instead he found himself lying in the four-poster bed with the covers already mysteriously gone. Stranded on his back, he was unable to move as the lone coral snake appeared coiled on his stomach now .. directly under his very nose.
The screams continued incessantly. Danny stopped breathing, eyes wide in fear, as the reptile lunged viciously towards his face.
That final violent image had certainly been enough to wake him. Even dwelling on it now sent a sharp pang of adrenalin through his stomach. Because his breathing was still off, Danny choked on a harshly stunned inhale as he stumbled towards the kitchen sink. Coughing and sputtering into the white basin, he wiped his eyes from sporadic tears before thumbing on the faucets to soak his heated face.
It was only two o'clock in the morning and except for the disturbing intensity of the dream, the night was beautifully quiet as moonlight entered through the thin kitchen curtains. He sat quietly in the dark until the dream faded to a duller troubled roar and he was weary enough to try to sleep again.
~ to be continued ~