My short story about lucid dreaming

[seeking_brilliance]

Stars of Clay-short story

 

Clayton Garner sprung from his bed, tripping over the retro alarm clock which he must have knocked across the room in fervent kicks of a wild dream. The details were fading fast, though he could clearly remember flying through swirling vortexes in outer space with some red-haired beauty-- of course none of that mattered now that he was running late for the first day at his new job. 
 
"You overslept?" the training coordinator echoed dryly when he explained, but she excused the tardiness because so few applicants had signed up. Work shortages and all. "Besides," she added, with a rather menacing twitch to her thin smile, "if it becomes an issue, we'll just install an alarm app to your CogniChip."

She referred to the popular brain implant which revolutionized cognitive and biometric technology across the globe. This job was at a CogniCorp data storage facility; really, they just needed warm bodies to push a few buttons, and to fulfill the quota for human employment. The joke was on her though, because Clayton never got the chip and they never scanned for one because again, not many people signed up. 

"Take a seat then," she said with a stiff lip, then turned on an orientation video and left the room in a hurry. Clayton found a chair in front of the projected screen, and sat next to a cute girl with fire-red hair. She looked very similar to the one in last night's dream, but it now occurred to him that he never noticed that one's face-- it was always just out of view anytime he tried to look at it. This real girl, however, did have a face and it was pretty damn cute. 

His knees knocked together, a gentle reminder not to stare. She laughed at something corny in the video, and he chuckled and played it cool. 

"So, why were you late?" she whispered, once the video's AI trainer began droning on about never peeking into the consumer's stored data. "And please tell me it’s a good story because I'm bored out of my mind."

They both snickered and he explained the events again; but the really cool version with more dramatic gasps and explosions. He decided it wise to leave out any mention of dreaming about a girl with red hair, for the creepiness factor alone. 

"You know," she said, "I had a weird day too. Ever have one of those days where everything just seems to go all wrong, like comically so?" Clayton nodded in relatable agreement. 

"That's when you do a reality check--" he said, then looked away very suddenly and cleared his throat. 

"What?" she asked, and his ears roasted in embarrassment. "What? Oh come on, now I gotta know…"

"Well," he relented, ready to kick himself for potentially ruining this, "people who lucid dream do reality checks like count their fingers. I'm still learning how, but…"

"Wait, what?" she said, placing her hand on his shoulder in slight alarm. "Say that again?"

"No, it's stupid, I was just kidding…"

Clayton laughed sheepishly and waved it away, completely saved by the abrupt ending of the video and the training coordinator's rigid return. She stood in front of the screen and performed a few brisk claps.

"Ok, who can tell me the three laws of cognitive data handing, which you learned in the video?"

Luckily someone had been paying attention and prattled off the laws like a good kid in Sunday school. Clayton looked over at the cute girl next to him, who was suddenly very interested with her wrists. She turned  them up and down, several times, and then fell into a fit of giggles. 

"I'm dreaming," she said, and showed them to Clayton. "Look, see? No tattoo."

"Uh, what?"

"The tattoo. I got it like three years ago. Just a little green paw print on my wrist after my dog died. His name was Garner…. Oh that makes sense, because that's your name isn't it? Your last name?"

"Uh, what?"

"EXCUSE ME!" the training coordinator interrupted, "I'll have your attention please. Or there's an app for that!"

"I'm telling you, I'm dreaming," said the girl with red hair, and Clayton slowly moved over a seat.  "Oh come on, now I'm the one acting weird?" She leapt up onto her chair and shouted, "I'm dreaming! Ok, ok… I can't get too excited…"

Clayton stared in awe, or rather a curious mixture of intrigue and disbelief. Maybe she took something? She was way too cute, in his humble opinion, to be acting like this. The training coordinator began yelling to get down from the chair and "act normal" or she'd make her. When that didn't work, she pulled out a tablet and began swiping at it in short, furious strokes. 

"Why… isn't… it working?" she muttered through gritted teeth.

Amy threw a cocky snicker -- "It's like you guys aren't listening. I'm dreaming! None of you are real! I'm certainly not going to let you control my mind with your silly cog chips or whatever-- seriously who makes this stuff up… oh that's right, me!"

Of course, thought Clayton, she could just not have the chip, like him. They never checked, right?

"Look, I'll prove it to you. I don't know how to do a bunch of stuff yet, but I can change the color of my chair." She hopped down, and closed her eyes tight.  To everyone's surprise, the chair changed from a navy blue to lime green. She opened her eyes and placed her hands proudly on her hips. "See? Told ya."

Nearly everyone in the room gasped and backed away, except for Clay. He didn't know what to think about it. 

"Who are you?" he asked, frozen in place but not from terror. 

"Oh, well I'm Amy! Welcome to my dream! Wanna get out of here?"

"You mean just leave?"

"Yeah, let's go."

"No I can't just leave. I need this job," he snapped in quick recoil, though he could almost hear how silly that sounded as it left his lips.

"Are you still not listening? I'm dreaming. This job doesn't exist. You don't exist. There's no you to need a job, and no job to need. I dreamed it all up. I dreamed you up, OK? Now let's go have fun!"

She reached out her hand and after one last hesitation, Clayton took it and they fled the orientation room, the training coordinator screaming after them to stop running or she'd paralyze their legs.

"Don't listen to her," Amy assured him as they sped down a long corridor, past rows of blank office doors. "Look, I'll use those big doors straight ahead and teleport out of here. Hopefully. You coming?"

At this point, for Clayton, 'no' didn't really seem to be an option. He hadn't even begun to process what he just witnessed, but the deepest whisper of inner wisdom promised that he'd never find out if he let her go. They bolted to a pair of metal doors at the end of the hall; and when those squeaked open Clayton squinted, blinded by the light of a new dawn.

"Yay it worked," said Amy, excited. "Well, mostly. I wanted to go to my dream forest, but we seem to just be in a city park. Oh I can see CogniCorp just over there… so we're still here basically… darn it."

Clayton's vision slowly returned as she talked. He wasn't too sure about the teleportation…it felt as if they had been running this whole time, and the park wasn't very far from the facility. 

"Prove it," he said heaving, and Amy rolled her eyes, likely annoyed that he still didn't believe. "Please. If this is true I want to know."

"If this is true," she answered, walking around stooped over as if searching for something. "Then when I wake up, you're dead. Poof. I mean, how much do you really want to know? Just help me look for my dream token, ok? Whenever I get lucid it's usually laying somewhere around…"

"No!" Clayton shouted out before he had the chance to stop himself. "No, you tell me, right now. What the hell is going on here?" 

Amy stood back up with a dramatic sigh, then flipped her fiery mane of hair to one side and began stroking it.

"Ok, fine. This is only like my fifth lucid dream… but sure, I'll go ahead and waste it by proving to an NPC that this is a dream. Sounds great!" 

Then, as if a sudden bolt of inspiration zapped her alive, her eyes brightened and she smiled wide. She clasped her hands together and said -- "Oh, I've got it! I've always wanted to learn to fly! I mean, you're here to serve me, right? Ok, then we'll pet two dogs with one hand. Or whatever. How about if you can teach me to fly, it will also prove that this is a dream!"

Clayton agreed, both thrilled and terrified. It just so happened that he was a prolific flyer in his dreams, ever since he was a kid (or since a few hours ago, depending on what happened next.) He jumped up a few times and really tried to emulate how he would fly in his own dreams; but gravity worked as expected, and really this whole thing felt nothing like a dream. It all felt very real; even now he found himself rationalizing what happened when the chair changed colors. He would have gotten lost on an endless train of deduction, had Amy not snapped him out of it. 

"Any time now," she teased, "seriously, I can wake up at any time. I've already been in here quite a while."

"Hmm...Ok. Pretending that this really is a dream, when I first started flying I found it much easier to jump off something." They scanned the park for anything short to jump from, but it was mostly grass and the few standing trees had no lower branches to climb (and they definitely weren't climbing to the top of CogniCorp, no matter how much she insisted that it was a dream.) "Ok, I have an idea. We'll do air steps! Yeah this should be real easy, and if you're really dreaming we'll know right away."

Going off of how he had done this in dreams, he had Amy stand with her feet together. Then as instructed, she raised her right knee and was to understand that there's an invisible platform of air beneath her foot. 

"Ok I think I can feel it," she said. Now for the test: if this really was a dream, the platform would support her weight as she stepped up with her left leg. "Here goes," she said and with little effort began climbing invisible stairs before Clayton's eyes. He looked on, frozen again, yet still not from terror. He didn't know what he felt, though the idea of it was just on the tip of his tongue--not that he had any mind to express it. After Amy was up to a good height, she looked down and yelled, "What's next?"

"Yeah, this is happening," Clayton admitted slowly, shaking his head in awe. "Alright then, yeah. Ok, yeah."

"What part of wake up at any time--"

"Yeah ok. Just-- wow. Ok! Well, I guess you should jump off! And… I can't believe I'm saying this… but just use the momentum of the fall to propel yourself upwards like a glider!" He acted the motion out with his hand, as if it were a paper airplane.  

"Ok, here goes," she shouted, and leapt. Down and down she fell in a nose dive so close to the ground that Clayton rushed to catch her - - but at the last moment she leveled out and soared up and away.

She flew out pretty far and then circled back and away again. Clayton lost sight of her a few times, but could clearly hear the excited shouts of "Oh my God!" and "I'm doing it! I can't believe I'm flying!"

He waited for a while and contemplated his obvious fate; but when it became clear she wasn't returning, he stomped his feet firmly in the ground and prepared to jump. He had made a promise not to let her go, and he wasn't going to let her fly away now.

Gravity was still in full effect, but right before he landed he gave his feet a few little kicks and started flapping his arms wildly. To his utter amazement, he began to float there, bobbing up and down just centimeters over the fluffy emerald grass. 

"It's true! Oh my God I'm dreaming! Or... something..."

Suddenly he heard more excited squeals from above, and he went upwards, however very very slowly. 

"Alright Clay, just let the ground fall away. That's right..."

And it did. The world shrunk beneath his feet as he soared up into the sky. He could just barely spot Amy like a speck on the horizon, and joked to himself that if someone didn't know better they might mistake her for a UFO--a slight distraction from a dark fate he must soon face. 

She seemed delighted when he found her, and they flew up and away from the city and over fields and forests. Up ahead he could see a large lake, sparkling like a bed of yellow diamonds in the waning sun.

"Can't believe I haven't woken up yet!" Amy yelled between daring aerial flips and twists. "Hey, I forgot your name! Didn't I give you one?"

"You can call me Clay!" he shouted back, and performed some rather skilled acrobatics of his own. Then they flew straight toward the lake and asked each other lots of curious questions. 

Now at the lake, they flew to the top of a rushing waterfall and Amy landed delicately on a large boulder. The fiery mane plopped down around her shoulders and at once she pulled it to one side and began stroking it.

"Why do you do that?" Clayton asked, landing not so gracefully beside her. 

"You mean why do I play with my hair? Um, it's a tactile thing, I guess. Keeps me grounded in the dream, and probably the only thing keeping you alive." The chuckle which followed was quite crass, then as if realising how psychopathic it sounded, her smile faded. "Oh, sorry... "

"Well you seem really sure about yourself," Clayton replied with a smirk. "But who knows, maybe you're right. Any idea how much longer we've got?"

"Yeah, I can feel it fading. I don't know how much longer, but let's just sit and watch the sunset. Is that OK?"

Clayton nodded and they looked out over the sparkling lake in awe of its dreamed-up splendor. 

"But you have to keep talking or I'll fall awake," Amy pleaded with a rather electrifying elbow bump to his shoulder. Even his tongue tingled as he responded--

"Well, tell me about your life," he said. "You know, out there or... wherever!"

"Hmmm... Well it's alright I suppose. Actually it's weird, like there's a dark veil over many of the details... but I do live in my apartment with my cat Bynx. Oh look there's my dream token, it's Bynx!"

She reached over and pulled something from the tall grass beside the boulder.

"Bynx is a stuffed animal?" Clayton asked with a raised brow.

"He is in my dreams," she answered, and sat the toy cat in her lap and began petting it. "And don't be mean or I'll make you jump off the waterfall."

"Yeah now you sound like the training coordinator," Clayton responded very dryly, then cleared his throat and looked away. "Nevermind, you probably have every right to..."

"I'm sorry, Clay."

"Hmm?"

"For how pompous and rude I've been. I know you're just a dream character and all, but... maybe that's just how I treat myself, I guess. Anyway I should have been more sensitive. Luckily you won't be around much longer to remember any of... Oops, see I'm doing it again!"

"Let's just talk," said Clayton with folded arms.

"OK. Well then... How about you? What's your life like here? What did I dream up for y-- I mean, what has your experience been like?"

Clayton found a nice sized pebble and then tossed it down the roaring waterfall. 

"It's been alright, I guess. I don't even know how long I've been living it to be honest..."

"Oh well I only went to sleep a few hours ago, you know."

"Yeah," he said. "So there's not much to talk about, really. Middle school was pretty f'd up."

"Haha, yeah mine too..."

They both found this incredibly funny for some reason, and laughed so hard that Amy almost dropped Bynx down the fall. Then they talked more and eventually the subject came to the idea of Clayton dreaming.

"So you're telling me," she said in frank disbelief, "that you've been having lots of dreams all this time? But never a lucid dream?"

"Well, I dunno." He shrugged. "To me this feels like a lucid dream. It would definitely be my first."

"Well then, if you haven't had a lucid dream before, how did you know how to fly?"

Clayton laughed and looked toward the setting sun, nearly cresting the horizon.

"Maybe you assume things too much," he said. "In my experience, you don't have to know you're dreaming to fly." He waited for some sarcastic reply, but one never arrived. "Amy? Don't wake up on me yet... "

But when he looked back she was fading fast - only a thin outline of her remained, and then that dissapated into a thousand golden sparkles like the sun-kissed lake below.

"Huh," he said, and again found himself frozen. No, not from terror, but because - - "I remember."

Clayton stood up on the boulder and wiped the grit from his hands. Then with a deep breath, he took a running leap and dived off the waterfall.  Before crashing into the lake, he levelled off and shot straight up to the emerging stars of an eternal sky.

And with that, he decided to explore the realms above and below; determined to learn everything he possibly could. Perhaps he could reach Amy again, and tell her what he remembered.

 Maybe next time, he'll awaken first. 

(fin) 

 

 

 

 

*******************
(Alternate ending) 

Clayton stood up on the boulder and wiped the grit from his hands. Then with a deep breath, he took a running leap and dived off the waterfall.  Before crashing into the lake, he levelled off and shot straight up to the emerging stars of an eternal sky.

And with that, he continued to explore the glorious realms in search of a way to reach his one true love, Amara, that magnificent goddess with fiery hair. She went by many names, but Clay's favorite was always Amy. It reminded him of a time when they were young, and things were easy.

There was something very important she needed to know. Something which could put this endless chase to rest. Perhaps next time he'd awaken first. Maybe then he'll remember to tell her. 

(finito) 

**************

Artwork by MindVenture club member Shaun Power 
 

Edited July 31, 2021 by seeking_brilliance

[Hulia]

 "In my experience, you don't have to know you're dreaming to fly."

NOw when I was reading it I can remember (I also remember remembering it recently) I could spring very wide as a child, I enjoyed it, because I could do impossible things in the air while springing, like pushing off and prolonging the leap, and then pushing off again before landing, and wondering how I do it. I remember it very distinctly, but maybe it was just a dream. Still I really was the best in long jumps in the school.  Maybe it was just that

And I really dreamt a lot that I fly. But not just fly - trying different techniques, like you described and also the others. And wondering every time how I do it.

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Hulia

[seeking_brilliance]

@Hulia haha yeah, I still test it sometimes ?

[Hulia]

1 hour ago, seeking_brilliance said:

@Hulia haha yeah, I still test it sometimes ?

In dream or in waking life?

[seeking_brilliance]

Both ? you don't do a little jump every now and then? ?

[Hulia]

1 minute ago, seeking_brilliance said:

you don't do a little jump every now and then? ?

no  Where could I do it? There are always some desks and chairs around, And when not, than this is a car, which is around  

 

[Hulia]

@seeking_brilliance  ? Imagined you doing little jumps now and then while walking the street an a settlement

Anc can you prolong a leap in an impossible way in a waking life? Because I am not sure whether I am recalling a dream or waking state, where I did it.

[seeking_brilliance]

@Hulia haha no, in my bedroom usually. No I haven't been able to prolong a jump. Even as a kid I liked to jump off the swing set with an umbrella to see if I could float down like mary poppins?

I know exactly what you mean. Not being able to tell if you are remembering dream sequence or a living memory.  It's all so blurry when we are children.

 

[Hulia]

1 hour ago, seeking_brilliance said:

@Hulia haha no, in my bedroom usually. No I haven't been able to prolong a jump

Gooood. I was already thinking, I am a bore decently walking a street like an old goose never trying to jump and fly

 

[Zeroguy]

Better not to write what I decide to do in my lucid dreams.Long story .

Edited August 2, 2021 by Zeroguy

[seeking_brilliance]

Happy to announce this story has been published on this cool spiritual website:

https://sovereignabilities.com/2021/08/03/stars-of-clay/

 

Also, I spoke to Robert Waggoner and he helped me with formatting it for submission to his lucid dreaming magazine. ☺️

[Hulia]

5 hours ago, seeking_brilliance said:

Happy to announce this story has been published on this cool spiritual website:

https://sovereignabilities.com/2021/08/03/stars-of-clay/

 

Also, I spoke to Robert Waggoner and he helped me with formatting it for submission to his lucid dreaming magazine. ☺️

What? You spoke to Waggoner?? Cool!

Ehm.. in a dream?

[seeking_brilliance]

@Hulia haha yes we are friends on Facebook, though he doesn't know two thoughts about me ? except he liked my story and thought it might be a good fit

[seeking_brilliance]

Stars of Clay

Episode Two: The Girl Who Ran to the Moon

Intro theme music:

 

  Amy studied the backs of her hands, from the pointed tips of her turquoise colored nails, to the faint little wrinkles above the wrists. There was something she was missing… something more important than anything else right now, if only she could remember… 

    "You get it all?" Sandra asked, scowling. "I swear, if I get my hands on those little cretins."

     Oh. Right. Amy was checking her hands for ketchup splatter after two small kids, a boy and girl playing an enthusiastic game of cops and robbers, tore through aisle eight where she was stocking. It was cute at first (the girl had crimson hair like Amy's, so maybe she held a soft spot) until the taller, lankier boy fired a finger pistol at his friend's heart; she clutched her chest and fell back into the ketchup shelf in a slow, painfully dramatic demise. Five bottles hit the tiled floor and shattered, spraying half the condiment aisle--and Amy-- in dark, oozing tomato blood. Her new CloudWalk shoes were saved at least; a huge relief since they were as white as the name suggests, and remarkably overpriced for its promise.

     Sandra, her manager, had brought paper towels and offered to "help mop," which really meant standing near the mop to gossip about Bryan in pharmacy. Amy was used to it, she'd been at this job long enough to know there was really no one to extend a hand. 

     It wasn't long before Amy was called up to work a register, and even less time before some cranky old lady was arguing over the price of bananas. To most, this would seem a very bad day at work; Amy just called it Monday night. She bit her tongue and explained, as smiley-faced as she could muster, that the store charges for each banana, not by the pound like in the dinosaur days, and that each banana would cost a dollar-four.

     "So if you're planning to buy three bananas, Mrs. Larkin, it's going to cost you three dollars and some change. Your total is right here on the screen, but if you'd like I can find a calculator--"

     "--Well in my day the customer was always right! Then you post-millennials got all 'woken' and now there's drone cameras everywhere spying on us shoppers, and 'employee rights'" - air quotes were applied to that last bit, performed by long knobby fingers trembling with years of abuse- "and now here I am being asked to pay over a dollar per banana. Per! Instead of by the pound as it should be!"

     "Mrs. Larkin..."

     "You know, I remember when water was free! Yeah, you could just step right up to the tap, and there ya have it. I want to speak to your manager!"

     "Well, I don't think the water was ever really free was it?" Amy couldn't help herself; besides the ketchup explosion earlier and Sandra's meltdown in the deep freeze, it was a rather slow night. "I mean, maybe it was really cheap, but you got a water bill, no?"

     "Your manager!"

     "Sure, let me get her for you." Amy suddenly remembered her customer-service smile, and quietly promised to stop being so cheeky. "But just so you know, I left her mopping up a huge mess, which usually doesn't leave her in a great mood... but if you really want me to... I'm sure she can come up and use her big fancy manager calculator." She cringed immediately and looked away, that was too far...

    But there was no reply, and when Amy looked back the old lady stood motionless, her head hanging low, an outstretched hand in midst of the particularly rude gesture of a bird. A long wheezing moan passed through her thin pursed lips, sputtering off to a dead silence.

    "Uh, ma'am?"

     Amy scanned the checkout center for help, but no one was paying attention besides the tall guy next in line.  Kind of cute, thought Amy, if he weren't staring like a creep. Cute in like a nerdy movie star kind of way, she amended upon further study. She didn't typically go for brunettes but there was something magnetic about his eyes, green with  burst of hazel around the pupils. When he noticed her staring back, the young man smiled and said,

     "You've already forgotten about the old lady, haven't you?"

     With a gasp, she snapped back to Mrs. Larkin, who still stood frozen by the paypad. Amy felt frozen too, except to reach out and touch the lady's shoulder. It felt soft and warm, like when she last hugged her grandmother. 

    "Hey, are you OK?" she asked, and looked around again. Why won't anyone help?

     "Wow," the cute guy said, "you really broke one properly this time, huh?" Amy wheeled. 

    "Are you just going to stand there?" she burst, panicking. "Get help! Call someone!"

     Suddenly, manager Sandra ran up from the back of the store, heaving. 

    "You paged?" she asked between wheezes, "what's wrong?"

     "No, she didn't," said the tall guy. 

     "What?" Amy and Sandra retorted in unison. This weirdo was looking less cute by the minute...

     "If you'll remember, Amy," he said, and stepped over to Mrs Larkin, then gently lowered her middle finger. "You never called for the manager. This lady asked you to, and you never did. And then, this happened." He bent down and opened one of the old woman's sagging eyelids. Satisfied, he stood and turned to Sandra. "No, she never called you, you're a diversion to get us back on track. On script. And if that doesn't work, they'll show up soon."

     "Look here, my dude," snorted Sandra, "I have no idea what you're on about, but if you have any idea the kind of night I've had, you'd shut your mouth and let the adults do the talking, mmmkay?"

     "Yes ma'am," he replied with a snappy salute. "but only if Amy here can tell me where she works." Looking to Amy his hand lowered, "and don't just say you work 'here.' What is the name of this store?"

     "Are you crazy? There is an elderly person here having a real medical emergency--will someone PLEASE call 911!"

     "You call them." He shrugged. "Don't you have a phone on you? What century are we in?"

     "Well I - Yeah, I'm sure I have one... around here..." Amy patted her pockets and searched around the register.

     "Where do you work?" he insisted.

     "I'm not stupid, I know where I work! It's-- it's uh... well, here. I work here. "

     "What's it called?" 

     "It's called... Um, hmmm, hang on..."

     "Why do you have ketchup all over you, Amy?"

     "Well," she replied, looking down. The sour stench of vinegar and tomato wafted up from her splattered shirt. "Yeah, there was a thing earlier and... and Sandra said I couldn't go change because they might need me up on a register." She looked to her manager, who nodded with reassurance. "I mean, I think, right? I was mopping all that up and then... I got called up to a register."

     "You sure?" Leaving Mrs Larkin, the tall guy stepped to the far end of the checkout counter, eying the nearest exit. "Or, did you just find yourself here, arguing with that delightful young lady about the price of bananas?"

    "You're right... ," said Amy, slowly piecing it together, "No, I never called for the manager..."

     Shoving past Mrs. Larkin, Sandra stepped up to the register and grabbed Amy's hand, patting it softly. 

    "Don't listen to him Amy, everything will be just fine. You can go home and change your clothes right after I kick that trouble maker's skinny little--aaaahhhh!--" The shrieking that ended Sandra's sentence was short winded, as the old woman sprung to life and sunk her teeth deep into the manager's veiny neck.

    No, not teeth-- they didn't look like teeth at all to Amy, they just looked... wrong. Too long and shiny, like rows of little golden daggers. Amy stood shocked, as tiny bits of Sandra were caught in Mrs. Larkin's deepest wrinkles; the old woman relished her meal with closed eyes--wait no, she had no eyes! Two black holes were all that filled Mrs. Larkin's sockets, darker than the loneliest voids of space between dying stars. Amy fell back into the shelves behind the register and knocked over a bottle of red shampoo, dousing her CloudWalks in thick bloody soap, completing the ensemble.

  "Amy, we need to go," the tall guy said, "right now. Please, I need you to leave your register and let's walk away. Carefully."

    "I -- I can't..." she replied shakily, unable to take her eyes off of Sandra. "Mrs. Larkin is a vampire?"

     "Something like that," he said, reaching out, "and yes you can. You can leave here if you want. But you have to want it, and quick before Mrs. Larkin is finished with her meal. Who do you think will be next?"

     The old woman released her golden daggers from Sandra's neck; then as if her lower jaw became unhinged, Mrs Larkin's mouth opened wide enough to swallow Amy's manager whole, head first. Her crooked body seemed to stretch and grow just tall enough to do it, and picked up a limp Sandra with very little effort. Before long she was sliding the feet down with a wet slurp.

     "Don't just stand there Amy, come on!"

     Like breaking from a nasty spell, Amy turned to him and, shaking her head,

     "I'm dreaming..."

     "Took you long enough, now let's go!" His hand stretched further, wriggling anxiously for her to take it.

     "Yeah," she agreed, and their fingers met with tingling excitement. Off they went and he led her past the other checkout counters and to the big exit doors at the front of the store. A large man with no eyes stepped on their path reaching out with long stretching fingers; Amy's new friend dodged expertly and rolled her around to his other side. 

      "Don't let them touch you!" he shouted, and picked up an umbrella to beat off a persistent eyeless baby crawling around their feet with tiny gnashing golden daggers. "Geez Amy, are all the demon babies this quick in your dreams?"    

     "I wouldn't know!" she replied, "so that's what these things are? Demons? These dream characters with no eyes?"

   "Something... like... that!" he managed through strong forward thrusts. "And you... can call me... CLAY!" With the last word the tall guy swung the umbrella low and putted the baby high in the air and deep into the store; they ran harder. "You know, that way you can stop referring to me as 'he' or 'the cute tall guy!"

     "You're reading my thoughts?" Amy yelled back, tearing her hand free but keeping pace. "I didn't know dream characters can do that! Are you like some special kind?"

      Clay didn't answer, just gave her one long look as they neared the exit. A calm night peeked through the glass doors and Amy could just see her car out in the parking lot. 

     "They're not opening!" He waved the umbrella at the doors' sensors. "Ok we're going through..."

     "Through?" Amy slowed, wheeling in thought, "oh, I'm not good at going through things... especially in a hurry..."

      "It's easy, just don't overthink it. Like how we have so much time to discuss all this even though we've been approching the doors for quite a while. It's a dream Amy, there are no doors, not really!" 

      "Ooooh, I don't know!" She winced.  "There's got to be another way out..."

     "Listen, doors aren't important, we just need to get to the other side, the parking lot. Just close your eyes and think about the parking lot!"

      She did and, after a short woosh, when her eyes opened they were now running outside and across the dark, near empty lot. Her car seemed a lot further than she remembered parking, but her mind was on what just happened. Did I go through the doors, she pondered, noticing the big cheese-yellow moon hanging over them as they scurried like mice away from the store. Or did I teleport? I totally teleported, didn't I?

    "Something like that," Clay said, and she promptly ordered him to stay out of her head. "Really?" He replied. She could've felt his smirk from eons away. "I'm not even reading your thoughts, Amy, you do well enough alone to broadcast them out like a free concert! You know, in a dream, your thoughts still feel like they're in your head, but where is your head, Amy?"

     "All around?"

     "Something like that."

     Amy thought about what horrific things she might do to him if he used that phrase again; Clay requested she'd not go with shooting fireballs at him since he took so long choosing his outfit. 

     "STOP IT!!"

      "I will when you will!" He shouted, and ducked as an expertly crafted iceball whizzed by, grazing an ear. "Oh good job, you've been practicing, huh?" 

     Amy didn't know what he meant by that, and didn't have time to explain where she learned the trick because two eyeless demons climbed out of a nearby vehicle and took chase with considerable speed. Amy threw large iceballs at them but any that would've hit were swallowed whole. 

      "Hey, you still know how to fly?" Clay shouted from further ahead. 

      "Yeah I can fly! Uh, but I have to jump off of somewhere high..."

     "Oh you're still on that? Ok, come here." He flipped the umbrella down and pointed the long guilded tip at her shoes. "CloudWalkers, huh? That'll work." And with a quick incantation ("Hocus pocus... wibbly wobbly...abra kadabra!")  golden sparks leapt from his makeshift wand and disappeared into Amy's shoes, now restored to a pristine white. The umbrella then opened high above his head and he lifted up and away into the night sky. "Now just walk right up to me, Amy! Actually, RUN!"

     With a narrow escape of gnashing dagger-teeth and long stretching arms, she ran vertically right up to Clay who was already high above the power lines. Each step created a literal cloud to cushion her climb, accompanied by a cute little 'poof'; luckily the eyeless demons couldn't fly. When she caught up to him she asked again about the creatures chasing them.

      "They're kind of like an immune system response," he said while they hovered well above the parking lot (Amy could see part of the town twinkling further down.) "Okay, or say that a dream is like a supermassive simulation with an aggressive autocorrect function. Those are the autocorrect. Correctors, I call them."

     "When things go wrong," Amy added, "or off script like you said earlier..."

     "Yeah, the correctors are the number one reason you don't get lucid more often. They show up lots of times when you start noticing things are unusual, but especially if someone tries to tell you that you're dreaming. They get real nasty then. And it's not hard to keep you on track, they just swallow the evidence, literally."

      "Well I don't remember seeing any dream characters like that before! It's certainly not something to forget..."

     "Of course not. When they destroy the evidence it's like it never happened, including their sudden appearance. You just go on with the dream, maybe under new circumstances that you believe were always there. The mind adapts. And when all else fails, they'll just eat you. Then you wake up and poof-- it's like it's never happened."

     "So that's why I don't remember so many of my dreams?" A topic heavy on Amy's mind as of late. 

    "Something like--
  
     "Don't even!"

     "Sometimes." He said instead, and began to lift higher and higher to the pull of his umbrella; Amy thought he looked more like Mary Poppins now than a handsome movie star (well I guess he could be both...) "And sometimes you just have really awful memory," he added, and dodged a whizzing fireball or two. He swung the umbrella far away to avoid losing his fabric vehicle to Amy's fiery retaliation-- "Hey I'm flying here!"

     "Fly away then, you're no help!"

    But before she could spray him with a barrage of fire and ice, a helicopter zoomed up from the parking lot and three more correctors leapt out, diving straight for the quarreling duo. 

     "Follow me!" yelled Clay "to my ship, quick!  Straight to the moon!"

     "Your ship in on the moon? But it's so far!" 

      "Something like that..." he muttered. Holding his free hand up to the moon, he pinched his fingers together, then pulled them apart like zooming in on a virtual tablet. The moon stretched and grew from the size of a watermelon to taking up the whole of Amy's view. When awake, she had seen close ups of the moon but never knew the rocky craters to have such an iridescent shimmer. "And my ship's not on the moon..." he corrected, "it is the moon."

   One of the large craters opened up like from a cheesy old sci-fi movie, and Amy marveled that she'd even dream up such a thing. It seemed totally out of the norm of her usual dream-fare, to have some irritably handsome mind reader whisk her away to the moon. Maybe it was the special tea she had last night at Evelyn's party....(I was at a party last night, right?) Or perhaps from binging too much Professor Zero on DisFlix. 

     She CloudWalked (or rather, cloud-ran,) right inside the crater behind Clay, and after a short swirling vortex of a tunnel, found herself stepping into the dark cockpit of a futuristic looking spaceship; her shoes no longer created little clouds on the metallic floor. A lanky sillhouete of Clay shifted across the small cabin to the pilot's seat on the left, partially illuminated by the glow from a multitude of prismatic buttons and switches comprising a ridiculously large dashboard. A giant screen towered above, displaying a moon-sized Earth on a dark and silent night. 

    "Take a seat," Clay said, patting the other one on the right. "It won't bite. It will give you ten kinds of temporal massages and a total chakra cleansing--that is, if I can remember where the buttons are..." He scanned through what seemed like thousands of flashing buttons above the empty seat alone, and promptly gave up. "Come on, we're safe in here. The correctors can't get inside. Come on, take a seat... "

    "Fine," Amy said with a firm resolve. "But only if you start being honest with me. No more 'something like that' crap, just... tell me the truth, even if you don't think I'd understand."

    "The truth? Sorry Amy, but I'm not here to tell you the truth. I don't even know if half the things I could say are true. What I can tell you is that we can have fun, if you want." He patted the seat again. 

     For the first time, she saw him. Sure, she had looked at Clay plenty of times by now, but it suddenly made sense who this was, yet impossible to put together into a single cohesive thought. Amy was flooded by memories of dreams she had as a small child. In them, there was always a special friend who bailed her out of trouble, or helped her to understand things as a scared little girl, or took her to amazing new places beyond her wildest dreams. When awake, she even had an imaginary friend based on this character, but didn't remember it being male, or of any gender, really. Eventually she had stopped talking to this friend and slowly forgot about them as interests turned to boys and clothes, or the worse, adulting. 

     No, this was not just some random dream character, this was her most secret and adventurous childhood friend, back again after all this time... 

     "Hey."

         (To be continued in episode three...)
     
Outro:

    

(Artwork by Shaun Power from MindVenture club)

 

Edited January 11, 2022 by seeking_brilliance

[Arcangelo]

Thanks for sharing!

[seeking_brilliance]

@Arcangelo stay tuned for episode three ?

[seeking_brilliance]

 Stars of Clay

Episode Three- Lost Moon

Theme music:

 

 

    "Hey," said Clay with a little wave.

     Amy stepped across the dark cockpit and took the empty seat on the right. As a quick stabilization technique, she pulled her fiery mane to one side and stroked it, just staring at Clay who she now recalled to be someone else entirely. None of this made any sense, but then again, it was a dream.

      "How much do you remember?" he asked, thumbing through the countless buttons and switches above his seat. Random sections of the ridiculously large dashboard twinkled in rainbow-lit clusters around the spaceship's cockpit. 

     "I'm pretty sure you were my imaginary friend when I was a kid. Bobidunk?"

     "Kind of a name upgrade, huh?" said Clay, "New name, new body... Oh, look at that! Here's a button for flying lessons, right up your alley."

     "Clay, I..."

     "Ah, and here's a dream stabilizer. That's super handy." He pressed it and Amy felt a significant shift in grounding. This particular dream was already feeling lifelike, but now there was just a bit more weight in her center, and she suddenly noticed how tired her legs were from running. She let go of her hair, and said softly,

     "I'm sorry, I can't believe I forgot about you." 

     "Ah, well," he replied, still not looking at her. "New dream, new me, right? Oh look, a switch to deactivate your CogniChip." 

     "Oh God, I would never get one of those."

      "Me neither." He flipped it anyway. "So, um, the whole of relative time and dream space. Where d'ya want to go?'

      "Can we go back in time?" Amy asked, perking up. 

      "Or forwards, or sideways, whatever you'd like. The 'Multiverse of the Mind' as they say."

     "Can we go back to the last time I saw you?" Clay finally found her eyes and she was so relieved that he didn't seem angry. 

     "Aw, Amy," he beamed like a child reunited with his lost VR tablet. "you do remember me. Ok, to the CogniCorp building it is--"

     "Huh? No, the last time I saw you was when my mom died."

     The 'Time-skip' button released mid press, and he cleared his throat. There was a faint ringing as if a million microscopic bells were struck in harmonic succession, then the giant screen above the dashboard cleared away and a new image phased in- like a movie being played in reverse. In it, Clay was flying backwards over a sparkling lake, then up a waterfall to land on a high cliff. Suddenly there were two people on this cliff and --wait, Is that me? she thought wildly. What is this? Another dream? Oh God, my hair is all over the place!"

     "Well, we'd been flying a lot," Clay said aloud, and for the first time she didn't care if he had read her mind. Bobidunk was always doing it, in fact she couldn't recall if her childhood imaginary friend ever spoke out loud in her dreams.

     "I don't remember this..." She scanned the whole dream in reverse, to the point of meeting Clay in the CogniCorp building where her mom used to work in real life. In this dream, it was their first day, and orientation was getting very dull. Though there was no audio, tiny bits of information were knowingly revealed as she watched, and yet- "I don't remember this at all."

     "No? Memory's funny like that, I guess." He pressed the button again and closed his eyes, "hang on, I'll have to channel the other last time I saw you."

     "So this isn't our first dream together? Well, I mean with you, as Clay."

     "Gee, you're quicker than I thought. But let's talk about it later." His finger released and the faint chorus of bells once again echoed throughout the small cockpit, followed by a loud thwomp. The screen now showed a moon-sized Earth at day, then zoomed all the way down to the golden peaks of the Ozark mountains, central USA, mid-autumn. 
 
      Here was the house where she was raised, crowded in on a tall hill with countless other Florida implants following the great marsh floods. Seeing it brought a rush of emotions, nearly drowning Amy in waves of childhood nostalgia. A tiny picket fence surrounded a tiny house the size of a single room; from what she remembered, these houses went several floors down to make up for space lost to modern times. After her mom passed, dad sold the place and moved them further inland, where it was cooler and plenty more opportunities to grow. 

    "Before we go in," said Clay, pushing another button. "A bit of invisibility. Don't want to freak our past selves out." 

     The cheesiest hisssss came from the round door opening at the cockpit's rear, which could have been audibly matched, at random, to any of the worst classical sci-fi shows; she stood and faced it, wondering how the new Bobidunk turned out to be such a huge nerd. He promptly answered "Because you are," and her eyes rolled so hard she almost woke up. 

     Gravity was a bit different in the ship, so that Amy could walk straight out the door into the top-down view of her childhood home (just as zoomed-in as it was on the screen.) Clay shot out in full superman pose, not quite acing the landing unless he was aiming for the neighbor's rose bush.   

    With a more delicate approach, little clouds formed beneath her shoes as she stepped boldly into the air-- Ah screw it, she thought, and leapt into a flying pose of her own. After some exhilarating acrobatic flips and twists, her feet touched delicately on the fluffy lawn near the front door as Clay scrambled over the fence, bloody and bruised. 

     "I forgot to shield before crashing," he whined, and quickly patched himself up by a hand's healing swipe. "Ah, I remember this place. You used to dream about it a lot."

     "Yeah, I did. So, are we really here? Like are we visiting the real past, or is this just another dream?"

      "Beats me, I've never actually done it before. But it's possible, I was able to cross over to your physical realm before, as Bobi-- as the other me, if that's what you mean by real."

      Amy stepped up to a window and peeked in; the kitchen was always the first floor in these mountain stackhouses, hers was hauntingly empty. Her parents were wonderful cooks and at least one could be found bustling about the top floor at any given time. If this was truly the day she died, then they'd all be a few flights down, in her parent's bedroom, awaiting the worst. 

      They met at the door and entered directly into the kitchen. Even Clay seemed to be wrapped up in sweet nostalgia, going straight to the fridge as Bobidunk used to when he visited late at night. He slumped back with news that it was practically empty.

      In stackhouses, each square room connected by way of a square staircase in the far left-hand corner that should have creaked as they descended, perhaps the invisibility button masked their mass as well. Below the kitchen was the main bathroom, then a cozy living room with three chairs and a fireplace where a young Amy used to lay and draw pictures of her wild adventures with Bobidunk. Next down was Amy's bedroom. She kept going as quickly as possible and didn't want to look at anything. 

      In her parent's bedroom, they were met with the scene she spent years trying to forget: a young but ragged-looking version of her dad sobbing by the bed, her mom in that bed, deathly gaunt and muttering utter nonsense, unable to lower her right hand frozen in a finger snap.  It had been that way for at least twelve hours by now, judging by the time holo-projected from the nightstand. Amy could only guess the agony this might cause, and whether or not her mom constantly felt it until she passed; the thought haunted her for years to come. Ah, and then there was a pre-pubescent Amy standing awkwardly by the faux window, so sad even her pimples were crying, though perhaps mainly from embarrassment.

     "Oh Amy, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself," Clay whispered. "I'm sure I told you that lots of times back then."

     "Huh? I didn't say anything. Why are we whispering?"
 
      "For dramatic effect."

      No one else in the room responded to their audible presence, so Amy said aloud, "I think we arrived just before mom passed. Look, she's starting to foam at the mouth." 

     "Oh man, I'm so sorry. What turned out to be wrong with her? I remember the doctors couldn't say, and then... well, I never saw you again until I was Clay."

      As the guilt piled on, Amy tried her best to remember what she learned about her mom's lethal disorder, but it was all just out of mind's reach. Her dream-mind was always doing silly things like that, even when lucid. What she could recall is that she always felt a bit responsible, but never able to pin down why. Maybe if she hadn't been so busy hiding her face, she could have noticed the signs early enough to help. 

     "Hey, what's she saying?" Clay asked, and crept in around Amy's dad for a better listen. "CogniCorp... rainbow dressing... the end of tomorrow... 04..20..85..."

     Amy scoffed. "CogniCorp makes sense, she worked there. Was one of the first to receive a CogniChip, actually. But the rest is utter nonsense, right?" She stepped over to her younger self by the window and touched her own shoulder, struck by a sudden memory of this very moment, having her shoulder touched that day. Back then, she thought her grandmother had done it, visiting their grieving family in spirit. "Wait, so this has to be real. I think I just proved it."

     "Oh, nice!"

     But something was wrong. A few things, in fact. Like the sheets. Her parents adored the Professor Zero show, their bedroom was practically a nerd-altar to it. Here there were only a few posters on the wall, and that hideous lamp made to look like Professor Zero's purple time machine, the VERITIS; but where were his big goofy head and delightfully corny catchphrases holo-printed all over the sheets? These covering her failing mother were just way too plain, a word that could never be used to describe either of her parents.

     "We're in a dream then," she said, deflated. "Dang, I really hoped we could go to the real past."

     "There's that word again. What exactly is 'real'?"

     "Well you know, like when I'm awake," she said, "when things really matter." Clay politely informed her of how dreamist that sounded and she figured, correctly, that he meant something like 'sexist', which may have set her off, just a bit. "Excuse me? Who do you think you are? You disappeared for a huge chunk of my life, ya know, right when things got hard!" The lights flickered and the house shook, the angrier she became. "I mean, what do you even do? You get to go off on all these fun, awesome adventures, and yeah I can come too, I guess... but don't talk to ME about what's real until you spend a day- a day!- out there, in the real world, in pain. You know, I would love to see you try and hold down a job."

     They were too far underground to hear crickets, but her mom's incoherent babbling was enough to break the awkward silence. Clay blinked slowly and after a reflective moment said,

    "Ok, I can see you are angry..." And when Amy refused to say more, he rather bravely continued, "Now, I know emotions in dreams can get real intense..."

    Amy made the biggest fireball she could muster (which in her state was rather terrifying) and shot it so hard at Clay it blew her dad's hair around. Clay shielded, of course, but she was too distracted to care, struck again with another memory-- of her dad swearing that his mother-in-law's ghost had ruffled up his hair. He even thought she went through him like a tempered flame, upset about her daughter's ill fate. He talked about it for years. And here he was now, in the dream, commenting on it, just like she remembered. It wouldn't be long before Amy's mom becomes a ghost too. 

    "I-- I just don't understand! Are we in the real past or not?"

    "Maybe there is no past," said Clay, coming back around the bed in hands-up surrender. "I mean, in a dream, reality is created in the moment, constructed by memory, you know? The past too. Even when you're awake, what exactly is the past except for your memory of it? Maybe the question isn't... what is the real past, but what is memory?"

     "Seriously, that's what you got? I thought you were supposed to be all wise and sagey."

     "Hey, I never said--" but she never found out what he never said because both her dad and younger self transformed into correctors, coming at them with gnashing gold dagger-teeth and black voids instead of eyes. "What?" she shrieked, "they're here too?"

     "I didn't think they'd follow us! Usually they go away after a dreamer gets lucid, but you keep narrating them into the story!"

     Amy had no idea what that was supposed to mean, a reoccurring issue with this guy. Clay conjured an ice wall to block the correctors, and they escaped up the staircase by way of flying and CloudWalking. The front door burst open and Amy scanned the skies.

     "Where's the ship?"

     "Right there," Clay answered, pointing at the sun. He jumped up and flew straight for it.

    "No the moon, what happened to the moon?" She followed close behind, running up little puffs of clouds. 

      "Well it's daytime, innit?" He pinch-zoomed the sun until it was only a short flight away. Upon approach, a round door opened within a festering sunspot; entering was definitely hot like she expected, but not excruciating. The door closed securely behind them, cutting off all light besides the prismatic dance of luminous buttons splashed across the dashboard. 

     Amy slumped back to her chair on the right, Clay to his beside her. She had never before considered a dream to be so exhausting. What was worse, she had been so wrapped up in it ever since Mrs. Larkin ate Sandra at the grocery store (and escaping with that weirdo over there geeking out over the countless dream-enhancing buttons at his disposal,) that she completely forgot to look for her dream totem, her cat Bynx. 

     Bynx, a typical black cat who kindly allowed Amy to live in his apartment in real life, appeared as a stuffed animal in her dreams. At first, it was her main way of becoming lucid since she would see the stuffed Bynx and know she's dreaming. As her methodology evolved, she found new ways to wake up inside her dreams and began to seek out Bynx after she was lucid.

    The feline totem acted as a great dream stabilizer and lucidity anchor; as long as she petted him, she wouldn't wake up.  Additionally, the longer she petted him, her thoughts would become clearer, and more akin to how she is when awake. For example, it would be rather startling if she suddenly remembered where she actually worked, since even her lucid mind was still stuck on that grocery store. So he was real handy to have around, but there was no way she'd be wasting any energy looking for him now.

     After what sounded like a button press, a stuffed Bynx fell into her lap from an opening above her seat. She stared at it, then at Clay, then back to the dream totem and started petting it, and said, 

     "Thanks, but why did you do that?"

      "You said you didn't have the energy to look for him."

      "No I didn't, I wasn't even thinking that..."

      "Oh, my bad. You must have been narrating that part." 
 
      Amy sighed, the way she does when she's had way more than enough, and thought about how she should wake up. It was no surprise when Clay offered a handful of fun ideas; she agreed to click her heels and repeat "there's no place like home" like from one of her favorite classical films. Before fading away, she apologized profusely for losing her temper so often (although he 100% deserved it, of course) and asked that he come find her again, just maybe if they could do something a bit more fun. When her sparkling silhouette was all that remained, she gave a little wave and awoke.

                                *********

     Clayton leaned back, thinking that didn't go half bad. By chance, his eyes rested on the temporal massage button and he pressed it, then melted into his seat and began thinking about where to go next. Maybe he'd scout out a few locations first, before bringing Amy along, since she truly did deserve a fun dream next time. He had a reputation to keep, and all.

     At the press of a button, the chorus of bells brought him to a place he had heard about in his travels but never got around to visiting. On the screen, it looked like any other giant space station out in the cosmic frontiers, but Star City was known to be the most luxurious space resort in all the known universes, and God, what he wouldn't do for a cocktail...
       
Outro:

(Artwork by Shaun Power from MindVenture club)

Edited January 11, 2022 by seeking_brilliance

[seeking_brilliance]

Episode Four now available on Wattpad!

https://www.wattpad.com/story/298498710?utm_source=android&utm_medium=link&utm_content=share_writing&wp_page=create&wp_uname=starsofclay_jp&wp_originator=YnNg1lkClJwuNOAqH1x7C8Z6kYXaL8HvDQlUv5cyGSoPxtd6ZySOILdRBRRaeYNxjmHJGK0g0vaVCC9lxmcbmh6qW2SkXXUUfcprgHcwp%2BoRT7MhhA29iMzNkNbFc5QD

 

Edited January 21, 2022 by seeking_brilliance