Night: Colbie and the Phantom Stab

Dreams (Scenes 1-3)

But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest hope!

—Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Thomas Common),
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None,
VIII: “The Tree on the Hill”

1

Colbie Amame missed her cue and slipped out of REM sleep, waking up in her dorm room and looking at the ceiling of her room in blank comprehension. Wondering why she had woken up so early, she reached for her watch next to the lamp atop the credenza and glanced at the glowing dial: 4:20 a.m.

“God, damn it!” Colbie said as it all came back to her, for she had slept through her dream diving cue and had missed meeting with Celia Hearn and Kendra Tellerman by almost an hour, and now she was going to get an earful from them on her arrival. She knew that the time and location for the first dream dive was at a collective dream realm somewhere in the Oriental part of the Phantom Realms at 3:30 a.m., but she still had no idea where Kendra had wanted to take them after they all met up at the first target zone. She’d ask them about it when she arrived, but since the chance of a second dream dive seemed out of the question, she resigned herself to a tongue-lashing, pulled the covers back over herself, and went to sleep.

Now repeating the same starting sequence on the fifth cycle of her dream dive that cycled through the intervals of light sleep and deep sleep to get to REM sleep, her dream-self materialized in her dorm room, lying motionless and dumb upon the bed before rousing in the glow of the nightlight throwing a harsh blue diagonal of light across the walls and part of the ceiling of her room. She looked around and saw the light of one of her lamps atop her dresser drawer glowing red and throwing up a purple circle of light on the ceiling, cut into thirds.

That purple circle of light—cut into thirds—was her dream cue, and upon recognizing it, she broke the subtle trance that all dreams imposed on non-lucid dreamers. She was now in control, and she could pursue her latest fantasy, perhaps attempt another stab at her favorite fantasy in the last few winks of sleep after facing the ire of her friends. She had her guilty pleasures after all, ones that she might let Celia in on later after the storm of her ire had passed.

When she arose from the bed and turned on the other lamp, she squinted as a spectral light flooded the room. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the lighting and then reached for her watch right next to the lamp and put it on and glanced at the dual dials: 4:30 a.m. on one dial, and 45 minutes and counting down the seconds on the other dial.

So she got off the bed and went to the closed door of her room, the door that led to the upstairs hallway and down the staircase in her waking life, but that very door was something more in her dreamworld.

Placing her hand on the knob, she focused on the destination she wanted to reach. Spectral waves blustered through her room, and her locks of hair fluttered and spread wide in the turbulence, and her pajamas fluttered in the blast.

She opened the door into the inky blackness that was her subconscious mind, and stepped into the void—

(with 45 minutes left)

2

And found herself in a weird version of Little Tokyo or Little China, somewhere in one of the back alleys, dressed to the nines in a flower kimono and sash, her brown locks tied into twin tails behind her head. Firecrackers exploded somewhere in the distance, and past the swaying red lanterns hanging overhead streaked shooting fireworks across the night sky, exploding into colorful starbursts like neon paintings against a canvas of twinkling stars.

The alley was abandoned without another soul in sight, spirit or dreamer, roaming the place. The red lamps overhead merely swayed in the night air, and all the shop lights in the alley were but dim apparitions through the windows and curtains and shutters.

Just then, another streak of light scraped the sky in a trail of sparks before exploding into starbursts. All the celebrations were happening somewhere blocks ahead of her, where her friends were waiting for her to appear.

"Damn it!" she said and stomped her foot on the cobbled side street, which reverberated along the empty thoroughfares, and balled her hands into fists and fuming at the fact that her latest dream dive wasn’t showing much improvement in the accuracy of her jumps. Just how Kendra and Celia were able to maintain a steady target zone during their sleep was beyond her, so she fished out her smartphone from her kimono and called Kendra Tellerman's number and waited for the dial to click off.

And from the other side of the connection came Kendra's voice that said, “Colbie, where the hell are you? We've been waiting for an hour!"

"Sorry about that,” she said, kicking herself yet again for another shaky attempt. “I guess I must've lost my concentration when I made the dive."

The voice on the other end sighed and said, "That's okay. Where are you now?"

"I'm in an alleyway," she said, looking around at the empty shops, "but I can see the fireworks ahead. Wait a minute, I'll be on the roof."

Colbie focused her mind, imagining steps she could climb, and a blast of air lifted her from the ground, fluttering her kimono and her hair, while she traipsed up invisible steps of moving air and reached the roof of a three-story building, where she got a better vantage point. Two blocks away, across the tops of several buildings and housing complexes, she spied the glow of street lamps and fireworks and neon lights moving like shadowy snakes made of spectral fire. The festivities were four blocks away, too far for her to make an accurate jump without the help of her friends.

She clapped her smartphone to her ear, saying, "I see it, but where are you guys?"

"I'll send up a flare," Kendra said.

And moments afterwards, the action was set to words. A bright red flare streaked silently through the night.

When Colbie saw it, she placed her smartphone in her kimono and concentrated on the light, imagining herself right there above the glowing festivities, where the last of the flare was dissipating into smoke.

In an instant, she was there, floating on a blast of air above the festivities. She looked down and saw the little people, ghosts and dreamers alike, on the sidewalks watching the scene and sitting at cafe tables further down the street. Others were parading through the streets with floating dragons snaking alongside and above their keepers amid the cheers of the crowd, and still others (pyrotechnics, she guessed) were lighting fireworks on the rooftops along the street, sending streaks of light skidding through the air and exploding above her head. They almost formed a moving mosaic of activity, the very picture of a postcard moment. She made a mental note to write all this down in her dream journal when she woke up.

But her reveries were short-lived when one of the fireworks streaked by her, just a few feet behind her, making her jump forward to get out of the way—

When she fell from her perch and tumbled towards the streets, tumbled towards a cheering crowd that had yet to see her fall till a few of the spectators pointed up towards a falling object, tumbled amid the screams of panic from the crowd who were witnessing her fall, tumbled and tumbled down and down and down. Yet in her tumble down amidst a bluster of thoughts and blurring images racing towards her at the speed of gravity, she managed to regain her focus at the last second.

A huge blast of air cushioned her landing on the street, blowing everything and everyone around her in a hundred-foot radius of near-hurricane gusts, ripping through the crowded thoroughfare and stopping the festivities for the moment. Till at last, amid the shaken crowd and fluttering debris, the winds dissipated, and Colbie alighted onto the cobbled street on tenuous feet, doubled over and clutched at her knees, trying to catch her breath.

Soon afterwards, Colbie looked around and spotted Kendra Tellerman and Celia Hearn wading through the crowd, both shaken from their worried expressions, yet when she stood up and faced them, she saw their glares and struggles to get to her. Her friends looked like they were about to murder someone once they cleared the obstacles of pedestrian dreamers and ghosts.

Colbie raised her hands in a placating gesture, saying, "Whoa, whoa, wait a minute!"

But they didn't wait; they kept up their struggles and got past the last pedestrian separating Colbie from her would-be attackers and now ran full-tilt on a collision with her.

Colbie stepped back and was about to make a run for it, but it was too late when she said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute! I can explain if you just—”

Yet her girlfriends tackled her to the ground.

Then Kendra slid behind her and wrapped her arms around Colbie's and locked her hands behind Colbie's neck, securing her miscreant friend from escaping her punishment and saying, "This is for making us wait so long, you little meathead!"

"And this," Celia added, digging her hands into Colbie's kimono and tickling her sensitive sides, "is for scaring the crap out of us with that stunt!"

And for some moments, Colbie laughed and giggled and strained against Celia's relentless tickles, trapped in place by Kendra's hold, till her sides hurt and she was on the brink of hyperventilating.

But Colbie's friends were not that cruel.

When Celia stopped tickling her to death, and Kendra released her hold on her, Colbie collapsed onto her knees and doubled over, taking massive gulps of air. Colbie stayed prone this way for several moments, then looked up at her friends.

Kendra had her hair down to her shoulders, no longer pulled back in a pigtail. And by God, she even sported a body-hugging mandarin dress, conforming to her gorgeous shape from her boobs to her hips, and showing scandalous amounts of thigh between the cut in her dress.

Temptation flashed across Colbie's mind. She was staring at her friend's legs, wanting to run her hands along those thighs and maybe even pull down her panties just for the hell of it, just to see her face light up. It wasn't everyday that she saw the flinty Kendra Tellerman wearing something that revealing. How Celia Hearn managed to get her into that dress must have been a miracle in itself.

"Earth to Colbie. You're not your type," Kendra said, folding her arms over her chest like a schoolmarm and glaring hellfire down at Colbie for her stare and then at Celia for getting her to wear it. "And don't even think about putting this in your damn dream journals!"

At that, Celia Hearn exploded into gut-busting hysterics, and Colbie followed suit, both girls laughing like maniacs as Colbie got to her feet.

"Oh, come on, girl," Celia said. "That dress totally fits you to a T. You were born to wear that!"

Now it was Colbie's turn, who added, "And I bet your handsome Randal's gonna love to see you wearing it. God knows what'll be on his mind when—"

"That's none of your business!" Kendra said, fuming and balling her hands into fists as if she were crushing Celia's head in one hand and Colbie's head in the other. "You two are impossible, and you," she added, pointing her finger like a gun at Colbie's head and making her flinch, "are lucky to be my friend, because I’d shoot you otherwise."

And with that, Kendra spun on her heel and walked off, gaining several looks and come-ons and whistles from passing dreamers and a few ghosts, to which she said, “You wish!”

Colbie traded glances with Celia and smiled a knowing smile. There was no way Colbie would omit this from her dream journal, and she knew Celia felt the same way.

So both girls laughed like maniacs again, but now—

(with 32 minutes left)

3

They spent much of their time observing the festivities, feeling the collective rush of the moment and the noise, but it eventually got stale, and they were getting restless. If Colbie hadn’t had messed up her finicky dream dive into a collective realm like this one, she and her friends would’ve had more time to prepare for another dive into another realm in the next cycle of their REM sleep, but Colbie’s tardiness had shot that to hell. While the festivities were still going on, the noise and the clamor began to fade behind the trio of dream divers as they entered a less crowded thoroughfare with Cobie and her friends resigning themselves to a last-minute change of plans. The only reminders of the festivities now manifested in the distant firecrackers and fireworks scraping through the sky and exploding into starbursts.

For the next block or so, Colbie Amame walked with Celia Hearn instead of catching up with the fuming Kendra Tellerman some paces down the street. Colbie loved messing with Kendra, but she got the feeling that she overstepped a line when she mentioned Randal Larking, the prince of Shad-Row Academy and Kendra's possible boyfriend.

So she passed the time with Celia, talking about their latest dream dives and their choice of fashion for this collective dive into the Orient. On that point, Colbie looked her friend up and down from her trilby to her kimono top over a frilly dress and stockings and boots, then smiled and said, "Still going for that Lolita look?"

Celia let out a sigh and said, "You, too, really?"

"Did Kendra have an issue with it?"

"Yeah, but you know her. She's really conservative when it comes to dress-up, even in her dreams. You have no idea what I had to do to get her to wear that dress."

Of course, knowing Kendra, Colbie had a pretty good idea what that was, so she rolled her eyes and smiled a knowing smile at her fellow conspirator and said, "Let me guess. It has something to do with taking pictures, doesn't it?"

Again Celia let out another sigh and said, "Yep."

"Your nude pics?"

"Don't be disgusting: it's not like that."

"Then what is it?"

Celia took hold of Colbie's arm and leaned into her as they walked, leaning close enough that Colbie could smell her perfume, and Celia whispered into her ear, saying, "She wants me to help her collect certain pictures of a certain someone."

Colbie caught sight of Kendra flinching some paces ahead of them and stealing a glance at them over her shoulder. Maybe there was some truth to Celia’s words, so she said, "By 'certain someone,' do you mean Randal Larking?"

"Yep, I'm sure he's it,” Celia said.

Both girls now saw Kendra flinching, then clenching her hands into momentary fists, then stealing another glance back over her shoulder before continuing on ahead of them.

"And by 'certain pictures,' do you mean," Colbie said, then whispered into her conspirator's ear, "dick pics?"

"I don't know,” Celia said. “Maybe."

Now both girls saw Kendra balling her hands tight, as though she was about to lash out at any moment, then looking back over her shoulder a third time.

So Colbie said, "Do you think she's into that?"

"Well, she likes taking secret pictures of us from time to time,” Celia said, loud enough for Kendra to hear, “especially when we're like this, but she's really cagey about it. Makes me wonder where she keeps those pictures."

"Does she have nude pics of us?"

"I'm kinda scared to find out, but maybe if we confront her about it, she might meet us halfway and—"

That's when Kendra turned around ahead of them and faced them, arms akimbo, stopping Colbie and Celia in their tracks with a murderous glare and saying, "All right, love birds. What's going on?"

Their response was immediate. Both girls flinched at the sight, and something of an electrical shock of fear ran up their spines, but they played along as a mock-couple, anyway, smiling at Kendra and whispering between themselves about their plan. If they played their cards right, Colbie thought, they might find out a little more about Kendra's infamous photo album and where exactly Kendra wanted their second dream dive of the night to be, though they had to be carefully there.

"Oh, nothing," Colbie said, waving her hands in mock-surrender in order to distract Kendra. "We were just talking about Celia's lolita getup, that's all."

"Why do I not believe you?" Kendra said through gritted teeth.

"Oh, I don't know," Celia added, looking away from her uppity accuser with a smile, all moe-eyed and innocent from her lovely curls to her dainty boots. "Only you can answer that, silly girl."

"Why do I get the feeling you were talking behind my back?"

"Because we were talking behind you, silly girl," Colbie said. "Just not about you, specifically."

"Who then?" she said, balling her hands into fists. "And will you stop calling me 'silly—'"

And before Kendra finished, Celia released her spell, and a giant magic seal of pink roses appeared glowing on the ground, one encompassing herself and Colbie and another encompassing Kendra before blinking them out of sight—

(with 18 minutes left)

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