Dreams (Scenes 4-7)

4

And taking them to a different dreamscape under her power. No longer were they walking alone on a nameless route through abandoned shopping arcades and desolate thoroughfares. No longer were they three tourists walking the fringes of a collective dreamscape. For now they entered another part of the Phantom Realms, the part of the Realms with the farthest vistas of imagination stretch into that dizzy infinity, where they had eked out a little corner of home they called their Floating World, their dream dive retreat, their own floating sukiya-zukuri mansion between the spectral skies of slumber and dreams and the infinite horizon of the Astral Plane.

"Celia, what the hell?" Kendra said, staring all around her in wide-eyed annoyance. "Why'd you bring us back here?"

And ignoring her question, the dynamic duo of Colbie and Celia posed on the tatami floor of the tea room, raised their hands at their unwitting contestant, both holding up three fingers and saying, "Three guesses for the gorgeous Kendra Tellerman."

"Brought to you by the wonderful Colbie Amame," Colbie said, smiling her most radiant smile amid a background of purple larkspurs, "your hostess for tonight's strip show extravaganza!"

"And don't forget the innocent Celia Hearn," Celia added, smiling amid a background of yellow roses, fluttering her tareme eyes, then tipping her trilby in a bow and letting her hair tumble in wavy curls, "your favorite lolita doll for this beautiful occasion!"

Both girls resumed their poses with frivolous faces.

Looking at their shenanigans, Kendra gaped in exasperation, still wide-eyed and now speechless.

"Oh, don't be that way, silly girl," Colbie said.

"Stop calling me 'silly girl,' damn it!" Kendra said, balling her hands into fits and glaring at the ridiculous duo to the last extremity of her plight. "I'm not your plaything! And if you think I'm bluffing, I'll get my big guns and blow both of your brains out. Got that?"

"We're only playing around, geez," Celia said, crossing her arms over her chest in a pout. "You don't have to get all pussy-footed over it."

"And besides," Colbie added, "we don't have much time left in this dream session, so we thought we'd make it fun for all of us."

Kendra shook her head. "It depends on what you mean by 'fun.'"

Colbie looked at Celia, and Celia looked at Colbie, and both of them smiled, before turning their maniacal gazes on the hapless 'plaything' standing before them. Now was the time for the real 'fun,' the kind of fun that involved placing certain caresses and certain touches on certain parts of the human anatomy, eliciting certain sounds and certain emotions now fluttering across their maniacal stares and eager expressions like snapshots of an ecchi show.

Kendra (poor girl) visibly paled and then blushed, stepping back on tenuous feet and wobbly knees. "Don't even . . . Don't you dare! No! No! Come on, guys, you're scaring the crap out of me!"

"Don't worry, silly girl," Colbie said.

"We'll make it all better," Celia added.

The dynamic duo teleported towards Kendra in a blink. Colbie shoulder-tossed Kendra to the floor, which reverberating through the room with the force of a body slam, while Celia straddled Kendra's hips, pinning her to the ground, and went to work on Kendra's sides, tickling the poor girl with the ferocity of a thousand bee stings. Kendra bawled with laughter, arching her back and straining against Celia's merciless tickles, kicking up her legs as Colbie went to work on Kendra's lower half, pulling up the hems of her Mandarin dress, so she could dig in and take off her panties.

But before their shenanigans continued, before Kendra got de-pantied, before her mind broke under Celia's tickling assault, the mansion shook with a jolt, toppling all three girls into new positions.

While Kendra remained in the same position lying on her back, she had her face covered in the frills of Celia's dress. Celia had toppled forward, planting her face on the tatami mats, with her legs now sprawled open and her dress flung up over Kendra's head. All the while, Colbie had her own face planted on Kendra's stomach, with one of her hands still clutching at Kendra's panties and her other hand cupping one of Kendra's breasts.

All three girls groaned on the floor, getting up and struggling to their feet.

"Man, what was that?" Kendra said, propping herself on her elbows, brushing the frills from her head, before noticing her friend's hand cupping her breast. "Hey, get off me, you little perv!" And she slapped the girl on the face.

"Ow! Geez, Kendra," Colbie said, feeling the slap searing into the side of her face, "it was an accident! I didn't mean for that to happen!"

"Then get your hands off my panties, or I'll slap you into next week!" she said with fury burning in her eyes.

Which had the intended effect. Colbie skittered off and cowered under Kendra's growing glare. "Okay, okay, I'm off, I'm off! Calm down, please!"

All the while, Celia groaned, still dizzy from the impact of planting her face onto the floor, still struggling on her hands and knees. "Ugh, I won't be surprised if I wake up with a headache after this."

Colbie and Kendra got up and came to her assistance, both girls taking hold of their fallen friend's arms and hauling her up on their shoulders.

"Hey, are you all right?" Colbie said.

"Looks like you took a nasty fall," Kendra said.

But the girl simply cupped her hand to her head, massaging away the effects of her fall. "I'll be fine, guys, don't worry. Just," and she looked at the shoji screen leading to the outside, "go check outside. Something must've happened outside, if it could shake the whole house."

Ever the trooper, Kendra went ahead, slid back the screen and went out to take a look, while Colbie helped her friend sit comfortably on the floor.

"Celia, are you sure you're all right? You want an ice pack or something?"

"Guys, I found someone!" Kendra yelled from outside.

Celia said, "I'll be fine, don't worry. Just go check on Kendra. She needs you."

Colbie nodded, went out into the verandah, and looked out into the nearby garden, where she spotted Kendra waving at her.

"She's over here," she said. "This girl's in bad shape."

Colbie jumped from the veranda and spirited across the garden pathway and into the garden itself, trampling through the flower patches to get to her friend, then walking up to find Kendra in a small crater with an unknown girl in her arms.

"How bad is it? Tell me," Colbie said, but no sooner had she said those words when she saw the girl's condition with her own eyes. She gasped, placing a hand to her mouth in shock.

The unknown girl was unconscious in Kendra's arms, her blue dress skirt and short-sleeved shirt stained in blood, her hands cut and caked with dried blood. She seemed stuck in a dreamless sleep that most people could only wake up from in bodily form, when sleepers wake up in the morning, for only the living could do so. The dead could never wake up from the sleep of death.

Kendra said, "Come on, help me get her to the house."

Colbie's heart raced at the sight as she stepped into the crater and placed the girl's arm over her shoulder, while Kendra carried her other arm over her shoulder, and they both carried her in silent dread. All the while, Colbie kept praying that this girl would make it, that this broken girl had not succeeded in offing herself.

They carried her to the house, where Celia was waiting for them at the veranda beside the entrance.

Celia gasped. "Oh my God, is she okay?"

"I don't know. Just get the bandages," Colbie said, helping Kendra lay the unconscious girl in the middle of the room away from the night breeze, drops of blood that had yet to congeal marking a trail on the floor. "She's lost a lot of blood."

Celia ran for the supplies in the storage room, pulling out drawers and opening cabinets, then coming back with rolls of bandages and tape, and bottles of water.

"Help me undress her," Colbie said, and she and Celia removed the girl's shirt from the waistband of her dress skirt, before they proceeded to pull up her shirt to see how bad her wounds were.

All the while, Kendra stood apart, her face completely grim, as she held onto the one object the girl had with her when she found her bleeding in the crater of the garden.

"Wait, there's no wound," Celia said, raising the girl's shirt past her bra to make sure, looking over her bare stomach and waist without a single gash anywhere, then looking over her legs from her calves to her knees to her thighs and stopping at her panties without a speck of blood on her. Celia sighed. "I can't see anything to worry about."

"Check her hands," Colbie said.

Then Celia opened a water bottle and poured water over her hands, washing out the blood, and said, "Nothing."

"Really, nothing at all?" Colbie said.

"Not a thing." Celia placed her palm over the girl's stomach, and a seal with pink roses appeared, encompassing the girl's entire body, and her face turned grim. "Her astral body isn't affected, but her mind's really messed up."

"You're kidding me."

"I'm not kidding," Celia said. "This girl's got some serious mental and emotional trauma going on. She might . . . I think she might have a split personality, even."

"Are you serious?"

"Guys," Kendra said.

"Later," Celia said. "I'm trying to figure this out."

"Guys, listen to me," Kendra said, and when both girls faced her, she showed them a kodachi with blood on the blade. "I found this in her hands when I saw her. She might've tried to kill herself."

"Keep that thing away from her," Colbie ordered, and a new stab of worry pulsed through her heart, as she muttered under her breath, "I'll keep her from doing it again, if I have to."

Kendra nodded and was about to dispose of it in another room when the girl began rousing from a dreamless sleep, first shifting to her side and squinting, then shifting to her other side, as if struggling into the consciousness of dreams.

"She's waking up!" Kendra said.

All three girls leaned in to see her awaken into their dream realm.

"Hey, wake up," Colbie said, reaching over and clearing the bangs from the girl's eyes, then wiping the sweat off of her forehead, as the girl roused from sleep and opened her eyes.

Colbie breathed a sigh of relief, saying under her breath, "Thank God."

Then the atmosphere changed, and psychic waves began flooding into the room in torrents, churning up the space with dark emotions: fear, disgust, anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, guilt, self-loathing, masochism, sadism, sadness, grief, sorrow, disappointment, disempowerment, discontentment, apathy, and more besides—all of them differing shades of the same agony, all of them expressed in the void of no happiness, no hope, no love, no life, and even no soul—

All of these emotions expressed in the girl screaming out, "THERE IS NO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!"

A scream that shook the house to its foundations, rattling doors in their door frames, blowing out windows, breaking the floorboards, sending psychic pressure waves from the epicenter of her scream, and threatening to send all three girls flying in opposite directions and slamming against the walls.

First it was Kendra; then it was Celia. Both girls lost their footing and got slammed against opposite walls, Kendra smashing through a shoji screen door, Celia slamming against the wall and collapsing to the floor.

Only Colbie was left standing, struggling to keep her concentration amid the myriad emotions cutting through her resolve and slicing at her soul, till she couldn't take anymore. She lost her footing and was thrown across the room towards the back wall, bracing herself for impact as she dug in deep—

And summoned a hurricane blast roaring through the room, breaking the doors from their frames, sending splinters and tatami mats flying, and caving in the back wall to keep her from slamming into it.

The scream continued for some moments, then dissipated into echoes of phantom screams of anguish. The pressure waves ceased, yet waves of psychic energy were still pulsing through the house, pulsing with the heartbeat of that broken girl at the center of it all.

Colbie doubled over, clamping on her knees to keep herself standing, taking massive gulps of air through raspy breaths. Her kimono was ruined, ripped and scraped in several places, her sleeves torn along the shoulders, and her sash nearly shredded. Her hair was a mess, her twin tails undone and hanging limp past her shoulders. And her soul was in complete disarray, still fighting off the torrents of emotions eating away at her like a dying martyr's last breath.

With everything she had, she pulled herself up and viewed the wake of the girl's devastating power in the ruins of her dream house. Celia lay motionless against the wall, and Kendra was only just beginning to move from the shattered heap of the door frame. And at the center of it all lay the girl, her eyes wide but not recognizing anything around her, her body now levitating off the ground and back to her feet, stock-still like a statue.

Colbie just stood there, looking at the girl with the kodachi in her hand, the weapon she had used to end her own life, still stained in the girl's own blood, still stained in her own living blood.

In that moment of recognition, Colbie knew she had to act. She knew the next attempt would truly end the girl's life. She said, now on the brink of tears, "Don't do it! It doesn't have to end that way!"

Her psychic waves renewed the onslaught in the room, as the girl faced Colbie down with a demonic glare blazing into her soul. "You don't know what it's like. You don't know what it's like! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIIIIIIIIIIIIKE!"

And the whole house shook with her scream, pulsing through the space with the anguish of her voice, with the fury in her eyes, with the hatred in her soul, with the beating of her heart that was slowly breaking . . .

And shattering . . .

And dying . . .

And dissipating into nothing.

And in that solemn void, another voice, a different voice, rang out across the Astral Plane and said, Mara, please, you have to listen to her. Stop it! You have to stop!

And all at once, the girl's rage dissipated, and the psychic waves subsided, just enough for Kendra to gain her bearings and get up and see Celia still lying motionless against the opposite wall. Rage flared through Kendra's body, and her muscles tensed in her right hand, manifesting a semiautomatic pistol there ready to shoot.

"B-but, why?" Mara said, breaking her demonic presence over the entire house. "Don't you wanna see me again?"

Of course I do, but I want you to live, the voice said. Don't die for me or anyone else. I want you to move on with your life!

"But I can't! I don't wanna live anymore," she said, tears welling up in her eyes, as the kodachi faltered in her grip. "Everyone's been taken away from me. I just wanna be with you, sis. That's all I want!"

Their words tore at Colbie's soul, like none of Mara's previous psychic attacks ever could, for words had the power to hurt as well as heal, to denounce as well as accept, to damn as well as save. Words sharpened the emotions of the human heart into swords, and like swords they could be wielded for good and for ill, to protect those you love and cut down your monsters.

So Colbie walked towards Mara, saying, "Mara, it's okay. You're not alone anymore, so—"

"Get away from me!" Mara started backing away, pointing the kodachi at Colbie, but she kept on advancing towards her. "I said, Get away from me!" And she swung the sword at her would-be rescuer, slicing the air with another psychic attack that almost took Colbie's head off and left an enormous gash on the back wall.

"Colbie, be careful!" Kendra said, gripping her gun in both hands, keeping it aimed at Mara's head as she moved along the side wall. "I feel for this chick, but she's fucking messed up!"

"I'm aware of that. Just go check on Celia."

Kendra cursed, then darted to the opposite wall where Celia still lay motionless, and shook the girl frantically with one hand while keeping the gun in her other hand and her eyes trained on Mara, praying to God Colbie won't get hurt. "Come on, come on, come on, wake up already! Wake up!"

After several frantic shakes, Celia broke through her dreamless sleep and roused, groaning on the floor, raising her hands to the back of her head, where she blacked out on impact. "Oh, man, what's going on?"

While Kendra kept shaking her friend and keeping her own sights on Mara, the voice rang through the astral plane, saying, Give them a chance, Mara! I know it's hard to believe, but they're here to help you, not hurt you!

But Mara wasn't having any of it, pointing her weapon at Colbie, still advancing, and backing away as visions of her sister's death flooded her mind. Tears she tried desperately to hold back began trailing down her face. "I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't! I just wanna see you again, sis. Don't leave me alone!"

"You're not alone anymore!" Colbie said, feeling Mara's words digging into her soul like knives. "I'll be your sister. Just put the sword down. I'm here for you!"

"JUST LEAVE ME ALOOOOOOONE!" Mara screamed in a rage of insanity, plunging the sword into Colbie's stomach and through the small of her back—

(with 4 minutes left)

5

Right in front of Kendra and Celia.

"COLBIIIIIIIIE!" they screamed as she collapsed to the ground, thudding on the floor like a thud of a casket closing over the body of the dead.

Celia sprinted towards Colbie's prone body, now bleeding out a spreading pool of crimson onto the floor, saying, "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my GOD! Please no, please no, please no! No, no, no . . ."

While Kendra rushed towards Colbie’s attacker in a blind rage, saying, "You fucking BIIIIIIITCH!" And she landed a solid swing on Mara's jaw, whipping her head to one side—

As a percussive shock shook the whole house, blasting part of the wall into splinters and shreds of plaster and dust and sending Mara slamming into the outside garden, turning up flowers and soil and clay and quaking the ground beneath.

Now Mara lay motionless in a shallow crater, but Kendra wasn't done yet as she stalked towards Colbie's murderer to finish the job, manifesting the same gun in her right hand. Her rage consumed her, and waves of searing heat swirled around her like a tornado of malice, all of her hatred directed at Mara.

She stood over the unconscious girl and aimed her gun at her head at point-blank range, her finger on the trigger, ready to pull, ready to shoot, ready to avenge Colbie's death with one bullet through the cranium into the brainstem—

But something within her could not let her shoot, something deep and sacred standing in the swirl of her darkest emotions like a beacon of light in the storm of her fury. She screamed in her rage and screamed at Mara, saying, "I hate you, I hate you, I fucking hate you! I hope you—"

But she just couldn't say it, not even to sate her own bloodlust at the pain of losing one of her dearest friends. Even in the blinding storm of her hatred, she couldn't shed the blood of the innocent, not even this pitiful specimen of humanity, this tormented soul lying there, battered and bruised, her shirt soiled and shredded, yet her face remained a picture of repose in a dreamless sleep.

So Kendra turned and ran towards her friends with tears trailing down her cheeks, vowing to never become a monster, not even for Colbie's sake—

(with 3 minutes left)

6

Which left Mara's astral body unmolested in the shallow crater, her conscious mind submerged in a dreamless sleep, leaving a void for her sister's ghost to possess for the time being. As Mara's loving sister, she needed to give Mara another chance at life before it was too late to set things right. So she picked herself up and followed Kendra's path towards the house, almost gliding as she walked, for she was a ghost in the astral body of a sleeping human being. She was a ghost within a ghost, an intangible possessing the intangible form of someone else, someone of her flesh and blood, someone she loved more than life itself.

When she reached the hole in the side of the house, she saw Kendra and Celia crying over their fallen friend in the middle of the room, with the pool of blood absorbing into the tatami mats. The scene sent tears to her eyes, for she remembered looking over Mara crying over Nico’s own dead body, crying as her own life-giving blood spread on the stage floor from a self-inflicted bullet wound to her head, while an audience laughed and jeered, applauding the twin sisters for putting on a jolly good show of Russian roulette, and their parents screamed and strained against their restraints, crying in agony at seeing one of their beloved children dying by her hand, dying by chance, dying by the pull of the trigger.

She sympathized with those two, for when this dream ends in just a short while, they would never again see their friend’s living eyes after they wake up. She walked up to them, but when they saw her approaching, Celia threw up several circles of protective seals against her while holding Colbie's lifeless astral body close to her, and Kendra stood up and aimed her gun at her, rousing the last embers of anger left in her after mourning the death of her friend.

Yet onward she walked, passing through Celia's protective seals like a phantasm, like a nightmare come true in the guise of a teenage girl.

So Celia hugged Colbie's body closer to herself, tight as death's embrace, and said, "Why can't you just leave us alone? Just leave us alooooooone!" And she sobbed into Colbie's blood-stained kimono, refusing to let her go even in death as her friend’s form started fading into limbo.

"Why are you doing this?" Kendra screamed, adjusting her aim as the phantasm girl moved closer and closer in silent steps, tears trailing her cheeks in despair. "Please, please, I'm begging you. I don't wanna shoot you. I don't wanna see another person die!"

Now losing her nerve and dropping her aim, Kendra let go of her gun, letting it drop to the floor with a thud, like the thud of the casket over the dearly departed, never again for living eyes to see. Kendra dropped to her knees to be closer to her friends, hugging Colbie's lifeless form close to herself and squinting her eyes shut of yet more tears.

Yet Mara's sister dropped to her knees, reaching out to the girls with compassionate hands, only for them to pass through their faces. With her own tears welling in her eyes, she said, "I wish I could wipe your tears, but I can't."

Celia and Kendra looked up at her through bleary eyes, red from crying over the dead.

Kendra said, "Who are you?"

"I'm Nico, Mara's sister. All three of you heard my voice when I was talking to my sister, but I couldn't save her." With tears now trailing her cheeks, she said, "I couldn't save her in life, and now I can't save her in death!"

And like kindred souls, connected in mutual grief, Kendra and Celia reached out their hands to touch her face, to wipe the tears from her eyes, but their hands passed through.

"Listen to me," Nico said. "Please, try to understand her. She never used to be so violent. She's been through more than you could imagine, but I can't save her anymore. Mara needs you. She needs you more than she could ever need me."

"But . . ." Celia said. "But why?"

"Because Mara is alive. I know she's alive. As long as she's alive, I know you can save her."

"But why us?" Kendra said.

"Because you three showed more courage than anyone I have ever known. You," turning to Celia, "cared for Mara and worried over her. You," turning to Kendra, "could've killed her, but you never did. And this poor soul here," turning to Colbie's lifeless body, "never gave up on my sister, even at her worst."

Kendra said, "But she's—"

"No," Nico said. "She's not dead. Promise me, both of you, promise me you'll save my sister!" And now she lost her composure, sobbing as she said, "Promise me, because this is the last thing I can do for my own flesh and blood!"

And so as one, as if Colbie were still with them in body and soul, each of them said, as one and all, "I promise."

With their renewed courage, Nico placed her hand over Colbie's wound and said, "My God, my God, please hear my prayer. The living save the living, but help me save the dead!"

And all at once, a blast of light shot through her hand and into Colbie's wound, as Nico herself began dissolving away into nothing.

Her last words were these: "When you meet my sister, tell her I love . . ." And her words and her voice and her spirit drifted away into the void of forgotten memories, forgotten to all except Kendra and Celia and Colbie and Mara and God, the Keeper of dreams from now till the end of all dreams—

(with 0 minutes left)

7

When the timer beeps on Colbie Amame's dressing drawer, rousing her from a tumultuous sleep. So she reached for her watch right next to the lamp and put it on and glanced at the dial: 5:15 a.m. The first morning light was at least an hour and thirty minutes away from streaming through the blinds and falling on her sleepy eyes. It took her several moments for the meaning of the time to compute through her head, because the last five minutes of her dream dive got submerged in the death-like static of unconscious and dreamless sleep when she got stabbed through the stomach and died in her dream.

She then scrambled out of bed, throwing off layers of sheets, and saw a large patch of dried blood caked on the fabric of her top over her stomach. Then she fingered at the hole in the center of the patch, where the blade had entered her astral form, and raised up her shirt but saw no gash on her stomach or even the faintest trace of a scar on her skin. Then she pulled off her shirt over her shoulders and saw a larger spread of dried blood on the back of her shirt, where she had bled out the most, and fingered at the hole in that spread, where the blade had run through the small of her back. But when she turned towards her bed, she saw a pool of dried blood on the bedsheets of her dorm room, and that's when she realized the worst of her dream, a dream she couldn’t wake up from.

That's when she screamed and screamed and screamed, waking up half of the students on her side of the dorm building as footfalls came rushing towards her dorm.

That's when the door to her dorm room burst open, and in came her friends with panicked expressions and tears in their eyes, both Kendra and Celia tackling their friend to the ground like before in their dream dive. Only now they wrapped their arms around her shoulders and hugged her and kissed her, holding her close to their bodies, neither wanting to let go of the friend they loved and so very nearly lost.

Oshimai