My newfound vision was greeted by an ocean of crimson red that stretched out over the horizon. The sand at my feet clung to me firmly as the apocalyptic sky of purple cast shadows down on the land thanks in part to its seemingly infinite number of stars above. Any attempts I made to tug at my legs only served to highlight how truly helpless I was as my shoes stuck to the ground. No, it wasn’t the ground. It was them. The tendrils that had emerged from those shadows were holding me in place. I was forced to stand there as a helpless spectator to the doomed soul before me.

It was the distraught, desperate face of Benjamin Otto as he slowly sunk into the red sea.

“Why, Tristan? Why?”

He uttered those final words before his lungs began to fill with the strange sea water. There was no fighting the guilt anymore. He was a soul I had condemned to the bottom of the ocean thanks to my own greed. I wanted this. I fought against my own desire to stay out of the limelight, and this is the result. I pushed someone down to get what I wanted. And what’s worse is that I justified his demise by calling him evil.

The smell of blood rusted the insides of my nostrils as a gentle breeze ruffled my hair, showering me under the weight of my actions.

Can you live with it, Tristan Collins?

A familiar voice, one I’d been hearing all week. Its voice did not feel like an external function of the world, but rather a reverberation of my own soul. It was feminine yet masculine, weak yet strong, peaceful yet threatening.

The culmination of two voices, two souls in one vessel. My heart began to beat rapidly in my chest. I was about to explode. Is this the end of me? Am I… dead?

---

It was bonding time on Monday, and my father and I were out cycling through the neighborhood roads like always. The sun was already well over the horizon. Daylight savings time had come, which meant that our bike rides would no longer be covered by a vague blanket of darkness for the coming months.

The switching of time was an awkward thing for Deer Valley. As the two mountains ranges that loomed above the city served as natural blinders to the sun for some hours of the day, it meant that some areas, depending on their location, were more starved for sunlight than others. The exception to this is any community existing within the middle horizontal line of Deer Valley. When examined top-down from a map, the mountains stretched north at a slant rather than purely vertically, so there are certain areas that experience normal sunlight cycles. The strip of land blessed with this experience is called the “Sun Line”, and it includes certain suburbs including this one, the downtown area, and the area around Deer Valley State. Areas that don’t exist in the Sun Line, such as Bucktail, are typically lower income since they’re less attractive to the average property buyer.

This is all to say that daylight savings served as a time of extra sunlight in the morning for those who lived south of the Sun Line. Regardless of that, however, the change in sunlight had granted me a newfound outlook on our morning ride.

What could I possibly say about the serenity of that morning that truly captured its essence? Aside from the sun, nothing had actually changed. A bright red northern cardinal sat perched atop the telephone wires above, exchanging calls with another bird further away. It flew off when a sudden autumn breeze blew past, brushing the rusted fall leaves of the oak trees, where squirrels were scampering about near their trunks, collecting the newly dropped acorns in preparation for the long winter. They cast my father and me occasional, weary glances as we cycled past them on our bonding journey. Indeed, it was all par for the course as far as my mornings went.

And yet, I found myself admiring this breathtaking every day as it was cast in this comforting, warm sunlight. Every little bit of mother nature’s grace was overflowing with so much love for itself that I felt my heart warming up inside of my chest. It was surreal how beautiful familiar scenery could look with just a small change of perspective. How did I not realize just how much I truly loved being alive? Why didn’t I appreciate my everyday surroundings? I waved at the familiar people who sat on their porches looking out for us as they usually did, and my dad laughed.

“You’re in a good mood today son. Thinking about your girlfriend, huh?”

“I don’t know, I think I just feel really blessed today.”

His smile only sort of curved at the edge of his face, but his furrowed brows couldn’t mask what was going on beneath his expression. Yesterday, my parents wound up holding a pseudo-intervention for me to ask about the bruise on my face. When I told them the truth, they decided that they would call the school, but they calmed down when I told them that the police had it under control. Between the suspension, the sneaking out for homecoming and now this, they were understandably on edge concerning my life at school. If there was any saving grace, it’s that Zoey showing her face led them to believe that I was living a joyful life now. If only they knew that she was the reason things were all such a mess.

“Well, it’s good that you feel that way son. I hope things go well for you today. Let us know what happens, okay? That kid deserves to be expelled. Rachel’s friend said he punched a referee at the homecoming game too. Kid’s a bad apple.”

“I think he’s just going through a lot.”

It might sound disingenuous after everything that’s gone on with him, but I truly wasn’t upset with Ben. Not about Gwen, about Zoey, or even about him raising his hands on me. For the past two days, there has been this fermenting urge within me to reject the entire premise that he was this domineering figure of evil that I had always viewed him as.

It reminded me of something Lance had said a few weeks ago. That, perhaps he’d had his own reason for hitting Gwen, and that while it wasn’t forgivable, it might be a situation that someone could follow the warped logic that led up to him doing it. Barring some form of mental illness, human beings don’t act illogically. He might have anger issues that he needed to get resolved, and he might be misguided. I could argue both of those things, but who even knows what misfortunes throughout his life had even placed him in that situation to begin with? And would I be any different if I had similar things planted within me?

“Son, you don’t have to be so understanding. He’s… I mean, he’s got a history.”

“Yeah, but I still think he should be given a chance.”

“Why?”

I don’t think I’ve ever had any meaningful confrontation like that one with my dad. Any friction between myself and my parents was one where the tensions had escalated out of passion. To calmly oppose them like this was out of character for me.

“If I beat someone up, would you write me off as a bad apple?”

“One bad situation doesn’t make a bad apple, son.”

“No, but it wouldn’t be my first. I already got suspended last week.”

He didn’t respond. The whirring of the bike chains filled the silence as he continued pedaling alongside me.

“Son… are you okay?”

“I’ve never felt better,” I said without smiling.

The world was breathing new life into me with every passing second. I’ve always been so wrapped up in anxiety and self-loathing that I hadn’t taken a moment to stop and appreciate all the majesty that existed in my life. It was the best I’d felt in years. Perhaps hacking Laura Young had been a different kind of drug.

“Well either way, however you feel, just don’t cover for him. Your mom would lose her mind if she knew he got off scot-free. I mean golly-gee son, he needs to be held accountable at some point.”

“I don’t think he should be expelled though.”

That dream I had of Benjamin after the homecoming game flashed through my head. About how I had condemned him to that journey through the tunnel. How he attempted to drag me down with him, asking why. Why had I left him to rot? Why did I leave him to be taken by that nothingness? Is that fair? Is condemning him to the empty world of the tunnel truly fair?

“Son, listen. You have a good heart. I know that. But you can’t just let people walk over you like that. There needs to be consequences.”

I pulled at my brakes, and my bike screeched to a stop in the road. Noticing this, my dad also tugged on his brakes then turned back to face me.

“There’s consequences and then there’s consequences, dad.” When I stopped to think about it, things looked terrible for Benjamin Otto. My actions had taken away the girl of his dreams, his chance at a career in the NBA, and his girlfriend of three years. If I let him get expelled on top of that, then what’s truly left for him? He’ll lose his friends too. He might even lose a chance at a regular future. “Just how many times must someone be trampled over until it’s enough? Don’t they deserve sympathy at some point?”

It was a perspective that the usual me, blinded by my own emotions, couldn’t possibly act on. What I wanted at that moment wasn’t petty revenge or the momentary relief it would grant me, but a solution that would resolve it peacefully for everyone involved. It’s not like he’s completely irredeemable. There was a part of him that Gwen fell in love with. So surely even Ben isn’t all bad. He just needs a helping hand to pull him out of the abyss he’s hurdling towards. Kicking him down is the last thing we should do.

“I get where you’re coming from son, but… you can’t take it upon yourself to save every single mal-adjusted person you meet. It’s his parents’ job to take care of him and understand him. For the rest of us, avoiding those bad apples is all we can hope for. Listen, I… I just don’t want you to be taken advantage of. Leave it to his parents and the professionals. Live your own life.”

My dad is a good person. I could tell that he just wanted what was best for me. He wasn’t corralling me into forcefully adhering to his opinion, but was trying to guide me to the truth as he believed it existed with his years of experience. But I had already made up my mind.

“I don’t think he’s that irredeemable.” I kicked my feet off the ground and began cycling again. The sun was finally rearing its brilliance over even those south of the Sun Line now. Its bright rays beamed over the darkness and ended the night I’d been facing for the entirety of our journey. It had granted me a new outlook on everything around me. I don’t know what the future will hold, but I know now at least that this feeling is something that should be shared with the entire world.

---

Hey guys! We're now halfway into volume 2. I've added a character poll to this chapter in order to get a gauge of who everyone's favorite characters are so far. You get to pick your three of them, so be sure to keep that in mind. I'll release the results in one of theA few chapters. In this chapter I also wrote a little more about Deer Valley's geography. You can expect a map at some point in the future for a helpful visual guide to the town that Dream Paralysis is set in. For now though, I hope you're enjoying the volume!