Evening Dreams

The Punishment

Roy wakes up one day feeling terrible. It was the last day of summer. He goes down stairs resisting. He stumbles out of his room slouching and attempting to go downstairs. The stairs begin appearing as if they were wet, but Roy thinks nothing of it. He finally gets downstairs and sees the chairs rearranged in an odd order. They were almost in a perfect line pointing to an open window with a faint breeze poking out of it. When all of a sudden the earth around him begins morphing into a grass plain.

He realises he is no longer in Hart and begins pacing around this strange atmosphere. A strange dark cloud begins fading into the beautiful blue sky, covering the grass in a thick blanket of shadow. The ground once again morphs and this time into a barren desert with nothing, but sand for miles. He begins running away with grains of sand flying past his white skin and with each step the sands begin flying creating a humongous sandstorm. The storm lifts him up and then violently throwing him into the sand.

The sand around him begins disappearing, revealing a galaxy with infinite stars and planets. When his mind suddenly goes blank and wakes up in Hart. He begins running downstairs, sweating with a terrifying feeling that he can't make out. He finally makes it down and looks around. The chairs aren't weirdly lined up which makes him feel slightly better. "Hey kiddo! What's wrong? You look like you just saw the devil." said Ms. Damples. Roy was speechless that he could only stutter a few words. "I-I'm fine." muttered Roy, staring at the realigned chairs.

Roy just suspected he had a dream, so he went to his room to play on his X-box. He inserted a Minecraft DVD and began clicking and tapping the plastic buttons on the controller. He kept playing until he eventually died in-game, so he began walking to his friend's house, Carson Gonzalez. "Hey Roy! You good?" said Carson, noticing bits of sweat left on his hand and the shaking. "Yeah, I'm fine." sighed Roy. "I saw you were online on our server. You're barely on the game."

Roy assumed Carson was going to suspect he wasn't fine, so he blamed it on Sydney his little sister. "Yeah, my sister Sydney was on it. She loves games." He grinned. Carson brushed it off threw him a controller and they began playing For the King 2. They began choosing their avatars when the screen turned off, but not completely. A dark shade of blue covered the TV and the friends began freaking out. They reached for a phone, but no one picked up. Carson's mom was usually sitting in her room doing laundry, but no one was in sight. All of a sudden the doors began slamming and opening up and closing.

Then to make matters worse Carson began turning to dust before Roy's eyes. Roy ran outside to his house and found his mom who began turning to sand. Carson was gone. His mom was gone. Carson's mom was gone and no one picked up the phone. Panicked, Roy began barging into every house in Hart. Mr. Reed's, Mr. Levero, Mrs. Gonzalez. Even Jesus the baker was vanished with only dust on their domains. He came to the final house in Hart. Harry Lock's cottage. Still no one was in sight and then Harry's old radio's speakers began producing muffled sounds which turned into a deep male's voice. "The gods are unhappy son." Roy was shocked the radio produced any sound at all. "Who are you? Who is this?!" demanded Roy, banging the table the radio sat on.

The voice ignored Roy and continued talking. "As punishment Veer, God of Dreams has decided to bring a dark cloud above your heads that will rain acid, bullets, and anything you mankind has ever used against one another. We call it 'The Punishment'." Roy began freaking and pleading to the mysterious voice for mercy. "Unless..." "Unless what? Anything!" "Unless you go through a dream, just like you had this morning, but worse and more painful. We shall spare your worthless species." The transmission ended and was woken up by Carson. "Hey bro! You good you just fainted!" exclaimed Carson, waving his hands in the air, trying to alert Roy. Roy did not know what he was up against and neither did Hart.

Roy made up an excuse to leave Carson's house and because of what Carson just saw he was fine with it. He began walking down the house's steps when the clouds above him became black and covered Hart once again in shadows.