BONDED

Chapter 5

Michael had disappeared before Dan could lay one on him. All he had left behind was a vacuum. Maybe a friend had woken him up. Dan had thought.

It did not really matter as he knew Michael would be back. After all this was Michael’s dream, right? With that thought, Dan scanned the dark that surrounded him.

Why was he still here if this was a dream? Did dream lands still exist even when the dreamers were awake? Or was this Michael’s subconscious? Isn’t the mind of a lover supposed to be a comforting place? Michael did clearly look infatuated by him, did he not? So why did he feel like a prisoner? Why did the comfort that he’d felt before disappear with Michael and why was loneliness the only thing left behind? Was Michael the key to that serenity?

These thoughts circulated Dan’s mind as he searched through the darkness, checking to see if there was anything that he had missed before. He felt unease. Unsettled. Though he held his head up high, the fear could not be erased from his eyes.

Dan had two theories.
Either Michael was using him as he was using Michael, and that the feeling Dan was having in the moment represented Michael's actual feeling.
Or this was not Michael’s mind but some sort of limbo.

Either way, the feeling was unnerving. Dan had been a lot in his past life but fearful was not one of them. But here he was, terrified.
Though his body language tried to hide it, they left traces all over him. He needed Michael back.

As he kept searching, looking in circles at places he'd already looked before, his eyes fell on something. Something that hadn’t been there in his multiple searches. A dim glow in the far distance.

Dan couldn’t tell how far away or wide the glowing object was. He felt like he was standing in space but with no stars to guide him. The only reference he had to guide him, was the cloud that he stood on.

He stared at the glowing object with his vampire eyes, hoping they would help him see clearly what laid ahead in the far distance but it did not work. His powers seemed to not work here. He hadn’t even notice the blood coursing through Michael’s veins which was odd for him.

Standing on the cloud, Dan thought of how to get to the glowing object. One bad idea after another, he settled on simply walking over there. Maybe there was an invisible pathway that he wasn’t seeing . He thought. He needed to do one thing to prove the possibility.

He walked over to the edge of the cloud and carefully passed his hand through the boundary to see if there was anyway he could leave. It felt a little colder on the outside, but his hand passed through it with ease. He then looked down to see the fall, should things go south. Literally. But then again, there was nothing to give him reference.

Dan now had the confirmation that he could leave his bubble but where to? Was the problem. Could he even make it a step beyond? After pacing up and down the cloud for what seemed like eternity, Dan decided to do it. It felt futile but he still wanted to give it a try.

Also a belief that the sorcerer did not yet want him dead, gave him a little pep in his step.
With that notion, Dan walked over to the edge and took his first step in the dark, hoping there would be an invisible pathway his foot would land on.
“Here we go.”

================================

Dan wiggled his leg in the dark hoping it would land on something but it just hang in the emptiness. He took his left foot back and tried again with his right foot. He had nearly tripped as he pushed his leg a bit too far past the horizontal plane of the cloud.

He pulled his leg back up and looked back at the faint light. It was still there.
Dan wondered how long it’d been since he started this or since Michael left. He could have at least used his hunger to tell time but he felt none. It could be hours, days. He had no idea. He'd lost count a long time ago.

As Dan stared at the light, He decided to forgo his initial mission and try something new. He needed to test out the rules of this prison. And the way to do that, was to jump. Knowing that the sorcerer most of all wanted to see him suffer, gave him the confidence boost that he needed. As he knew he was less likely to die. Less likely.

Dan planned on waiting for Michael but changed his mind. He had no idea how long it would take for Michael to come back and he didn’t want Michael stopping him from what he needed to do. He needed to test this out on his own.

Dan looked down one more time, readied his nerves as he turned around. He relaxed his body and gave into the dark. Falling face up.

There was no wind to whoosh by his ear, just the coldness of his surroundings. He felt the temperature drop as he fell further and further into the dark.

This was not the best time to be shirtless. Dan thought as he wrapped his arms around his body when the shivers started to set in.

He looked around him as the cloud above him got smaller and smaller, hoping to see something, a loophole to his way out but he found nothing.

After Dan had fallen for what seemed like forever, he started to feel warm again. But this wasn’t a gradual rise in temperature as it was coming at him fast and hard.

He started to burn up. Falling, he turned and faced away from the direction of the cloud to see what it was, only to be met by flames that were about to be projected from the open throat of a dragon.

Dan had nowhere to run as he fell in the direction of the flames. He screamed in pain as the scalding flames engulfed him.

As Dan screamed, he felt his body twist and turn on something soft. He opened his eyes to find himself lying on a cloud. He assumed it was the same cloud that he had jumped from.

He immediately got up and ran to the edge. He looked down and saw hints of red in the very far off distance. It had been real but he did not die. What kind of illusion was this? Dan thought.

Though that was a failure, it had given him a bit of a reference. Comparing the size of the dim light to that of the fading flames that had lit him up, it seemed the dim light was closest to him.

He wasn’t planning on going there anytime soon since he didn’t want to be barbecued again, but it was still a good information that may prove useful in the future.

As Dan looked up to the dim light which seemed to be on the same horizontal plane as his, he wondered what it could be. Maybe it was another lit-up cloud. With a prisoner standing on it looking back at Dan’s dim light, wondering if there was anyone there. Did that prisoner hear him scream? If he was to shout now, would the prisoner hear him? Dan wondered but held off on that since he didn’t want his voice bothering Michael again.