Superhero Effects

3. JUST A NIGHTMARE

"...you're mine now, Lucinda."

I woke with a sharp inhale, lifting my head from the mahogany desk. The lavender lamp in the bottom-most desk's cubby was still on, the only thing providing light. The on-button of my desktop monitor blinked, signaling it had hibernated inactivity.

To one side was my finished history essay and to the other was a small yellow writing pad filled with random thoughts and useless scribbles.

I put a hand to my chest, sank back into my rolling computer chair, and turned to face the rest of my room. The red numbers on the alarm clock glared at me from the nightstand. Half past five. Thirty minutes before my alarm. My backpack still sat on my made-bed, and tons of homework I was supposed to get done was untouched—besides the stinking essay.

I groaned, rubbing the painful knot on my forehead. "Great."

With a nudge from my toes, I swiveled back to the desk and shook the mouse, bringing the computer back to life. It lit up, right where I had fallen asleep, with my protagonist, Lucinda, sitting in her car defiantly facing her foe.

The cursor blinked, almost tauntingly against the white of the first page, halfway through a sentence. A sentence I just couldn't make myself finish.

My first two books flowed so seamlessly, so quickly. It only took five complete edits to get each perfect, and now—I had the worse writer's block ever. It was interfering with everything: my grades, my every waking thought, my emotional stability, and now, my dreams—nightmares.

Nothing sounded right these days. My romance scenes were too mushy. My fights were uncoordinated. My descriptions were boring. My beginnings were story-bookish, and my endings were cliffhangers when they weren't supposed to be. It just wasn't flowing like it used to, and the craziness I had dreamt last night hadn't helped a bit—because that's all it had been, a crazy dream/nightmare from my slipping and banging my head on ice-lined concrete. I had the bump on my head and the headache to prove it. It wouldn't be the first time I had dreamed crazy, vivid things.

I rubbed the goosebumps on my arms vigorously. I was glad it had been just one strange nightmare, where my subconscious had drummed up characters similar to the ones I wrote. It just meant I was going to get over the block soon.

Through the wall my desk was against, a faint alarm sounded. I rolled my eyes, and all thoughts of drifting back to sleep, in bed this time, dissipated.

Lewis purposefully rearranged his room two weeks ago, so his bed and nightstand were right against the wall our rooms shared. He called it payback for having to pick me up so many times from Peggy's house late at night.

The issue was Lewis woke for school thirty minutes before I did—usually—or at least was supposed to, to do some morning workout, but he never woke for his alarm these days. Mom had told him he had grown used to it, that he needed to try a different sound, but did he? No. So when it went off, it rang and rang and rang until I was forced to wake up, march over to his room, and shut it off myself, and then I would get in trouble for interfering with his workout because I turned off his alarm and made him miss it.

I saved the document unnecessarily—I hadn't succeeded in writing anything new and rose from the desk. I went first to my backpack and dug out the algebra worksheet due third period, the only non-reading assignment. It took me the rest of the early time to get through it, especially with Lewis's alarm sounding faint through my room. By the time I finished, my alarm was going off.

The door to my room opened, and my mom poked her head in. Eyeliner from work last night lingered on her upper lids; it had been her Call night. "No snoozing this morning?"