The man cursed halfway, stopping and exhaling heavily while all I could possibly do was stand there and look at the destroyed cavern that was the underneath of my bed. Trying to piece together the fragments of consciousness I'd managed to hold onto in the chaos of everything, only managing slow-motion images behind my open eyes. I saw it all happen again, this time detached by experience and time, and yet everything was just as vivid and the twisting in my gut was just as real. And I was exactly as confused.
The man's mumbling momentarily distracted me, suddenly aware that, yes, there was another person here. I looked over at him, his eyes glaring over at the hole as if he expected whatever Michael had become to jump out again. He was tense, but at the same time he held a kind of exhausted and numb look about him, almost tired-looking though veins stood out on white-knuckled hands still grasping the glittering hilt of the sword. I glanced over at the sword again, at the steadily trickling golden stream of tiny dots, at the unnatural golden hue about the whole thing.
And I rationalized that this was most likely not a normal person. At least, he was a normal person holding a not-normal sword. In fact, as I had time with the sudden halt in activity, I looked the man over and realized that he looked positively normal compared to the extremely abnormal weapon in his hands. While it glowed a pulsing, almost hypnotic hue of warm yellows and whites and gold, he was muted and diluted, from head to toe. In fact, I found only one common marker between the two. Yellow.
Yellow hair, done back in afterthought with more hanging limply and dirtily in his face and across his neck than actually pulled back. Dull yellow jacket, looking as if it might once have been regal and magnificent military coat like the one my grandfather had worn, but now just covered in dirt and greys, the fabric rubbed almost thread-bare in random small patches, the front buttons undone and revealing an even darker yellow undershirt. The same went for his pants and his shoes, both in equal states of disarray and tatteredness, as if this man had gone months, maybe even years without repairing or washing anything he wore.
In all, the man looked extremely unfit for the sword he held with such surety. It was beautiful, magnificent, even in the moment where I felt something shatter in my own reality, it was still beautiful. But the man was not. He was small, not skinny but not muscular like most men I'd seen in pictures with swords and military coats, and maybe just a tad too tall. He was unkept, with something wild in him, something that emanated from somewhere I couldn't quite pinpoint. He was certainly no warrior, no hero of some magnificent journey. Face slightly unshaved, looking as if this were the very last place on Earth he'd rather be.
There was nothing brave or gallant about this strange man. Just a wildness and anger and mystery. He was nothing like a character in a book, and so I had no idea what to think of him. I just stood there, looking at him, wondering when he'd move from his crouched position, wondering what had happened, wondering where Michael was. I did a lot of wondering in the few moments where I waited for him to speak first, but with no answers, my wait grew impatient.
Heart still beating out an odd rhythm, as if it weren't quite sure what to do at the moment, I took a tentative step forward. Success, my leg not crippling under me. I took more slow, testing steps, now focused on the blackened crater beneath my bed, wondering if it were deep, wondering if Michael would come out soon, or at all, or if I wanted that, or if he were Michael at all. And then I wondered why he wouldn't be, what had happened, if he were, if he weren't, why he would, if he could, and everything was so strange and I didn't know any of the answers and Michael wasn't there to tell me and I felt like my own mind was suffocating itself-
"Stop that!" A firm grip took hold of my arm and yanked me from the crater I'd almost knelt by, roughly staggering me from it and spinning me to face the man, his skin considerably red around his neck and cheeks now. He glared at me as if I had done him some horrible wrong, and I was far too dizzy from my own mind to be offended or curious. "What do you think you're doing? You just...I want to know why you just did...that!" He practically screamed, throwing forward his hand with the sword, pointing to the large hole beneath my bed.
YOU ARE READING
The Boogeyman's Lullabye
FantasyMadeline Cadelle, like most any of us, had never thought of her own mind. It was a far-off place she knew nothing about. And that was true, but it was anything but far-off. It was inside of her, a place she never would have visited had her Boogey...
