For the second time in thirty years, the entire world has fallen asleep...
Thirty years after the Greymen caused the decimation of her people, high school drop out Rain Collins spends her days learning to pickpocket and hold her booze. Yet she long...
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Large, grey buildings shot up on all sides, surrounding me. Long, narrow, and winding, the only road led to an ornate building in the grey city's square. I took a single step and was on the roof, overlooking the vast, grey city.
Filling the streets, covering the roofs, were thousands of Greymen. The invaders themselves.
As a child of the post-Big Sleep era, I had never seen a Greyman before, but my bedtimes and campfires were all filled with detailed descriptions. I recognized them immediately.
Tall, human-like creatures with watery grey skin that seemed to pour from their skeletons, painting their fluid shapes. In place of clothing, flaps of loose, drooping skin adorned their slender bodies, both disguising and accentuating their individual forms. From so far, I couldn't make out the thousands of dark eyes that I knew searched for me, the blood red claws that sought to tear my skin.
Imagining a dark eye trained up on me, I ducked behind the roof's ledge. I had to avoid the gaze of the nasty things. If one found me, I would be lost to its nightmares. Maybe forever.
Safely hidden away for the moment, I considered the meaning of the Greymen's appearance. For one, it meant that I was dreaming, which meant that I was asleep. Now, I was no Dreamwalker, but I knew that simply knowing that I was asleep could be the difference between living and dying.
But the arrival of the Greymen meant another thing: somehow, the Big Sleep had returned.
I had no time to wonder at the how or the why of it all. Out in the open like this, I was in serious danger. Somehow, I had to get to the Green City, hidden safely away from the Greymen and their nightmares. To even start looking, I first had to escape the horde.
A story my father once told tugged at my mind. He had summoned a great beast to help him fight the Greymen back in his glorious days as a Dreamwalker. It was near the beginning of the war and he was trying to rescue a few of the city kids, when a horde of Greymen cornered him in a nightmare. Hundreds of them bore down on him. Mustering his courage, he pictured his old dog, Spot.
Suddenly, Spot was there, a hundred feet tall and menacing. Every Greyman fell to his faithful pup and not a child was harmed that day. At least, that's how Dad always told it.
I closed my eyes and pictured a massive animal, a beast. In my mind's eye, I saw a roaring lion rear back on its haunches, preparing to pounce on a helpless, cowering Greyman, dwarfed by the lion's size. Calling forth all of the bravery that I had, I stood to face the horde of Greymen below. But they weren't there anymore.
Confused, I sat down again. Perhaps there were no Greymen. Maybe I wasn't even dreaming. Or maybe I dreamed them? The door to the roof opened beside me and several Greymen materialized there.
Panicking, I closed my eyes. I heard the mew of a kitten as I felt myself fall.
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