For Everything

Just A Nightmare

I walk under the big "Try New Things General Store" sign and into the cramped store. Off to the left are the fishing hooks, lines, floaties, canned peaches, mayonnaise, and books on trying new things. Off to the right of the store are t shirts, sweats, mirrors, tape, glue, slabs of wood, sunglasses, alarm clocks, and more books on trying new things. In the very back of the store is the main counter with my father standing behind it helping a customer. My mother is carrying an energetic Rosie up the stairs through the back door to the kitchen. I walk through the isles of magnets, postcards, and mini license plates with names on them to the back door. "Hey son," my dad says, waving, "How was school today?"

"Good," I say blankly, fast walking to the door now, not wanting to talk.

"Slow down there Hunter," my father says, grabbing my arm, "I want you to meet a new friend." My father turns me to face a tall pale woman that looks exactly like Felicity with just a couple more wrinkles. "Hunter, I would like you to meet Mrs. Lyone I believe?"

"Yes, you said it right," the woman says sweetly, "Hello Hunter, you can call me Marsha if you like. I hope you had a good first day at school today?" she smiles.

"Yes. I had a fine day, thank you," I paused, unsure if I should mention the next part, "I actually believe I met your daughter today."

"Felicity? Oh really? She's quite the character isn't she? Oh my goodness, look at the time! I only came in for some extra staples, and I ended up meeting a wonderful new family! Well, I hate to be the buzzkill here boys but I have to get back to get dinner ready for the family. It was very nice meeting you all!" Mrs. Lyone says, waving as she closes the shop door behind her.

"Well she seemed nice," I say.

"Yes, she did," my father replies, "I'm about to close up shop for the night, it's getting dark." He was right. It was so funny how fast the sun disappeared behind the horizon line. The thing I would come to learn soon enough is that the town of Blackburg, Maine was always dark, and slowly but surely getting darker every day. My father asked me to lock the front door and turn off the lights as he went upstairs, leaving me in the increasingly dark general store. I walk to the front door and push the key into the lock. When I look up from the iron handle of the door, I see a figure through the misty glass. A tall, looming, silhouette stands across the road from my front door underneath the shadow of a street lamp. it just stands there, hands in its pockets, staring at me. I shudder but put a hand up as a wave. The figure doesn't wave, instead it reaches its hand up and removes the hood it was wearing. I still can't see its face but their hair almost shoots out of the hood. A bright turquiose tangle that falls next to her or his face. Almost as soon as they remove their hood, they turn and walk away, fading away into the gradual darkness. 

Suddenly I see myself standing in a room. A white room. A white padded room. I'm sitting on a padded bench with shackles on my hands and ankles. I stare at a white padded door with a cloudy window. Shadows form on the other side of the window and muffled voices sound. The voices slowly turn to echoes, followed by a violent, piercing noise, screaming. I rush to the door to see what's wrong. The shackles pull taught and restrain me from getting all the way to the window, but the voices are much clearer now and I can make out the features of the shadows. I see a figure in a white lab coat with turquoise hair carrying a clipboard. Their back is to me so I can't make out their face. Three figures emerge into sight. Two bodyguards carrying a limp figure. A girl. She has fiery giner hair and freckles all over her pale skin. Suddenly, Felicity starts screaming and kicking. The guards struggle to hold her wriggling body. Her foot flies up and collides with one of the guards' nose. He lets go of Felicity and stumbles back, clutching his face. Felicity punches the other guard in the stomach and he lets go too. She runs to my window and stares in, finding my face. I scream for her, to get me out of my shackles. I see a look on Felicity's face that looks awful on her, fear. She stares at me, and starts banging on the glass. She starts screaming too, punching the window. Surprisingly, the glass splinters, then cracks, then shatters. Felicity reaches a bleeding hand through the window and grabs onto me. She yells as two hands grab onto her shoulders and a flurry of blue hair enters my vision. A hand plunges a syringe into Felicity's neck and she goes limp. I yell as she is pulled back out of the window. Her hand traces something on my arm and I look down. Her finger had written something while she was screaming. I yell in horror as I look down. Written in Felicity's blood, was the word PRISON.

I shoot out of my bed screaming. I yell and yell until my head hurts. I look around breathing hard. I'm in my bed in my room. It's night and I'm sweating bullets. My clothes are soaked and sweat dribbles down into my eyes. Rosie starts crying from being woken up so abruptly. The light from underneath my door turns on and footsteps sound. My door opens and my parents run into the room. "What's wrong? Is everything okay? Why were you screaming? Why is Rosie crying? Hunter, what is going on?" Millions and millions of questions attack me the minute they enter my room. My mother picks Rosie out of her bed and starts coddling her. The crying subsides.

"Calm down guys. Nothing is wrong. I just had a bad nightmare and woke up. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you." My parents sigh. "Wait a second, how did I even get in bed? I was standing at the store's front door a second ago."

"What are you talking about honey?" my mother says, "You came up from the store and we all had a peaceful evening together. We ate dinner, watched a movie, and talked about our days. That was over five hours ago. Are you feeling okay?" she sits next to me and puts her hand on my forehead.

I nudge it off, "No, I'm feeling fine. I'm sorry, I remember now, just really tired. I just need to get more sleep."

"Okay honey," she kisses my forehead and puts Rosie back in her bed, not crying anymore, "Goodnight both of you." Before I can respond, they are out of my room and my door is closed again. I couldn't get much sleep after that. I mainly stared up at my ceiling, gazed at the stars through my window, or watched how Rosie breathed when she slept. I couldn't get the dream out of my head, or why Felicity and the blue haired figure were in the dream. I tried to forget it, but I couldn't. Every shadow I saw that night I flinched at, thinking they were the bodyguards carrying Felicity's mangled corpse, every bump I saw on Rosie's bedding reminded me of the padding in my cell, and everytime I turned in my bed and the sheets caught my wrists, I almost screamed, thinking they were the shackles that bound me. I came up with a solid solution, I had to either talk to Felicity or the blue headed figure about the dream. I had no way to find the blue headed figure though, so I decided that I would talk to Felicity tomorrow. I had to know for sure. I didn't know a lot about what this would mean for me in the future, but what I did know was that Felicity somehow was involved in this. I also knew that this was not something normal, and this was definitely not a nightmare.