Dead End

Good Bye

       Apollo wakes up, but mentally checks himself. He's really awake, lying on a real bed. He could have laughed with relief. But refraining himself, he listens. Something isn't right. Low voices mumble right beside his bed. If he'd open his eye, he would see them right above him. The voices sound strangely familiar. Apollo peaks an eye open. Three college students in black are standing by his bedside, heads bent together in an angry discussion. Apollo suddenly recognizes them as Jayden's friends, and the glint of a sharp blade catches his attention. Forgetting caution, he opens his only working eye wide open and stiffens, preparing to throw himself off the bed if he has to.

       The burliest looking man, with a hulk like disposition, is the one waving knife around. Apollo recognizes the other two as Ben and Cleon.

       Hulk man turns to Apollo and he quickly shuts his eye, feeling sweat trickle down his temple. Hulk man says, "Let's do it quickly, before anyone finds out." Apollo grips the sides of the bed in preparation.

       Apollo hears hulk man's laboured breathing right above him, and in a sudden burst, painfully flings out his right foot into the man's groin. Hulk man cries out and Apollo yells in pain and rolls off the other side of the bed onto the floor. He refrains a scream against the excrutiating pain. Apollo sees Hulk man round the bed.

       "No!" Apollo fights to get away, but Hulk man raises the long blade over Apollo's body and stabs.

       Apollo gasps awake. Bright light momentarily blinds him and he raises an arm against the sunlight. When his eyes begin to adjust he looks around him. He is at the end of a long hallway, standing in front of a window. A stout wooden clock sits on the table in front of him showing about 8 in the morning. The sun rises over a forest of pine trees. Down the hall, rooms with intricate numbers on the doors extend along either side. He's back in the castle. What's happening to me?!

       One moment he was being beat up in a hospital and the next he's back in this strange dream. Apollo yells and tries kicking the furniture, but of course his foot just goes straight through. He stops and stands rigid, back to the window, fists clenched at his sides.

       Then a door opens. Apollo watches with anticipation. A little hatted head peaks out from behind the door just below the door handle. His big, bright green eyes watch Apollo with curiosity. He says nothing.

       "What're you looking at?" Apollo says angrily.

       The boy shrinks behind the door a little further. He says nothing.

       Apollo sighs in frustration and turns back to the window. As Apollo watches, the sun raises over the pine tops and its ray's arch out over the forest and through the window, bathing the whole hallway in golden light. The rays pass right through Apollo.

        "Why were you screaming?" The little boy's voice is high and innocent with a hint of a British accent in the childish slurs.

       "Because I'm dead, and you are the only one that can see me." Apollo grinds his teeth in anger and swallows hard. He hadn't known how truthful he had just been until he said it.

       "Why are you dead?"

       Apollo really doesn't want to answer him. But this is his only opportunity to talk to someone, anyone, even if he is just a child. Apollo turns to the boy. He is still watching Apollo with that innocent, curious gaze that all children have. "I fell off a cliff face when I was rock climbing. I was..." Apollo remembers his every move leading up to the moment, " I was stupid and chose to risk my life and my friend's gear to try to beat someone. But he won and got away and now I'm left dying in a hospital bed hundreds of miles from here." Apollo says the last part a little hostilely.

       "So you're a ghost?"

       "I-" Apollo thought about the strange way he would always enter his dreams. He had been in this nightmare from the time he went into a coma until he was somewhat healed and then did not dream, even when he slept, until Jayden's friends beat him up. The only times when he was in this nightmare was when he was dead or close to death. Apollo realizes with dread that for all he knows he could be dead now. "I got to get back to the hospital to see if I'm still alive." Apollo strides past the boy down the hall. The little boy watches curiously after him and he goes down the stairs, and passes out the front door into the open courtyard. It looks so different in the day time than at night. Apollo doesn't know what to do. At a lose, he cries out to the sky, "I need to go back home! Take me back!" His voice does not echo as it should. There is no reply.

       "You took me way out here! I need to go back!" Still nothing.

       "TAKE ME BACK HOME!" Apollo screams in a rage and collapses to his knees. He continues to scream in pain and rage and sorrow and fear that he really is dead. He curls over and screams into the ground. "YOU CAN'T DO THIS TO ME!"

       The ghostly winds remain silent.