Summer Dream

Peter

He had dreamed of blood and death his entire life. He had lived a dozen lives and died horribly in each and every one of them. He had bled and screamed in languages that he only knew in dreams.

He had been a woman tied to the ground, screaming in some Celtic language, begging in vain for mercy from the Roman soldiers murdering him. He had been a Saxon child, crying blood-soaked tears as his father hacked his entire family to pieces. He had been the son of a Norman lord, sliced nearly into two pieces by his father's broadsword. There were more deaths, some worse than others, some almost peaceful. But he always died.

He couldn't remember a point in his life where he hadn't dreamed of his own deaths. Something had always kept his mouth firmly shut about it, like he had known what would happen if he dared breathe a word about this; a later dream, one that looked distinctly Tudor in clothing and phrasing, had him withering away from starvation in a tower room for telling his husband that he had dreamed of dying in an earlier time.

Some of the ways he had died... He always dreaded the dreams where he was a woman for a reason. After some of those dreams, he refused to so much as touch a woman. He went out of his way to avoid them if at all possible. People always teased him, asked if he was gay, if he was allergic to girls, if he was afraid of them. He always just shrugged and ignored both the question and the implications of it.

He wasn't gay. He wouldn't say he was straight either, though. He couldn't say if it was natural inclination or the byproduct of dreaming of being raped so many times, but he wasn't interested in a relationship with either gender, much less sex. The notion he was allergic to girls was ridiculous, and he certainly wasn't afraid of the majority of them, with perhaps one notable exception: Kimmy Barrett. Something about the popular girl from school made his skin crawl, made him want to make himself into a small target if he couldn't escape her entirely. There was something off about her, and he knew he wasn't the only one to sense that: a lot of animals wouldn't go near her. She had been one of his major tormentors for years, doing whatever she could to make him as miserable as possible without leaving a mark on him.

No, with the exception of Kimmy, he definitely was not afraid of girls. In fact, one was his best friend and had been most of this life. Sarah had been his rock through this life, and that was just the kind of person she was: solid and dependable. It probably wasn't any wonder that so many people judged her to be a reliable person from the moment they met her. She had been working odd jobs for years: delivering food to people who couldn't do their own shopping, driving people to appointments, tutoring after school, and now taking care of rescue dogs while their owners were on vacation. She had even invited him along.

What she had neglected to tell him, what he didn't find out until they arrived at the house, was that she had also invited a few other of her friends, who had in turn invited yet more people. There were at least six or seven cars waiting outside the gate when he and Sarah arrived. She groaned, muttering something dark and disappointed. He, on the other hand, was mainly being concerned about one thing: Kimmy Barrett was in the assembled group, and that probably didn't bode well for him in the least. They weren't at school right now, after all, so there was nothing to keep her from stepping things up a bit.

Peripherally, he could hear Sarah exchanging some less than pleasant words with another of her friends, Jennifer Cassidy, for inviting along additional people, especially without telling her. Knowing Cassidy as he did, he was in no way surprised that she laughed it off, adding some flippant remark about the more, the merrier.

Across two cars, Kimmy locked eyes with him, and he found himself quickly staring down at the ground, desperate to look anywhere but at her. Meeting her eyes had felt almost like a challenge, and that was something he didn't want to get into with her. He just wanted to make it through these two weeks with his sanity and most of his skin intact.

Sarah finally broke away from her argument, shaking her head in disappointment, and went to work on unlocking the gates. They were tall, wrought iron things, decorative but functional; there wasn't enough space between the bars from a small dog to escape, let along a person to slip through. They were attached to brick walls that were at least three or four meters high, too big for the average sized person to easily scale. There were no trees near the wall either, so there was no getting in or out that way.

The first thing he noticed as Sarah drove them in was the cobblestone driveway. It seemed like each stone was a slightly different color. Someone must have taken ages putting it together. The next thing was the fountain in the middle of the circular drive. In the center was a reasonable facsimile of the Winged Nike statue.

But none of that mattered after a moment, not once he saw the rest of the scenery. The house was huge and imposing, with its stone walls and wide windows watching him intently. It looked... hungry, like a very patient animal sizing up its prey.

It had changed since the last time, but then it had changed every time he had seen it. It had been a Saxon hut, a small Norman castle, a Tudor manor, a Regency mansion... Until today, it had only been in his dreams, though.

This was it. This was where he always died. There was no mistaking it.

It should have been terrifying, but instead all he felt was numb. It was almost relieving, in an odd way.

"Welcome," Sarah intoned brightly, speaking to the entire group as they all exited their respective vehicles, "to Summer Dream."

He had come home to die after all.