The mages had done something more than just knock her in the head because Katie went into the Dream Lands. No more loathsome, cursed place could exist. As a child, her mother called the dream place her night terrors. Night Terrors. Even then, Marie didn't listen. Two-year-old Katie, smart, talkative, had tried to tell her and the doctor. It was a whole, unpleasant world, controlled by conniving, manipulative sphinx, where djinn, manticore, and every other narcissistic, sociopathic monster mankind had dreamed up lived in their not so happy ever after. The adults chalked up her night terrors as the imagination of an extraordinarily intelligent child.
We have a special school for them. Would Marie like to send Katie?
Marie said no. Took her home, gave her half a melatonin in big spoonful of Irish Cream from the bottle on top of the refrigerator.
Since then, Katie only went back to the doctor for the required shots. Every time they invited her to go to the free special school and every time Marie said no.
It was a long time ago, but Katie's memory wouldn't let her forget. Her spongy little brain remembered stuff. Her stuff. Other people's stuff. All the stuff was in there somewhere. This place jogged it loose. Her attention zeroed to the face of that doctor, while she sat in the too big chair wrenched with frustration. She saw it now. The eyes. The aura around his body. The doctor had been a human mage. Still powerless. No more metaphysical paranormal juice in him than in any other regular person; that doctor had just been another man with a degree on his wall until the world broke and instead of losing everything, he gained it all.
The Dream Land was a good place for that kind of clarity, but it came at a cost. She'd been sucked down the drain into this place every night until her first period. Forced to pay the price, every stinking time. A lock of her hair. A painless piece of fingernail. A scratch that drew blood. A creature would find her, no matter where she hid and make her pay a piece of herself. Weird, but her menstrual cycle gave her cramps and control over her own damn mind, while all the other thirteen-year-old's had been losing theirs. She hadn't returned here since then.
She hadn't had her wits knocked about like this before, either.
Sometimes she'd found answers here. The sphinx would talk to her. It spoke in long, drawn out stories, taking what felt like days to get to the point, peppered with riddles that made no sense, and lightly salted with hints of her destiny.
"Will I grow up to draw pictures? I wanna be an artist!"
Katie learned it was better not ask.
Motherly, patient as long as she did not cry and used good manners, her little girl self made friends with the sphinx. Please, thank you and yes, ma'am or she'd find herself tumbling across the dusty, colorless landscape with a hard swat to the butt. Otherwise the creature indulged the little girl, telling long tales in a wise, melodious voice. Katie usually fell asleep cradled in it's lap, warmed by the fur on it's forelegs.
She had not made friends with the djinn. That creature always demanded a lock of hair, pulling hard until Katie screamed, sawing through it with a dull knife so that when she woke up Marie would be sure to notice and wonder why, why her daughter kept cutting her hair and lying about it.
The manticore was a hundred times worse, a bearded man face, lions head and body strange and incongruous with his scorpion tail. The mismatched parts didn't fit together right in her mind. His favorite game was to find her before she could find the sphinx, chase her until she peed her panties, and leave a long scratch down an arm or a leg that made her scream and wake up her mother in the bed across the studio apartment.
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Katie And The Reaper (A Post-Apocalyptic Romance)
FantasiBorn right before the world was broken, Katie isn't quite human, despite what Mom claims. And the male she's had a crush on since she was fourteen isn't human at all. In fact, there is reason to believe that he is one of the monster's who helped br...
