The Morning Star

Chapter I "Dream"

"Where am I..." The voice of the teen stuttered as he raised his hand to block the strong light on top of him. He got up from what seemed to be an eternal sleep to find himself in a well-furnished hotel room, laying on the king sized bed with absolutely no memories of how he got there. As his eyes adjusted to the light he moved out of bed gulping in fear and shock just as he looked out of the window. The awful view of the city burning below him, the huge smoke clouds forming on top of the orange lit streets, but everything was too small, everything was so far. The building he was in, a skyscraper? Is this why his room was so well kept with absolutely no signs of any catastrophe? But why was he there in the first place? A million questions buzzed through his head as he ran to the door and busted out of the room hoping to find someone, anyone to explain what was going on.

As he busted out the door his legs crippled down stopping him dead in his tracks after noticing how dark the halls were. The lights flickering from the end of the hallway over a room service trolley that was knocked to the floor with all its holdings scattered around it. "What the hell is going on here..." He asked himself one more time as he leaned on the open door and took a deep breath before yelling "Hello... anybody here!" The only reply he got was the electricity flicking the light at the end of the hallway. With nowhere else to go, he moved across the hallway as his footsteps echoed loudly through his mind, reaching the light he found himself facing the exit door. He then grabbed the rusty handle forcefully pulling it to open the jammed door.

"This place is starting to creep me out." He muttered to himself as he leaned over the iron rails of the stairs looking down at the endless floors below him. He then took a look up and noticed the end of the stairs was just three floors away. The roof, a place where he can at least pinpoint his current location. His breathing intensified and his heart shivered in fear as he took the stairs up to the rooftop. Reaching the end of the stairs under the dim emergency lights took had him gasping as he consumed more and more oxygen to calm his wrecked nerves, with a final breath, he opened the rooftop door to be greeted with the night silence. The teen walked out of the door scanning his perimeter, the shocking surprise that awaited him locked his eyes and made him breathless.

Sprouting through the broken blocks of cement, a tree that aged nothing less than a hundred years, its stem thick and dry, its branches big and proud. "A tree up in the middle of nowhere..." his mind added to the questions as he slowly felt his body moving toward the tree. The outlines of the tree looked familiar, he wasn't a big fan of plants and biology, but as he got closer and closer to the tree that blocked the orange lights from the fires afar, it became more and more familiar. His mind finally caught a grip of the memories kept away, the tree reassembles what they call "the tree of life", but that didn't explain how the hell it ended up on the roof of a building, nor the dark aura that was now visible to the teen. As much as he desired to stop, his body kept moving towards the tree until he reached its base. From there he looked up at the giant before falling down to his knees with his jaw dropping. His face froze in fear as he took one final look at the branches that were hiding six dead bodies lynched on the branches, hidden behind the leaves.

The tears rolled down his face as he could tell the identities of the lynched bodies, the bodies of his mother, father, his girlfriend and her parents, and finally... his own dead body staring at him with wide open eyes. The teen clutched his eyes with his hands. He felt lost, sinking in all the superstitious events. right then he was interrupted by a voice from far away, spooked he jumped in place falling back to the ground as he looked around, frantically hoping to find a savior to get him out of this dream world. "Who is it! Show yourself." He yelled as his eyes, desperate for answers scanned the place over and over again. "We're right here." A voice that he knew quite replied. That didn't comfort him at all, in fact the reply made the teen feel like a knife just got shoved into his throat choking him to death. He turned around slowly, hoping it wasn't true, his eyes then rolled back to the top of the tree to meet up with the faces of all six bodies smiling down creepily. Scared he was barely able to stutter his words "What are you... you're not real." His body gladly answered his question with the ear to ear smile carved upon its face "You did this, you made us, don't you remember?"