Shifted

Bed Bugs

"Run." Nobuko says calmly.

Hearing a thundering, thumping sound behind me, I did what I was told.

"What the hell is that?!" I say in a panic.

"It's a Bed Bug, they plant viruses in dreams. After that becomes a common nightmare." She says while we are still sprinting.

I glimpse back just to see what it looked like.

It was a dark, shadowy figure with many disliking features. Eyes were up and down the body.

As I was staring at it, I became a little light headed.

"Don't stare at it for too long" she says almost laughing, "Those things can suck you in just like that."

Nobuko turned around and took out something which seems to be a brightly glowing object.

She was going to take it down with that little thing? I assume it'll just slice her in half or do something even worse.

She sprinted toward the bed bug and thrusted the object into its body.

The nefarious monster made a horrible groaning sound so loud I had to cover my ears. But soon after the groaning stopped.

The thing exploded into ashy smithereens and left nothing but one of its eyes. Gross.

Nobuko picked up the eye "This is very a very useful item" she puts the eye in her satchel.

"Useful for what?" I say disturbed.

She glanced at me with joyful eyes like she was engaged to tell me.

She held up the eye which was bigger than her thumb "Bed bugs leave body parts lying around once you kill them. They can leave their liver, spinal bone, brain, but mostly their eyeballs. So when you have one of these," she drove the eyeball closer to me, "You can trade it in one of the to the thrift stores near by."

"What do they do with them?" I just wanted to know, considering that people actually bargain these things...

"Well," she says,"They make a nutritious meal." she pointed out.

I was about to puke.

~~~
Later after that we kept walking and I saw some places where creatures were jumping and flying.

I looked at my bracelet.

"Your bracelet is your gates to your two worlds" she explains, "The real world and this world."

"It'll be like you're shifting to two lives" She laughed but then grew stern, "...but you don't want to be shift-ed. People who become shifted cannot wake up in their real world. I've seen it happen many times I have."

She dazed off in complete melancholy.

"I lost one of my partners 75 years ago when that happened to him. Doesn't happen that often. You don't last long when you've been shifted."

I was curious. Why is she demonstrating most of these stuff to me? "But, why are you informing me on what you do?"

"So," she walked closer to me and looked me in the eye, "you can be a mature Dream Catcher." Then she smiled with her eyes closed.

I was back in my bed and Aki was licking my face.

"Get out"