Dreams (The First Part)

A deafening roar issued from the army as it surged forward as single unit. The red and white flood raced forward across the field away from the safety of their towering stronghold. I couldn’t hear my own battle cry, lost among the masses of the other voices, but I knew I was screaming myself hoarse. I was at the front of the charge, sitting atop a glowing white horse, brandishing a silver sword over my helmeted head. I glanced down at the hooves of my horse, at the green grass flecked with multicolored flowers as it all sped past at mind-numbing speed. I looked back up at the ugly horde before me. They had ragged banners scattered randomly through their ranks. I didn’t know what any of the myriad species were exactly called, but they were all of the hairy, fanged or just plain disgusting variety. With a roar just as loud and twice as haunting as ours, the motley assortment of red-and-black-clad beasts charged. None of my men faltered, they simply lowered their shoulders and barreled into our enemies. The crash of the armies overpowered both battlecries by a long shot. Metal clashed with metal, blood spattered and voices cried out in pain and desperation. An enormous creature with a bald head, grey-green skin and crooked rotten teeth stood before me, bellowing and shaking a jagged halbard at me. I stood on my saddle, anticipating my mount’s death, and leapt at the Orcish abomination. I batted aside his weapon and sank my blade into his forehead as if it were butter. I landed standing on his chest, pulled my sword out of his head and charged off into the fray. I didn’t look back at my horse. I knew she was dead. I knew she had the dead Orc’s halbard in her throat and had died precisely when had.
The sounds of battle filled my ears: the screams of the dying, the roars of the living, the crunching and squelching of wounds and the trodden-on dead. I knew how this would end, but I still fought with all the resolve and zeal of a man who was not doomed to death and was defending his country and land. I looked up in time to see the Ravagers rise up above the battle. I didn’t know how I knew what they were called, I just did. They were demonic, humanoid creatures with maroonish-orange bat wings, flaming eyes and bright red claws on their hands and feet. All of them conformed to this general description, but no two were exactly the same. Some had more arms, some more wings. Others had horns, blades or tusks jutting out of unconventional places. I immediately picked out the one that was after me. It was the same one as every time before. She was big with four wings, small tusks and a jagged, rusty and bloodstained glaive clutched in her talons. She picked me out right after I saw her, let out an internal screech and descended upon me at a mind-numbing speed. I took a step back and swung at her polearm with my sword, disconnecting the blade from the staff. She seemed unfazed and continued at the same pace. Her momentum knocked me down and drove the jagged tip of the former glaive through a weak point in my armor. I let out a cry of pain as I was pinned to the ground with the makeshift spear. She looked down at me for a split second with those glowing eyes, let out a bone-chilling cackle and set to work ripping me apart with her claws.

***

I woke up screaming. I had kicked the blankets onto the floor and my legs were wrapped awkwardly in a light sheet. My pillow was wet with sweat and drool. I stared wide-eyed into space, seeing only the Ravager’s gleefully sadistic expression, and hearing only her equally sadistic laugh. I shuttered. That was the seventh time in two weeks that I had had that dream, and every time it gotten more vivid. When I woke varied as well along with my method of death. I had watched myself decapitated, felt my eyes ripped out and my skull pulled apart. One time I even stayed asleep almost long enough to die by being beaten my own arm. The one thing that never changed in the least was who was killing me. It was always her.

I plunged the spoon into the bowl apparently full of only milk, fishing around for the last brown flakes of what had been my breakfast. I lifted my spoon out of the opaque liquid to find a couple sad-looking flakes swimming in it. I dumped the spoon’s contents into my mouth and surveyed the occupants of the other two chairs at our conveniently triangular table. On my right was my mother, displaying a painfully forced grin and staring directly at me through her squinting eyes. She had long, curly blonde hair and sun-burnt skin. She was wearing a pink tank-top and blue booty shorts. I was quite sure that she was a pornstar or a stripper at some point in her life. She had never told me this, but it I had guessed at hints my father had dropped and a several-year gap in her life story between graduating from high school (a detail that I had always questioned the factuality of) and meeting my father. I raised a skeptical eyebrow at her grin and turned my attention to the other place at the table. The only evidence of any one sitting in this chair were a few sallow fingers wrapped around a seemingly enormous newspaper.
“Hey, Gray,” I shouted at the newspaper, “pass the Bran Flakes.”
“Get it yourself,” sneered the voice from behind the newspaper. I revisited my theory that Gray specially ordered gigantic newspapers in my head.
“Call him ‘dad,’ dear,” my mother crooned, somehow keeping her grin at full strength at the same time. I ignored her.
“C’mon, Gray,” I snapped. “You’ve got it hidden behind that newspaper again. You might as well just pass it. The top of the newspaper lowered for a moment to reveal to beady eyes and a small crop of perfectly parted black hair. The eyes stared inquisitively at my mother. She gave a not-so-subtle nod and the newspaper began to fold up. Gray could never just put something down. It needed to be folded or put back exactly where he found it. He even folded his dirty laundry. Gray placed the folded newspaper down next to his breakfast, picked up the box of tasteless, fiber-rich cereal at passed it to me. He was wearing an immaculately ironed black suit and tie over an equally well-ironed white, button-up shirt. His black leather shoes were polished so well that it practically hurt to look at them. He had grayish skin and a giant hooked nose. I wasn’t actually sure what he did for a living, but it both required him to dress like this and gave him a lot of money.
I poured a second helping of cereal into my bowl, stirred it into the milk left over from the last bowl and set to work eating. I considered that I didn’t think my mom had eaten anything all morning. She didn’t seem to eat much at all. My stream of thought on my mother’s eating habits was cut off by Gray raising his arm with a flourish to look at his watch and informing us that he should be getting to work. I silently told him die a slow and painful death as he walked away. They didn’t hear me. They rarely heard me, even when my thoughts were expressed verbally. I had learned long ago not to bother telling them anything. Gray didn’t care. He’d say something steeped in artificial empathy like “I’m sure you’ll get through this” or “I’m sure this will sort itself with time,” and then he would turn me away. My mom tried. She really did. But she just the lacked capacity to help. Talking to her about emotional issues was like asking an optimistic goat to harmonize with you... or to help you with math homework. It might try, but it has no idea what’s going on, and it won’t succeed.
“You seem down honey,” my mom said through her haunting grin. “Is something on your mind?”
I wanted to say Yeah, two things are actually, and I want you to hear me out on both of them before you respond. First, I’ve been having some really violent dreams lately. Like, I’m scaring myself with them. I want your help on this one. Not any of your phony positive reinforcement, I want genuine help. At this point in my fantasy, she tried to interrupt me. I silenced her with an outstretched finger. Shut up. I’m not done yet, I wanted to say. The second thing is that Gray is a shitbag. He. Has. NO. Redeeming. Qualities. None. I don’t know what you like about other than his ridiculous amounts of electronic money.
Of course, I knew I could not do this. Every time in the past I had tried anything remotely like this, I had been disappointed with her reaction.
“Nah, Mom, just thinkin’,” I mumbled, stirring my bland-flakes lethargically.
“Well what are you thinking about?”
Gray. Is. A. Shit. Bag.
“Nothin’.”
A few moments passed in awkward silence. I continued to stir the milk in my bowl, watching the brown flakes peak above the opaque surface before slipping under again.
“Look, Mom, I’d better get to school,” I said, grabbing my backpack and standing up.
“Alright, have fun. I love you,” she said to my back as I walked to the screen door.
I answered with a noncommittal grunt of “Mm-hm,” before extracting my iPod from my pocket and walking out. Birds chirped cheerily, the sun beamed harshly over the pristine, colorful suburb that Mom insisted on occupying. I looked across the street at the houses that I pass. Old lady’s house, old lady’s house, old lady sitting in front of her house, drug addict’s house, old lady’s house, a house that had belonged to an old lady before she died and it was raided by scavengers. I rolled my eyes, sliding the earbuds into place and selecting a Slipknot tune. I closed my eyes briefly, allowing myself to be absorbed into the grinding guitars, pummeling percussion and growling vocals.
“We! We are the new diabolic! We! We are the bitter bucolic!” I mouthed along with the chorus, a small smile forming on my lips.
My metallic sanctuary was broken by a wizened screech of, “Faggot!” I didn’t need to look to know that it was the enormous, morphine-bloated, terminally diabetic Mrs. Whorebitch. I wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that that was her name, but it was a good guess, based on her actions.
“Fuck you, bitch,” I called, giving her a prime view of my middle finger.
“Respect your elders, you little cocksucker!” she squawked.
I quickened my pace, thinking I’ll respect you when you earn it, you waste of semen.
I arrived at the bus stop long after my song had ended and Mrs. Whorebitch’s ragged, bigoted insults had faded away behind me. There was a gang of suburban white boys hanging at the stop, trying very hard to show that their skin was, in fact, dark brown. Their over-sized tees and jeans in conjunction with their expensive gold necklaces and speakers vomiting the sounds of real black people rapping gave them away as the hopeless, white mama’s boys they were. I stood away from them, ignoring any judgmental looks they shot my way, until the yellow, graffittied school bus pulled up. The doors slid open to reveal a blue collar, overweight, redheaded bus driver in a greasy baseball cap. I followed the white boys onto the bus, mumbling my customary, “Hey Brian,” to the bus driver. He responded with his equally customary silence.
“Hey Violet!” said a thick voice from a seat I had just passed. I turned to a thickset football player with hand up to get my attention. He was in my grade, and I didn’t know his name, but I was pretty sure he was two or three years older than me.
“Haha, you looked when I said ‘Violet’,” he said, apparently quite pleased with his cleverness.
“That’s my last name,” I informed him dryly.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Anyways, I got two questions for ya.”
“Shoot,” I said in the exact same dry tone.
“How much do you charge for blowjobs, and does the lip ring make it more pleasurable for the recipient?”
“Oh that’s very funny,” I said sarcastically.” Because not only are you implying that I’m gay, but also a prostitute.” I walked away, shaking my head in disgust. Before I found a seat, I turned to a grin back to the jock.
“I almost forgot, there. I was real proud of you knowing the word ‘recipient.’” I clapped slowly as I walked farther down the aisle in search of a seat. As usual, few were willing to share a seat with me. Eventually, I found a second grader that I was able to intimidate into letting me sit next to him. I sat for a few minutes, eyes closed, absorbed in Zack de la Rocha’s venomous scream of “All of which are American Dreams!” I eventually became aware that the little kid next to me was staring. Not surprising, but annoying. I opened my eyes and looked down at him.
“Yeah?” I said, my eyebrows raised. It took him a while, but he finally spoke.
“Are… are you a demon?” he asked in a high-pitched squeak. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes.
“Yes.” I said dryly. “I am a soul-sucking demon, and I plan to feast on every soul and chunk of raw flesh in your school before I return to my firie domain.”
Despite my sarcastic tone, I shuttered a little at the thought of a demon.

I pulled the chair out, sat down, dropped my writing pad onto the desk, and set my forehead down on it. Honors Life Science. There was really nothing “honorable” about Honors courses. Being in them was like being handed a certificate with CONTRAGULATIONS! You’re Slightly Less Retarded Than the Rest of the Retards Here! Written on it. There were the nerds, the people with no lives and the people who actually put a bit of effort into school. I was a little bit of all three. The problem was that Life Science was the worst Honors class that I was privileged to participate in by far. Our teacher, Mr. Hoffman, was a devout fundamentalist Christian. It was a wonder that he got a teaching permit.
“Good morning class,” he said through his barely intelligible southern accent, despite that it was afternoon. “I am required by state law to teach the theory of evolution to you.” He paused to take a breath before his lecture. “In 1831, Charles Darwin set out on a voyage on the HMS Beagle. HMS stands for His or Her Majesty’s Ship, depending on whether there is currently a king or queen. Anyways, Darwin went on the boat as a young man and collected evidence as a naturalist. While on this voyage, he developed the theory of evolution. He used his observation of unique species on the Galapagos Islands, such as aquatic lizards, and these birds.” He bent over and rummaged around in a canvas bag for a few moments before pulling out a picture of a black bird with a huge red sack under its thin beak. I sensed the eyebrows of the class rise as one. He set the framed image on the chalk tray and went on.
“Darwin’s theory was, a nutshell The Survival of the Fittest.” He turned as he said this and wrote ‘survival of the fittest’ in blazing white chalk above his head. “The essence of Darwin’s theory is this:” He stopped and drew two small dots on the chalkboard. “You have two individuals. They have… intercourse.” He crossed himself. “They have offspring.” He drew a few more dots. “The offspring are made up of combinations of their parents’ genes, but they are not all equal. Let’s say they’re cheetahs. Some of the offspring are faster, and therefore catch more food. They live, their siblings die. The faster cheetahs have offspring, some are faster than others, and the cycle repeats. Evolutionists think that this means that vast evolutionary change can occur and then new species will appear. Like a monkey giving birth to a human. Any questions before I go on?”
Three hands were in the air. A nerdy kid named Mark, or Matt, or Max, that’s right, it was Max, Cindy, who loved Jesus enough to have his children, and me had our hands in the air. Of course he said, “Yes, Cindy?”
She took a deep breath.
“Why don’t you believe that evolution is the right and true path?”
“Well, I was going to get to that soon enough. It is because evolution is a relatively unsupported theory that contradicts the mighty Lord’s creation and demeans humans by claiming that we are also just dirty animals.”
Max’s hand shot into the air. Mr. Hoffman sighed and called on him.
“Sir, I think your description of the process of biological evolution is extremely inaccurate. Monkeys don’t give birth. Monkeys are modern monkeys and humans are modern humans. Both species came from a common ancestor. Also, evolution has nothing to say about biogenesis, it simply describes the gradual genetic change in species through natural selection. Therefore…” My head was on my pad of paper, the graphite doodles sinking into my forehead.

***

I was yelling. The horse was charging. The army surged after me, bellowing with me. The crash of bodies and metal. The gurgling screams. My horse hit the grass, spraying earth up with me as I leapt at the soulless abominations, my sword singing with glee as it drank the cursed blood. Then there she was, shrieking and thrashing. Her talons sank into my eyes and I saw blackness as my head was pulled apart.

***

I wrenched myself to my feet, clutching my head and screaming. I opened my eyes to the cold florescent lights and the dumbfounded expressions of my classmates. The ground rose up to meet me and I writhed there, my hands pressed to my ears, confining my screams to my head.