Here Be Monsters - By M T Murphy Page 0,21
away from her skin.
“So, this is where you hide.”
The boy was sitting on the chair, his face young and clear of disease.
“Why are you hiding in my dream, girl?”
“I’m not. This is my dream.”
He began to stand up and she took two quick steps back. His body was covered in bandages, right to the tip of each finger. He looked around, thoughtfully.
“Perhaps it is.”
He opened the door, the one behind the machine that shouldn’t be there, and left, his red cape billowing in the wind.
Lux followed him, anxious to leave the throbbing glass thing behind. The Dreamer’s world reminded her of the comic books she had become so fond of lately.
It was built in bold colours, sharp corners and deep, contrasting shadows.
Every sound made an echo.
The boy had pulled up the hood of his purple cloak, a new costume, but his fingers were still bandaged when he motioned for her to follow.
They walked a fantastic cityscape of vertiginous angles until she stopped.
“No. Here.”
He didn’t seem put off by her boldness.
“As you wish.”
They were sitting at a long dinner table, a fairytale banquet between them.
“Shall we talk, little sister?”
“I am not your sister.”
He played with a silver napkin holder, two snakes biting each other’s tails.
“We are all brothers and sisters, all we who lay inside the machine. One house, one heart, one soul? No, no souls,” he seemed to be thinking out loud now. “We have no souls. He took them. He made us…more, and we pay the price.”
He nibbled on a delicate cake, sugar flowers on marzipan stems. They were too bright and colourful, uncomfortable to look at.
“Why are you here, little sister?”
“I came to see you. There aren’t many of us left.”
“Did you kill them?”
She looked up, startled. The scope of his power was unpredictable too. He might be connected to all of them, feeling them go out like candles, one by one. But he changed the subject.
“I see your dreams. I see his dreams too. You have ideas, and he doesn’t know,” he smiled a wicked, sugary smile. “What will he do when he finds out?”
“He won’t.”
“No, I suppose he won’t. Because you are very good at hiding. He made you that way.” He offered her a blue biscuit butterfly. “He doesn’t know that either.” She didn’t reply, so he went on. “ Show me what’s in your heart, sister. Your heart’s desires. Are they dark and pure?”
“Yes” she looked at him, and wondered how much he really knew, and if he could be saved, “but you know that. You’ve seen my dreams.”
He changed gears again.
“You used to cry every night in your cage. I listened.”
“I don’t cry.”
“No,” he crumbled a sugar daisy into sticky dust. “You don’t need to anymore. You kill,” his smile was desperately wide. “But you are not going to kill me. I am dead to the world, a thing in a dream.”
“You are alive.”
“Only in here. If you were going to kill me, I’d be dead already,” he blew up his floppy fringe, feigned indifference.
“That’s true. You will die of your illness.”
“It’s not an illness. It’s my power. Did you know that I volunteered? He didn’t take me, like the others. I wanted it, I wanted to be….”
A super hero.
He wanted to be a super hero.
The walls melted into dark branches and their dinner table was in a forest clearing. Every tree was twisted and every shadow had yellow malevolent eyes.
He looked around, surprised.
“You dream of this?”
“Sometimes.”
“Where are we?”
“Outside the house.”
“I see. The world. Yes, I suppose it is like this. I don’t miss it, you know?”
She just looked at him.
“I don’t,” for the first time, a defensive chink on his voice. “I don’t miss it,” he murmured into a teacup.
“What’s there?” he pointed behind her. A path had opened and a merry light could be seen through the branches. Lux knew there would be a house at the end of the path.
“Nothing,”
“Is this it?” he was up and moving already. She tried to grab him but the beautifully inked cloak slipped like rain through her fingers.
“No! Don’t go there!”
She was running after him now, but it was like fighting thick mud. She couldn’t catch up, “NO!”
The golden glow flickering in the window was a Sleeping Beauty nightlight. The bedroom had white and blue wall paper and it smelled of plasticine and baby shampoo.
Lux stopped fighting thin air.
Helpless, she watched the Dreamer peeping into her long-ago bedroom. His previous giddiness had turned into clenched teeth and frozen limbs. A familiar voice, faint echoes