Chapter 3: Girl of My Dreams

Mike yawned, covering his mouth, then set his book down on the cart. It was dangerously full, and he knew that Sofia would ream him out if he just kept cramming books onto it.

“Can you take this to the platform?” he asked Death.

“Yes I can, Mike Radley.” The grim reaper grabbed the cart with bony hands and pushed it down the corridor, the wheels squeaking softly. Mike rubbed his eyes and yawned again, then checked his phone. He had no signal in the Library, but all he wanted was to see the time. It was almost four in the morning.

“Shit.” The Library was severely lacking a coffee stand. Maybe he could talk the cyclops into installing a magical espresso machine that followed him around and doled out caffeine at a moment’s notice.

The pods would probably still be bad for the environment. He could probably put in for a self grinding machine, maybe even have it draw a picture in the foam for him.

He wondered what it would take for Tick Tock to take the job.

Determined to keep going, he scanned the next rack of books, kneeling down to see the bottom shelf. The bottom shelf was always the hardest for him because he had to get on his hands and knees to read the titles. His knees ached, so he sat on his butt and leaned forward to read the title of the first book.

The way the words swam out at him from the spines of each book made him rub his eyes again. He appreciated that the lantern helped translate for him, but the method made his eyes itch. Something scratched the edge of his eyelid, and he used a fingernail to scoop it free.

“Ugh.” It was a tiny grain of sand. He flicked it away, letting out another yawn. Though the hour was late, he was determined to push forward and at least gather up the rest of the books in this section. The very thought of missing a key bit of information made him anxious.

A thick brown tome stuck out a bit farther than the rest. He squinted to read it, the foreign script whirling around like a hyperactive hurricane before rewriting itself on top of the spine.

Fantastic Faeries and Where to Find Them. The hovering letters sparkled like gold, spinning around in lazy spirals.

“Looks promising,” Mike muttered and cracked the book open. Puzzled, he flipped through the pages, then rifled through to the end of the book.

The pages were all blank. Who the fuck would put a blank book in the Library? Puzzled, he closed the book and reopened it, wondering if there was some trick to it, or maybe he would need magic to reveal the words.

A loud tone resonated through the Library, and he dropped the book, catching it before it hit the floor. When the ground rumbled beneath him, he fell backward into the shelves behind him, knocking some of the books onto the ground.

“What the hell is that?” He stood, and quickly lost his balance, the book in his hands turning to sand and falling between his fingers.

“What the—oh.”Letting out a sigh of relief, he watched the book fall to pieces in front of him, forming into a small pile of sand. He gave the pile a little kick, and the solid stone floor beneath it shattered into stone crumbs that bounced off of the nearby racks.

The nearby stacks crumbled, turning into large piles of sand that threatened to bury him, but he easily climbed above them. When the whole world tilted, the sand flowed like water, carrying him away to parts unknown.

The flowing sand pulled him free of the giant columns of the Library and out into the open air. The Library was gone, replaced by an open sky and mountainous clouds. He spiraled through the clouds, the harsh grains of sand scattering around him to form large streams that punched holes in the mist. Breaking free of the cool embrace of the clouds, he saw that the world beneath him had formed into an incredibly large beach. Dark waves surged against the shore, the waves breaking along the horizon and crashing into the sand like hungry hands, eager to scoop it all away.

He spread his arms wide, stabilizing his fall. Keeping his eyes on the approaching ground, he got his feet beneath him, ready to bend his knees on impact.

He slammed into the sand with the grace of a bowling ball, landing in a heap with his legs crumpling beneath him. Rolling down the side of a sand dune, he came to a stop face up at the bottom. The wind had been knocked from him, and he fought the urge to panic, just letting his mind take over as he contemplated the sky above. Stretching his legs, he heard everything pop back into place and chuckled. Sitting up, he brushed the sand off of his face and looked around.

“At least you realized you were falling this time.” Lily stood behind him, her scorpion tail whipping back and forth before vanishing with a pop. The wings on her back disappeared as well, leaving the succubus to regard him over a pair of red sunglasses. She wore a white and red bikini and thigh-high boots, her black hair streaked with crimson. A smirk of amusement was painted on her thick, red lips.

“Good morning, Lily.”

“Hey there, Romeo. You sure know how to keep a girl waiting.”

“Are you the reason I’m asleep?” he asked. With a single sting of her tail, she could inject a toxin guaranteed to put any creature into the deepest sleep.

“Nope. That’s all you. The frailty of the human condition involves requiring food and sleep, you knucklehead. Clearly you are lacking the latter, so here I am.” She waved a hand and the sand beneath her formed into a stool, followed by a popup tiki hut complete with a vacant-eyed bartender who slid her a drink. It smelled of coconut and rum. “So what has you burning the midnight oil?”

Mike stood next to her and concentrated on the sand by her feet. He was able to command it to form into a metal rod without the seat, so he created one out of the sand on the ground, then picked it up and screwed it on.

He sat next to Lily and put his elbow up on the bar. “I’ll have what she’s having.”

The bartender made the drink and handed it to Mike, who sipped at it.

“Wow, these are good.” He saluted the bartender and turned to face Lily, his earlier sense of fatigue gone, his head suddenly clear. “A bit has happened today. We found out that Cecilia is being held captive by the faerie queen, and now we’re trying to do research so that we can open a portal to the faerie realm and convince the queen to give her back.”

Lily spat out her drink, spraying the counter with multicolored drops of syrup. The drops sprouted legs and chased each other around until the bartender soaked them up with the sweep of a towel.

“Holy shit, Romeo, do you have any idea what you’re going up against? You’re going to try to sweet-talk the queen of the faeries? Are you insane?” Lily wiped her mouth off with one hand.

“Hey now, I don’t see what the big problem is. I’m planning on having Beth help, too. We’ll be very diplomatic.” For now, he mentally added.

“Oh no, there’s a big problem. If you thought demons were deceptive, then you need to understand that she’s who we look up to when it comes to deception through words. The fae have been around much longer than demons. In fact, they were one of the first things created after the Old Ones were sealed away. I would argue that trying to convince the faerie queen to do anything she doesn’t already want to do would be like staring into the sun and trying to convince it to blink first.”

“You really think it will be that difficult?”

Lily nodded. “Here’s something you need to understand. Demons can’t lie when asked directly, it’s supposed to be a throwback to when they were angels, part of the price for their fall, really. You get to be a prime douche-bag, but you still have to tell the truth when asked directly. The faerie queen not only gets to be a capital cunt about everything, but she will flat out lie to your face. The fae will claim that Fairie Law binds them, but guess who makes the laws? She thinks it’s hilarious, being able to openly fuck over mortals with her magic. It’s pretty much a game for her to sell you on your own misery, then watch you suffer the consequences of your agreement. The only things the fae can’t break are vows or bargains done in writing. And even if you make a deal with her, she will try to nail you in the fine print.”

“She sounds super nasty.”

“Yeah, well she didn’t used to be that way, but it’s a hard fall going from being revered like a goddess to being the subject of tall tales and shitty children’s cartoons. At least, that’s my assumption.”

“Hmm. The guy she sent here said that there was a deal about having someone here to escort the Caretaker to the underworld. That must mean the Architect made such a deal, right?.”

The succubus laughed. “If that’s the case, then the Architect must have been one hell of a negotiator. What could he have traded to the queen to get her to agree to something like that?”

“I have no idea, but maybe I’ll ask her.”

“Yeah, well, don’t expect to walk in with your usual strategy of fucking up and then getting lucky at the last second. Honestly, the queen is someone you need to be very careful around.”

“Sofia said something similar.”

“Yeah, well, she’s been around a long time too, so perhaps you should listen.” Lily slammed the rest of her drink. “Enough talk about the faerie queen. Are you ready to show me what you’ve got?”

“I am.” Mike cracked his knuckles and stood up. He walked away from the tiki hut and looked up the hill behind it. His home was on top of the hill, a permanent fixture of his dream world. “I’ve been working on this one for the last couple of weeks. Let’s see what you think of it.”

“I’ll sting you if you start to wake up.” Lily leaned back against the bar, tapping her fingers on the wood.

“Appreciate it.” The Dreamscape could only be accessed while he was having a lucid dream, and even then, too much mental effort on his part was enough to wake him up. The training sessions with Lily helped immensely, but they only did them once every week or so, and he had honestly forgotten they were going to have one tonight.

In his mind’s eye, he conjured an image of the Jabberwock in his front yard. The distant palm trees shivered, and he willed it into existence, pretending it had been there all along, only unnoticed. The distant beast pushed its way through the trees, loping toward them like a drunken dog, its tail dragging behind it.

“Wow, starting with the big guns already?” Lily hopped off her stool and waited for the beast to kneel down in front of her. “Not bad. The size is about right.”

“Thanks.” It was much harder to create replicas of living creatures. The first couple of weeks he had tried to do it, he had ended up with an assortment of animals that were mostly teeth and fur, but little else. After studying some anatomy books, he had been inspired to work on his own version of the Jabberwock, and had worked his way up from tiny lizards to the beast that now sat in front of them.

“Does it have a rope for a tail?” Lily leaned over to look, and Mike groaned. Sure enough, instead of a thick, reptilian tail, it was dragging a giant braided rope behind it.

“I mean, a rope isn’t that bad.” He tried to remember what the Jabberwock’s tail looked like in the real world, causing the beast’s head to briefly turn into a ball of static. “Shit, I can’t seem to hold it.”

“You don’t have to. You gotta learn how to let go.” She put a hand on the Jabberwock’s paw. “But I would worry less about that than your other, much bigger problem.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

Lily casually punched her hand through the Jabberwock, then grabbed a piece of the beast and ripped it off. “Why is the whole damn thing made of chocolate?”

“What?” Mike ran to her side, and explored the hole. Sure enough, the Jabberwock was hollow, its innards an inky black. “Shit, why would it do that?”

“No idea. This is your dream, remember?” Lily took a bite of the Jabberwock. “Ooh, sea salt with caramel. You’ve got some good taste.”

“Damn.” He concentrated again, and the Jabberwock deflated like a giant whoopie cushion, blowing sand in every direction. “I thought I had it, too.”

“Maybe you should have gone with something less complex.” She took another bite of chocolate, then tossed the rest on the ground. It melted into the sand. “Actually, I’m curious why you were trying something so hard.”

He screwed up his face. “I wanted to impress you a little.”

“Okay, that’s rich. Care to explain why?”

Mike let out a disgusted sigh. “I don’t want you to feel like I’m wasting your time trying to train me.”

“This is hardly a waste of time.” Lily put her hands on her hips. “I offered to help and you accepted.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure there are better things you could be doing right now.” He had no idea what Lily did with her free time, and she never offered more information about it. He rarely saw her outside the Dreamscape, though he had heard rumors that she hung out with Dana quite often. “I don’t want my problems to become your burdens.”

“You’re one of the rare humans who can even come here on his own, much less manipulate it so easily. You are years ahead of where you should be, which I find very fascinating.” She scowled at him. “However, your self-pity is killing my buzz.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s hard to recognize my own achievements, especially when I’ve made no progress on unlocking any more of those visions.” Each vision Mike had gave him a new clue about the house, but also brought along more questions. He and Lily both believed that the Dreamscape was a wonderful way to prepare for the next one, and even possibly open up a path to have the visions at will.

“Maybe you should try peyote.” She held up a cup full of a shimmering red paste.

“Will that even work in here?”

Lily laughed. “Your brain would probably put together its own version of what being stoned on peyote is like. However, your brain just made a chocolate dinosaur, so maybe you shouldn’t risk it.”

“That’s probably true. Does peyote give you the munchies? A chocolate dinosaur might hit the spot.”

Lily rolled her eyes, the cup in her hand disappearing. “Good grief, I was kidding. I am definitely not giving you dream drugs.”

He laughed. “That’s probably for the best.” He cracked his knuckles again, wiggling his fingers over the sand. “Should I try to build the door?”

“Yes. I want to see it.”

With a nod, he focused on the sand, thinking hard about how, millennia ago, a secret door had been planted there, just waiting for someone to discover it. Moments or minutes passed, it was hard to tell in the Dreamscape, and a thin line of wood appeared in the sand, moving slowly upward.

The door had been Lily’s idea. The whole point of training in the Dreamscape had been to allow him to freely travel to the place where he was literally one with the house and could learn its secrets. Since the world of dreams seemed to be closely tied with it, Lily had surmised that stepping through a magic doorway was a perfect metaphor for his brain to hold on to.

The door grew taller, its wooden frame wrapped in vines. It had an ornate knob with a large keyhole on the bottom, and when it finished emerging from the ground, it hovered a few inches above the sand.

“It’s kind of pretty,” Lily said, moving closer. “Where did you get the idea for it?”

“I tried not to,” he admitted. “I figured if I modeled it specifically on something I knew, my brain would take me there instead.”

“Good answer.” She took a step back. “So now what?”

“Well, up until recently, the door hasn’t worked properly. So I gave it a lock to represent unlocking its secrets.”

“I’d groan, but I think you’re right.”

“And for my next trick,” he held up his hand and stuck out two fingers. The fingers distorted, metal teeth sprouting out from them. “I must be the key.”

The succubus said nothing, an intense curiosity on her face.

Shrugging, he stuck his fingers in the lock and turned them. A loud clunking noise filled the Dreamscape, and he pulled his fingers out and grabbed the knob.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Maybe. If this works, I probably can’t go in with you, so be ready for that.”

He pulled the door open and was immediately bathed in light. Music played from the other side, and he stepped through, temporarily blinded. Squinting, he could make out intricate white marble that seemed to stretch on forever. His heart skipped a beat, his whole body trembling in excitement.

“Is this a bathroom?” Lily asked from behind. The light dimmed and revealed that they were now in an impossibly large room with hundreds of urinals lining the wall.

“What?” Mike looked around and saw a long mirror above the impossibly wide sink, and a handicapped stall down at the end. “I don’t get it. Why a bathroom?”

Lily started laughing. When he looked at her, he saw that she was staring at his crotch. Looking down, he realized that he was naked from the waist down. Embarrassed, he tried to cover up, but a sudden flood of heat washed through his groin.

“It’s not funny!” he cried out, running over to the nearest urinal and letting loose a large blast of piss. It was like the jet stream setting on a hose, and he couldn’t get it to stop.

“It’s the ... it’s the ... the piss dream!” Lily now sat on a chrome stool, tears running down her face as she held her stomach. “You found an anxiety!”

“It’s not funny!” Shame and rage filled his cheeks, and he knew then that he was losing control of the Dreamscape. Without Lily’s venom in his veins, he was susceptible to slipping into an ordinary dream, one where he would watch his own actions as if in a movie. “What do I do?”

The succubus laughed. “You keep peeing!”

Mike swore under his breath, trying desperately to aim the stream into the mouth of the urinal. He ended up peeing everywhere, and then the urinal clogged, so he sidestepped over to the next one, which quickly clogged up, then the next. He did this for several minutes, doing a shuffle each time, the frustration building up.

“Lily, help me!”

“Oh, fine.” Her eyes flashed yellow, and she gave him a grin.

He turned away from the urinal, the full feeling in his bladder gone. Looking down, he saw that his pants were back on. Puzzled, he turned back to the urinals behind him. They were now overflowing, water spilling over their edges and filling the whole room with water.

Lily grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind them. With a kick, she knocked it to the ground. Water leaked up out of its edges, staining the sand with moisture.

“That was some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen.” She wiped a final tear from her eye. “I thought you were going to drown in there!”

“I...” Mike realized that he didn’t feel angry anymore. “What happened?”

“Well, first things first, you’re welcome. I gave you a little sting to put you farther under.” She kicked sand on top of the door. “You stumbled into an anxiety, a recurring dream that people tend to have. Like going to school naked, that kind of thing. You panicked and started to wake up, which is how it trapped you. Once you were in control again, the scenario fell apart.”

“That’s kind of weird. What caused it?”

“What do you think? Stress. I’m guessing you miss everybody’s favorite screamer, and are burnt out on trying to get her home. And though I’m no psychologist, It definitely could have been way worse.” He figured she was referring to his mother, who had tormented him as a child. When Lily had trapped him here the first time they met, his mother had been a literal specter that followed him through his dreams, trying to drive him mad.

“Yeah, I guess.” He balled up his fists. “Should I try again?”

“No. Once your mind gets stuck on a visual like that, it tends to repeat itself. You’ll have to make a different door, summon that one again and you’ll be back in that dream.”

“Yeah, that would be—” he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. Up at the house, he saw a dark figure step out of sight behind the curtains.

“What?” Lily turned to look at the house. “Did I miss something?”

“The shadow is back.” He shivered. The shadow came to him often in his dreams, but this was the first time it had shown up while Lily was in his head. “He’s watching us.”

“Oh, I’ve got to see this.” Lily’s wings burst from her back in a sulfurous cloud, and she took off, racing toward the house.

“Hey, hey!” Mike gave chase, trying to will himself into the sky. Dream flight was something that was beyond him, so the best he managed was large leaps across the dunes and onto the grassy front yard of his home.

The house in his dreams matched the house in the real world. He was inextricably tied to it by the fact that Naia had embedded a piece of her soul into his. Just as Naia could never leave her fountain, Mike couldn’t travel beyond the ocean inside his head. On one occasion, he tried shrinking the house down to put it in his pocket. It had nearly worked, but he had been startled awake by Tink falling out of bed next to him and unleashing a litany of curses.

Lily stood sideways on the outside of his house, bent over to peer into his bedroom window. Mike navigated a small cluster of bunnies made out of stone that had congregated beneath her, careful not to trip over them. It was odd how beings like the rock rabbits populated the corridors of his mind, and Lily had explained to him once that his brain did a lot more thinking while he was unconscious than he realized. In a way, it reminded him of the abstract thoughts of artificial intelligence, only his brain was much better at creating order from the chaos of his thoughts.

“And?” he asked from below.

“Don’t see him.” Using her foot, she slid the window open.

“Hey, don’t go in without me.” His words fell on deaf ears as she hopped into the house, falling horizontally. “Damnit, Lily,” he muttered, then tried to jump up to the window. The rabbits, however, were now scrambling across his legs, their imaginary weight holding him down.

“Fucking dream logic.” He kicked them away, stubbing his toe in the process. The rabbits multiplied, suddenly doubling in number, then scrambled across the top of his feet, snuggling up to him. He turned away from them and shuffled to the back door of the house. When the Dreamscape got away from him, it was always best to allow simple logic to take over.

“No rabbits in the house,” he shouted, and the weight fell away from his feet as he stepped through the back door. Looking back, he saw the horde of stone rabbits milling about, blinking their obsidian eyes at him. They seemed to fade away into the scenery until only a small cluster of them remained. He wondered if once upon a time, he had dreamt of a bunny made of stone, or even seen something in a movie that triggered it.

“Lily?” He called into the house, walking through it carefully. So far, none of his encounters with the shadow had become violent, but the fact that it had even made an appearance was a bit of a surprise. “Lily, where are you?”

“Upstairs.” He followed the sound of her voice and stepped into the upper hallway. Lily emerged from his bedroom and shrugged. She was now dressed in a purple dress with a green scarf. Her tights were a near match for the headband in her now entirely red hair.

“Nice touch,” he told her.

“There’s a mystery to solve.” She dramatically revealed a large magnifying glass, then winked at him through it.

“Do you think he’s still here?”

“I do.” She lowered the magnifying glass and looked over her shoulder. “When I am in your head, I can sense your presence, easy peasy. But something definitely feels off right now. You ever have a scary dream where you know something is watching you but can’t see it?”

He shuddered. “Who doesn’t?”

“Well, sometimes, something else really is watching you. I’ve been in someone’s head when that happens, you know. Feels like sinus pressure before a storm, that’s the best way I can explain it. And right now, my nose is going nuts. The shadow is still here, and he’s close.” She looked down the hall, then held a finger to her lips and then pointed at the door to Beth’s room.

Mike nodded, but Lily pointed to his mouth and rolled her finger in a circle, telling him to keep talking.

“What kind of things watch people when they dream?” Mike asked, his eyes on Beth’s door.

“Truthfully? I don’t really know. I’ve run across some beings that feed on dreams, or other demons, whatever. World’s a big place, I’ve seen my share of interesting creatures. But there’s a part of the Dreamscape that even I won’t go to, and you shouldn’t either, not if you can help it.”

“Wait, what? You’ve never told me about this.” He opened the door to Beth’s room and looked inside. “If there’s somewhere I shouldn’t go, then why haven’t you warned me?”

“I don’t need to. If you ever encounter it, you’ll know right away. A sense of fear comes over you, the same kind that you might wake up from screaming.”

“Like night terrors?”

“One and the same. Science will tell you that they typically have nothing to do with our dreams, but we know better now, don’t we?”

“These things cause night terrors?”

“Night terrors can be caused by many things, but they are the primary culprit. You wake up in a cold sweat, unable to move because they are still feeding on your psyche, and refuse to let go. You ever hear of bathophobia?”

“Fear of ... baths?” He grimaced, knowing it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself.

Lily rolled her eyes. “Fear of depths. Imagine swimming in the ocean and then going out over a dark patch, watching the ground fall away into the pitch black of the depths below.”

Mike shivered.

“Exactly. Typically these things lurk in the dark and deep parts of your dreams. People who encounter them rarely remember the dream itself, but bring their fears back to the waking world. It’s also why some people are afraid of deep water, and even holes. That’s where I typically find them inside of dreams. Bet if we swam far enough into the ocean, we could sink to the bottom and come across one. If the terror of the encounter doesn’t wake you right away, they can take a piece of your mind with you when they go.” Lily crossed Beth’s room and opened the closet. “Nothing here.”

“Sounds a lot like the Old Ones.” He and Ratu had destroyed a piece of an Old One. The task had been difficult and had nearly cost him his life.

“Perhaps. There’s a theory that the Old Ones aren’t gone, just asleep. Perhaps these encounters are simply their dreams bleeding over into our world. Either way, I’ve been known to bail on a dream if I encounter anything I don’t recognize.” Lily got on her hands and knees to look under the bed, revealing that she wore a pair of crotchless purple panties.

Mike laughed. “You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

“Hmm?” Lily looked over her shoulder and wiggled her ass back and forth for him. “Oh, is there a problem? Did you spot a clue?”

He couldn’t help it. He walked up behind her and gave her ass a playful slap. “Maybe. But we’re looking for the shadow, remember?”

“Oh, I know.” She stood up and grabbed him by the front of the shirt. “But we both know it’s just going to be old man Jenkins or some shit, using light and shadows to scare the locals, right?”

“Lily, I—” She kissed him hard, then slid her hand down the front of his pants, stroking his shaft through the fabric. When she broke the kiss, she licked the side of his neck, then bit down on the lobe of his ear.

“It’s watching us,” she whispered quickly, then slid a hand beneath his shirt, dragging her long nails across his chest. “C’mon, Romeo, we never seem to have any time anymore. All we do is drive around in that stuffy old van all day, sniffing dog farts.”

“There’s no time for this right now.” Mike winked at her, playing along. “We need to focus and solve the mystery of the missing shadow. And I think I spotted a clue.”

“Where?” Lily turned dramatically, her hair flaring out like her skirt.

“Under the bed!” He pointed where she had been looking, and she immediately got on all fours, her skirt sliding up to reveal her ass.

“I don’t see anything.” She pulled out her magnifying glass.

“You need to look deeper.” He scanned the room but didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Lily must have sensed the shadow watching, but from where?

“Ah, nuts.” Lily’s had squeezed her upper half beneath the bed, her full bottom now folded over perfectly to give it a wishbone shape. “I think I’m stuck.”

“Um ... okay.” Every time Lily jerked her hips, her skirt rode up higher, and he was having a tough time looking anywhere else. “Do you ... need a hand?”

“Yes, please. Just grab me by the hips and pull.” She wiggled her butt back and forth, which sealed the deal. He was now rock hard, and when he got behind her to pull, his cock pressed up against the puffy lips of her labia through his pants.

“I don’t think you’re trying hard enough,” she groaned, grinding her ass against him. “I need you to pull!”

“Jinkies, I’m doing my best.” He slapped her ass again, and she yelped. “What are you even stuck on?”