When All is Null and Void

Chapter Twenty-Two

The grasses were above her hips, swaying and sweeping against her body in ebbing waves. She knew this dream: The sun was high, the skies the clear sort of never ending blue. It was peaceful, silent but for the twittering of small, invisible birds. Danielle knew what was coming, and yet she could only think of the way the sun played against her bare shoulders and the wind brushed gently against her.

It was the same every time. The peace and serenity, and it lasted for hours.

Until it stopped. And dark, roiling clouds came pouring over the mountains. They were unnaturally black, a seething, frothing mass of shadows and an absence of light. The sun was blotted out, the blue of the sky shattering as skeins of darkness covered it. The grass which had been brushing against her hands crumbled as the blackness touched it, becoming nothing more than ash. Soon, it was gone. The entire world grew to be unrecognizable, not even a pale imitation of the light from before.

Danielle couldn't move. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think. Those shadows reached into her lungs, pouring into her eye sockets, wrapping around her until she was gone. Replaced by the darkness itself. And then her eyes opened, and there was the dull light streaming through her bedroom's old blinds from the street beyond. She was out of her bed, yanking off her pajamas, and pulling on her running clothes in moments. She'd grown used to running after she had the dream.

Danielle excused it for a long while as needing to improve her personal record in cross country and track, but then she'd started to accept the fact she was too perturbed by the dream to sleep. She was too freaked out by the way the darkness felt icy as it poured into her eyes, gripping her in its iron fists. She didn't know what it was, but the darkness always seemed alive and as if it had been searching for her.

So she ran, even though it was a Saturday morning and the sun hadn't even begun its ascent over the hills. They were still stark against the purple sky. It was nearing 7:30 when Danielle wiped her hand under her nose, sprinting around the final bend of her high school's track. Her hand came away slick with a mixture of sweat and snot caused by her exertions and the frigid, early morning air. She sniffed, keeping her bounding leaps steady as she slammed through her own, personal finish line.

Danielle completed twelve laps, including the mile warm up jog from her house. She had no other reason to be running than for her own enjoyment this season; she hadn't turned in the paperwork in time to join the cross country team this year, which was a bummer, but she might have purposefully been at fault. Not that she'd tell anyone this. She never had been one to enjoy athletic competition. Pit her up against anyone in debate and writing articles for the school's newspaper, and she thrived, but she always choked when it came to races.

Besides, she didn't need competition to push herself. So Danielle woke up every morning after the dream to push herself to go faster and faster, for no other reason than her love of running—and escaping the nightmare. She slowed to a jog and eventually into a brisk walk. Halfway around another lap, Danielle made a beeline across the dew-covered turf to the fence that led to the main road.

Music pounded through Danielle's headphones, and she moved her lips along with the lyrics. It wasn't her normal playlist this morning; she'd chosen one comprised of popular songs, and there were quite a few unknown, albeit catchy, compositions. She did know this Sia song by heart, though.

The rain was beginning to fall when she strolled up to her house twelve minutes later. Starbuck, Danielle's two-year-old Havanese, watched her from the front window, his tail thumping fervently. "Bucky," she whispered as the opened the door and stepped into the still-dark house. "You know those chairs are off limits." He flopped onto his back, letting her scratch his furry belly. She smiled and blew a stream of air onto his face, which Starbuck ferociously tried to devour. "Too bad you're cute," she cooed, "or else we'd have a serious issue."