Just a dream

Chapter 2

Loopy and Lula

I woke up in a fuzzy haze, not fully aware of  what had happened. I expected to see the blue sky full of fluffy white clouds, with the road and trees surrounding me. Instead, I saw nothing. Everywhere I looked was white, just white. There were no defined objects, and no pathways to follow. I couldn't even make out the floor I was sitting on, and when I put my hand down to touch it, my hand went straight through, or straight through where I imagined the floor being, anyway. I knew where I was immediately - the Dreamworld. This was just like the default setting, which I could easily change if I wanted to.

Coming here since the age of five meant that I had had a varied number of designs for the place, but recently I had settled down on a soft purple with lilac clouds circling above. To change it, I pinched myself. This was required, because in order to change the settings, I had to be briefly awake. The clouds appeared with a noise like a puff of smoke. I looked up in awe like a baby staring at a mobile. But there was only so much staring I could take. I pinched myself twice more, producing a rubber tipped pencil, and a blank sheet of paper. I began to draw Loopy.

Loopy was my own little character. Ever since I was able to draw a man with a distinct nose, mouth, and eyes, I had drawn Loopy. He had floppy, curly, brown hair; bright red cheeks and nose, which looked a little like makeup; a crooked smile that always looked like her was laughing; and his best feature - his large, crazy, green eyes. They would spin from side to side, never looking in the same direction, whizzing around, never stopping. He wore a long flowing garment that looked like a chorister boy's uniform. It was a pure white, and the sleeves almost trailed down to his feet. Loopy was the first imaginary friend I ever had. But he wasn't the only one.

There was Lula too. She was his sister, but looked quite different. She had flowing, wavy hair that was so blonde it was almost white; she had soft rosy cheeks with pale, skin; thin, baby pink lips that rarely contained any expression; and the most dazzlingly beautiful blue eyes, but they were sad eyes that only looked in two directions - down to the floor, or straight into your own eyes. She wore a snow white, sleeveless, empire line dress with little roses for a belt, and a matching rose wreathe on her head. She was a sad beauty.

I incorporated Lula into my drawing, the two looking so out of place together, but yet strongly bonded by invisible strings. The power of imagination could prove to be a powerful thing.

As mine was about to demonstrate.

"Ooh! Very good! Looks a bit like me." A mad chuckle came from behind me, but as I whipped around, there was no one there.

"Over here silly!" I turned back around as fast as I could but there was no one there. After a minute of silently waiting and listening to only my soft breathing, I turned back to my drawing, thinking that I was being stupid. I was bound to wake up soon, anyway. But as I looked down, there was no Loopy. He had completely vanished from the drawing, and not just like he had been rubbed out, it was like he had never been there in the first place. I wasn't an idiot. It didn't take Einstein to figure out who had been calling out to me. After all, it was just a dream, anything could happen. But the funny thing was, nothing had ever happened before without me wanting it to. That was the first strange thing that had happened. Well, apart from dreaming here in the first place.

"Loopy?" Despite having created him, I was so terrified of the prospect of meeting him. It was like meeting up with an online friend who you'd never met before, not knowing whether they were a genuine friend or some kind of creep who was actually seventy five.

"Very good. Ooh! I've said that twice now, I should make it a catch phrase shouldn't I? "Very good." says the Great Loopy. Nice touch, the 'Great' bit, don't you think?" I gaped in astonishment as Loopy, my creation, stood before me, as if he were a living being. "You know, I always used to love this place when it had unicorns whizzing around. Now it's just plain dull purple. I don't like plain and dull! I want the unicorns back!" he was beginning to sound like a whining five year old, just as I had imagined he would do.