Danger Kid

Chapter 8

Though caught in a dream, I am feeling very real pain. The wound in my shoulder blazes, but its agony is nothing compared to the suffering my dream causes.

I have no doubt that what is happening right now isn't actually real. Despite my awareness, it's a dream that I can't escape, since I've been cast into it by Vaughn's knife wound. I'm suffering from a serious injury, and my body won't regain consciousness until it has fixed itself. (Or maybe I'll just run out of life and die. My dream consciousness will slowly fade, go black, and then I'll never awake. The thought is disheartening...)

I have no choice but to wait, and this is unfortunate because I want to escape this nightmare so badly.

I'm looking into Amber's eyes as she is about to be cast out of the plane and into space. Of all my nightmares for the past year, this one is most reoccurring, and most haunting.

However, I take advantage of the dream, no matter how dire and maddening it is. I try again to understand what it is her eyes are trying to tell me. I've become more and more convinced that she was giving me a message, an instruction.

Maybe she wanted to tell me that it was alright. She knew I wouldn't be fast enough. Maybe she was trying to give me insight on how to be fast enough. No, but those two suspicions never seemed right to me.

Sometimes I think it was a different kind of message. Was she saying something about us as a couple? That's silly and hopeful on my part. I know Amber wouldn't have spent these moments on something she considered as unimportant as that.

All I know for sure is that her eyes are focused, determined, and desperate, yet somehow, not afraid. A deep, dark "something" tells me though that her eyes are angry with me. (Threatening, almost.) Why?

She falls over the edge. Usually when I have this dream, this is about when I wake up normally. But I can't wake up this time. Again, the thought crosses my mind that maybe I'm dying, and I won't ever wake up. This could be the last experience I'll ever have. That's a dismal thought.

Soon the other three fall, cast to their potential demises. Now comes the final part, the only part of the dream that brings me satisfaction. I stand, my head rocketing upwards, crushing Tag's face. But the dream continues this time, and I find myself running for the parachutes. I know that the drug has affected my friends too much. Something about it temporarily eliminates one's deviation. In their current state, if they fall from this high, they will die.

As I grab the parachutes and turn, the dream takes a new twist. Tag stands by the hole that has just eaten my friends. His mouth is stretched across his face, a morbid grin full of jagged, sharp teeth. (Though the teeth are disjointed and mangled, I note they are still pearly white) This is the only part of the dream so far where it has begun to fade into surrealism.

Yup, the suspension of disbelief is definitely shattered as I notice his eyes. Black holes. He walks towards me, chuckling, a deranged sound that sounds fitting of some horror movie clown.

His nose is crumpled from my last blow, but I punch his face again, this one really manages to cause quite the impact. Tag flies back, and as he hits the wall, shouts out, "Dope! You lose! You lose!" as if he were a carnival game. For a second I want to walk forward, and finish him, but I have no time.

I jump out the door, parachutes in hand. Now the dream returns to a more accurate depiction of what happened. Diving, I ignite my hands, pointing them behind me, upwards into the sky. It's the fastest I've ever been able to light up to this point, but it still takes me several valuable moments. I jet atomic energy from my arms, rocketing me forward.

Wind batters me, making it almost impossible to steer with any sort of accuracy. I can only see one figure in the distance, teetering quickly, gravity's plaything. I assume it to be Brayan; he was the last to be dropped. His body doesn't resist against the assailing wind, he doesn't have the energy too fight it. He looks like a flopping rag doll. He's so far away.

Below Brayan is the ground, only a hundred or so yards away. It's shapeless and grey, and appears to be the texture of mashed potatoes. However, the ground is also darkened, lit only by a dim moon. No, I realize, thankfully. It's not the ground, it's the clouds. I send out another blast of atomic energy, trying to direct myself downwards towards Brayan. My trajectories off, and I go too far, jetting in an obscenely inaccurate direction.

The clouds are upon me now, and it only takes a few moments of foggy blindness to break through. Now I can see all the figures, each progressively distant. Far below them, but not far enough, lies an expansive ocean. Again my dream separates from reality, becoming symbolic and surreal. Instead of dark and murky as it was originally, the ocean is red and thick, like blood. I hear the roar of the waves far below. I think I smell metal.

This isn't the movies. Water isn't a soft cushion, not when you hit it from more than the height of a small cliff. The speed we are generating from our free fall will make the liquid below hard like cement. Feeling the weakness of my poisoned body, I know my friends and I will have the relative resistance of several tomatoes; the water will splatter us in a similar fashion.

I shoot out another blast of atomic energy from my hands. This time I my aim is on target, the opposing force of my energy discharge causes me to soar with almost exact accuracy towards my target. However, as I soar down, I am far too aware of my chances of success...

Sometimes you wish you could just go insane. Lose your mind so that whatever current trial you're facing is more tolerable. But even insanity is a mercy which I am denied. My dream continues, and it seems as if I'll be completely aware and capable of rational analysis. I'll get to suffer and regret every last moment of that wretched night.