The Eternal Dreams Trilogy (Most Imaginative Setting Winner 2012)

Chapter Two: The Kids Don't Stand a Chance (Part 1)

        “Ah, the fabled Inseparable Six,” a teacher sneered from the doorway as she flicked on the classroom lights. We didn’t have time to make it look like we weren’t trying to steal the answers for the next day’s test. There was no mystery behind our failure. It was simple: we were stupid and we got caught. “Do you all enjoy giving everyone around you headaches or do you just not care? Detentions are in order I think. Keep it up and I promise it’s going to get a whole lot worse than that.”

        “Ms. Laliberte,” Kanoa said, stepping forward to once again take the blame for all our actions. “It was my plan so –”

        “So you’re going to take the fall for your friends,” she finished, not buying his pleas for a second. “I’ve heard the stories Kanoa, but they’ve lost their lustre. No one believes them anymore. Come along now. Straight to the office with all of you.”

        Despite her declaration of our title, only four of us were involved in this plot and all four of us grumbled as we exited the room. We hadn’t seen Thalia for quite some time now, Adora even longer. Maybe it was their absence that had caused our plan to fall apart so quickly. Or maybe our hearts just weren’t in them anymore.

        “I had just ended my two week streak of lunch detentions,” Osias muttered on our long, familiar walk to the office. When we got there, they would write us up for misconduct like they had done so many times before. They basically had an entirely separate book just for us. Kanoa was probably the only one who thought that was a good thing. “This is just great.”

        “Hey, we had gotten away with like four plans in a row,” Kanoa said, not letting our capture bring him down. Win or lose, as long as Kanoa got his recognition, he was happy. “We can’t win them all.”

        Osias hesitated at the entrance to the office, looking at it as if it were a guillotine. Kanoa laughed and pushed him in, the secretary barely raising her head to see who had entered. She already knew. Cora hesitated too, but she wasn’t scared like Osias had been.

        “What’s wrong?” I asked.

        “I don’t know how many more of these I’m in for,” she sighed, sounding frustrated. “It’s all getting a little… Tiresome.”

                                                                             ******

        Drephoria remained without light no matter where we went. Even the stars refused to shine. Pieces of the sky had begun to fall and shatter upon the ground, leaving big holes in the atmosphere that were nothing more than empty space. Occasionally, we would experience strange anomalies Osias had deemed ‘aftershocks.’ The whole world would shake. Sometimes it would be so soft that we would barely felt it, but sometimes it was hard enough that we would need to stop walking and wait for it to pass. For some reason, after ever aftershock, I was reminded of Adora. I caught my friends making quick glances at any white objects we passed, as if she might have been hiding all along. I wondered if there was such a thing as phantom friend syndrome.

        We found ourselves walking through a desolate, decaying, dark amusement park. The rusted gate at the entrance had read “Disneyland,” but the ‘S,’ ‘N,’ and ‘Y’ had fallen off. If anyone had once maintained the park, they hadn’t visited in quite some time. Many of the rides were completely broken. There were gaps in the tracks of the rollercoasters, weeds had grown over the merry-go-rounds, and all the concession stands had caved in.

        I thought back on the days when I was too short to go on rides without a parent, when it felt like the world wasn’t built for kids. Now I was too old. Memorable Disney songs attempted to play over the park’s speakers, but the sound was slow and filled with static, their inherent cheer taken away and replaced with sorrow.

        Scattered amongst the ruins of the amusement park were blades in the shape of keys, each one seeming to mark a final resting place for its owner. I saw a familiar blue sign with yellow lettering that reminded me of where I used to rent movies and video games before it had shut down. There was another sign, hanging upside down, with white lettering imposed over an orange splash mark. It belonged to a colourful studio that had images of lost cartoon characters plastered across the building in black graffiti. This wasn’t an amusement park anymore. It was a graveyard.

        “What a dump this place has become,” Thalia muttered after we had taken a moment to take in our surroundings. “Remember how Drephoria used to amaze us? It’s never felt more like home. No surprises.”

        She was right, unfortunately. I remembered how our dream world used to fill me with wonder and the sense that no matter what, the impossible was achievable. Lately Drephoria just felt like a place where dreams went to die. I looked to the horizon, but all I saw was darkness. It was the longest damn dawn any of us had ever waited for. The fatigue that plagued us all was evident in our eyes, our steps, and even our voices. We were insomniacs in a dream world.

        “I know this is going to sound weird but,” Thalia prattled on, “I miss sleep. I feel so tired, so burnt out by this never-ending wake. I need a break.”