Kingdom of Nightmares [F/Multiple]

Chapter 2 - Waking Up

I jolted upright in my bed, my hand over my throat, and my heart pounding in my ears. It took me a minute to realize that I was no longer trapped in the dream but was instead in my bedroom with my parents just two doors down.

Darkness surrounded me and outside my bedroom window, I could see the hint of the sun rising in the east. I counted in my head the seconds as the light slowly rose up at the edges of my bed. It must have been an hour I sat there. My heart finally settled, but my fingers twitched. The after affects of the dream left me wanting something I knew I couldn’t give myself. Not only was it wrong, but it was also impossible.

My body didn’t respond like it should. When I touched myself—or at least tried to—I got only a faint response. I could chase after a climax for days if I had the will. The thing was, I couldn’t c*m except when I was in my dreams. The sight of the beasts from my dreams was enough to get me soaking in my underwear. It was instant like there was an on switch that could be toggle by only them. Since I was sixteen I’d dealt with this curse.

I thought it had stopped when I turned eighteen.

That was the day I woke from a peaceful sleep for the first time in two years. The first thing I’d done was rub one out, laughing as I came from my fingers and without the assistance of the beasts.

It all crumbled down when I’d found out Jacob had gone missing. Somewhere in the midst of the night, he’d snuck out of his bedroom and hadn’t come back. At seventeen years old, there had been no telling where he would have gone. For months we searched for him and couldn’t find a clue. His bedroom became locked off and we only mentioned him in reference. Nights at the dinner table were hard to get through when all I could imagine was him somewhere on the street starving to death.

I’d gotten what I wanted. The dreams were gone, but I’d lost Jacob.

That was until tonight.

Hope surged through me. I couldn’t let myself feel that way. But it was too late. Tears fell from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks. I covered my face with my hands and cried until my throat hurt. With burning eyes, I fell back on my bed.

The dreams were back. Maybe that meant Jacob would come home.

I stood up from my bed and fumbled for some clean clothes from my dresser. I’d barely gotten a clean pair of pants on before there was a knock on my door.

Frowning, I turned towards it.

“Yeah?”

“There’s a call for you.”

My heart skipped.

Calm down. It’s not him.

That irrational part of myself was coming back. Though I knew how unlikely it was that he would show up after two years of silence, I wanted this phone call to be from him. I don’t know why he wouldn’t talk to mom or dad—though he didn’t know them as well as he did me—first. But I was craving for some closure.

“Who is it?” I grabbed a white t-shirt from the top drawer and pulled it over my head.

“Angeline. From the studio.”

My heart sunk. It should have been expected. Work was calling. Not Jacob.

I opened the door.

Mom stood there with the phone in her hand. She handed it to me. I took it and shut the door before she could say what was on her mind. She’d had that look on her face that said she was going to go on a rant about how I should be working under Dad’s company instead of wasting my time freelance writing for a studio that didn’t pay me squat.

Though the prospect of moving out of my parent’s house was great, there was the slight problem that I would be more constricted under Dad’s scrutiny. He managed a car shop in town. He made good money for just being the manager, not the owner, but they were good friends from back in high school. I could have had a job there with no problem.

It just wasn’t me. And I wasn’t saying that to make myself seem cooler. Working on cars had been nice when Jacob was around. It was his thing. We would wake up early before school and work on the car he’d dug up from online. I didn’t know much about cars and still didn’t know much, but when Jacob was talking about things it was hard to not get involved. I was sucked into this small world he’d created.

The studio I worked for was Channel 6 News for the surrounding Southeast states. Though I wasn’t making that much, it gave me the freedom to work by myself and only take up a few writing tasks during the week. I needed less time to think about things and had a lot more time sleeping.

This the was the first dream I’d had since they stopped. I’d gotten used to having a full nights sleep plus whatever I snuck in when I wasn’t working. A second job would have been the right choice but I was fine with the sporadic pay that came with the work.

Dad thought I was a fool and Mom made it a point to not talk to me about it. I’m sure they were tired of me staying here. I was too.

They were fine the first few months after I turned eighteen and graduated from high school. When Jacob disappeared, they were just as heartbroken as I was, but they soon got passed it. I don’t know how they did it. I couldn’t go a minute without thinking about him.

Even now, a year after the cops stopped searching him, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.