A Dreamer's Realm (Part 1)

A Dreamer's Realm

Chapter 1

Hope

"Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be."

- Don Quixote

There is no other place as exciting to be at after midnight than this one, where the neon lights make the streets alive and the old vampires cannot tell if it’s still daylight outside. People move around with their shinny cell phones over their ears and their rusted souls beneath the Armani and Prada suits and dresses. High heels are heard through the wet surface of the upper world, a world when everything seems to be in a daze – half dreaming, half sleeping.

It is well after the devil’s hour when the slim figure of the twenty-five year old man jumps over the bench that’s lit by the dim lights of the street corner, and hunches down like a bird that stalks a prey. He dresses in black and wears a worn-out leather jacket, trying to muster balance - writing in a little, leather covered book while smoking a cigarette. There is an old phone booth at that corner that seems to have been abandoned by the phone company a long time ago, much like the rest of the city’s streets seem to have been forgotten by the rest of the world. The sounds of the shopping cart being dragged across the street by an old bum seem to be getting closer, and the young man turns around to see him walking behind him.

“Good morning,” the homeless says, waving his gloved hand in a very polite manner. The young man gives him a nod and returns to his book. “Is it that time of the year again?” he asks. The young man doesn’t turn to see him, he just simply replies with a soft “yes”, without losing a beat on whatever he is writing. The man walks by, patting him on the shoulder. “I oughta figure that - I rarely get to see you outside on a full moon. Say hi for me if he asks.”

“I will,” the young man replies half pretending to be smiling, half still concentrating on his book. He hears the man and his shopping cart roll away. He is certain the man is headed to the shelter just a couple of blocks away, and he resists the urge to follow him and make sure he gets there okay because he knows that the old phone will be ringing any minute now.

He throws away the last of the cigarette just as the phone rings. He lets it ring a couple of more moments before standing up and entering the phone booth, picking up the line as the door closes behind him. There is a little bit of static, yet he has come accustomed to it over the years. He draws a smile on his face as soon as he hears the all-too well-known “Hello?” from the male voice on the other end, in a language he knows only a few speak it in that angel town.

If anyone asks, his name is Connor Hayden. He owns and works at the bar known as The Lighthouse, just a few blocks from the old town district. His driver’s license says he was born somewhere in the south part of the States, that he’s an organ donor, and that he needs to wear glasses when driving. The twisted part of it is that he’s never owned a car nor he cared for one at any point in his life. And if we make a list of his “outside features”, we can say that he never takes a day off, never gets sick, and is always there when the bar is opening and when the bar is closing, mainly because he owns the building where the bar is at and has his own. He usually keeps the details of his private life as they are – private. Sticks to business and treats his staff fairly well; they all agree that they feel strangely safe even though the work environment isn’t always a peaceful one and the neighborhood is not all that glamorous either. None of them have ever thought about quitting, maybe because the pay is good, or maybe because humans tend to stop looking for something better when “better” seems to be present at all times. Not even the staff can tell why.

Connor is very well known in the underworld. Most of his long-time customers know him by the nickname of “Hard Rock”. He doesn’t like it and scolds whoever calls him that with a dirty look that usually does the trick, only for the offence to be repeated once or twice before the offender gets the “real message” and never does it again. The origins of the nickname are probably because he plays in a Rock band named “The League” and the stage is usually the Lighthouse’s. But sometimes they like to participate in the local band’s talent shows, in which they are frequent winners. It’s a talent, some may say – a wasted talent since they mostly play songs from more popular, more famous bands (yet most people can swear on their mother’s grave that they play them ten times better than the original artists). They don’t seem to mind, however, and are quite contempt with the crowd they can draw whenever their name happens to appear at some local radio station or the little warn down marquee sign on top of the Lighthouse’s entrance.

He’s got a sister – her name is Samantha. He visits her every day at the hospital because Samantha has been comatose for the last five or six years. All they know is that it happened because of a car accident, but no one can remember why or how it happened… and he had never talked about her before it happened. It was like, one day he was an only child and the next day he had a sister whom he never had talked about, nor did he ever introduced her – to anyone. “The next thing you know, he’ll have a mother, and a father, and a dog, and a cat, and the obnoxious cousin who married his sister and lives in a bunker somewhere in Somalia!” Sarah, the head waitress said once. She is the oldest member of the staff at the Lighthouse and she says that she got hired the moment she walked into the bar. “It’s the skill,” she says. “I’ve gots TWO of them…”

Back to Connor and his sister, Samantha. As I’ve said, he visits every day and knows the nurses by name and birthday after all this time. He stops by the nurse’s station to talk to the ones who are there, asks about the ones he doesn’t see, talks to Sam’s doctors, and then he spends the rest of the visiting hours with his sister, mostly talking to her about his day. Sometimes he sings to her and it’s like the entire floor comes to life. He sometimes even sings at the children’s ward. The kids like it when he sings.

If you ask around, most doctors would say that even though she’s not on life support, Connor does not like the idea of taking her home with him because by now he’s too used to living alone. Very few would realize that the main reason he keeps showing up at the hospital is because the idea of having someone close to him gives Connor something that he thought was long gone before Samantha appeared in his life. The second part of that something is the phone call he gets every year, around September, on the old phone booth he is at right now. He doesn’t want to admit it, but that phone call fills the empty space he feels inside his soul ever since he moved into town (about ten years ago, maybe more than that). The call from home – the voice that keeps him up-to-date on everything and everyone he left behind; his best friend since he was a child and the only true link he has of his past. The “something” that the voices on the other line and the visits to Samantha have brought to Connor’s life is resumed in one simple yet so complex word:

Hope.

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."

- Erik H. Erikson

The Lost (Fragg)

El siguiente es un fragmento de una novela fantástica que escribi ya hace un buen. El titulo de la novela es The Lost y forma parte de una trilogía... aqui esta un pequeño fragmento de esa novela...

I believe in the spirit. I believe that we are all capable of constructing our own paths, our own destiny. I believe that faith is a matter of choice. Then again, I believed I served a greater purpose at one point in my life, so who am I to tell you what should or shouldn’t you believe. But you see—it’s all connected. We are all connected in some radical, twisted way to one another, even beyond our entire belief system. And to believe that dreams are the sheer image of what goes on inside your soul is the basic principle that saves you from the nightmare that you might call a reality. Faith, in many cases, is the sole provider of hope, light… and sanity.

If you believe… then you are not lost… but rather, found.


________________________________________________

“People are talkin’ trash ‘bout yah behin’ your back, Danká, and quite frankly Ah am worried ‘bout what they say. They say tha’ yah hang ‘round a demon’s nest – a bad kind of demon’s nest, an’ that Michael thinks tha’ yah had somethin’ t’ do with tha’ demon escapin’ hell a while back.”

Danká blew out a light cloud of smoke while stroking his hands in that alley trash can to keep himself warm thanks to the bonfire inside such can. Right next to him stood an elderly black woman, looking pretty much like a classical case of homeless lunatic, dirty clothes, raggedy skirt, hobo gloves and all, looking at Danká like a mother looks at her boy trying to seek out the truth. She wore a crazy amount of necklaces around her neck, most of them made out of shells and small bones that made a whole lot of rattling noise whenever she moved around. “Don’t yah listen t’ them, Hattie,” the angel said, bringing a light in to the woman’s eyes. “People are jus’ mean an’ wanna bring everyone down these days.”

The old woman laughed delighted to hear those words. “That’s what Ah thought! There ain’t no way, no how mah’ boy would be tanglin’ ‘round bad people, nuh-ah, not mah’ boy!” she gave Danká a hug as they both laughed, then, she asked with a suspicious whisper: “Bu’ wha’ are yah doin’ ‘ere boy?! Yah know this ain’t a safe haven for yah!”

“Ah ‘ad t’ see yah, Hattie: Ah needs some info’ ‘but the A.I.S.; Ah needs t’ get in touch with somebody.”

“Michael is not allowin’ anyone near them,” Hattie sounded strange, “not even old Hattie. Ah thinks ‘e might be int’ some deep shit.”

“Yah don’t say?”

“Hm-hum. Th’ other day, Ah saws ‘im walkin’ around Main Street talkin’ t’ that no-good Camael in a very low profile. Yah don’t do tha’ unless yah have somethin’ t’ hide. Camael ain’t good angel, no sir: he makes deals with the Devil.”

“Tha’ low-rotten scum bag!” Danká sounded outraged. “No angel should be makin’ deals with the Devil, Hattie! Tha’ really blows mah bubbles!”

Hattie laughed, showing all her pearly whites as she did. Then, she abruptly stopped laughing and looked mysteriously at Danká. “Some bad voodoo mojo is goin’ on ‘ere, m’boy,” she said. “The Devil is gone, an’ for some reason Ah fear tha’ it is unnatural. The Dreamah’ is havin’ nightmares tha’ are not ‘is own: th’ darkness is callin’ th’ Waker an’ soon we’re all gonna be in grave danger…”

Danká leaned down towards her. “Don’t yah worry, Hattie; Ah’m workin’ on tha’ too. Ah would nevah let anything ‘appen t’ yah – nevah!”

Hattie smiled and pulled on Danká’s cheeks with motherly playfulness, “Mah’, mah’! You are one o’ th’ good ones, m’boy!” she kissed him on both cheeks, took off one of her necklaces and placed it around Danká’s neck. “Th’ spirit will guide yah an’ protect yah. Don’t you evah’ take this off, yah ‘ear?!” She took her shopping cart and placed some of the canned goods that Danká had dropped off when he got there, “God blesses an’ protects ‘is prodigious son at th’ ‘oly grounds, m’boy! Th’ Lord would nevah’ let anythin’ ‘appen t’ ‘is own blood.”

“Thank yah, Hattie!” Danká waved good-bye to the woman with the swinging step. He then looked up to the sky, “Oh, Hattie!” he sighed, “Ah’m really gonna miss yah when you’re gone.”

Danká returned to Aramis shortly after that, being gone for three days already. He found Aramis strangely altered, yet made no comments about it because (1) he valued his life, and (2), even thought Anavar had made him completely incapable of conceiving children, he valued his balls all the same.

“Ah spoke t’ one o’ my closest contacts,” he said in a private interview they had inside the warehouse. They had no need to turn on the lights for their magical eyes could see perfectly in the absolute darkness that surrounded them.

“Bu’ first a question: haven’t yah noticed tha’ even th’ Hunters aren’t havin’ troubles findin’ angels?”

“The images have come to my attention, yes.”

“Well, Michael and th’ rest o’ the angelical high consort have been sein’ ‘round in broad daylight by some o’ the Visionaries…”

“You saw Hattie, didn’t you,” Aramis gave him a wicked smile. Danká’s wing feathers did a little ruffle.

“So what if Ah did?!” he exclaimed in self-defense. “She told me tha’ Michael had been doin’ bad business ovah’ with Camael, and Ah for one don’t like that business relationship, it’s nothin’ bu’ bad news!”

“Yes, but did you find out anything about Lucifer?”

“Hattie tolds me tha’ we might find ‘im ovah’ at the cemetery.”

“Did that raving lunatic used such well-conceived words?”

“Not really – bu’ she did mention holy grounds, an’ what’s holier than a place where dead people hang out?”

Aramis sat back against the wall and began a quiet thinking process, broken only when Danká spoke once more, “Want me t’ send out mah’ people t’ check it out all the same?”

“Yeah,” the demon said distracted. Danká took notice of this and asked:

“Somethin’ wrong?”

“I’ve been hearing voices… and they aren’t my usual little leprechauns giving me the usual killing spree ideas.”

“That’s bad coming from yah’.”

“It’s apocalyptic, in biblical proportions!”

“Hah!” Danká laughed, “Yah’ said biblical!”

Once Every Blue Moon (Excerpt)

I

“C’est la vie”, said the old folks, “it goes to show you never can tell…”

Every first full moon of the fall season, Ethan would bake butterscotch cookies in the middle of the night and leave a full tray out on the window for the fae to find. This would make the entire neighborhood homes beam in cheerful light and often made his neighbors dream of fairy tales and adventures in far-away places. He would start the endeavor by telling Peaches and Biscuit the story of how the Crowley family had first arrived to Kingston and had built Crowley Manor, a beautiful Queen Anne style home with a spectacular rounded veranda that covered most of the lower level façade, with Palladian windows on the third one. It had a large domed roof supported by simple columns and sturdy balusters and there was a central bay window above the veranda that gave a nice view of the entire surrounding neighborhood. The garden was big enough to keep Peaches and Biscuit – two beautiful Golden Retriever dogs in full contempt, but too small to keep the pony that Ethan had dreamed of having since he was a little kid. He kept trees around the garden fence, most of them apple and peach trees, and a small flower patch with lavender, poppies, and primrose (where Peaches and Biscuit were not allowed to enter but somehow he always found them sleeping in) next to the backdoor. After he told the story, he would then proceed to bake the cookies he would leave for the fae and then he would settle down in front of the T.V. for the rest of the night or until he eventually fell asleep while the infomercials showed how he could make his abs of steel or how he could improve his sex-life with the use of an odd-looking pump that cost 59.99 plus shipping and handling.

At thirty-two, Ethan Crowley thought he would have a different life than the one he was living. When he was younger, he had made a blueprint of his life which included going to Africa and runaround with those people who save the animals from hunters and poachers, marrying Farrah Fawcett and having eight kids (two girls, four boys and a set of twins), and discovering something so important that humanity itself would not be the same afterwards. So far, the closest he had been to Africa and Farrah was via the posters he had on his bedroom walls (the Africa one was particularly cheesy as it had a sunset and the silhouette of a giraffe with the words “Your talent is God’s gift to you” written in golden, fancy letters). As for the invention, he was convinced that whatever he could muster in his B+ mind had already been thought of, laughed at, and tossed to the bin of stupid ideas by other, brighter people. No, Ethan was not in Africa, he was not married to a movie star, and he was not the genius inventor of the family. He worked at a pet hospital as a pet-nurse during the week and on the weekends he loved to take Peaches and Biscuit to small trips to the lake or just hang around the house, working on the flower pad, watching T.V., and (on special occasions such as the first full moon of the fall season) bake cookies he would leave out for the fae.

He wasn’t sure, however, if it was the fae or the dogs the ones eating the cookies.

It wasn’t as if Ethan believed in faeries, but the memory of his grandparents and Amelia was kept alive through the tradition of leaving food out for the “good folk”. His grandfather would sprinkle thyme on windows and doorframes while singing gadflykins, gladtrypins, gutterpuss and cass, come to us fairily each lad and lass. Amelia, his twin sister, would laugh at the sound of those words. She was a cheerful and delightful girl, with bouncy ebony curls and bright almond eyes who could brighten up a room with her sole presence. She loved to hear her grandfather tell the fae’s stories, often dressed like a backyard fairy using her pink tutu dress and tin foil to make frilly wings. Their mother would use stems from the lily of the Nile blooms to make excellent wands and the frail flowers to make necklaces Amelia would then wear until they dried and fell. He would pretend, like any older brother, he didn’t like the stories and he would often tell Amelia that faeries weren’t real to which statements Amelia would often react with anger and tears because it was a well-known fact that faeries died when people ceased to believe in them. He would then apologize profoundly and swear (spit in hand) that the faeries lived in their backyard and that they came out dressed like fireflies to dance in the moonlight when the year’s wheel turned.

Amelia was only seven when the wheel turned for her and Ethan would feel her ghost following him all the time after that, particularly during the spring, when the flowers bloomed and it seemed as if the entire garden came to a magical rebirth.

“This old tabby came to my house this morning again. I thought you said you gave it to that nice family in Toronto.”

Ethan smiled politely. Beverly Swanson was eighty-seven years old and always wore that bright-flowered hat with her big, bug-eyed sunglasses on Tuesdays, even if there wasn’t sunny outside. “I did, Mrs. Swanson. I think she must’ve walked.”

“Well that’s some journey. I can’t have her at my place, not with George and his arthritis acting up during the winter. Can you take her in and find her a good home again? This time tell her to stay there.”

“Of course Mrs. Swanson,” Ethan said taking the tabby in his arms and turning to place it in one of the pet carriers behind him. “How is George?”

“Grouchy. Cold weather makes him want to pee every other hour and makes him get up from the mat near the fireplace to do his business in the yard. He’s all achy and winy from the arthritis, but that old mutt doesn’t lose his sense of decorum, I’ll give him that.”

“Be that as it may, you still need to bring George in next week to get his yearly shots, okay?”

“We’ll be here, dear, don’t you worry about that. So, how is your grandfather?” Beverly asked as she took several doggie treats in the bowl they had there as a courtesy.

“The same he was last month, and several years before that: dead.”

Beverly looked over the glasses’ frames. “Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure. I was at the funeral home the day he died,” he said, as if proud of it.

Beverly growled and slowly shook her head. “So young,” she muttered under her breath and walked out. Ethan followed her with his eyes until she disappeared across the street. He then turned to the cat. “That is not your home anymore and you know it. Why do you keep going back there when you know they’re going to catch you? Might as well just move your furry little kitty ass here and save yourself the trouble.”

The cat blinked and meowed. He chuckled. “Nice try,” he said, “but I can’t take you in either. Sorry pal: you’re just going to have to settle for a warm blanket and free food – for now.”

A Dreamer's Realm 3

A DREAMER'S REALM

Chapter Three: Angelic Deviations

“I feel that there is an angel inside me whom I am constantly shocking.”

~Jean Cocteau

Out of everyone there, Connor trusted Sarah more. The red haired waitress was the first one he had hired when he opened the bar, and had seen the kind of people Connor usually hung out with. It wasn’t easy deceiving her; she simply knew Connor inside out and knew whenever the man was lying to her about anything. She knew.


That night she walked over to Connor just before she left for the night. “Everything okay?” she asked. Connor nodded, distracted. “You’ve been acting funny for the last couple of days,” she said. She touched his shoulder and made him look at her. “MORE than usual, that is.”


He looked at her for a moment and then showed her his hands. “What do you see?” he asked.

“That you haven’t washed your hands all night.”


“See? That’s just it!” he half hissed, half whispered to her. “You’re human! You don’t see it!”


“See what?” Sarah sounded confused. She knew all about Connor and his true nature, but even for him this was sounding kind of crazy.


“The circles! In my hand – there are circles, like burned circles, and they have been there since ---” he was about to say something else, but just then he felt a pounding in his head so painful that actually made him lose consciousness.


An undeterminable amount of time later, he woke up with a pounding in his head only equal to having little people hammering inside his brain with tinny silvery hammers. His entire body felt a little numb as he started to turn to see where he was. A beeping sound. He looked over to his left to see a monitoring machine telling them that his heartbeat was slightly lower than normal – for human standards. For angels? Perfectly okay. He found himself with an IV up his arm, pumping some sort of yellowish liquid into his system, not that it would do good, but it was going in anyway.


“You’re awake!” he heard Casey, one of the nurses say. She had this angelic glow of relieve as she wrote down stats on her chart, “You had us worried! Your friends are here…”


My friends? Connor thought, and looked over at the room’s wide window that gave a nice view of the hallway. There stood Mike (the bar’s bartender – a skinny young man with short black hair and brown puppy eyes who looked at Connor as if he was terminally ill), Harvey (a good looking guitar player who played in the band; he had long blonde hair with bangs and olive-green eyes that seemed to speak the devil’s tongue every now and then) and Sarah. “They came as soon as we phoned them,” he heard Casey’s nice voice again, “They have been really worried about you – except maybe your friend over there, the one with the dirty jacket and dark glasses: I think he’s only here for the nurse uniforms…”


“Yeah, Harvey’s a skank.”


“We were worried sick about you!” Mike argued a couple of minutes later, when Casey and the Doctor in charge gave them the okay to go in, “You crashed into the floor ---”

“Not cool,” Harvey interrupted.


“—left everyone high and dry, completely thrown off by your actions –“


“—and we had to tell a whole bunch of lies to a whole bunch of people!!” Sarah exclaimed.


“The point here is that when they called us over at the bar, we thought you were dead!” Mike was totally freaking out.


“He did,” Harvey said.


“I mean, what the fuck we were going to do with a dead body?!”


“Fuck it!” They all turned to Harvey, “What? Dead or not, I know of several sick fuckers who would pay dearly for this fucker’s ass!”


“Well, it’s been fun being here, but I think we can all agree that we all want to go home now, don’t we?” Connor started to get out IV lines and monitoring wires.


“Hey! Stop doing that!” Mike exclaimed, being aided by Harvey and Sarah as he tried to get Connor back in bed, “Nurse!” he screamed out, “Crazy patient trying to escape here!!”


Casey came in, “Connor! What are you doing?!”


“I want to go home now…”


“You can’t. We’re still waiting on your labs…”


Connor froze. Did she just say something about… labs?


Oh dear lords. Connor knew what was going to happen next. People in the laboratory where going to go paranoid when they found unknown species of cell bodies inside that sample. He could see could see himself in a CIA underground experiment facility somewhere in… Somalia!!!

“Oh dear God, no!! Not Somalia!!” he exclaimed with anguished voice, squeezing the bed sheets tightly against his body.

“Connor, what the hell are you talking about?” Harvey asked looking at Connor as if the boy had completely lost his marbles.


“I can’t go to Somalia, Harvey…” Connor looked back at him with lost puppy eyes.

“Agreed… Not Somalia,” he heard a southern-accented voice coming from the door. A white lab coat was now walking towards them signing a chart and giving it to the nurse, “Mr. Hayden can go now, thank you.”

“Okay doctor.”

Doctor? Connor had to make an incredible effort not vomit right then and there. Danka looked at everyone in the room “Please, if you would allow me a moment with mah’ patient?” the doctor said with a sweet smile.


“What are you doing here, Danká?” Connor asked seriously. Danká had closed the curtains and had handed Connor his clothing bag.


“What? No kissy? I was kind of expectin’ some kissin’!” he smiled. Connor was not amused. He took a deep breath. He showed Danka his hands. “What do you see?” he asked. Danka looked at the hands, then at Connor, and smiled. He took off his white robe, took off his scrub shirt and turned around. There, on his back shoulder, Connor could see the same symbols that were burned into his hand.


“So,” Danka said turning around. “Are you ready to talk yet? Or do you want me to send the labs over to Somalia?”


As they walked inside Connor’s apartment (above the bar), Danka had a strange feeling of coming home. It wasn’t hard to place a spell on everyone involved in the case to make believe that Connor was okay and was able to go home that same afternoon. Inside the room, Connor had a small bar where he headed as soon as they walked in. He took out two glasses and poured some whiskey into them. Danka sat in one of the stools. “Talk,” Connor said as he handed him the glass. Danka smiled for a minute or two. “What? Are you going to sit there, looking stupid now?”


“Okay, here’s the deal: I’ll spill my beans and make sure Heavy and everyone else at the city is off your case about going back home… if you hide someone for me here, you know, give him shelter, just for a while. You see, he’s sort of, in a way, running from the celestial law and he needs to have a low profile while he regains his strength and composure.”


“Who?” Connor asked. The entire idea started to sound less and less appealing.


“A… friend…” Danka said as he drank the whiskey in one gulp as if one was drinking water.

“I know the sort of scum you hang out with – Who?”

He felt it – it was as if cold, icy water was running down his spine. The sight of the good-looking man standing on the door that led to his bedroom, wearing a bathrobe and still steaming from the shower he had taken not even a few minutes ago. Connor’s jaw dropped. He had an innocent smirk on his face that matched his perfect baby blue eyes. He had long, golden blonde hair in delicate waves that reached his kneecaps.

“I know what you’re thinking!” Danka said trying to calm him down. “But he has changed! He’s no longer the blood-thirsty crazy demon he once was,” he turned to the man. “Are you?” he asked in a severe tone. The man shook his head. Connor screamed out desperately, running towards him, heaving and panting. The man smiled sweetly.

“Hi,” he said.

“Out!” Connor screamed pointing to the exit door, “Get out!”

Danká walked in from behind, “Here’s the deal,” he said taking Connor to sit on one of the stools as the man sat next to him, “We need Aramis here to lay low for a while. He stays with you, I get my business in order, we’re all very, very happy indeed. What d’ yah say?”

“NO! HE’S A DEMON – WORSE THAN HAVING LUCIFER OVER!”

“Wait,” Danká said politely, “you haven’t heard the good part!” Connor looked at him in disbelief, “Yes, there is a good part. Now, I know that sounds weird coming from me and all but trust me, it might interest an old witch like you.”

“I doubt it!”

“Been having bad dreams lately, Elaosu?” Connor turned to look at Aramis, who smiled eerily. “Dreams like – a city melting? A girl dying while Danka here holds her heart in his hands? Yeah, I’ve seen you at the top of the hill, looking down at it, and I’ve seen you screaming at the hospital. And then there is the fucking symbols no one else can see and fuck do they sting!” Aramis took off the robe, revealing two symbols identical to the ones Connor had on his hands, but considerably bigger and on the planes of his shoulders, linked together by flames across his back, “I must admit,” he whispered lustfully, “they keep me turned on…”

Connor looked in disbelief, tracing the burned images with his fingers.

“So,” Aramis said rubbing his hands together, “For what I know, we’re in deep shit, and I don’t mean “Oh my God I’m in deep shit!”, but more like, “This shit is so deep it required aeons in development to come together and form the pile in which I am now submerged in”… yeah.”

“Can we talk ‘bout this with drinks?” Danká suggested. Like a robot, Connor took the whiskey bottle and rank what was left on it. Danká turned to Aramis. “He’s taking it well, don’t you think?” he asked. Aramis gave out a deep sigh.

“I do not intend to know everything.” Aramis began, “But I do know that I am the one who knows a bit more. For what Danká has told me, I could master some information that I hope it will be completed with whatever you can spill. So, my story starts with me, minding my own business --”

“In hell,” Connor interrupted. “As the demon you are, you were sent to hell, am I correct or am I missing something here?”

“Yes, in hell. I was quite enjoying the rest and relaxation I was so gratefully provided by good old Lucifer – nice fellow, a bit on the loony side, quite misunderstood – when I started to feel strange… and I assumed that for someone who is a spirit, to feel something as physical as pain would be terribly wrong. The next thing I knew, I was being pulled by this nice young fellow here… who needed a favor from me.”

“But we’re not here to discuss that issue, are we?” Danká seemed nervous, “Move along, move along…”

“So, after providing Danká with… stuff… I decided to travel the universe, see what was the new order, and came to find I was no longer a God, nor an angel, nor a demon – I was a legend! I was so happy! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that my sole name would bring so many angels to their knees in sheer horror! Well, I came to Earth and found myself in Egypt, where I found out about this thing that’s been going on under our noses for the last couple of eons. These (he pointed at Connor’s burned hands) are no casual thing. These are the markings of the chosen Immortals, warriors of the Underworld, as cliché as it might sound… but that was way after I started having the dreams.”

“What dreams?” Connor didn’t even notice he sounded interested all of a sudden, but Aramis did and he was pleased.

“The first dream I had came when I was traveling over Chimera, the old Atlian moon. I was at the Khoriean city, and Kube was sustaining what was left of his castle. His warriors had long been killed, it seemed, and he was struggling to keep the energy flowing through the Hexagon. Then, it was surrounded by a blood circle with strange scriptures around it – and that angel and that woman appeared… I knew I’ve seen them before, in old books the Gods keep over at the Tizcat and some old papyrus I’ve left over at an old Atlianian temple to Acbal. So I when I woke up I drew the circle and showed it to Daih, an old demon back in Egypt who used to be one of the most powerful demons in the good old days.” He said taking a piece of paper out from his left pocket and showing it to Connor, who looked over at it with udder interest as Aramis went on, “He told me something about a holy battle that was about to take place in the realm of the Dreams; that they had been gathering the pieces of the Formation to open the gates and bring over the Old Empire, a thing that usually means everything is wiped out, and restart a new. Since Daih was making as much sense as a monkey on crack, I decided to investigate with the little information he gave me, and went over at my old lair, surprised to see it still standing. The scriptures talk about the city of Morpheus, when the Dream Empire was within all its glory; before the Dreamer destroyed it. His name was Sleipnir. He is said to be a powerful sorcerer, much like a God, or even higher. He sleeps and dreams us all; we are all but figments of his powerful imagination. And you would think that this circle come from the Dreamer, right? But then I started reading a bit more, clicking everything Daih had told me little by little, and found out that these scriptures,” Aramis pointed to the letters surrounding the circle, “are an ancient language spoken only by angels of Kaikeyi. It says “seven suns that rise together. Light to Darkness; Life to Death; and in the middle Time keeps all tracks of Destiny’s Dream…” and then I remembered that the Ōris Clan markings where similar to these.”

“The Ōris Clan… God’s Assassins.” Connor whispered.

“Good!” Aramis cheered, “An educated angel! Who would of thunk it? So, after this I met with Danká again, who told me about these dreams he’d been having about the Fairy Kingdom, the girl with the bloody heart, and about an angel, whose name is… what was his name again, Danká?”

“ Yune; crazy mother-fucker, blood thirsty as I’ve ever seen one.”

“At first we thought he was a demon, but he has celestial vibrations – goody-godly vibrations even. And then there was the symbols equal to that Sunshine had on his back, and I figure that either we had a heavily drunken party and ended-up with kick-ass tattoos… or somehow we became part of a ramification of the Ōris Clan. In any case, I think it’s pretty fucked up if they chose beings such as me, or Danká – or you, Hard Rock.”

“But… I still don’t understand.” Connor looked puzzled, “What do we have to do in any of this?”

“I don’t understand either, well, not entirely that is.” Aramis shrugged his shoulders, “But I guess all will be revealed in good time. All I know is that we need to stick together, and that we need to find two others with symbols similar to these – Daih told me.”

“And you know we trust good ol’ Daih…” Danká said ironically. Connor looked at Aramis for a minute then said, “You can stay… but under certain rules.”

“Go on…”

“I don’t want demons and angels knowing who you are. This place is neutral and I don’t want problems. Sarah knows what I am but she can’t know about you, I don’t want her to freak out even more.”

“I can do that.”

“And you will work to pay for your stay. You can have the room at the end of the hall.”

“Okay, deal. I live as close as homeless as I ever lived, anything else?”

“My name is Connor Hayden. None of this Hard Rock or Elaosu name goes on around here, got it?”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t want any random murders!”

“Connor, baby, I’m a demon not a butcher!”

“I know you.”

Aramis sighed. “You got yourself a deal.” He said finally, “I’ll behave – you have my word. I’ll be good,” he battered his eyelashes with a completely innocent look.

“God that’s just scary!” Connor whined.

“Tell me ‘bout it.” Danká drank directly from the bottle, “The last time I saw that look, Bambi’s mom got shot.”

------ O -------

I know I'm an angel, and I know I should be looking for the goodness in people and all that but -- Aramis is driving me insane!

I introduced him to the rest of the staff as Matthew Gray, and Aramis began to speak with this perfect British accent (the girls say it’s sexy as hell). I told them he would be working with us from then on and that they should show him the ropes of the business while I was going out for a couple of hours. Well, it was only a matter of three hours that I left him alone here and by the time I got back, he’d already placed a “closed down for remodeling” announcement on the door and inside – he was remodeling! Apparently he’s a RICH demon and decided to invest his million-dollar account here. His accountant almost had a heart attack when he told her the news.

He became very accustomed to life here. He likes to boss people around and he’s a damn good manager. Mike bitched and complained about it, but then he got to see the plans Aramis had inside his head and was his new and devoted follower (I am scared). So, Aramis got to work, right? He got cages for the go-go girls and the stage is a bit bigger. He got new lighting and new smoke machines. He went neon-crazy, yet it looks cool. The rock essence is still there – but in Technicolor! He got new sound systems and a new DJ, even though it’s not a dance club he said that this was no reason to go cheap on the music. He got male strippers for the ladies night and the gay night, and stripper girls for the rest of the weekends. He got a beautiful karaoke machine, along with seven small monitors and three big-ass plasma screens that roll videos all the time – except on Mondays, when we plan to do Monday Night Football, and on special sporty occasions. I must admit: he knows what the hell he does. PLUS, he brought the new uniforms for the staff and I must admit that everyone is very happy about it – even me.

On his spare time he likes to read… and argue passionately with himself about whatever he is reading. The other day he and Harvey were almost screaming at each other over if Mary had a little lamb. Harvey likes him; I can tell. And he loves to paint too… but he stopped doing it when I found out that he was using human blood to mix the paints and inks. He tried to make it better by telling me that the blood came from thieves and whores. I felt kind of bad – the corner whore is nowhere to be found… yet he made an amazing copy of a Picasso and it’s hanging from the bar’s wall.

Aramis never sleeps. That’s the main reason he’s driving me insane. He stays up at all times, all hours, and sometimes decides to decorate his room (we’ve made some adjustments to my floor so one of the old rooms was available for him to say at) and pounds heavily on the walls, screaming in God-knows what language, laughing maniacally once in a while. And then I get the heebes-geeves, because I knock on his door and he opens it slightly, giving me this child-like smile that just looks creepy coming from him. And then, when I think about all the evil he is capable of, I lose sleep. It’s frightening to picture him doing all the things I know he did and all the other things I’ve been told he did.

Danká comes here often. Danká is an old friend of mine, fun to be with. He has the face of an innocent, yet he’s the most perverted mind I’ve ever came across with. He’s not from around here, but when he talks he’s got this very southern, very bayou kind of accent that makes it a bit hard to follow if you’re not familiar with him. But, I was telling you that he comes often. He didn’t work, but he does drink like there is no tomorrow. So I told him to either pay his fucking tab or go. So he started as a part-time bartender. I must admit, he’s damn good. If he was half as good as he is at this in everything else he does, he would be a damn good one – demon, angel… even pimp. Yeah. He would make a good pimp… and Mike would be his favorite whore...

Dear God! Help me!

“How do the angels get to sleep when the devil leaves the porch light on?”
~Tom Waits

A Dreamer's Realm 2

A DREAMER'S REALM


Chapter Two: A vision of Heaven

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company"

- Mark Twain

Smoke coming out of the last drag begins to drift away as the wind starts to blow. The view from the roof of the Lighthouse is beautiful at sunrise, Connor’s favorite time of the day. It’s like a new beginning – the chance to start over, clean slot, and all that. He looks at the drag in his hand. He didn’t smoke before, he thinks, and now he’s down to three or four packs a day. Not that he’s going to get sick about it, but it wouldn’t help to stop the vice before Sarah starts to bitch and moan about it ‘till he’ll eventually quit just like he did with all the other stuff she’s been there to drag him out of. Sarah is his head waitress, but he considers her more like the guardian angel he’s certain God never gave him. After all, how can you give a guardian angel to someone who is already an angel in the first place?


“How is she today?” he asks one of the nurses at the station, later that day.

“Just fine,” the nurse replies. “We gave her a bath, so she should be all nice and clean.”

He smiles politely and heads over to the room. However, the scenario when he gets there is all but “just fine”: there is blood all over the room as well as pieces of Samantha. He looks at the scene in shock for a couple of seconds before his soul returns to his body and makes it scream out in horror. The nurses rush to see what has happened; Connor looks at them and points to the room, shaking, horrified, shocked, and screams again, “What happened?!”


They look at him, obviously confused.

“With what?” one of them asks. It’s the same nurse that told him Samantha was “just fine” not too long ago. Connor takes her by the shoulders and starts shaking her.

“Just fine?!” he shouts, “Does this look like just fine to you?!”

“Mr. Hayden, please let go!” other nurses try to pull him back. He releases the poor girl and turns to see the bloody scenario. He feels his body freeze when he sees the silhouette of an angel, standing on top of Samantha, holding her heart in its hands. Suddenly, he feels a painful sting on his hands. He looks upon them and sees that circles with strange symbols are appearing, as if they are being burned into his flesh.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Connor! Hey, Connor!” Sarah shouted as she splashed some water on his face in order to wake him. He woke up completely startled, looking around for evidence that he was still in the hospital. It took him a minute or two to recognize the storage room and that he had fallen asleep on top of his desk. “I know I said you should sleep more, but NOT when we’re about to open the place, m’kay darling?” Sarah slapped his face in a playful manner. “Com’on – you’ve got a bar to run!”

Sometimes all it takes is for you to stop and look around and you can actually sense the presence of a disturbance so overwhelming you know it’s going to change your life. For Connor, that moment came as soon as he exited the storage room behind Sarah. He felt it, running like a wildfire across his spine and sending shivers all over his body. He looked around, trying to pin-point it.

Table six.

One of the waitresses was taking the order at that table. It was set just across the stage, and the seating was sort of like a corner booth, so you couldn’t see who it was from where Connor was standing. But he knew something he didn’t like was sitting at that spot – and as soon as the waitress came with the order, he told her he would take care of that.


“Bottle beer,” she said giving Connor the note. The bartender took the bottle out and Connor took it, no tray, no glass; he headed over to the table, feeling his heart pounding mercilessly at every step he took.

The young man sitting at the table looked up. He looked older than Connor, probably in his mid-thirties. He had dark skin and short, wavy, white hair. He covered his eyes with dark sunglasses and was wearing a trendy black Armani suit.


“Out of all the multi-universes, I never thought I would find you in this one; I guess my bloodhound nose isn’t that rusty after all.” He said and took the beer from Connor’s hand. He had a very peculiar foreign accent.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in a mental institution?” Connor asked.

“I was,” the young man said as Connor dragged a nearby chair and sat across the table. “It was fun the first six months… But then Kalavan got himself a girlfriend, he stopped visiting, and my stay got boring after a while particularly when they took Kube to the suicidal ward and I had no neighbor to talk crazy to. Besides, I wanted a beer –”

“You’re the angel of vice, Danka; you taught Jesus the “water into wine” trick.”

“See, that’s the thing about mental institutions in Lenka; they think that just because you go a little crazy they can take your magic away for your own good. Cheers!”

“Annihilating an entire city and then do the same with your own legion when they try to stop you is not going a little crazy, Danka. You’re an angel you’re not supposed to go around killing innocent people.”

“Sheesh! You make one little mistake and suddenly everyone is judge and jury!”

“I’m warning you--- go.”


“Look, I’m just here to casually listen to the band. I hear they’re quite good and that they’ve won several tournaments. Of course, you know it’s considered cheating and that cheating is the same as lying? You’re an angel, Hard Rock: you’re not supposed to lie.” Danka finalized turning to the stage. There was a moment of silence between the two, broken by Connor.

“What do you want?” he asked taking a deep breath.

“I want to run some things by you, Hard Rock…” he looked at Connor over the sunglasses. Connor could briefly see Danka’s wine-colored eyes that shone brightly as they usually did when he was dead serious about something. “Do you still call yourself that?” he asked.

“My name is Connor,” Connor said in an undertone. Danka looked over to the stage once again.

“I promise I’ll just sit here, listen to the band play, have another beer, wait ‘till you have some time to talk to me… and then I’ll walk right out that door and you never hear from me again, Connor.”


Connor sighed. If there was anything Danka was good at was in keeping his promises.


After the second set (and in the mid of raging applause and whistling from the crowd), Connor came down to table six and motioned Danka to follow him to the storage room (which he did right after leaving the waitress a nice tip and blowing a kiss over to the singer in the band). As soon as they crossed the frame, Connor shut the door and turned on the small light in the middle of the room. Danka stood on the other side, looking around.


“Okay, what is it? And don’t make yourself at home, I’m not that happy to see you yet,” Connor said as Danka sat on top of the box crossing his legs in a lotus position.


“Heavy came to visit the other day. He looks like crap.”


“Heavy Rock?”


“Do you know any other sucker who goes by that name and who can look like crap?” Connor shook his head. “So he comes to visit, right? And he tells me that he needs me to come to this shit hole you call a home and bring you back to Camsui even if I have to drag you by your wings. Granted, he came over when I wasn’t bored or in the need of a beer, so I said that he might as well forgot about it because I wasn’t up to betraying your lovely Queen, BUT now –”


“You got bored,” Connor said conversantly.


“Yeah, there’s that --- and, well, now things are different.”


“Different? How? You finally realized that the Queen is not going to give you the time of day?” Connor arched an eyebrow. Danka took off his sunglasses and looked at Connor with intensity.


“Have you been having bad dreams lately, Connor?” he asked.


Connor suddenly felt eerily nervous yet he tried to hide it as much as he could. “My kind doesn’t sleep -- I don’t sleep; thought you knew that.”


“Really?” Danka said in an undertone, “So it’s not you who is screaming bloody murder at that girl’s hospital room while I’m holding her heart in my hand?”


“Sorry to disappoint you but no, and if a bad dream that made you wet your bed has brought you all the way over here, then you have to speak to your therapist because obviously they’re giving you the wrong medication, flippy.”


Danka snorted out a laugh. “I guess so,” he said. “Then again, I’m not the one who’s running away from my past.”


By the way Connor looked at him Danka knew he had hit a delicate nerve. Danka stood on top of the crate. “When you’re ready to listen, give me a holler. And by the way? Those circles in your hands? I have one too.” With that said he turned into water and splashed all over the place. Connor stood still for several minutes before he started kicking the remaining water pools grumbling only God knows what to only God knows who.

A Dreamer's Realm 1

A DREAMER'S REALM

Chapter 1


Hope

"Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be."

- Don Quixote

There is no other place as exciting to be at after midnight than this one, where the neon lights make the streets alive and the old vampires cannot tell if it’s still daylight outside. People move around with their shinny cell phones over their ears and their rusted souls beneath the Armani and Prada suits and dresses. High heels are heard through the wet surface of the upper world, a world when everything seems to be in a daze – half dreaming, half sleeping.


It is well after the devil’s hour when the slim figure of the twenty-five year old man jumps over the bench that’s lit by the dim lights of the street corner, and hunches down like a bird that stalks a prey. He dresses in black and wears a worn-out leather jacket, trying to muster balance - writing in a little, leather covered book while smoking a cigarette. There is an old phone booth at that corner that seems to have been abandoned by the phone company a long time ago, much like the rest of the city’s streets seem to have been forgotten by the rest of the world. The sounds of the shopping cart being dragged across the street by an old bum seem to be getting closer, and the young man turns around to see him walking behind him.


“Good morning,” the homeless says, waving his gloved hand in a very polite manner. The young man gives him a nod and returns to his book. “Is it that time of the year again?” he asks. The young man doesn’t turn to see him, he just simply replies with a soft “yes”, without losing a beat on whatever he is writing. The man walks by, patting him on the shoulder. “I oughta figure that - I rarely get to see you outside on a full moon. Say hi for me if he asks.”


“I will,” the young man replies half pretending to be smiling, half still concentrating on his book. He hears the man and his shopping cart roll away. He is certain the man is headed to the shelter just a couple of blocks away, and he resists the urge to follow him and make sure he gets there okay because he knows that the old phone will be ringing any minute now.



He throws away the last of the cigarette just as the phone rings. He lets it ring a couple of more moments before standing up and entering the phone booth, picking up the line as the door closes behind him. There is a little bit of static, yet he has come accustomed to it over the years. He draws a smile on his face as soon as he hears the all-too well-known “Hello?” from the male voice on the other end, in a language he knows only a few speak it in that angel town.


If anyone asks, his name is Connor Hayden. He owns and works at the bar known as The Lighthouse, just a few blocks from the old town district. His driver’s license says he was born somewhere in the south part of the States, that he’s an organ donor, and that he needs to wear glasses when driving. The twisted part of it is that he’s never owned a car nor he cared for one at any point in his life. And if we make a list of his “outside features”, we can say that he never takes a day off, never gets sick, and is always there when the bar is opening and when the bar is closing, mainly because he owns the building where the bar is at and has his own. He usually keeps the details of his private life as they are – private. Sticks to business and treats his staff fairly well; they all agree that they feel strangely safe even though the work environment isn’t always a peaceful one and the neighborhood is not all that glamorous either. None of them have ever thought about quitting, maybe because the pay is good, or maybe because humans tend to stop looking for something better when “better” seems to be present at all times. Not even the staff can tell why.


Connor is very well known in the underworld. Most of his long-time customers know him by the nickname of “Hard Rock”. He doesn’t like it and scolds whoever calls him that with a dirty look that usually does the trick, only for the offence to be repeated once or twice before the offender gets the “real message” and never does it again. The origins of the nickname are probably because he plays in a Rock band named “The League” and the stage is usually the Lighthouse’s. But sometimes they like to participate in the local band’s talent shows, in which they are frequent winners. It’s a talent, some may say – a wasted talent since they mostly play songs from more popular, more famous bands (yet most people can swear on their mother’s grave that they play them ten times better than the original artists). They don’t seem to mind, however, and are quite contempt with the crowd they can draw whenever their name happens to appear at some local radio station or the little warn down marquee sign on top of the Lighthouse’s entrance.


He’s got a sister – her name is Samantha. He visits her every day at the hospital because Samantha has been comatose for the last five or six years. All they know is that it happened because of a car accident, but no one can remember why or how it happened… and he had never talked about her before it happened. It was like, one day he was an only child and the next day he had a sister whom he never had talked about, nor did he ever introduced her – to anyone. “The next thing you know, he’ll have a mother, and a father, and a dog, and a cat, and the obnoxious cousin who married his sister and lives in a bunker somewhere in Somalia!” Sarah, the head waitress said once. She is the oldest member of the staff at the Lighthouse and she says that she got hired the moment she walked into the bar. “It’s the skill,” she says. “I’ve gots TWO of them…”


Back to Connor and his sister, Samantha. As I’ve said, he visits every day and knows the nurses by name and birthday after all this time. He stops by the nurse’s station to talk to the ones who are there, asks about the ones he doesn’t see, talks to Sam’s doctors, and then he spends the rest of the visiting hours with his sister, mostly talking to her about his day. Sometimes he sings to her and it’s like the entire floor comes to life. He sometimes even sings at the children’s ward. The kids like it when he sings.


If you ask around, most doctors would say that even though she’s not on life support, Connor does not like the idea of taking her home with him because by now he’s too used to living alone. Very few would realize that the main reason he keeps showing up at the hospital is because the idea of having someone close to him gives Connor something that he thought was long gone before Samantha appeared in his life. The second part of that something is the phone call he gets every year, around September, on the old phone booth he is at right now. He doesn’t want to admit it, but that phone call fills the empty space he feels inside his soul ever since he moved into town (about ten years ago, maybe more than that). The call from home – the voice that keeps him up-to-date on everything and everyone he left behind; his best friend since he was a child and the only true link he has of his past. The “something” that the voices on the other line and the visits to Samantha have brought to Connor’s life is resumed in one simple yet so complex word:

Hope.

"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired."



- Erik H. Erikson