Young Writers Society

"The human boy has fallen asleep."

"How long before he awakens?"

"With any luck, he shall remain asleep for several days."

"And if he awakens during the test?"

"Then we will have a problem. Don't worry about that. I've checked my numbers hundreds of times, through several computers. He won't wake up early. Now, go turn on the Dream Monitor."

"Yes sir."

This storybook will be a series of dreams this boy undergoes while sleeping. Each post will be a different dream. The posts can be as long as you want. They must all start with "He was dreaming," in bold like so.

No inappropriate content in the dreams. This is a boy of about 9 or 10, don't ruin him.

No swearing either, because of the same reason.

Follow regular YWS rules.

No character templates are necessary for this storybook, because everyone will write as the human boy.

Run wild with creativity!

He was dreaming. . .

There was a long tunnel in front of him. His mother waited at the very end, her arms extended. She was calling his name. He stumbled towards her, feeling very weak and helpless. After only a few steps, he collapsed, clutching his knee. "Mama," he called, "Mama, come and help!"

She was only a blur now, tears streaming down her face. She was trying to help him, but she couldn't reach him. The pain was multiplying by the second, reaching from a painful thud to an excruciating burn. His knee was on fire, feeling like it had been smashed by a sledgehammer and then each individual piece had been stung by a million bees. It was excruciating, and he saw his mother crying. She seemed so far away, but why wasn't she there to help him? Why wasn't she saving him?

"Ow, Mama, it hurts," he sobbed.

"Don't give in to the pain, son," he heard her voice echo down the tunnel. But it was too much. The pain was wrapping around his neck, squeezing all the life out of him. Black spots danced at the edge of his vision. He couldn't go on like this for much longer. "Don't give in," her voice echoed, bouncing around the dark walls of the cave. How could he expect him to resist this? It was unnatural. Nothing should ever hurt this much.

He reached out his arms, but suddenly she wasn't there anymore. He was falling, falling, falling, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. His pain was disappearing, but he knew intuitively that when he hit the ground, it would be renewed with a vengeance. Finally, with a sickening thud, he hit the ground and lay there motionless.

He was dreaming. . .



“Who are you?”

A laugh. “Does it matter?” The man asked, looking to the vast night sky. “We live in a world where absence of knowledge demands an answer. Let's not demand answers tonight. Ignorance is bliss.” He sat down on the grass hill they stood on, patting the ground next to him indicating the boy should do the same. The boy complied.

They silently stared at the night sky, with all its stars. The boy had never seen so many stars in his life. And the moon. The moon looked larger than moons should, and it gave off much more light. Yet somehow, the meadow they stood in was dark, they being just silhouettes.

The man smiled. “Get ready.”

“Ready for what?” The boy asked, but a finger was placed over his lip, a silent way of shushing him.

“Remember? No answers tonight.”

They both looked down into the meadow when the first flower lit up. Then another, then another, until eventually the whole valley shone with otherworldly blue light. In the center of each flower, a blue glow emanated, and from the flowers rose blue spheres of light. The air turned into a highway blue-glow balls floating around.

The boy reached out to touch one, but the movement of his hand blew it away. Slowly, carefully, he went for another, but just as he began to close his hand on it, it too flew away. He and the man stood once more, enjoying the beautiful scene together. In that moment the boy felt he was one with the man, heartbeats in sync, emotions the same.

Then the man turned away. “I need to leave now.” He began walking towards the distant fields.

“Why?!”

“No answers, remember?”

The man continued walking, and the boy chased after him, tears streaming down his face. “Don't go! I need you!”

No answer.

“Please...” He said between sobs. “At least let me tell you something, before you go.”

The man stopped and looked at the boy, gesturing for him to speak.

“I'm afraid of being alone. Daddy left so many years ago I can't remember, and Mommy is gone. I don't want to be left behind. I want to stay with you, with someone. With anyone. Its been too long since someone loved me. Since anyone cared for me. Please, don't go.”

Without saying anything, the man turned and walked away, fading into black with the rest of the valley around him.

He was dreaming

He looked around, his surroundings changing quickly from a valley to a city scene. He looked up and saw people walking around him, ignoring him.

"Mommy?" He called out, the sound of fear carrying in his voice. He looked down, he saw his bare feet on concrete and blue ripped jeans.

How did I get here? he wondered as he looked back up and started walking.

He didn't notice how quiet it was for a busy street, or that slowly the people around him were crowding behind him. For every step he took, they took one.

It wasn't till one of them touched his shoulder that he noticed.

He was dreaming. . .

Gray nothingness gave way to a pond. It was a beautiful pond, with little ducklings and goslings lazily floating around, bobbing with the slight ripples of some invisible breeze.

Two were bickering with each other, snapping their bills at the other's feathers, but never pulling one out. They never meant to do harm to one another; it was just a fun little game they would play while their parents weren't home. And they never were.

Vibrant fields of green grass flooded into view around the pond, with gigantic rocks littering the edges of it.

Hands fluttered into his field of view, gray and lifeless, but still somehow his own. One was holding a simple fishing rod and the other, its simple hook.

Two figures appeared in the distance. They were sitting on a boulder at the very edge of the water, their backs turned to him. He couldn't tell who they were... but they felt... familiar.

Their very presence was so inviting to him. It lured him and tugged at his heart, like a juicy bait for unsuspecting fish. His mind told him he didn't want to get eaten, but his heart pumped louder.

So he obeyed his feelings.

As he moved closer to the duo, they turned to him and their features suddenly became apparent in bright, vivid actuality. The left was a smiling teenage girl with flowing blonde hair and deep dimples. The right was a solemn but happy boy-turned-into-a-man with sandy, windswept hair and knowing brown eyes. She gestured him over to have a seat in between them.

He did so, transfixed on the two. They were so familiar. "You are so familiar," he heard someone say, then after a moment he realized it was himself saying that.

"We should be, silly!" the girl said.

"Yeah, we've only been living with you for you entire life," the man teased.

A butterfly swayed in the air in front of them, caught by a powerful gust in a serene sky.

He sat down with the two people. He didn't know who they were, but he felt... at home with them. It was a soft moment. It was a lovely moment.

But, of course it was not to last.

The boy tossed his line into the water lazily, just enjoying the moment with the two people at each side. It was peaceful. "This is peaceful," he muttered.

"No it's not," the man said.

He furrowed his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"

"Don't you know, silly? He has to go."

The man stood, dropping his fishing pole. Putting on a tough green helmet on and a matching vest, he turned away from the others.

"But... I just got here."

"Oh, it waits for no one, silly." The girl wrapped her arm around him. "Don't worry, he'll be back."

"No he won't."

"No. He won't."

Crimson circles wet the back of the man's vest as he walked away, fading into the nothingness.

The boy tugged at the line, feeling no resistance. "At least I have you here, right?"

Silence.


The boy swiveled to see the girl standing, putting a cap on and coveralls.

"Are you leaving me?"

She smiled at the boy. "I'll be back, though, silly!"

"No you won't."

And she disappeared.

He was dreaming

The boy couldn't see through the fog. It grabbed at his throat and pulled him under. Claws of the night dung into his hair and pulled. Lights were flashing above and around him. He remembered standing on the open, foggy ground watching two people disappear. He had wanted to grab out but his limbs felt weak. So, he just sat down on the ground and waited. Closing his eyes and slightly rocking back and forth, he had wanted to wake up.

"Are you alright, dear?" A calm, soothing asked. The boy looked up but saw nothing. Only clouds moving lazily across the sky.

"I'm fine, mama," another voice replied back. He frantically got up and started aimlessly wondering around.

"Your forehead feels a bit hot. Do you want a cold rag?"

"No thank you, mama."

"Hello? Is anyone there?" The boy loudly asked.

"Okay, sweetie, get some sleep. It's going to be a big day for you tomorrow.

The smaller voice giggled. "I will. I love you, mama".

"I love you too."

The boy wasn't paying attention to where he was going, looking up at the sky, concerned for where he had heard those voices, that he didn't notice the black hole opening up in the middle of his walkway. When he did fall down it, the boy had tried screaming but nothing came out. He grabbed onto thin air but nothing was there.

He was dreaming. . .

And he fell into the ocean. The dark, foggy ocean, with teal veins and black arteries threading the water like stitches. White foam bubbled on the seams, reminding him of hydrogen peroxide poured on a cut. His knee tingled again.

The water tossed him up and down, left and right. At last it spat him onto the sand, and the sand was warm and sun-baked, even though the sky was reigned by clouds. Way up high, just below the clouds, he saw beautiful rocky mountains. And on a big gray boulder he found an unused sketchbook, open, pure, white, and a sharpened pencil.

He drew the mountains in the sketchbook, smiled, ripped the page out, and dropped it on the sand. Then he kept walking, toward the mountains, and drew them again, on a new page. He dropped this drawing under a tree. Another in a crevasse between rocks. Another he just let go of, and the wind took it where it wanted to go. Each drawing looked different, even though each time he was sketching the same mountains.

It started to rain, and some of the raindrops, like acid, fell onto the sketchbook and burned little holes through the pages. Others fell onto his skin and ate away at his arms. He cried out in alarm and started to run faster, faster, drawing more quickly and ripping the swiss cheese pages out without regard to where they landed.

He heard a great rumbling sound behind him, and when he looked he saw the ocean, rearing up tall and terrible, one giant wave ready to pounce on him and swallow him whole.

He threw the sketchbook at it.

Immediately, the earth below his feet quaked.

Mother.

Mother earth.

All of a sudden he was flying. Flying like a rocket, into space. Mountains sprung up wherever he had left a drawing, and they carried him up and up and up, and the water tried to reach him but it only crashed against the rocks.

Finally he and the earth rumbled to a stop, poised straight and tall like a sharpened pencil, bite marks littering his arms. He felt the sun-baked soil at his feet, and felt warm and fuzzy inside.

But even Mother Earth couldn't go this far.

She shuddered, unwillingly, and he tumbled from his heavenly perch.

He was dreaming…

Down and down he went, staring in the abyss of a spiral staircase. When his blistered feet touched the earth, the boy involuntarily shuddered, shivering like a wet dog. Standing up, he squinted against the bright sun, beholding the surrounding landscape.

From the hill, he saw the ocean experiencing high tide, thrashing like a man with a festering wound. But the main focal point was about eighty feet in front of him, at the foothill of a straggly cliff, on which an abandoned lighthouse perched.

The house itself looked foreboding, like something the boy once saw from a Halloween movie. Dark shadows were elusively cast around its perimeters, as if almost daring the boy “come closer”; the leaves rattled and whispered to wind blowing in the boy’s direction. A raincloud seemed to be permanently stranded above the property, black crows crazily running around in circles, as if trying to send a foreboding message to the boy.

“Mama, mama” he starting crying this like a mantra, thinking that if he willed her to appear, she would come and show him the way.

While tears were blurring his eyesight, he hadn’t noticed a tornado being twisted around him. This monster of creation the largest that this region has ever seen, looked absolutely chaotic: with sticks flying everywhere, patches of earth and trees being uprooted, the world on a titling balancing act.

A loud roar startled him, making him almost jump out of his skin in terror. That wasn’t even half of the fear that he felt, because once he spun around and witnessed the destruction that mother earth was already causing he dropped to his knees in reverence to her mysterious abilities. He gulped, staring down at his shoes, knowing that at this moment in frozen time he was lost, hopeless, broken. About to give up, to give in to the sure death and destruction that this tornado would cause to his body.

All of a sudden, he remembered his mother's last words in that eerie tunnel: “Don't give in, Don’t give in”.

He was dreaming. . .

There was nothing. A blank void, and his consciousness floated in the middle. Even he himself did not exist in this void, but was rather just a presence, an onlooker.

The void peeled away slowly to a house. There was no one in the house, but a stairwell resided in the far corner. The door was closed, and the hinges seemed rusted shut. That door had not been opened in a long time.

Suddenly, a soft moan could be heard through a doorway. It cracked into a sob. The sound seemed to come from a young woman, of twenty to twenty-five. He couldn't see her, because his view wouldn't shift from the stairwell.

A shadow appeared, cast onto the lowest stair of the stairwell. A young boy walked down slowly. Meanwhile the woman's sobs grew louder, and the boy curiously approached the room it came from.

Then the scene shifted to the same stairwell. The room looked much younger, and the door hinges were not rusted shut as they were in the previous scene.

Before the dream faded into blackness, a vague and undetailed silhouette of a young man walked out the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Then the dream was over.