The Dream Maker : Chapter One

Chapter One

The man’s soul trickled into Arlen’s body through the hand he had put on the bloody, mangled forehead.

With his eyes closed, Arlen pressed down on the hand as he felt the man’s mind mingle with his. A trickle of sweat ran down Arlen’s neck. In his head, he heard the man’s anguished howls and pleads. For a short moment, he could feel something blocking his airway, and squeezing on his heart. The pressure became more terrifying with each ragged breath Arlen took.

Abruptly, the pressure disappeared as if it had never existed in the first place. The man’s body sagged, and Arlen took his hand off of the forehead, blankly observing how bloody his palm was. The man’s soul settled inside him, in the Dream. Arlen forcefully took away the consciousness from the foreign soul, just like what he had done to the hundreds of other souls resting inside himself.

Two soldiers in heavy, oiled chain mails rustled close. They grabbed the man’s limp arms and began to drag him away. Arlen reached out one hand and tapped a soldier’s back.

“His name.” Arlen coughed, feeling the old, rotting tiredness settle into his bones.

The soldier gave him a strange look, that one might give to a murderer who was making a grave for his victim.

He replied, “Johnson Woods,” and continued on his way. Johnson’s bare, blistered feet left bloody drag marks on the stone floor.

Arlen lowered his hand and wiped his palm on the crooked silk blue robe he was wearing. Even though he was a Dream Maker, who was naturally avoided by most people, the queen had felt the need to give him a silken article of clothing.

He had a new guest. His name was Johnson.

Slowly, he dragged his body up forcefully and turned around to head back to his room. He had a room that was the size of a large torture cell. It didn’t smell of blood or tears, but it was all he could think about.

He had lived in the castle for as long as he could remember in his twenty-six years of living. His birth had happened in the castle, and he had been discovered as a Dream Maker at the age of seven in the castle. For twenty-six years, he had never taken a step out of the castle doors. Gray stone walls, meals on silver plates, the same silk blue robe, occasional visits of the queen, and the dreams that visited him in the nights. He knew only those things from his life.

A Dream Maker. 

It was what he was. He didn’t know what else he would be if he wasn’t a Dream Maker. Although it was extremely painful at times, taking in other souls into his own had become a steady routine. He ate, read, sat, slept, and stayed in his room unless there was a summon made to him. A soldier would knock on his door and call him out. Arlen then went down the stone staircase that curved and twisted, down to the cells and the torture chambers. He was thrown a bloody pulp of a human being, and he would take the soul in.

It was a fairly simple job. He imprisoned a prisoner in the Dream, a space inside his head that was completely under his control and desires. If he wanted something created, it would appear immediately. If he wanted a soul to crumble and disappear forever, it would happen. By the queen’s orders, he interrogated or killed off souls. It wasn’t very hard, considering that they were always unconscious and limp like they were dead all the time.

He trailed up the staircase, and to the left was the heavy oak doors that led to his room. Expecting nothing better than what greeted him every day, he pushed the doors open. Just as he had expected, not a thing had been shifted. It was just as he had left it about an hour before with the soldier. Arlen dragged his feet over to the bed, and plopped down on the blue covers.

The queen seemed obsessed with filling everything associated with himself with blue, while in truth, there wasn’t anything about a man named Arlen that went together with the color. The only things that might have matched were his blue eyes, yet the shade of blue the queen gave him was too deep and royal. In the blue robes and bedsheets, Arlen looked like a misfitted outcast.

Raising a hand to his forehead, Arlen tried to feel Johnson, whose name he would simply forget days after. Every time, even though Johnson’s soul was still very much alive, Arlen felt like a murderer. The uncomfortable feeling was what made Arlen disgusted at himself. He was taking other humans’ souls. He didn’t have the right. He rarely did.

Just as he was starting to drowse and sink into the bed, staring with half-lidded eyes at the blue patterns on the ceiling, the door rang with three precise knocks. Arlen shot up to his feet, and gazed at the door with bleary eyes before he managed to recall what the knocks meant. He opened the door, took in the two soldiers with his eyes, and stepped out of the blue comfort of his room.

The soldiers stomped down the stone stairways with their iron clad boots, while Arlen’s shoes made of fabric hardly caused any disturbance. Arlen was about to turn into the hallway which led to the ground level cells, when a soldier prodded him further down the staircase.

After Arlen passed the first hallway, the second, then the third, he realized where he was being led to. It was the lowermost dungeon that kept only the most serious offenders and criminals. The man who tried to stab the queen. The maid who attempted to put a poisoned leaf into the queen’s tea. About an hour after the discovery of their crimes, they could all be found in the place that Arlen was heading towards. Most of the times, they didn’t have something that they were supposed to have, such as a limb or an eye.

At last, Arlen stepped down onto the bottom of the stairs. The soldiers left him immediately, stomping up the steps. Arlen briefly closed his eyes. He smelt rotting blood on the walls and the floors. From far away, a guttural scream echoed into nothingness, followed by a smaller one, but still as brutal and pained.

Another soldier, who was in a black suit that hid his features, led him down the hallway. Countless metal doors were lined up along the two walls. One of them opened, and something —a body— was thrown out carelessly. Arlen stepped closer to it. The black soldier didn’t make a move to stop him.

It was a young boy, and Arlen immediately felt revulsed. He didn’t feel the same way toward adults; they had a long life experience, they knew what they were doing, and they had made a decision to do something against the queen. Even though Arlen had been locked up in his room for most of his life, he believed that he had seen all the gore and suffering the world had to offer. He saw what decisions brought upon humans. He shared his body with hundreds of other souls.

For those who were younger, it was different. They hadn’t lived a life long enough to figure out what they were going to go through. No; even if they had known the decision that they were making, they hadn’t had enough chances, more opportunities.

Arlen reached down to brush a mop of tangled and bloody hair away from the boy’s face. It had used to be blond, he assumed. He couldn’t tell. For all he could see, there was blood, and some bits of dull yellow showing in-between. The boy’s face was boiled and burned into a horrible red and black shape. Arlen could hardly see the nose, lips and eyebrows through the countless whip marks. The area right under the nostrils was warm. It was the only sign that the boy was breathing.

Slowly kneeling down, Arlen glanced up at the black soldier. The soldier nodded briefly. Whenever Arlen came down to the lowest dungeons, the queen was never there. She only gave orders. The black soldiers did them.

The fingers Arlen put on the boy’s forehead felt foreign. For a moment, he gazed down upon his clean, pale fingers that looked like a ghost’s on top of the boy’s face. He felt like he didn’t have the right, more than he always did. The black soldier’s gaze intensified. Arlen closed his eyes, and breathed deeply as he drew the boy’s soul into himself.

His eyes snapped open. The soul was struggling. A soul had never done it before. Most of the times, it was confused, hurt, and disoriented, so much that it couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Arlen regained himself, and forcefully folded the soul into the Dream. He didn’t know what would happen if he let go of a soul in the middle of being put into the dream. For all he could assume, it would disappear into the air and wander forever.

When the boy’s soul finally settled into the Dream, Arlen lifted his fingers off of his forehead. It was sticky with redness. Arlen stared at the crimson fingertips, before he stared at the black soldier again.

“His name.” Arlen rasped. The soldier shook his head.

While Arlen’s lips parted soundlessly in protest, the soldier turned around and left the dungeon soundlessly, leaving Arlen behind with the soulless boy and the screams. Feeling a sudden chill creep into his bones, Arlen scrambled up. He glanced down at the boy’s body. The blond, bloody strands were sticking to the head.

Arlen saw how young the boy was. He felt the boy’s soul howling inside him, beginning to be forced asleep. His stomach churned.

He thought, I don’t have the right.

₪

Until Arlen saw the darkness creep from the horizon, he didn’t have anything to do. He lounged on the silky blue bed, staring at the fingertips he hadn’t yet washed away. It was the first time the soldiers hadn’t told him about the prisoner’s name. He didn’t know why he had to ask it every time, yet he did. Perhaps it was because then he felt like he cared. Maybe he wanted to show the soul that he cared enough to know a name, that he wouldn’t harm them.

For a while longer, Arlen gazed at the redness that he had touched, then closed his fingers into a fist, slid down his eyelids and fell backwards into the bed.

It was time to see all the souls he had took.

The Dream was simply his own soul. Arlen visited the space every time he fell asleep or unconscious. If he hadn’t made the decision to make all the souls sleep for as long as he lived, he would have been attacked by a wave of enraged people every time he closed his eyes for a rest.

Every time, he told himself that it was the best decision to make.

His consciousness faded. He could feel his body going into a sleeping state. Yet, his mind stayed awake, letting the physical form of it rest, and faded into the Dream. Arlen closed his eyes, then reopened them.

The endless white space that the Dream was spread out in front of him. He couldn’t see where it met the horizon —there was no horizon—. It was simply white. Colorless nothing that contained identities, wills, and the boy who Arlen didn’t know the name of.

Normally, Arlen would have simply sat down and tried to relax. Yet, it was a special occasion. He didn’t know the name of the boy. Arlen stretched his arms, and began to walk among the bodies, souls, looking for one vaguely familiar face.

When souls went into the Dream, they were mostly healed without all the blood covering them. Yet, if the physical wound took a big toll upon the soul’s mind, it stayed on the soul. Arlen hoped that he could recognize the boy.

Before he went through about ten of the souls, he found the smallest and less bulky one and flipped him over. A smile found itself on Arlen’s face. Arlen crouched down and examined the boy’s clean features. He thought that the eyelids were a bit sunken in, but it could be because of hunger and pain.

He snapped his fingers.

“Wake up,” he willed. The Dream twisted around him like a dirty rag. The boy’s eyes flew open. Arlen sucked in a breath. He had seen worse things before, yet being surprised was a whole another matter.

Slowly, Arlen backed away a step from the empty eye sockets. The boy whipped his head around and fixed it on where Arlen was standing. He opened his mouth, yet no sound came out. A noise like something being torn apart sounded instead.

“Wait! I’ll fix it,” Arlen said, forcing himself to calm down. The boy lunged across the white space. Too surprised to remember that he could control the distance in-between them to lengthen, Arlen got the full impact of the boy’s weight and fumbled down onto the ground. The boy’s hands didn’t even hesitate as they found Arlen’s throat. Another round of noises escaped the boy’s mouth.

“Wait, I, just wait,” beginning to cough, Arlen managed to make another will. “Heal!”

In a blink, the boy’s eyes reappeared in the black, red and bloody sockets. They were a strange shade between blue and green. He stumbled back, releasing Arlen’s throat. Arlen bent over, coughing, and pointed at the boy’s throat. Finally, something that resembled a human voice echoed in the Dream.

“What did you do?” The boy asked, sounding as if he was about to take his own body apart in order to find out. Arlen took a big step back, then another. He finished his last cough and straightened up.

The boy’s eyes shone with unhidden malice as he backed away quietly, all the while glancing around at the whiteness and the limp souls. His eyes shook for a quick second, then regained their stoniness.

“One of the queen’s leeches, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am.”

“What is this place?”

Arlen laughed quietly. The naked fear and disgust in the boy’s young —yet old— eyes seemed to be directed at himself, not the Dream. At what he could do, at what he had done. It was another thing to face it so directly.

“It’s the Dream.” He replied after a while. The boy’s eyebrows arched. Before he could spit out any more remarks, Arlen cut him off.

“Your name,” he inquired, “tell me your name.”

The boy silently backed away, and tripped over a man. Arlen recognized him as the soul he had absorbed just hours ago, earlier in the day. While he attempted to reorganize his memories, the boy covered his face with a hand.

“This is…” he quietly remarked. “I know him…”

His head shot up, eyes flashing with anger. Arlen dully observed him.

“What did you do?” The boy growled. His eyes darkened into a shade that was more green than blue.

“Can I switch it with your name?”

The boy roared. His hands were shaking. Arlen extended a hand forward, indicating for him to stand up. He didn’t want the souls disturbed by anyone else than himself, who at least had control over the Dream.

“I’m Arlen. Can I have your name?” Arlen tried again.

“What did you do, what did you do?!”

“Calm down. I’m sorry that this happened, but,”

Arlen dropped his hand. He didn’t know what he was doing. Was it because it was one of the first souls he had awoken in the Dream? Or was it because he didn’t have the boy’s name yet? Perhaps, it was because of the fact that he didn’t get to talk to anyone except for the soldiers and very occasionally the queen.

“Sleep.” Arlen snapped his fingers. The boy’s face went slack. He dropped onto the white ground beside the man that he knew.