What Dreams Are Made Of

The sun kissed the horizon, splashing hues of tangerine and rose to drench the clouds. They dripped their glow upon her cheek, as his fingers danced the length of her body. As the waves rolled up the sands their cadence induced the pair into a hypnotic euphoria. She wrapped herself around him. With a flick of the tongue her lips began to glisten as a coy grin climbed her cheeks in anticipation. Their eyes were fixed in one another, linked by an invisible cord that tightened until their lips were separated by a fraction of a whisper. The tension peaked; the universe held its breath. The steady pulse of the lake stilled, and its surface transformed into mirror for the heavens as their world radiated with a luminous glow.

“Fredrick.”

A rogue gust swept down from the aether and tore the boy from his trance. Fredrick jerked his head around as a shadowy tentacle shattered the placid surface of the lake, and shot towards him. He leapt to cover the girl against the sudden attack as the tentacle constricted around his ankle, and reeled him towards the water. Clumps of sand dissolved through his fingers as he grasped for anything to anchor him to the shore. Fredrick looked up at his lover who sat unmoved, that coy grin still etched across her face, as one by one her molecules dispersed into the air. The evening star began to glimmer above the horizon and the beach plummeted into darkness.

“Fredrick.”

The voice echoed again, louder this time. It resonated from everywhere and nowhere at once. He tried to compose himself, and gathered all his strength in a final attempt at escape, only to be ripped from the sands. Fredrick crashed back to consciousness, and nearly knocked himself from his chair. The room flooded with laughter.

The 11th grade math teacher, Mrs. Gray, stood before the classroom. Her furrowed brow hardened her features. As Fredrick sunk in his chair, he hoped he would drown in it, and let his eyes fall to the blank page on his desk. Mrs. Gray returned to the whiteboard without a word as something struck Fredrick in the back of the head. His shoulders tensed as in his periphery an eraser skip across the floor. He snapped around to glower at his three most loathed classmates, Tyler, Jason and Patrick, who sat at the back of the classroom snickering stupidly to one another. The three of them were the star athletes in Fredrick’s year; impressive physical specimens with chiseled features who could get any girl in the school they wanted. Irritated more by that thought than he was by being struck, Fredrick sulked back towards the front of the classroom.

Fredrick was nothing like the rest of the people in his school. He saw the world through a different lens. Everything about the manmade world he born into revolted him, but it was inescapable. His affinity with nature was his only joy, as if every scene he encountered was meticulously arranged by unseen hands just for him. While never a particularly religious boy, Fredrick often drifted away into the afternoon sky, and it was inconceivable to him that such terrible beauty was mere cosmic coincidence. He longed to translate that feeling into art, to convey to others the beauty that exuded from the natural world. But Fredrick lacked the aptitude for such ambition, as a brush was never anything but cumbersome in his grip. Instead he was fated to be lord of a language he could not communicate, and he retreated to his dreams, the only place where he was understood.

Fredrick’s dreams provided him with temporary relief from an existence over which he felt an increasing lack of control. He was the youngest and smallest boy in his class, and was harassed mercilessly by the larger, testosterone fuelled boys who controlled the school. Whether they knocked him from his feet to crumple into a row of lockers, or slapped his lunch from his hands to adorn the cafeteria floor, every day it was the sole ambition of those three boys to make Fredrick’s life intolerable. As he delved through his thoughts the lust for vengeance flickered in his mind. But he could do nothing. He was a tumbleweed, there to be kicked around, and incapable of self-defence.

The school bell rang as the tumbleweed was swept up in a swirling gust, causing Fredrick to jolt back to reality. He fumbled with his belongings as he hastened to leave, and the moment he stood he was struck by a force in his back. His desk rose into his gut forcing the air from his windpipe as his possessions scattered across the floor. Fredrick glanced up to the front of the classroom with no luck as Mrs. Gray had been too quick to leave.

“Maybe if you paid better attention you wouldn’t get hurt so much, fag,” said a playful voice that thrust Fredrick’s face into the desk.

Fredrick was not gay, but that never stopped the bullies from addressing him that way. It didn’t bother him much, particularly not then with his nose pressed against the desk. The hand released him after a few seconds with a burst of laughter. Fredrick pulled himself up and turned as Tyler, Jason, and Patrick swaggered from the room. As Fredrick regathered his things, his mind throbbed with a fury he could not indulge. He brooded up to the mouth of the classroom as students coursed through the hallway like rush hour traffic. Too irate to care, he cut into the dense current, clipping the elbow of a girl, and spinning her of axis.

“Watch where you’re going…” trailed her cry that reduced to a murmur beneath the other voices.

The last class of the week had ended, and students gathered in cliques throughout the hall as they discussed where they might over-indulge in beer and cocktails that night. Fredrick slipped between the masses while avoiding eye contact with everyone as he divined his way to an exit. He escaped the swarm and burst through the doors at the end of the western hallway. The natural light exploded in his face. He paused to let his eyes adjust, and untangled his headphones from his bag. Placing them over his head, Rage filled his ears. He sighed as he scanned the horizon for the silhouette of the next city whose skyline sought, so perversely, to penetrate the sky. As Fredrick’s thoughts drifted, his eyes stumbled upon a car; a red convertible with the licence plate ‘EETMIDST’. Fredrick brow knitted as he simmered. Tyler’s parents purchased the car for him the day he received his license. He loved that car.

An unnaturally cool gust materialized from the north, and swooped through the school yard. He turned his head to shield his eyes which landed upon the small rock garden that encircled the flag several metres away. An alien impulse invaded him. Alert, Fredrick surveyed the area to see if anyone watched him, then dashed to the rock garden and picked up a rock the size of his fist. Students passed around him, but he moved invisibly amongst them. He maneuvered his way towards the convertible, his pulse quickening with every step. A smirk curled up the right side of Fredrick’s face, and with a final sweep of the parking lot, he tore towards Tyler’s car, pausing for two seconds to launch the rock through the stereo console.

Fredrick ran like a man possessed, never looking behind him. He buried his face and cut through the increasing wind until he was far enough away that the school couldn’t be seen. As Fredrick came upon the alleyway he used as a shortcut home, there was a lightness in his chest even though it heaved heavily. It felt like victory. As he stopped and leant his back to the red brick wall to regain his breath, the scene that formed above his head drew him in. Dark clouds poured across the sky devouring the sunlight as a mighty wind billowed between the buildings. He turned his back to the gust, and stepped away from the wall as he dug his grip into his sleeves to brace himself against the gale that chewed through his coat. Motionless he stared up at the sky, entranced as a single drop emerged from the darkness, and plummeted towards him. At the last instant he blinked, and the droplet splashed off his cheek.

As he reached to wipe the moisture from his face, something struck the back of his left knee. Fredrick’s headphones flew from his head as he twisted in a futile attempt to cushion the fall. A numbing pain shot through his left arm as his elbow struck the ground. A slur of curses and laughter swirled in the wind above Fredrick as he struggled to comprehend what was happening. Flat on his back, he stared into the clouds as they unleashed a torrent. The rain struck him with the force of boots to his ribcage and stomach. As Fredrick curled up into a ball to shield himself, the rain continued its assault. With one final strike to his teeth, a voice slashed through the wind and rain.

“Let’s get out of here!”

The echo of retreating footsteps washed away in the downpour as Fredrick lay in a puddle, unable to distinguish between the tears, rain, and blood. His consciousness slipped from him.

“Fredrick.”

His eyes sprung open. He pushed back from the puddle he had inhaled, convulsing into a fit of coughs. Pain rifled through his torso with the sudden spasm, and he collapsed to his back. The rain had stopped. He inhaled carefully. The injuries he endured did not need much encouragement to flare into agony. Fredrick propped himself up on his elbows, looked into the puddle that had tried to drown him, and examined his reflection. The darkened image could not disguise the pronounced bruise already formed around his mouth. He ran his tongue over his teeth, spat a mouthful of blood into his face, and watched the crimson spread like an ominous veil across his face. He hadn’t seen those who attacked him, but he had no doubt who they were.

Fredrick looked around the alley. His head throbbed. The world blurred with every off-beat of his pulse. The clouds hung so heavily in the sky that the pressure caused the buildings to bow in on the alley. He felt claustrophobic. They couldn’t have seen him do it. More resigned than angry, the reality that there really was nothing he could do to stop the persistent brutality settled on his thoughts. He peered into his reflection, his mind torn in innumerable directions, when the lips of the face that stared back at him spoke.

“We must run,” the voice whispered. The water rippled outward from the mouth as each word splashed into the air. “It isn’t safe here,” the voice continued. “In this town we will find only pain. Run away. Run home!”

When the voice stopped, and water stilled, Fredrick shook his head. He couldn’t have seen what he saw. With a finger he slashed through his image that shred to chaos, then simmered back to his wavering self. He stared at the reflection and waited for something more to happen, as if his doppelganger would rise dripping from the underworld. But nothing happened. Only after the alley had darkened several shades did Fredrick struggle to his feet, crediting the hallucinatory vision to his probable concussion, and continued home.

As he hobbled down Main Street, the shops glared at him through spectacled eyes. Each passerby looked down on him in either pity or apprehension, but gave him a wide berth in either instance. A car passed, stirring the air which only added to the otherwise unsettling stillness. It took Fredrick longer than usual to limp home, and when he reached his house, the front door strained against its hinges as Fredrick’s legs gave out. No one was home to be alarmed. No one was ever there. He was the only child of a single mother who worked long hours in order to support her excessive drinking habit. Fredrick rarely saw her unless it was to wake her up off the kitchen floor in the morning, a bottle of whiskey half spilled across the floor. She had always resented him for coming out of her, and often told him so, which at first drained Fredrick’s soul, but had long since lost any emotional effect. He stumbled down the front hallway to the den, and collapsed on the couch as soft tendrils stripped away his waking mind.

He lay in darkness. Three figures loomed above him, with only their ivory grins visible in the shrouded alley. Suddenly they attacked with a barrage of phantom limbs. When Fredrick’s body could not sustain another strike, an unnaturally yellow light flickered on at one end of the alley. The assailants paused. Fredrick could see the faces of Tyler, Patrick, and Jason turn towards the glow, but Fredrick’s gaze pulled to his shadow as it rose from the asphalt to tower above the four of them. His assaulters turned to the pillar of darkness as it reached out at them. The three of them shrieked as they shrunk in terror, and fled the alleyway with a quickness not humanly possible. Fredrick stared into the featureless face of the apparition as it bent towards him.

“You are too weak to deal with them on your own,” the shadow moaned. Its guttural voice unsettled Fredrick’s bones. “But deal with them you must.”

When Fredrick reached his hand out to touch the shadow his hand passed straight through, but was bit by an icy chill.

“How?” Fredrick asked after a prolonged silence.

“If one’s nature is too weak to withstand the tyranny of those who are stronger, there are tools that must be used to bridge that divide.”

Fredrick stared at the entity that hovered above him as he tried to come to terms with what it suggested.

“I’m not a violent person,” Fredrick said, more to himself than the apparition. He stared at the ground and muttered, “I just want to be left alone.”

“They will never leave you alone,” it spat. “It is a compulsion of the strong to reinforce their dominance by abusing and manipulating the weak. It is a cycle. The weak may try to resist, but will always be pushed back more violently the next time. Such should be evident to you by now.”

Fredrick turned to his shadow uneasily and repeated, “I’m not a violent person.”

“Are you unwilling then to defend yourself?”

“I can’t!” Fredrick protested.

“I will make sure you can.”

An extended silence hung between them. The air did not stir, and the vacuous quiet drew out the most violent musings that Fredrick had supressed throughout his years of abuse. He knew he could not stand up to them alone, but maybe with help he could find the strength. Fredrick knew he could not endure another day of torment. His armour cracked.

“If I do what you say,” Fredrick whimpered, “I won’t get hurt again?”

“That I promise you,” the shadow replied as the light flickered out.

Fredrick stood in his mother’s bedroom before an open drawer. A chrome hand gun lay before him, illuminated by a desk light. Fredrick’s eyes darted around the room. How did he get to his mother’s room? He did not even know she owned a gun, but it lay before him. His brain rattled as he shook his head. It must be another dream. He pinched himself, but did not wake. The gun gleamed at him, so he reached for it.

“Yes,” hissed a voice as Fredrick examined the gun.

Something moved at the corner of his eye, but when he turned, nothing was there. Without a doubt in his mind, it was the same voice he had heard in his dream, unless he was still dreaming. He had never sleep walked before. His thoughts spun him dizzy. Fredrick sat down on the bed to steady himself, and tried to ignore to the idea that had rooted like a tumour. Was violence really necessary to end the constant conflict? Or would it only incite further, more drastic acts? He wanted revenge, and it was becoming unavoidable that anything short of death would only provoke an escalation in the violence. He had to act in pre-emptive self-defence. His life was in jeopardy as long as Jason, Tyler, and Patrick lived. Fredrick clenched his eyes shut and shook his head violently as he tried to dislodge the vengeful certainty that took over him. As he opened his eyes, the shadowy figure swirled up from the carpet, and wrapped its arm around Fredrick’s shoulder in advocacy.

“You know where to go,” the darkness whispered.

Fredrick knew where they would be that night, where they always were on a Friday night. The room spun around him and vaulted him into disarray. Fredrick could not tell up from down, but when the inertia subsided, he stood in the street outside a different home with the same red convertible with the ‘EETMIDST’ licence plate parked in the driveway. Hip hop music blasted from within, and the vibrations could be felt in the street as Fredrick moved away into the shadows. Night had descended and street lamps that hung in the air stained sections of the road. A few houses away a home with no lights on, or vehicles in the driveway invited him to sit. Fredrick slunk towards it. Though he moved, he had lost control of his body. A possessed vessel, he sat on the front stoop of the vacant house and waited.

Within minutes a stiff breeze ushered a familiar voice from down the street. Fredrick stood up, draped in shadow, as his eyes narrowed towards the voice. Someone came into view as they turned a corner a hundred metres up the road. Fredrick felt the weight of the gun pulling at his hand, and tucked it in the back of his jeans like he’d seen in so many movies. He moved to confront the voice in the street.

“Hey guys! I’m here! Let’s get this party started,” he shouted from well outside of the house.

As Fredrick stepped beneath a street lamp the light cascaded across his face. When Patrick noticed him, a venomous grin curled up his cheeks as he adjusted his trajectory to Fredrick.

“What do you think you’re doing here?” Patrick slurred. He staggered slightly as he walked, clearly inebriated. As he moved closer he noticed the bruising on Fredrick’s face and began to laugh. “What happened to your face? You look even uglier than normal, faggot. You better get out of here unless you want another beating, and we won’t take it as easy on you the next time.”

Patrick was only feet away from Fredrick as he stepped into the sullen glow. The gun emerged from Fredrick’s back, and swung to a halt pointing between Patrick’s eyes.

“What the –,” Patrick stammered. He instinctively cowered, but that sudden movement beckoned the bullet, spinning down the barrel of the gun with a clack before it burrowed into Patrick’s brow. He folded to the ground like a discarded puppet. The street lamp cast down upon the limp body its forsaking glow, and chased his shadow into the darkness.

The gun had jumped from Fredrick’s hand as it recoiled from his grasp, and lay on the ground beside him. He looked down at the manikin beneath the spotlight, the blood drained from its face, and the blood drained from Fredrick’s face. The sky came crashing down around him as he collapsed in the street. He couldn’t understand what had happened. How could he have shot someone? He’d never used a gun before in his life! Yes, it had to be a bad dream.

Everything started to spin again. Fredrick’s senses muted. As he lay semi-conscious in the road, the pulse of the music that had given life to the ground beneath his feet disappeared into silence. A few muffled voices gathered in the distance. The buzz grew louder until a single shriek slashed through Fredrick’s stupor, and saturated his vision in vivid colour. A formless force wrenched his stomach, and he turned just enough to avoid vomiting on himself. A pair of feet trudged down the street towards him while he heaved.

“What did you do?” erupted the voice.

As Fredrick lifted his gaze he saw Jason moving towards him. The invisible force released its grip on Fredrick’s gut, and he scrambled backwards out of the light. Jason stopped at the side of his friend, and stooped down to roll him to his back.

“I…I didn’t mean to. Honestly. He came at me! I don’t know what happened,” Fredrick sputtered from the shadows. Jason looked up from the face of the dead friend he held in his arms.

“You shot him in the face!” Jason seethed. He rose to his feet and turned on Fredrick. “Where’s the gun!?”

Fredrick’s eyes betrayed him as he glanced to his right where the gun lay at the edge of the street lamp’s glow. Jason exploded towards it, the aggressive movement punctuated by the shrieks and gasps of onlookers. At the same time, Fredrick mustered what little strength his battered body had left, and flopped over to block Jason from the gun, while taking the full force of the lunge between his shoulder blades. Fredrick felt a couple ribs crack from the weight of the blow, and his wail echoed through the still night air. Jason maneuvered back to his feet. With his vastly superior strength, he gripped Fredrick by the shoulders, and heaved him into the darkness. He must have expected Fredrick to have dropped the gun, because while Jason searched the road around his feet, a bullet entered his peripheral vision. The mass of teenagers up the road scattered to the pavement as the bullet continued its trajectory out the back of Jason’s skull.

The shot echoed down the street as Jason collapsed beneath the hum of the street light. Fredrick sat feet away, his two hands white-knuckle clenched around the grip, as a tendril of sulfurous smoke slithered up from the end of the barrel. Fredrick wriggled up to his feet, unblinking, yet completely blind to anything outside the yellow circle. As he stepped between the fallen boys, his emotions gathered to a head.

“This isn’t what I wanted,” Fredrick mumbled to himself. He trembled uncontrollably, and closed his eyes as he tried to wish himself away.

Many of the teenagers who had gathered in the street retreated back into the house, while others escaped into the darkness. A few remained in the street. Fredrick looked up at them, as in the distance the foreboding wail of police sirens whistled into being. The wind started to swirl, and Fredrick’s shadow peeled up from the ground to stand before him.

“There’s one more. He’s standing right there. Finish what you came here to do!” it goaded.

Fredrick looked to Tyler who looked back apprehensively. Fredrick did not seeing the upright, confident bully he had known and loathed. The boy before him shrunk under Fredrick’s glare, and backed towards his house.

“I can’t,” Fredrick whimpered.

“You have to finish this. This will never be over if you do not remove the head!”

“Do you not hear that?” Fredrick shrieked, and motioned towards the sirens swarming closer. “It’s already over. I never wanted this. I just…” Fredrick trailed off as he noticed the terrified faces of those who remained, who watched him scream at himself.

He shook his head and the apparition was sucked back into the asphalt. The clouds began to thin out in the distance just above the horizon. As they parted a star fell through space, disappearing into the suburban landscape. The heavens shed a tear for another lost soul.

The houses at the end of the street were painted in alternating red and blue before a police car squealed around the corner. The teenagers who remained outside scampered onto Tyler’s lawn as the car accelerated down the road towards Fredrick. Two more trailed the first that screeched to a halt at a distance. The officers emerged from their vehicle as the other two cars stopped at its flanks. Fredrick closed his eyes, and tried to deliver himself from that asphalt cell.

“Get in the house,” one officer yelled at the teenagers who ran inside.

Faces and hands were pressed to bay windows all along the street. An officer shouted out to Fredrick, but Fredrick was no longer present. He was back on a beach. A sun crested the horizon, and chased the darkness over the opposite horizon. As the stars faded back into space, a head emerged dripping from the lake. Her wet, waist length hair clung to her body as she slowly stepped up onto the beach. Her hips swayed with every step. Fredrick stood still on the beach, and listened to the soft slosh of the water as she wrapped her arms around him.

“Come home Fredrick,” she whispered in his ear, and then pushed him back with a giggle, that coy grin on her face.

“Put down the gun!” The voice shredded through the water, the sky, and the girl, dispelling them in a brilliant flash.

Fredrick looked up the street at the police, their guns pointed over the tops of their car doors. He shot them a melancholy smile, and turned the gun towards himself. His every longing reached down the barrel, and stroked his hand with a tender caress.

Clack.