Building Monsters | WRITER'S AWARDS WINNER 2017

2.2 Peregrine

First Chapter Part 2

I take a moment, confused and unsure of what he just said. "Come again?"

"Wake up, Peregrine. The sickness of fear has become enjoyable to you and you no longer have a purpose in your created terrors. Find the purpose."

"Nightmares are supposed to be an indication of a fear that needs to be acknowledged and confronted. So wake them up. Not in a literal sense, but in a spiritual one." Zaphreal stands with the other two angels. "Dreamweavers, if you have any further questions, I suggest you ask after we conclude this meeting."

"And now to the heavy part." Chayiel crosses her arms, holding her hands her dark hands before her. "As we said, times are changing, and so we must as well. Numbers will drop and increase in different places to sway the Sleepers and to put them back on track. We must pay close attention to our Sleepers, and we must stretch our memory and our minds to remember and create. Everything that they experience in your Dreamscape has to mean something. You must not forget that."

"And on your Dreamless day, whichever you have assigned to your Type, I suggest you look around and study the world the Sleepers live in. Otherwise you won't understand where to start with their dreams, their flaws, their fears..." Zaphreal glances upward, his bronzed skin shimmering in the light coming from the sky above. "When you return to your Dreamscape, you will notice something different. There will be a single book in the center of your floor with your name on it. The spine will increase in width, depending on your amount of Sleepers. This is where you will take notes on them. Each one of them will have a section, and you will help them all."

There's a terrible silence that fills the room as the words seep in. The words and their fears used to just come to me, but now I have to put thought and reason in something completely and utterly... unreasonable. Dreams are unpredictable, illogical—especially nightmares. How is this supposed to work?

"I know what some of you are thinking," Herchel intervenes. "The amount of work you have to do is unbearable, especially those of you that are the only Dreamweaver in your Type. But God will help you through it and time will move slower as you write, giving you space between your Sleepers." He pauses, looking out at all of the questioning eyes, whose mouths below begin to break the silence with their noise. "Good luck, and may God be with you. Dismissed."

Some Dreamweavers leave immediately, whereas I sit until the table and chairs around me have disappeared. The only one remaining is left beneath my own body, waiting for me to stand. I watch as the line to talk to the three angels shortens and then disappears, as if time is moving by quicker than I'd want it to.

"Peregrine?" Chayiel asks, breaking my trance as everything around me slows. "Do you have a question?"

I hesitate, afraid to ask the only question that's stuck with me over the years, however long it's been since I became... this. As I contemplate, they watch me expectantly, making my heart guard itself by building a wall around it. I can't ask them. Not now, and maybe not ever.

"No," I stand, pushing aside my self-pity and letting the bitterness I feel well inside my mouth. "I guess I'll get a head-start on that heavy book you've placed upon our fragile shoulders."

I open my wings and fly to the door, which swing toward me as I approach. My feet find their way out and I make my way back to my Dreamscape, my room, and darkness surrounds me once again. It doesn't choke me; it embraces me and accepts me in ways I cannot explain, but also in ways I'm not entirely sure that they're good. Here, I am accepted possibly in the worst way.

I slide into my chair and, for a moment, struggle to recall where I was going with this old man's dream as I pull my attention from the large, open book sitting on the other side of him and his Shadows, his Monster twice his size and looming over him. And then it returns to me like the parting of a sea, making me tired and wish tomorrow was the fourteenth. His is the same fear most everyone has, everyone but me for the fact that I cannot.

"Ah, yes," I breathe. "Death."

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AN: Well I hope you enjoyed that two-parted chapter! I did. It's a lot of information, and, don't worry, chapter two will have a nightmare in it. So get ready. And, by the way, I put up a list of the dreams so you can see what it is the three angels were talking about exactly. Enjoy!

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Chapter on Radish: First Chapter