Vivid (BoyxBoy) {Pipe Dream: Book I}

Chapter Thirty-Five: Safe.

The door opens onto pitch darkness as I scream out her name. It was a darkened corridor.

Dreams are so fucked up.

Following the corridor blindly, I see the light at the end, with a wind picking up and snow seeping onto the floor. Like blood.

I look down. It's blood.

Taking a step back in fright, I look up and see Anne on her hands and knees, digging in the blood-tainted snow.

"Anne...?"

"...safe," her voice was softer than a whisper, I barely made out the word. She continues to dig in the snow, as if I don't exist.

I stand directly behind her, her dress in tatters and smeared in blood. I reach for her, my fingers actually shaking at the cruel fucked up joke my fucked up mind decided to pull on me. "Anne?" I repeat.

Just as I touch the fabric on her shoulder, her head unnaturally snaps up like a marionette on strings. What greeted me made me pull back in shock. A chunk of her face is missing. Her right eye-socket was completely gone. Only a jagged hole looking into a cavity of bone, flesh, blood and muscle. The top of her jaw peaked through torn flesh. Whole chunks missing along her cheeks, should more muscle and teeth.

"Safe." She muttered again, her exposed muscle moving in time with the words. "Too late," her fingers pull away from the bloodied snow and reaches for me. The skin was pale grey with black veins.

I pull back, the back of my head hitting something hard and I see stars with the throbbing pain. "No!"

Too late.

"Too late," I repeat, my voice coming out in sobs, unable to control the reaction, I look around the unfamiliar room. I'm tired of this. Where am I now? Where's Anne? I didn't mean it!

"Give back Anne!" I rasp, completely disoriented.

"Hey!" darkness grabs my arms, pulling me into disarrayed panic.

"No!" I scream at the dark. Stop it. I don't want anymore.

"Kae!"

"No! Give her back."

"Kae," X's face suddenly materialises in front me, the darkness around my shoulders became his hands. "You're ok."

I don't know if this was dream or reality. I can't tell the difference anymore but knowing he was in front of me, something solid gripping my shoulders made all the floodgates open. So I cry. Cry until my voice is hoarse and the words I mutter don't make sense, even to me. I keep on apologising. Over and over. Even in my dreams I'm too late to save anyone. But X stayed. He didn't turn into mist or runaway as my mind expected. Instead his warm form stayed wrapped around me until I sink back into a darkness without realising it.

My eyes open onto a darkened room that I've never seen before. It was small, only big enough to hold a bed within the walls. I realise that I was holding onto something tightly. Looking up, I see that it was wrapped in fabric. Sleeve. Of a coat? Arm. I was wrapped around someone's arm. Blinking, I barely register that it was X, sitting beside me on the bed. He must have noticed that I was half awake as he suddenly starts t stroke my head. Slowly, gently. Like he's trying to soothe me back to sleep. If I had the energy, I would be freaking out right about now. But the effort and the pain was too much to bare.

I notice that his fingers linger on my eyebrow.

...Ah that scar. I sleepily open my mouth, barely able to mumble through the sleep fog overcrowding my mind. "I got that when I was six. Cody went off to some skate-park and left me behind." I had to laugh at myself. "Even back then I was afraid that I was missing out on something...so I went after him. Didn't look at where I was going and collided with someone when I ran across the ramps and shit trying to get to him." I move to touch it myself. "Got blood everywhere and had a few stitches. Now that I think about it, it's the oldest scar...Kinda a reminder that there was such a world, once upon a time. Still, nothing's really changed. I'm still a cry-baby running after his brother."

"...Is that so bad?" X says after a time, his eyes focused elsewhere. "Your brother will always be looking over his shoulder to check if you're there. That will always be his constant... and will be something that he will always be expecting."

I half smile, "You have a strange way of looking at things, X."

"...Is it really so strange?" I felt his eyes on me, expecting. Almost a silent panic that he was afraid that I was rejecting him. Odd.

After a yawn, I find my voice, "Not really. You're you. I like it." I think I said something rather bold but I was too fucking tired to be bothered with it and felt my eyelids close again to sleep.

I wake again, this time looking at the ceiling. I shut my eyes in order to hold onto the image in my mind while searching for the quiet I should be hearing. And yet, underneath it, there was a strange thrum. Like a melancholic song playing so softly that you had to be concentrating specifically for it.

It pulses like a heartbeat. It was unnatural and was cruelly continuing to play, like a light that wished for nothing more than to be extinguished but was continually being drowned in fuel. But where was it coming from?

Two songs.

I open my eyes. There were two songs. Two rhythms. Both of death. One tragic. One suffocating. One wanting death of itself and one that wanting it of everything but itself.

"You're listening again..." X's voice almost felt like a shout and jolts me straight out of my skin. It was almost a scolding.

"Who...what?" I sit on the bed, twisted in the sheets.

"The calling."

"What are?"

He tilts his head to the side like a puppy. "Those who are calling out. Tragic screams. Over and over."

Why does he chose moments like this to talk in circles? I rub a hand over my face, looking around. "Where are we?"

"The Abandoned Grounds."

He moves over to a 'whoosh' door and it opens onto more blinding light. I blink at the painful onslaught, "I don't know what that is."

"...Training area and I guess you would call parts of the structure, 'ruins'...or 'remnants' of an underground subway station from before...amongst other things."

"...Are you saying that your group are using some abandoned old world shit as your gym?"

He meets me with the silence as he walks out of the room completely.

I was about to mumble a number of profanities under my breath when he returns with two bottles. One's water and the other looked like orange juice. He passes them both to me before sitting down on the bed beside me.

I look around and notice that Lady was missing.

"She will return," X's voice was gentle. "She is exploring for herself."

I open the water bottle and take a few gulps down. The songs I was hearing..."There is something else out there isn't there?" I was at least sure that the song wasn't of a 'Queen'...I hope. But for some reason, it sounded similar...like they were almost the same kind of thing but ...not. Not like I'm having a hard time understanding anything already. Let's just add an extra dash of insanity shall we? Urgh this is giving me a headache.

"Yes." X says simply.

And he's turning it into a freaking migraine.