The Nocturnal Vol 1 : The Awakening

Chapter 3 Part 1

- Remi-

I never thought I'd be so passionate about it. No, I really didn't.

Outside, the sun was fading, the room was then lit only by the dimmed light of my work lamp. Sitting at my desk, I looked at the open book in front of me, with my pen in my hand. I had spent many evenings writing. A little too much to my friends' liking.

It was already the last day of school, and what made me most happy, beyond having succeeded in my year, and even beyond the holidays, was to see that I had reached the last page of my notebook. I was about to finalize my last dream, but I was delaying the fateful moment to prolong this exhilarating feeling that was overwhelming me. My Nocturnal, as I called them, had been enriched with some eight hundred chimeras. Eight hundred stories that I could read and reread at my leisure.

- 'It is time,' I finally thought to myself.

With a wide gesture, I put a beautiful black dot at the bottom of the page. Volume 1 of my dream journeys was completed. I blew on the ink to dry it and closed my work with pride. Filled with joy, I even found myself humming a few notes of music and swinging in my chair. I was enjoying this moment. I took the compass that was lying on the desk and invented myself as a conductor, splitting the air with this improvised baton, until its tip was stuck in my thumb.

- 'For once I was having a good time,' I said aloud pissed off as I gently removed it.

The prick was not very deep, but a drop of blood immediately appeared. I watched this bubble swell before I wiped it with my index finger. All this excitement had tired me. I got up from my chair to pick up my Nocturnal and put them inside the pillow, where they belong, in the warmth under my head. I finally turned off the lights while waiting for Morpheus to come and take me away and lead me into new adventures.

But where do these cries come from? What is this sad lament? So much pain in one voice. I arrive at the edge of a stream on which is stranded an inert narwhal baby. As I approach it, the mother, immense, emerges from the funds.

She thinks I'm responsible, she's targeting me. I quickly move back on land, imagining myself safe, but the beast, guided by pain, comes out of the water! She begins to crawl out of her element, centimetre by centimetre, and begins to breathe. I run through fields and hills, barefoot in brambles and thistles, but I still hear her terrible cries of pain. She's always on my trail and she'll chase me everywhere!

I woke up suddenly. My tense body was all sweaty and sticky. I was out of breath and my heart was pounding fast.

- 'What a night,' I thought to myself.

I didn't feel comfortable. Did the Narwhal mother follow me here? I scanned feverishly all around me. My room was plunged into semi-darkness, lit only by the daylight that crept in between the edge of the wall and the wooden shutters. I suddenly imagined her leaping from under the bed, grabbing my feet with her big, gaping mouth and dragging me with her. I mechanically retracted my limbs towards the centre of the mattress. The space it delineated made me feel secure, beyond that was uncertainty. I didn't dare reach my bedside lamp to turn it on when it was only a few centimetres away. I listened carefully to each little sound around me without moving any more. The slightest noise seemed suspicious to me. Suddenly, my alarm clock went off. I jump out of bed screaming, carrying with me the sheets I had tangled in. I hurried as best I could to light the room. What an idiot. My heart almost stopped, but I nonetheless forced myself to look under the bed and finally find nothing there, except a strong feeling of shame perhaps.

I opened the shutters wide to let in the warm rays of the Mediterranean sun. The day looked very beautiful, as always, actually. An ideal time to spend the day at Vaness' pool with Eva and Erwan. I hurried to take a shower to freshen my thoughts and get dressed. When I came back to the room, I noticed the disastrous state of my bed. It was upside down, the sheets hanging and crumpled, the box spring cover torn off and the pillow on the floor.