“Come on, let’s finish breakfast and we can be a few minutes late today,” I offer.
Dad smiles, walking back to his seat. His pancakes are really good. It would be a mega shame to waste them. After that, our conversation turns to lighter topics, thank goodness. Eventually, with a full stomach, I head for the door. I stop, remembering Loki’s bag of food sits nearly empty in the pantry.
“Hey, Dad,” I call back to the kitchen. “Don’t forget to pick up a bag of dog food on your way home today. Loki is almost out.”
“Okay,” he shouts back.
“And don’t worry about unpacking. I will get started on that as soon as I get in from school.”
Dad’s head pokes around the corner.
“No, no. I got it. If you want to see your new friends after school, by all means go see them, just remember what we talked about. Check in, and be home on time. Okay?”
“Okay. Love you, Dad.”
I start to go out the door but he stops me.
“We’re not going to be just a little late now, Dad, we are going to be like, really late.”
“I know, but Biscuit…” He pauses, looking around the room like he needs to find the words.
“Tell me something about these kids you hung out with, are they nice?”
They are something alright.
“They are...interesting,” I reply.
I shouldn’t have said that.
“Interesting how, Sailor? Are they doing drugs? Did they offer you drugs? Maybe I should meet their parents,” he mumbles.
“Bye, Dad,” I say and wave, closing the door behind me and shaking my head.
He’s unbelievable. I take one step and run into something, or more accurately, someone.
“Sunday?”
I peer over his shoulder and a meek Mel waves at me with a soft smile.
“The Four Horsemen don’t look like that,” Sunday says bluntly.
“Uh, what?”
It’s too early for this. How am I supposed to translate Sunday at this ungodly hour? I almost laugh at my pun thoughts and the irony in them.
“The ogres in your nightmare. That’s not what the horsemen look like. The fact is, the horsemen are in hiding until the planetary alignment. So, they have taken on a different form. One could look like a nice old man. One could be a teenager or even a child.”
I know my eyes are bugging out, but I can’t help it. They bum-rushed me when I haven’t even had a good cup of strong coffee.
“Can we back up here? How do you know about my nightmares? I haven’t even told my dad the truth about that.”
“I know because I was there.”
He replies casually as if dream walking is a normal thing that everyone does.
“We’re gonna be late for first period. Walk and talk,” he says.
Mel skips gleefully beside him. I am still standing on my steps, mouth open, staring at them in shock and confusion. Seriously, my dreams aren’t even safe now?
“Hey, wait up,” I call out to them and jog to catch up.
“Who said you could just enter my dreams? And by the way, that, my dear dream invader, is what we humans call a nightmare. Dreams are when you are happy and nightmares are when you’re being mauled by a thousand angry demons.”
“I walk in and out of dreams undetected. I can affect it if I want but generally, I try to stay out of the way,” Sunday notes casually.
His cool demeanor annoys me further.
“Okay, I don’t like that. I mean, you shouldn’t have access to my private dreams and nightmares.”
“Hey, it’s no picnic for me either. Do you have any idea the horrors I’ve seen in the human subconscious? You have no idea what nightmares really are.”
“Then why do it?” I push.
“I don’t go around walking into everyone’s dream. In fact, I try to avoid it. But I had my orders.”
“Who ordered you to invade mine?”
“Rye. He feared you’d have nightmares and would need a Hook Light. A Hook Light is the light you saw in your dream. I manifested it by gathering your wants and desires, and I used them to create that light. It’s hard to make a Hook for someone I hardly know.”
His brows rise and he gives me a pointed look. It’s safe to say we aren’t on the best of terms.
“I thought you said you guys all got a flash of my life,” I reply.
“Yes, but dreams aren’t driven by events, they are driven by longing and fear. The team knows what happened in your life but we don’t know how you feel about those events or what your secrets desires are. And that’s what I need to create the Hook and blast your nightmares away.”
“But you did that. So, what did you use to make the Hook Light?”
“I used something that I knew you wanted but weren’t ready to admit you wanted. Something that gave you a flood of euphoria and headiness.”
“Okay, and what was that?”
“I used your feelings for Rye.”
Mel gasps and chuckles. “Oh my god, they would make a cute couple.”
“No, no. You’re wrong. Your light shouldn’t have worked if you were gunning for my feelings for Rye.”
“Why is that?” Sunday stops and faces me head on.
“Because I hate him,” I mutter.
I know that’s not true as soon as it leaves my lips and I feel the color rise from my chest up to my ears.
“If that were true, the light would have failed. But it didn’t. Instead, it grew and it saved your ungrateful butt.”
He turns and stalks on. Mel smiles apologetically and skips on after him.
Oh no. Before the nightmare, I was kissing Rye. Did Sunday walk in on that too? When I finally manage to reach Sunday and Mel again, I grab his hand and turn him back to face me.
“Are you going to tell him? What you saw in my dream. The part where I kissed him?”
Mel sucks in a breath again and with each reaction from her I want to slap her that much more. Sunday scoffs and then grins
