2014-04-07

When Dreams Walk Among Us

SPECIAL TREAT! This is a guest post from the amazing Lizzi Rogers of Considerings blog
What did I do to deserve this treat? Basically I assigned it to her like a mean substitute teacher, as part of an award

She introduced me to the concept of the Secret Book of Rules (SBoR and/or BoSR,) which is much like the Maurader's Map from Harry Potter. If you tap your wand upon it, metaphorically and not at all pervertedly, or mayhaps just a tiny bit pervertedly, and solemnly swear you're up to no good, you can find a way around any rules in the entire Blogosphere. But you have to mean it, about the being up to no good. I'm obviously Team Captain of this concept. I took the book and ran with it.

I had a very vivid dream, that I only remembered a few seconds of. Her mission, and she chose to accept it, was to take what little I remembered and write a short story about it. For Lizzi is the Hermoine Granger of fantastic fiction. Here is her tantalizing tale of terror. (Me? Yeah, I'm the Neville Longbottom of alliteration.)

When Dreams Walk Among Us
By Lizzi Rogers

We burst out of the solicitor’s office laughing, whooping and hanging around each other’s necks, crying with happiness. We were totally immune to the stern glares of the prim secretaries, deaf to the ripple of irritated “SHH!” sounds our exuberance had triggered and were thoroughly committed to celebrating the moment.  

“Success!” she shouted, punching the air. “Finally, after all this time and heartache and panic – we’ve done it; we’ve pulled it off.” 

Radiating a joy and peace I’d not seen in her countenance for many years, she pulled me into a tight hug.  

“I couldn’t have done it without you”, she whispered into my hair “you’ve been amazing. Thank you.” 

I squeezed back, choked with emotion, before remembering something important. I pulled away suddenly, surprising her “Hey! We said when this day happened we were gonna go for...” 

“ICE CREAM!!” we squealed in unison. Prompted by the explosion of noise, the secretary jumped up and strode over to Glenys, offering a curt invitation to please remove ourselves from the office. 

Grinning, and with linked arms, we went to find the elevator down – away from this office with its memories of such trepidation and anxiety; away from this office with its revelations and its hard-won victories; away from this office for the last time – to freedom. 

Her heels clacked along the floor, the spring in her step apparent to everyone who saw us.  

Even in the elevator, she couldn’t stay still, dancing and fidgeting and still exclaiming her incredulity that it was all over – that she could move on – her gorgeous red power-shoes tracking across the metal floor, imbuing the tiny space with staccato possibility. 

The lift shuddered to an unexpected halt between floors, the light flickering. Our eyes echoed the flicker as we caught each other’s gaze, wondering whether we should panic. I reached out and grabbed her hand, hoping that the bombardment of positive emotions we’d just undergone would not turn sour. 

Before my eyes, a small hatch appeared to slide back in the metal wall of the elevator. The stench came through before the visual; a male face with a large, rounded head and overly-pointed chin, was looking through at us, his lip curled in a sneer and his blank eyes darkly infathomable 

Glenys was fluttering around, banging the emergency button, trying to get hold of an engineer to come and sort the problem out so we could disembark. I was caught in the coaly glint of the face through the window, feeling his attitude creep in until everything was coated with the stink of fear and the loss of oxygen.  

Andela”, his voice snickered out into the air, making me shudder “you didn’t think you’d seen the last of us, did you?” 

“I had hoped so, Kakaios, but she is safe now – it is finished. You have no further business here” 

Glenys had sunk into full-on panic-mode, sensing the need to leave this place and its stifling, crushing atmosphere. She was pressing all the buttons incoherently, the happy tears of minutes before now showing shining tracks of terror down her cheeks.  

Kakaios’ mouth stretched into a wicked grin, showing his grey lips and pointed teeth. He reached in with spidery hands and slowly, deliberately, wrapped them around the corners of the metal box, suddenly shaking it. Glenys squealed in terror, and my heart jolted, knowing that we were in a very precarious position indeed. 

“You fool” he laughed, his tortured pit voice filled with malicious glee “We will never be finished with the two of you. Not until you are finished. Which might be right now... 

He shook the elavatror again, hard, and we began to plummet. 

Glenda was screaming, her eyes bugged out in desperation. 

The air was whistling past us, and we could feel the weight of the metal around us, and sense the floor rising up as gravity pulled us inexorably downwards, ever faster. 

I met Kakaios’ leer and evident pleasure at our predicament with burning anger and sudden, shining wings erupted from my shoulders, lifting me from the floor as I reached down to pull Glenys away from her doom. 

A world-splitting CRASH! echoed through the building as the plummeting lift met its swift and inevitable destruction against the unforgiving concrete foundations. The floor shattered and the edges buckled out, the roof smashing down on top of us, swatting us out of mid-air and into a twisted, aching heap in the corner.  

Screams and the sound of urgent movement grew closer as people rushed to help, heaving away sheets of tattered metal, finally uncovering us, not a wing to be seen, just the shaking, terrified ‘normalcy’ of two people who have just survived a crisis. 

Hands reached out to us, pulling us from the wreckage amidst exclamations of wonder at Glenys’ scrapes, cuts and total lack of terminal damage. 

Across the bustling, emergency-fuelled atrium, a man sat in a bubble of calm - Maalik - the now-ex husband. His presence simmered with barely-contained anger. He glared, pointing two cocked fingers at her, miming the pull of a trigger and the kick of a gun. Behind him, Kakaios leaned down to whisper more poison in his ear, reaching through his skull with those long, spidery fingers, to stir up dark thoughts in his mind. 





Lizzi is a Deep Thinker, Truth Teller and Seeker of Good. She works a normal job and has a secret life as the writer at Considerings. Wife to Husby and Mother to two Neverborns (and now dealing with the challenge of primary infertility) she is a frequent instigator of silliness and loves to entertain with words. 


Connect with her in all of these places:

42 comments:

  1. Thank you SO much for sending me your dream and inspiring such a fun story... *MWAH*

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    1. It wasn't fun until you made it fun! Thanks for playing.

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  2. How scary that must have been to dream about but what a tale Lizzi turned it into! !

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    1. Joy's dream ended with the face through the window in the elevator, and had less foreground. I wish there had been some way to differentiate the parts which were hers, but it's all rather a glorious melee :)

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    2. Well I linked back to the original post, with the assignment but really most of it is yours. I didn't remember much more than the elevator.

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    1. Thanks Debra - it was SUCH fun to have this challenge suddenly 'apperated' at me :)

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  4. First, the Neville Longbottom of alliteration? Ha!

    Nice work, Lizzi!

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    1. Oh but she's fun, non?

      Thank you :) HEY NICE TO SEE YOUR PIC AGAIN ON A COMMENT! Good grief, you'll have to figure out how to get that onto Disqus, cos my system's not going anywhere.

      I wonder if I should run a side-line in...not dream interpretation, but re-writing...

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  5. Fantastic collaboration! Everything Lizzi touches turns to gold in my opinion.

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    1. Your opinion is very sweet and feeds my ego nicely, thank you Jen :)

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    2. I know she would make a golden story!

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    1. Thanks Prathima, and thank you for following this all the way over.

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  7. OMG Lizzi I just loved the way words played with my mind ! I could imagine Kakaios spidery fingers as well. Great guest post :)

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    1. Thanks Afshan - I really enjoyed the chance to write here...and to mess with Joy's dreams...

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  8. What a tale full of horror ! Your words depict it so aptly.

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    1. I hope the twists kept it a bit interesting :D

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  9. I love it! How wonderful to be able to write so vividly and how great a post! Thank you to Lizzi and Joy as well!
    xox jean

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    1. I'm a little envious of Joy's epic dreamscape, it has to be said - I've not had a good dream for WEEKS.

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    2. I wouldn't be, I was having stress nightmares and the only time I remember my dreams is when I'm ripped awake suddenly by noise. Then I have trouble falling back to sleep. Then it feels like devil talons are reaching in my brain all night and day...bit not in a cool way.

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    3. Ohhhh okay that sucks a bit then. When I remember my dreams they've usually been in glorious technicolour with some kind of mad plot twist. Perhaps I'll write the next one I remember and you'll see :)

      (HUMBUG! to getting ripped from sleep though - YUK!)

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  10. Yikes! This really did read like a dream... but with a conclusion. Creeptastic.

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    1. Ah but the ending remains unwritten - you may draw your own conclusions. I shall have to wait for Joy to dream the conclusion and let me know! Thanks - I enjoyed making it just a little off-kilter.

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  11. Scary mary! Great story though.

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    1. BWAAHaHAHA I know, right? I hope there was just the right amount of creepy. Don't read this one to your kids...

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  12. so Neville, how much of this was your dream? I guess I'm asking who's more disturbed you or lizzi? Oh my god lizzi that was even scarier than some of your other stuff Ive read....you kinda have a knack for this horror stuff well you have a knack for fiction. This was fiction right?!

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    1. Joy can't reply right now cos I have her shackled to a machine which is letting me probe into the rest of her brain in search of inspiration. I think she quite enjoys the electrodes I'm using...she's stopped crying and pissing herself, anyway (I'm taking that as a good sign). Somewhere in here there's something good - I haven't quite come across it yet, but I have Kakairos whispering in my ear and telling me it's just beyond that...SHIT! That's not good. Hang on...

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    2. Can I *cough cough* come up now? It's dark and cold down here!
      I didn't give her much to work with, pretty much just the elevator! This is all her angelicly wicked mind!

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    3. *arches eyebrow* Maybe...

      I guess I've tapped you for enough imagination FOR NOW :D

      (hey, totes off-topic - you coming to VidChat tonight?)

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    4. I plan to be there, yes. My policy is "If I'm awake, I'm there." :)

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    5. I hope the sleep was good for you :'(

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    6. Much needed, but I was so tired I didn't even brush my teeth or wash my face. I half fell asleep putting the little ones to bed and couldn't even change out of day clothes. Ugh. I feel a little more rested today, but I also feel like I could go back to sleep for another 20 hours or so. Not an option since the hubs is having a dental "procedure" done today and it's just me and the kids again. ZzzzzZZZZzzzzZzzzZZzz

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  13. I cannot tell you enough of how much I adore your writing. It's like opening a book and not wanting to put it down...only you make me...jerk. Kidding.
    You make everything flow very eloquently and engages us right from the start.
    Well done xox

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    1. That gives me encouragement, my dear, because I'm still panicking a bit about the idea of writing an ACTUAL book (once this A-Z thing is over) and ouf! to know that you like my writing enough to not want to put it down...*relief*

      Thank you :*

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  14. "For Lizzi is the Hermoine Granger of fantastic fiction." Man, I wish I had thought of that first!! Perfect!
    This was awesome!

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  15. THIS TOTALLY CREEPED ME OUT. I will never sleep tonight.

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