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This is a dream of mine. In the words of a friend, it’s technically a true story. I’m not sure, psychologically, what any of it means, but I thought it had actually happened a few minutes after I woke up. There are parts of it “filled in,” but none of them are important enough for any mention.
"Blake" is part of my real name, and what most people call me besides. I've decided, after a bit, to make this public- there's not much you could really do, as I have very few online profiles in which my real name is used, and none of them could be used against me even with that information.
To understand this dream, you’ll need to have a brief mental map of my school. The classrooms I go to are almost exclusively in a hallway on the second story of our school building. One end of that hallway leads further inside the building- there is a sort of “hub room” that houses some lockers, the teacher lounge, two different stairways that lead to separate halves of the first floor (the grammar school down one and the nursery down the other) and a hallway that houses some more school rooms and a third staircase to the grammar school at the end. The other end of the hallway with my schoolrooms leads to a balcony, with a set of stairs on the left side of that as well, which leads to a pavilion where we wait for our carpools at the end of the day. There is a railing that meets me about chest-high so that we don’t run outside and kill ourselves on accident. My dream was virtually perfect in these details.
With that said, let us go on. I was in Composition and Literature, the period just before lunch, and a new student had come. I did not know his name. He had a dirty blonde mullet, and a quiet, confident smile. He offered to shake my hand.
“My name is Jake,” he said, and I reached out to shake his hand firmly. When he left, I noticed something strange. The jacket I normally wear (we call it the “Michelin jacket” due to its quilted appearance resembling the company’s mascot), in the short time from when I made eye contact with the person to when I looked at the jacket, had a single sewing pin stuck in it with a silvery white head.
I looked to the person. I noticed something strange about Jake’s hazel eyes. His pupils were slightly –very slightly- pointed on the top and bottom, but so small was the difference that I had not caught it at first.
He sat back down. Class was a blur. I caught him later and asked him about the pin.
“A little sleight of hand, nothing more. I do, after all, have you marked.”
A raised an eyebrow. He laughed as a van, bright blue drove into the carpool lane, beeping. He gave me one last smirk, then left, climbing into the passenger’s side. I couldn’t tell who was driving, but it was probably his mother or grandmother- whoever it was, she looked old.
A blank spot. I’m sure, in the dream, it was filled with something convincing. That day, I wrote a quick story outline for the D&D campaign me and my friends do from time to time. I put it on some forums for criticism before returning to bed- school the next day.
My brain skipped past most of the parts I don’t care about. Breakfast, extra ten minutes of sleep, the like. I was in Composition class again.
He said in a perfectly even voice, “I would like to make an oral presentation today in class. A story, if you don’t mind.”
Most schools –even my private school which is somewhat lax on form anyway- would never have accepted it, but Miss Bridges did gladly. New student syndrome, I guess.
What he presented (in a perfectly clear, concise voice, not unlike my own- I excel at these type of presentations) was familiar. I began to realize what it was very soon. I tried to say that’s mine, but it came in a quiet whisper. One he seemed to hear none the less. He shot me a look and another one of those almost vampiric smirks.
He finished. I approached him after school.
“I told you. You’re marked.”
“What do you mean?” I said. It’s strange. When I’m angry with someone, I usually turn to more proper, concise speech- when I’m lax, I tend to be more vulgar.
“I mean, Blake, that I’m shadowing you. I’ve decided you need some things taken away.”
“What things?”
“Your talents. The things that make you different. You don’t deserve them.”
“That’s not something you can take away.”
“True, in a sense. But I can make them worthless.”
“Not legally. My father’s a lawyer.”
“Perhaps,” he said, and smirked again. I grew tired of that.
The same van as before came. I looked at my arms.
Several pins this time. Sleight of Hand. Normally I’m not easy for people to catch off guard like that, especially when I’m staring straight at them. I didn’t even see his hands move. Had he just willed the pins to be there?
“That’s nonsense,” I thought. “People can’t do that.”
When I got home that day, I deleted any story files I could find from the different places I had entered them to for criticism.
I made a map of a nonexistent fantasy world (a pastime of mine) and went to bed.
The next day, in Composition (always the same class) I stood inside the classroom, facing the door momentarily (I think something had distracted me), and Jake came in, giving me quite a few papers as he passed by. I took them almost without thought.
It was the map I had made earlier. Now this was disturbing. It wasn’t only that.
He had every single one of my written series, even the ones even I hadn’t seen for years, or ever shown to anyone. The paper on top, as if a monument to it all, was the map I had made.
I turned to him. He stood up from his desk.
“I took credit for it all,” he said evenly. “Publishers came today. The same will happen to anything you write. If you think of a story and write it on a notepad in the privacy of your own room, I’ll know it. And I’ll take that story and write it myself. And then I’ll get the credit, and you won’t.
“You should stop before I hurt you,” I said, and I knew I was getting dangerous. And this was coming from me. I wouldn’t threaten anyone, even people I hated. But there was something about him that some animal instinct of mine said to fight, tooth and nail, since I could not run.
Even when I was alone, somehow, he was watching. But reason kept me from tackling him here and now. If he could watch me so closely…
He would have planned for that. Would he? I didn’t know. But I felt like he needed to die. There was something altogether evil about him.
He responded to my threat with a laugh, louder and heartier than his normal chuckle. “Hurt me, eh? Go ahead. Go right ahead.”
He walked off, and I looked at my hands.
Covered in those sewing pins of his. There were at least a dozen on each arm. There was no way.
No way.
He left the room, I followed. He looked back and laughed, ran out the door to the balcony that ends our school hallway.
I chased him. I knew that there would be a showdown, between him and me. And he was leading me to the arena. I didn’t like it, but I knew I didn’t have a choice. He was holding all the cards.
He jumped down. I realized he was showing off, looking up at me, smiling, waiting.
He knew I wouldn’t jump down, that I would take the stairs. And he was right. I figured I should take my jacket off if I was to fight him, but for some reason, I was scared of those pins. I felt like that goose down jacket was the only thing protecting me, somehow.
I took the stairs, and he was already dashing away. I took after him as fast as I could. He went around the bend of our school, facing a pathway between the actual building and a covered basketball court.
Then he vanished, like smoke. I heard a voice from behind me.
“You can’t escape,” Jake said.
“I’m the one chasing you,” I responded, but before I could turn around, he slugged me in the back of the head, sending me flying forwards and setting my ears to ringing.
My world was a blur. He walked, calmly, and picked me up with one arm. I realized his physique was exceptional, chiseled.
He set me on my feet, and smiled again.
“Why are you doing this?” I said, and took off my jacket. He wanted a fight. It was one I could lose, but I didn’t fight fair, ever.
I suspected he wouldn’t either. This time, I watched his hands. They didn’t move.
But then, I felt biting pains in my now bare forearms. Lines of blood fell down them.
He couldn’t have…
The top layer of my skin was impaled with those sewing needles.
I pulled them out. He laughed all the while, now getting more raucous and free in his laughter. A flock of black birds flew away.
His laughter settled. “Are you going to fight me, Blake? Try and kill me?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“Why?” He said, in an inquisitive tone that told me he was trying to fit me in a logic trap. He had plagiarized me and poked holes in my jacket- until a few seconds ago he hadn’t done anything even like real violence. It didn’t deserve murder.
“Something’s wrong about you,” I said.
“No, Blake. Something’s wrong with you.”
His statement paralyzed me. I swallowed it done, got in a fighting stance.
“Hmmph,” he said. “Fine.” He got in his own, almost a mirror of mine.
He couldn’t…could he?
I swung. He ducked. A flash of light was all I saw.
The last thing I saw before I woke up was the movement of a short-bladed, but still deadly, knife to my throat, coming too fast for me to move out of the way.
I woke up gasping for air, then, realizing it was a dream, blinked it away.
I am not one easily fazed by my own subconscious. However, after that…
I wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t just the fact that he had pulled that knife on me.
It was the fact that, similarly armed and against someone I thought inferior, it would be exactly what I would do.
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