Dream Haunter (4 page)

 “
That’s
my
girlfriend! If you
ever
,
ever
touch her again, I
will
come after you!” He screams at
Adam at the top of his lungs, shaking him against the
wall.

Sam throws Adam to the floor, reaching
for Melody’s hand before stomping to the door with her. Adam rolls
on the floor; a sick smirk on his face as he jumps to his feet. He
comes up behind Sam, punching him in the middle of his back. A
piercing pain shoots up his spine as Sam lets out a grunt before
slumping to the floor. Melody yelps for him since Sam is more
focused on swinging around and shoving Adam to the floor. The next
thing she knows the two young men are rolling around on the floor,
throwing angry punches back and forth at each other, falling into a
zone of pure white rage.

Melody lunges forward, getting ready to
scream and pull them apart, when suddenly she begins to get dizzy.
The checkered tiles zoom up at her before blurring away as her body
spreads out on the cool tiles.

“
Melody!” shouts both Sam
and Adam, the sound of her hitting the floor had pulled them from
their fight.

They run over to her, pushing and
shoving each other.

“
Look what you did you
bastard!” Adam yells at Sam.

“
This wouldn’t have happened
if you hadn’t laid a hand on her in the first place!” Sam retorts.
He picks her up, brushing her hair off of her face. “Melody? Melody
can you hear me?”

Melody groans, struggling to open her
eyes, pressing the heel of her palm to her head. Sam throws Adam
one last pissed glance before walking out the door with
her.

Chapter Eight

Melody wakes up, her head throbbing as
she moves her feet across the soft dark green sheets of Sam’s bed
with an icepack pressed against her forehead. Sam saunters back
into the room, the springs making a low creaking noise as he sits
down next to her.

“
How do you feel?” he asks
as he switches the ice pack out with a new one; the touch of the
ice makes goose bumps rise across the skin on her neck.

She sits up, rubbing her throbbing
temples. “My head hurts a little but other than that I'm fine, I
guess. How did we get back here?”

 
Sam takes her fingers
from her temples, and massages them with his own. “I walked out of
the front door and was back here.” Melody looks over at a few of
the cuts on his face from the brawl with Adam.

“
You… walked out? Whenever
I’ve been there there hasn’t been a door…”

He shrugs and looks down at his lap.
“Maybe you were too busy to notice it…”

Her stomach tosses around; that was a
jab at her. She touches the one over his eye. “You really did get
hurt.”

He nods, massaging the back of her
neck now. “The guy had a big punch on him! He was really pissed
that I took you.”

Melody drops her gaze from his. “Yeah…
he’s gotten kind of attached to me. You should have seen his face
when I said that I loved someone else.”

 
Sam pulls his hand
from her neck, sprawling out next to her, resting his head on her
knee. She plays with his hair, studying the mix of light brown and
gold that isn’t noticeable unless you look carefully for it. She
gently kisses the bruise on his cheek.

“
So, this is real?” she
asks.

Sam licks his lips; his eyes flicker
up at her. “I guess so.”

She nods, awkwardly nibbling on her
bottom lip as she tries to take in this new information. “I'm
sorry.”

He pulls her hands from his
hair, lacing them with his own before kissing her knuckles. “I know
you are, but you don’t have to be.”
He
smiles up at her, tired from the rush of adrenalin and proud that
he had claimed what was his. Melody’s hands stroke his forehead in
such a soothing manner that his eyelids struggle and fight before
finally closing. She smiles, a freeing feeling in her chest because
she thinks this is all over, but sadly this is only the
beginning.

The door clicks behind her as she
begins to make her way home, rain still falling against the
pavement as she walks back. The sleeves of Sam’s jacket, which she
had stolen from his closet when she realized that it was still
raining, fall over her hands so she balls her fists inside of them
as she walks slowly home. She pushes the door to her apartment
open, staring down the hallway to her bed room.

Her apartment is dark and empty
compared to Sam’s, but its home. She drops her keys on the end
table as she walks sluggishly over to her bed. The sheets are the
same tangled mess she had left them in, and now that Sam had scared
Adam off she should have nothing to worry about, but she doesn’t
feel comfortable in her own bed anymore. She slips into a pair of
sweats, pulling a quilt from the closet and rolls up on the couch.
She sighs in her sleep, dreaming of nothing other than Sam,
relieved that Adam has no role in this dream.

                                      
………………………………………
..

She runs through a park
with Sam, happy and laughing, when she notices that things are
beginning to blur and the trees disappear. She stares down at her
feet; the dirt ground turns into black and white boxes. Frightened,
she looks up around her. Red paint smears around her where there
once had been trees. Adam walks up to her, one arm wrapped in a
sling, the other ready to reach for her. Melody stays her distance,
watching his moves and his eyes as he veers closer to her. Adam
holds his free hand out, letting the heart pendant dangle from the
chain wrapped around his fingers. She smiles and reaches out for
it, fingers nearly grasping the golden chain before he pulls it
back, holding a finger to his lips. He slides behind her, brushing
the hair off of her neck before draping the cold chain around her,
locking it at the back of her neck. She watches the heart sway on
her chest, almost not feeling the hot breath on the skin of her
shoulders. She slides from him; getting ready to make a run for it.
He gives her a hurt look, taking two steps towards her.

“
What? Oh, this can’t be
about that ‘Sam’ dick, can it?” he sneers.

Melody stares him down, no
one talks about Sam that way; she has defended him since the day
she met him. “He is not a dick! At least he’s real!”

Adam smiles, lopsided and
off putting, as he lets his head fall to the side. His eyes
bouncing around her, even though she is dressed in her sweat pants
and Sam’s too-big-for-her jacket, she feels naked.

“
You don’t think I’m real?”
he asks once his eyes have made their way back to
hers. 

She swallows, nerves
prickling the skin around her neck; the smooth, seductiveness of
his voice has always done that to her.

“
You’re not. This is all
just a dream.” she says through gritted teeth.

He stretches his leg out,
taking a wide leap forward until he is only inches from her
face.

Chapter Nine

Adam nurses his bloody nose in the
bathroom mirror, tossing the bloody tissue in the trash. He hadn’t
recognized the name until he had seen Sam for himself. That was
him, he was the reason Adam had been cursed so many years ago. Adam
coughs up more blood into the sink. Sam has gotten better at
fighting since their last brawl.

“
So he’s going to ruin
things for me again isn’t he?” he says to his reflection. His lips
curl up into a smirk, “I guess this means revenge will be an option
for me.”

Slipping back into his revenge seeking
self isn’t hard him, it’s like an old, cotton t-shirt. He walks
down the narrow hallway, following the beam of light shining out
from under a black door at the end of the hall. Adam pushes the
door open; his blood runs hot with pride as he looks across the
room.

Polished glass spheres stand in rows
from one side of the room to the other, each filled with a young
woman, their ages ranging from seventeen to thirty. They stand at
his presence, hoping that this is the day that he will finally let
them go, but unfortunately for them he hasn’t come with freedom.
Adam walks through the rows of glass cases, looking at each
heart-rate monitor next to their case, noticing the quickening
pulses as he passes by. He lingers next to one case.

A tall, tanned young woman named Chloe
sits on the floor, her legs pulled under herself as she brushes her
long black hair with her fingers.

“
Is there something you
need, Adam?” her voice like a sweet, familiar song to his ears
asks.

 
He scratches the back
of his neck; Chloe was the first girl, the one he stupidly thought
would cure him quickly. He can smell his skin oozing with the minty
clean pheromones that have drawn in so many women, but it has
always been stronger when he is around Chloe.

“
I think she’s the one that
can fix this.” his voice comes out almost as a whisper, which
surprises him.

 
Chloe nods, standing
to face him through the glass; she had truly loved Adam at one
point in time, back when they were younger.
“So you will have no need for us then?” she asks.

Adam shrugs, using his finger to scroll
through her vitals on screen in front of him. “She might be a
little bit harder to persuade than you guys. She has a
boyfriend.”

Chloe swallows back some sort of
emotion that builds up in her throat whenever he’s around. “That’s
never stopped you before.”

His blue eyes burn holes into her,
making her fidget back and forth. Chloe snorts; its funny how
something she used to love about him is something she wishes she
had never seen.

“
No. But this boyfriend just
happens to be an old friend of mine; he’s the reason why I'm cursed
in the first place.” Adam says as he slowly walks out of the room,
flicking a light switch next to the door that drops red drapes over
the curtains.

He watches them slowly slip over the
glass cases, keeping eye contact with Chloe’s brown and gold eyes
before the red silk obscures his view. He has always loved her, but
the reason he was cursed was because he didn’t know what love was.
He and Chloe had been just fifteen at the time.

Adam sits down on his leather couch,
nibbling on his swollen lip as he thinks more upon
Chloe.

When the curse fell upon him
her dreams were the first ones he lived in. She welcomed him with
open arms, crying and saying that she was worried when she heard
about the fight between Sam and him. He told her that he was a
cursed man, and that he would be forever bound to dreams and heart
break until he could figure out what love really was. Chloe had
gripped his face, holding it a few inches from hers.

“
Jet, I love you.” she
sobbed.

But nothing happened. No
burden was lifted from his shoulders; no magic filled the room and
made it all go away.

“
You don’t love me, or else
this all would be over.” he told her. Chloe ran off
sobbing.

Adam dropped into
depression, haunting Chloe’s dreams, filling her with emptiness and
pain.

One night, she refused to
come to him. So he slipped into another one of her dreams, grabbing
onto her subconscious and locking it away in his first glass
sphere. He heard on the news that she had slipped into a coma, and
has been that way for almost eight years now.

Ever since then whenever one of the
girls try to leave him he traps them here, either grabbing them by
their subconscious, or physically going out and hunting them down.
They are all still under his spell, even after they realize who he
really is, so it usually isn’t much of a struggle to get them to
come back with him.

Except for Chloe.

But then again, he never had to flicker
his azure eyes to get her to be with him, she has always come to
him, at least she did until he snapped.

Chapter Ten

Melody screams, waking herself up. Her
heart beats violently inside of her chest as she looks up at her
clock, her vision pulsating with her heart beat.

7:19 am.

She sighs, trying to calm her boiling
blood.

“
Sam should be up right now
getting ready for his audition, I’ll call him.”
she thinks to herself

She reaches her arm out to the coffee
table, her fingers frantically scratching at the table until the
cell phone slides to her.

“
Hello?” croaks a very
groggy Sam.

“
Hey, it’s me.” Melody
says.

Sam perks up at the sound of her voice,
pressing his lips closer to the phone. “Hey, I was worried when I
woke up and you weren’t there. Is everything ok?”

“
Oh, sorry I let myself
out.” She can just picture how saddened he must have looked when he
noticed she was missing; something inside of her drops to her
stomach.

“
It’s ok. Did you dream
about him again?” he asks.

“
Um, kind of…” Melody
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