Dreamer School

He carefully plucked the lacy cotton tiara from her hair and set it down in the grass next to them. Molly felt his tensing muscles firm up as he positioned himself just above her soaking entrance. Molly swallowed in one of his glances and gripped his thick arms nervously for reassurance as she felt the dripping cushion at the tip of his spear begin to press into her royal shrine. She kissed him hard and entered her house in a slow, strong thrust. Molly's head tilted back into the grass as she felt him finally claim her as his own with three simple words.

"Ding-dong, ding-dong, dong, gong, goner."

The campus clock tower was dinging five minutes to nine, the hour was up and she had to bring herself out of her journal and head into her math class. Had she really been reading for that long? She shivered and straightened her skirt, trying to shake off the heat her imaginary stranger's words filled her with.

Molly walked into the classroom with two minutes to spare. The professor with his signature half un-tucked, white, short sleeve button up was already writing out some equations on the dusty chalk boards. Her heart felt sick, she hated math.

She sat in her usual seat in the back of the class, where she could disappear, she had no friends in this class. All her friends had graduated already. Not that they wanted anything to do with her now. Molly hid her left arm. She was so rushed this morning, she forgot to put on a long sleeve shirt. A lead jacket of self-consciousness fell on her.

Molly thought after her "unfortunate incident" as everyone called it in whispers, maybe her mother would be more understanding. And she was, for as long as she was in the hospital. But any facade of warmth fell off soon after they returned home and her mother became even worse towards her. Always bringing it up as a way to hurt Molly or shut her down whenever she decided to try a way to gain some breathing room for herself.

Molly almost wanted to cry right there in class. She was so exhausted with her situation, she had no idea what to do, or why she was doing it. All she had were her fantasies in her journal. And she was pretty sure she would be told, that too was probably just as "unhealthy". She gripped the wrinkled fabric of her skirt under her desk and tried to ride the wave of her despair without anyone noticing. She held her tears back, she was broken and alone in this horrible world. She wanted to leave it, and she failed at even doing that. Now she was stuck more than ever. Molly rocked in her chair and focused on her breath. She slowly brought herself back into the present.

She was escaping more and more into that thick pink journal of hers and she knew it. But there was nothing for her here. Here in this class, here on this planet. No one understood that. No matter how much she tried to explain it to someone. No one understood, there was nothing for her here!

Everything was a big fat Disappointment. Boys, men, friends, parents, school, work, entertainment, all of it felt empty. She was empty, couldn't they see that? And her friends, her friends were the worst of it. All the shit they talked for years about sticking together no matter what and they abandoned her when she was at her lowest point, when she actually needed them most.

What a sham. The whole world was a sham, she hated it. At least she had some kind of control in her stories.

She wanted her fantasies!

Molly watched the strange chalky equations morph on the cloudy green chalkboards and drifted off as she thought about her fantasies becoming real. If there was some kind of mercy out there, let her have those at least. Give her something of her own. Let her disappear into her dreams. Win-win.

The stranger in her dreams was there with her, he whispered something in her ear, "it's because you belong to me..." The thought drifted through her like a kiss knotted in time. Molly felt something like a ghost around her heart and neck.

The students around Molly were rustling their things as they packed up to leave, the class was over. She watched them as an outsider, she couldn't wear a chipper mask anymore. Watching everyone file out of the room made Molly's eyebrows perk up, what had she been doing the whole time? She missed the entire lecture. Were the distances between the words of her thoughts becoming so long now, that she was falling into their gaps and missing time? Molly shook her head, where had that thought come from?

She missed the whole lecture and didn't care, she was failing all her classes this semester and still, she didn't care. She was smart enough that she could make them up at midterms, but she didn't care to try. The entire thing had been ruined, college was a waste of time for her. She didn't even have the distraction of friends anymore to keep her pretending. Tears welled up in her eyes and she tried to stop thinking about them.

Molly went to put her math notebook away, she hadn't taken any notes, but took it out to blend in. She stopped and goosebumps rose to the surface of her arms when she noticed she had drawn something on the page. When had she done that?

It was a cat's eye with flames coming out the top where the lashes would be and the number "454" with a heart next to it, in a hand that wasn't her own.

She shoved the notebook in her bag, surprised at herself. She must really be drifting away from this place if she didn't even remember drawing such a thing. Was it sleep-doodling? She shivered. There was something eerie about not being able to remember having done something with your own body.

There was a large terrible scratch in the wood of her desk under where the notebook had been, it cut across her vision like a comet. Molly felt sick.

She decided to skip the rest of her classes and lounge on the green until her mother undoubtedly would come to pick her up after work. Which was usually pretty late into the day.

She laid down on the cool grass and propped her head up with her bag. The sun was out and she found the perfect place with the best balance of shade and sun for the rest of the day. Her stomach growled. She had forgotten to grab any money before she left and there was no way she could tell her mother without suffering more of her angry lectures.

Molly tried to ignore her whining belly and settled into her journal. She slipped out a pen from her bag and began to lose herself writing down a new fantasy of hers based on the scraps of the dream she had in the night.

"And he carried her across the bloody lake of her despair like an angel of death and her kiss fell upon his lips like a first breath..."

Hours passed like dandelion seeds and the sun was setting when Molly realized she needed to transition indoors in order to continue under better lighting. She moved to put the journal away when she heard a branch snap. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and a shiver like ice cube ran down her spine. A massive raven swooped past her and grabbed the book out of her unsuspecting hands in a smeary blur of black feathers.

Molly yelped and pulled her hands back into her chest, nearly tripping over the roots of the tree she was under as the giant bird made away with her purple treasure.

She followed it up with her eyes as it landed atop a sloped roof of a nearby hall. The setting sun was glaring off the windows behind it and she pushed up her glasses and shaded her eyes with her hands. The raven had a small crown of light hovering above its head that was spinning slowly.

Molly blinked, the golden glare from the window must be messing with her. The black bird blinked at her sideways, slashed her journal with its beak four times in a weird motion before cawing loudly and darting away.

Molly stood there, staring up at the high roof of the hall. Should she get help? She checked her phone, her mother would be coming soon. She didn't have a lot of time. There was no way she would be able to live without that journal, it was a piece of her, it had everything in it, it was diary, fantasy, dreams, everything of Molly. She had to get it down.

The book was just on the edge of the high roof, Molly walked around on the green trying to analyze a way to get at it. Maybe if she pulled it down with a stick? No, there was no branch near her long enough to reach, she would need a whole tree.

She scanned the building and saw the large windows from the class room. She knew the class, she remembered staring out the very same windows a year or two ago in her algo class. She hurried into the hall and made her way up to the classroom. The place was deserted and Molly heard her sneakers echo out as her small sweaty hands gripped the thick wooden banister and she propelled herself up the polished marble of the winding steps and burst into the classroom on the fourth floor.

One of the windows was already open, AC was not in this hall. She wiped her forehead, tied up her hair with a crimson scrunchie from her left wrist and walked over to the window, looking out. She spotted her colorful book hanging out on the roof, close to the edge of the sloped, dirty, cloud-colored surface.

She looked around outside to make sure no one who mattered would spot her and she climbed through the opening in the window, heart first.

Molly carefully advanced down the steep angle of the roof with her arms flung wide to increase her stability. An end of summer breeze blew across her slick neck and up her skirt and shirt, cooling her sweat and making her sticky. She kept her eyes narrowed on her journal as the wind kicked up the cover and swept the pages open.

She closed the distance between her and the edge of the roof in a skittish and rushed way. She knelt down precariously in front of the flapping journal, the incline of the roof was steeper than she thought and she was struggling to keep herself from slipping down it. Molly wiped her hands on her skirt and went to grab her journal. A gust of wind blew her hair out around her and advanced the journal another signature. Her feet started to slide down the slope of the roof towards the edge and Molly readjusted her footing.

Her prize fanned opened to the section covered in her blood. She gulped and her hands shook as she hesitated to reach out to pick the journal up.

The dark, rusty ink blots of her blood on the pages were bringing up waves of trauma and she felt her body throbbing as she stared into her past. It was as if a black hole had opened up in front of her, sucking her into his darkness despite her resistance. The burnt rubber smell of the roofing material was making her increasingly unsettled.

Her dirty white sneakers kept sliding down the slope of the dirty white roof of the college hall.

Molly moved her feet again to readjust herself when a loud caw screeched out from behind her and jolted her forward in surprise.

Molly felt all the air leave her body in a shocked gasp as she sensed herself slipping off the high roof. A block of ice was in her stomach. Her arms flailed out and snatched the book up in a desperate grasp as she tumbled head first off the edge, clutching her mauve journal deep into her heart.

She closed her eyes and felt the warmth of her bladder panic as the last thing she experienced was the ground of the brick path below ceasing her.

All was black. All was black. All was black.

O~~~

"A fistful of tangy letters sent ahead, forward into your breath like angular fetters. Locking, dropping, sopping top, mopping up. Jittery, your soul is littering the halls of my heart. I'll tear it apart, rip your lips with a kiss so furious you'll be deliriously stuck in the delicious poison of a rattling hiss so sweetly leaking from the barbed tip snuck deeply into the thick center just inside the top of your precious mouth. Squeezing your pouting cheeks shut tight with my grip and forcing a look from between the pages of your book with a hand a little too forcefully rummaging around in your private nook..."

Molly's head shot up. Her senses bolted around her head like freshly branded cattle. She found herself gasping horribly for air with deep, burning breaths. Her heart felt stuck in a rose-bush. Her entire being was on fire.

Her vision came in distorted like looking through a wide-angle lens dropped inside the fishbowl of her head. The sand-colored wooden rectangle of a school desk filled her vision and spread out edge to edge, like a polished desert. She stood up, her chair screeched out behind her and sounded very far away. The classroom around her sucked in and out with panicked oscillations. Strangers' faces pulsed around her with every panicked breath.

Her hearing was warbly like two large pinballs running chaotic circles around a steel drum. There was a kind of scratching sound that made Molly feel as if her head was ripping through a large tarp underwater. All at once, her hearing popped and she heard a voice, first distorted, then slowly shaping into English words.

"Miss Molly, everyone," the woman's voice said, "this is your new classmate, give her a little space. You all remember your first time waking up."

Molly looked at her hands and tentatively touched her body, first her head, then the rest. She was alive? Sweat instantly soaked the black, delicate brows that crowned her vivid dark eyes in beads of sweat like quivering dew on a black petunia. Her setting focused and most of her senses normalized when she saw a class of twenty or more people of different ages turned and looking back at her.

"Please take a seat Molly and try to relax," A woman with a blonde bob in the front of the classroom said, "class is almost over and then I'll explain everything to you. Now, where was I?"

The woman was wearing a tight red skirt and a white silky blouse. Her hair was a dirty blonde that became stylishly frizzy at the ends of her shiny bob. She must have been in her late thirties, but it was hard to tell since she obviously took good care of herself and her skin was creamy and smoother than Molly's. The blonde woman was sitting on the edge of a desk and had her long legs crossed. She gently twirled her left foot which dangled a glossy red pump with a sharp tip covered in poppy seed sized rubies in a pattern that looked like a bloody coneflower. Her eyes were sharp and vibrant amber stones with an ancient well trapped inside. Her eyebrows were well formed and knitted slightly with concentration as she lifted a book, paged forward, and continued reading from it: "and having the three of them bonded through the one, became a rarity of a universe and were placed on The First Dreamer's favorite shelf..."

Molly sat down quietly at her desk and cradled her throbbing head in her hands. The worst kind of stress sweat coated her entire body and made her feel slippery. If she wasn't so out of sorts, she would have died again of embarrassment.

Where was she? She snuck a peek to her left and to her right. She was in a classroom she had never been in before. The entire left wall was large windows that looked out towards a twilight scene of a massive forest that rolled out like ocean waves into the distance. The dark trees were coated in a glowing rainbow shimmer from clouds the color of the aurora borealis. The sky was striking and clear, she could see stars vividly twinkling in the bluish purple night. There was a giant crimson moon hanging in the sky and adding a healthy amount of rusty pinks into the classroom. The scene was so frighteningly beautiful, Molly was afraid it was going to ruin her eyes so she glanced to the right.

On her right were more desks filled with people of different ages looking forward towards the blonde teacher, except one girl with golden braids, who was looking at Molly with a gentle smile and a friendly wave.

Molly looked away and down into her desk. Her heart was out of control. The last thing she remembered was the sensation of falling and then a hard nothingness. And her journal, she was gripping her journal.

She sat up and wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her shaky hand. She felt sick, like she was going to vomit. But she was utterly empty.

Molly wanted to run, to jet out the door and find help. She crossed her arms and started to rock slowly in her seat.

"Okay, class dismissed," the blonde teacher said, snapping the book in her hand closed and looking at Molly.

Some people started filing out of the class, a handful stayed, busy writing. An old man in a wife-beater and pink swim trunks with a long, white beard continued to doze in his seat with a comforting kind of snore. A small group of girls gathered and started chatting to each other.

Molly looked around sheepishly, she didn't recognize anyone and she didn't know what to do. She rubbed the invisible raised hairs on her arms and felt like a frightened, stray pussy. She glanced out the window again with big eyes. She wasn't on earth. The sky was like a dream of color, Van Gogh meets Frazetta meets Moebius. She hugged her skinny frame with hands filled to the brim with overflowing nerves. The strange rippling of the colorful sky made her feel like the classroom was in a giant submarine and she was deep in unknown waters.

"Hey," the teacher with the wonderful pumps said, standing over her, "take a breath, breathe slowly. The first time you wake up, the adrenaline of dying carries over, it will fade, but in the meantime, you have to make sure you breathe."

Molly nodded at the woman's ruby-tipped feet and closed her eyes, trying to calm the rush of energy that wracked her body in powerful shudders.

The teacher placed a beautifully manicured hand on Molly's shoulder and comforted her with every breath until she calmed down enough to stop shaking and uncross her arms.

"My name is Patricia," the teacher said, sitting on Molly's desk, "I'll be your guide for the next nine years or so."

Molly glanced up into her burning globs of amber and Patricia beamed a relaxed smile into Molly. All Molly could do was nod as she fell into the warmth of the woman's ancient portals. She smelled like old books and peaches.

"Where... what happened to me?" Molly tried to ask, but before she could finish, her breathing started to hyperventilate and her breasts rattled under her quivering cotton panther.

"Shh... now," Patricia rubbed her shoulder, "try not to talk for a little while, you're not accustomed to the difference yet."

Molly placed a hand on her chest and tried to calm herself again.

"You died," Patricia said, "you died with no bonds to Humanity, you died truly alone." She patted Molly on the shoulder again, reassuring her, "the same as most everyone else here."

Molly's big eyes widened even bigger, was she in hell then? There was no way she had made it into heaven. She believed in neither before she died, so surely that would be used against her? Her heart thrashed around in her empty stomach.

"There's no such thing as Heaven or Hell," Patricia said, recognizing the fearful glint in Molly's moist glare, "well, that's not true, technically speaking, everything exists, but not in the way it was portrayed, the people in 'Hell' for example, it's like their Heaven for them. But that is far away from where we are. I guess you could get there if you..." Patricia stopped her train of thought and looked at Molly.

Molly gaped at her, she was having a hard time understanding anything.

"This is the Moon," Patricia said, pointing outside towards the giant red disk in the purple sky, "well, not exactly... look honestly, I'm not very good at this," she laughed to herself, "why don't you reach in your desk there, it might help clear things up a little."

Molly hesitated before she turned away from Patricia and reached both her arms into the dark hollow under the top of her desk. Her groping fingers bumped into the edges of something. It felt familiar, Molly smiled, she knew what it was.