Lucid
((The parts where I see him as Liam and become Saja feel different, like I'm on the edge of being lucid, but I don't make any choices. I just have clarity.))
The beginning is a little hazy. I was a member of an archeological dig in the desert. A man from the government came in to
find a missing woman and debunk our findings. He was being an irritating, arrogant ass, who kept ignoring facts and wouldn't listen to me.
There's a tent pitched alongside a wall, the wall looks like it belongs to the outside of the house I grew up in in MA. Out of the corner of my eye I see a dirt floor and observe all the 7x10 photographs tagged to the canvas. The government agent, Jack, is speaking to a blond woman who pins another photo up and then exits the tent. It annoys me that he's still following the evidence this way, because he's ignoring the danger. He has his back to me, he's wearing a black suit, white shirt, with a thin black tie. He considers the line of photographs, hands on his hips.
I can't help myself. "Still refusing to follow the facts, I see." I say to him. He turns around and drops his eyes to the floor, smiling
a little.
"Oh. Hello again, Brenna." ((I've never been a Brenna before. Huh.)) He ignores my jab and looks after the blond woman
as she makes her way down the narrow canvas hall. "I was sad to see that she had dyed her hair."
"Oh? Why's that?"
"I have a particular weakness for women with black hair." He gives me a significant look, it's almost playful. He's giving me the
option to ignore it. It's only then I realize that I'm Saja. My hair is waist length, black and wavy. I'm even wearing one of her dresses, the hem falls mid-calf, it's a spring green-yellow with a white apron. I draw my hair over one shoulder and smile. He walks over to stand beside me and examines another line of photographs. As he crosses the floor, the wind snaps the canvas overhead creating gaps for the sunlight to stream in. Where it shines on his hair, it makes it look less brown and more red. The longer I look at him the more red there is. He suddenly reminds me of Liam. It's only when he's standing next to me that I realize he's the right height, too. Before I had seen him as my enemy and would not allow myself to find him physically appealing, but he's opened a door and I can't ignore it. Because he looks like Liam.
I turn to face the wall of photographs. They all look the same to me. It's dimly lit snow with a faded splash of blood.
"Well. As long as we're sharing. I can't help but notice how much red you have in your hair...and I have a certain fondness for
redheads." I stare at his profile while he looks at the pictures, and see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.
I fix my gaze on the pictures, pretending to look at them, knowing that as I turned away he looked over to study my profile.
"Look at us. Being civil. Can't have that, can we?" He comments wryly. "Why did you come here?"
"I want to try one more time to help you see the truth, Jack."
"Brenna." his tone is sharp, warning. His expression turns cold. "I don't have time to listen to your tripe."
"TRIPE?" I exclaim, suddenly outraged. "Oh YES. Why bother with facts when you can make up whatever story you like!"
"You were falsifying your findings and when you needed proof that these 'creatures' exist, you murdered a young girl to fit your story."
"You are so incredibly wrong. How can anyone stand to be around you?"
"Well, naturally I'm offended by deception. Honest people get along with me nicely."
"Oh, I'm sure." I snap sarcastically.
There's a lapse. It's after dark. I'm fleeing the tent because I've stolen evidence. Jack caught me at it and is pursuing me with ill
intent. I also overhead him talking about the undercover agent in our unit that was meant to disrupt the core stability of our group, to try to suss out who exactly the murderer is. The landscape looks like the yard outside the house in MA. Where there is a small hill leading down into the neighbor's yard, the lawn fades into sand and the landscape becomes a desert.
I'm barefoot and I can feel the cool sand under my feet. I get a brief bird's eye view of his pursuit. I'm shouting over my shoulder as I run.
"How can you be so willfully blind? When all the evidence is right in front of you!" The dune to my left is, I know, actually a
sphinx that has been swallowed by the desert. I run my hand along the front paw, clearing it of sand. There's some sort of creature nesting between its front legs, close to its chest. I eye the thing and hope it hasn't noticed me. A little ways further there's a stone wall and a line of open doorways. I think I've lost him for now. I jog up the next dune and at the bottom of the following valley is our research and living trailer.
I'm inside now. I pass a guy who looks exactly like Sendhil Ramamurthy. I ask him where Nate and the new girl went off to and he says to the kitchen.
"Will you get them for me, I just found something interesting." He says.
Attachment 4750 I suck at describing this crap, so I made another layout. I cross the living room and go to hall, the door to the kitchen is slightly open and Nate has his back to the door and the new girl, who is Jack's undercover agent. She doesn't feel right somehow, she is raising a large kitchen knife.
"HEY." I say loudly. They both turn around, she drops the knife and looks a little embarrassed. "Looks like we found something.
You wanna follow me?"
They follow me back to Sendhil. We act like I didn't just find the new girl about to murder Nate. Sendhil talks about how he
just found some proof that our group had been infiltrated, but we won't know by who until we can get all the hands together in the morning. The new girl looks extremely awkward, I wonder why I'm not saying anything.
"Jack is on his way here."
"We can meet him outside if you need some time." The girl offers.
I grin at her a little, her cheeks flush. "Sure. Whatever you like."
There's a lapse. Sendhil is trying to show me something, it's a really confusing image. We're looking at something like a mirror
or a tv screen. There a thin metal frame around it and it glows a dim blue. He's sitting right behind me, chin on my shoulder, urging me to look and see for myself.
I see my own face, and his. I can't really remember what happens here. I notice the shape of my eyes, and the curve of my jaw.
There's another confusing moment after another lapse, he says he's going to meet Jack outside. I say I'm going to follow but
when I pass the mirror in the living room I'm a fat young man with pale green eyes and cork-screw curly hair. Then I try to put on my shoes but I forget my socks, and my shoes are shaped all funny. They look more like a walking cast. I don't want to get sand in them when I go outside. So I take them off and try to find socks...
There's another lapse and the story picks back up. I have traveled to a snowy place up north, I have tipped Jack off, telling him
that if he follows me there he will find the proof I've tried to convince him exists. That the woman he thinks I've murdered is actually here and alive. I meet him outside the house, he's huddled next to the wall. I sit down across from him.
"Oh, I didn't realize you'd be here." He says.
I let him pretend I wasn't the one who gave him the tip, and remain silent.
"He said he'll come get me. The girl wakes up every morning at the same time, like clockwork."
"I'm glad you're here." I whisper.
"Are you? Well. There's that at least." he pauses. "We're on different sides."
He looks so much like Liam that I forget he's Jack. "LIAM." I say, leaning forward so my nose is almost touching his. "Do you really think I care about that?"
He doesn't look startled or confused that I used the wrong name. He meets my eyes squarely and shakes his head once, just a little. I can feel my name on his lips. I want him to say it. He's never used my name in the dream.
I will him to call me Saja.
He opens his mouth like he's going to speak and then closes it.
"At least put your arms around me, then?" I say, disappointed.
"I..."
"It's cold."
"I can't."
I want to kiss him on the cheek but I don't. "Fine."
"I'll...see how things play out."
"As you wish."
He smiles a little but he looks sad. We hear the front door of the weathered shack open and we go inside. The girl we have come here to see, lost her fiance out in the snow. They thought she would die. Physically she recovered, but once she woke she would just do nonsensical things and spout gibberish.
"Can we speak with her?" Jack asks.
"You can try." Says her grandfather. "I'll give you ten minutes." He leaves the house and we proceed in trying to talk to her.
I don't remember any of what she says, but she goes over to this small round table by the door.
"You might want to be car---" she deliberately runs into it. "Yes. That's right, keep running into the table."
She and picks up the lamp, "You might want to not---" she then leans forward and knocks her head against it. Hard. "Okay, sure. Knock yourself out."
Jack kind of rolls his eyes at my sarcasm.
"I don't think we'll get anything useful from her, do you?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna talk to the grandfather again."
Now the girl is laying on the table, cuddling with the lamp, her head hanging off the edge. Her skin has an unhealthy blue cast and her eyes look strange.
"Odd are the hours that meet us at the gate." She says. I frown at her.
"What gates?"
"The ones on the edges. IT lives beyond the gates. Follows every grain."
She's really freaking me out and I get the sense that she actually did die out in the snow and whatever THIS is, is no longer human. She's changing into something else. Her lips look blue. She reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt. I tear it out of her grasp and join Jack outside. I'm am done with this creepiness.
He gives the grandfather his best and we start to leave.
"I guess that settles it. You didn't murder her."
"Someone sure did."
He stops me and gestures at my shirt. There's a splash of luminescent blue on the front. Just beyond him I see two tonberry trundle out from the darkness, carrying their lamps and stylized blue knives. There's a glowing blue orb on the ground, they're attracted to it. One of them starts to come toward me. Jack pivots and sees the tonberry.
"Uh oh."
We watch as the second tonberry viciously stabs the blue orb and absorbs its energy. The other one stops in front of me and makes a weird keening noise. I take off across the snow.
"What are you doing?" Jack hisses after me.
"I'm running ya moron. I'll be fine."
The tonberry follows me to the edge of the lake. Running is fluid, so easy. I dive in, and hear a splash as it moves out into the water. Swimming is even easier, I glide effortlessly through the water until I reach the other side and leap to the bank. There's a large snowdrift there, and on the other side I know is the road. I climb over the drift and fall into the snow on the far side startling three strange turkey-peacock creatures into flight. There are three giant zebras in the road. They are the size of draft horses, I know they are extremely aggressive. I grab a handful of snow and pelt the zebra stallion's flank hard, and then dive into a snow drift to hide.
A second later the tonberry bursts through the snow hill I climbed over, the stallion is offended, thinking that the tonberry hit it with a snowball...so the zebra tramples the hell out of it.
Gleefully triumphant that my plan worked, I wake up.
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