Goal:

inside. "please, don,t stop," she whispers. her fingers flow over his, entwining with the rhythm of passion. nikolai feels her stiff nipples press against him with fervor. she,s nearing climax, he feels her body shudder with anticipation.,,"skye," he whispers softly in her ear. his next thrust sends them both off the bed and flying swiftly upward, nik feels the rush of air rushing by his cheek. the bed grows smaller and smaller in the distance, forgotten in the heat of the moment. he looks up and reaches out with his hand towards the deep-purple sky. it suddenly collapses like a deflated balloon and encapsulates them in a sphere of silk. the sun shines rays of lavender light through the sphere, illuminating it brightly. the enclosure is void of external sounds-nik only hears skye,s soft cries and the reverberations of their quick, heavy breathing. he lifts his left arm and moves it in a circular motion. they twirl around midair until she is resting on top of him. she falls down on his chest and laughs softly, then whispers, "let,s never stop. let,s stay here forever." she rises up on his hips and back down again rhythmically. he breathes harder.,,"okay," he manages in between breaths.,,the climax comes. he grabs hold of her-her brown hair smothering his nostrils in her sweet smell-and thrusts with all his strength. she cries out as his seed spills into her and his pelvis becomes slick with her juices. she collapses and falls over next to him in the soft cocoon. the silk caresses her skin as she slides down the purple sphere. the tingly sensation is like no other except their love-making. nikolai knows this, that is why he created it again. she continues to stroke her body on the enclosed sanctuary, entranced with every caress. he watches, enjoying every second. minutes, maybe hours go by. a quiet beeping is heard, seeming to resound inside their refuge. not again, he thinks. he feels her fading. she looks at him, saddened.,,"already? you promised.",,he yells out "clarity," but to no avail, she is fading and there was nothing he could do. the ringing becomes louder and louder. the world turns black, nikolai,s vision darkens and he awakens ,,outside. he opened his eyes, expecting an alarm clock to be going off, but only finding silence and a sliver of morning sunshine coming through the blinds of his window. he looked over at the clock, seven am. he sat up and shook his head, trying to hold on to the image of skye and. . . was it the silk cocoon again? he couldn,t remember, although he was sure it would come back to him later in the day, that,s the way his dreams usually worked. some people remembered dreams immediately after but completely forget them later in the day while others are the complete opposite. nikolai fell into the latter category. he tried to think of where the name skye came from. he couldn,t remember that either. what was still etched in his mind like stone was the feeling of floating in the air, the feeling of semen rushing through his lower body, begging for release. he remembered the soft feel of her breasts, the taste of her saliva, the smell of her hair.,,he breathed in deeply. now all he could smell was his pile of dirty laundry in the corner. his taste buds were filled with the delicacy of "morning breath" and he felt only drowsiness with a slight hint of depression. he pulled up his covers and looked down. not even an erection to show for hot dream sex, he thought. guess that was all well and good, considering he had a roommate sleeping ,, feet away from him. if he didn,t have a hard-on then there was a good chance that he wasn,t moaning or humping the bed in his sleep.,,nikolai looked around confused. wasn,t he startled awake by something? some kind of alarm. . . but there was no alarm going off, his or his roommate,s. maybe it was just his brain telling him to wake up. he didn,t know, he was sure he wouldn,t care in about a half hour. his first class wasn,t for another hour, but his dream had once again left him in a state of bodily unrest while his mind just wanted to collapse back into sleep. he tossed and turned for thirty seconds and gave up.,,he got up and stretched his legs and arms. monday. he just loved mondays. his hangover was a sweet reminder of yesterday,s drinking. his light brown hair was greasy, his dark brown eyes had the product of six hours of sleep gathered in the corners. he yawned and headed out of the dorm room and towards the bathroom for a hot shower. ,,twenty minutes later nikolai was back in his room, refreshed and ready for another day of virginia state. although this semester had consisted more of text messaging under the table while the teacher lectured while simultaneously attempting to perfect the ability of sub-vocalizing into an earpiece like a ventriloquist. very few students could sub-vocalize well enough for the microscopic chip placed discreetly in his or her ear to recognize the words while concurrently moving his or her lips little enough to not be noticed by the teachers. it was an art, one that he currently sucked at and had been rebuked multiple times in class for doing. his goal was to perfect it by the end of the semester, however unrealistic.,,anton was up and doing his routine of morning exercises when nikolai entered the room, toweling off and completely naked.,,"hey nik, oh, let me turn around," he made a big show of facing the opposite direction. ,,"anton, cut it out," nikolai said. "you know i don,t give a shit.",,anton was something out of a fairytale, an anomaly, god,s big mistake, he broke every stereotype rule in the book. he was ,,,, the color of dark chocolate, toned body, and was horrendous at every sport he had ever tried. he had grown up in the projects of richmond, virginia and went to the worst schools in the city. but he was a genius, at everything. he managed a full scholarship to vsu and was now on his second year, with a ,.,, and double majoring in psychiatry and english literature. he was also gay. not flamboyant gay, he didn,t walk down the street in pink shirts with sentences saying "i like guys" printed on the front or talk like a bleach-blond-haired high school cheerleader. he was quiet and kept to himself. nikolai suspected it had to do with not fitting into the black crowd because of his lack of interest in sports and most white people were intimidated by a large black guy.,,he had to admit, he was a little freaked out when he was told he was being put with a black guy from the projects his freshmen year, but the stereotype that he expected to walk into the dorm quickly faded away as he saw posters of various alternative and popular rock bands plastered on his side of the room. then when anton told him he was a psychiatry,english major and wasn,t on the football team, nikolai felt right at home. ever since their first semester they quickly grew to be best friends and repeatedly requested to be roomed together each semester. ,,anton was busy talking to him about something, he tuned back in to reality as he pulled on the rest of his clothes and turned around. anton turned around and looked at him expectantly, which then turned to annoyance. "you weren,t even listening were you?",,nik shrugged.,,"okay, which was it this time? the room, or the girl? oh wait." anton looked at his watch. "must be the girl." ,,"i told you, i,m done with that damn room. and which girl?",,"you know, your dream girl, skye right?",,"i dream of a lot of different girls, how do you know that i was dreaming of her?",,"you,re always up at seven when you,re with her.",,"really?" nikolai asked curiously. he hadn,t really paid attention, but anton noticed everything.,,"seven on-the-dot, every time. you,ve got one accurate mental clock.",,"yeah, i guess so. something keeps waking me up. i think. . . something buzzing. no. beeping. it,s some kind of alarm, or at least this last time, and i think other times before too, i,m not positive.",,"this must be one hell of a girl for you to have her etched in your subconscious as well as you do.",,he thought back to his dream. "yeah. . .",,"what you need is a real girl, one that you actually can touch. not something i know much about, but i heard straight guys really love them," he jested.,,"you ever had a lucid dream before anton? it,s more real than you think.",,"i,m not a dreamer, you know that.",,"everyone dreams, it,s a matter of whether you remember it or not.",,"so you,ve told me before.",,"anyway, i gotta get going," nik said as he pulled his backpack around his shoulder.,,"you,re class doesn,t start for another ,, minutes," anton stated while looking at his watch.,,"thanks for the tip," nikolai said grinning as he went out the door. anton flashed him a smile and closed the door at his back. ,,nik headed out of the dorm and onto the quiet campus. at ,,,, am things were still rather quiet, the hustle and bustle of college students usually didn,t start until a little before ,, when the first classes started. he sat down on a bench right outside his dorm and put his backpack down. he pulled out a cigarette and lighter, lit up, and took a long drag, closing his eyes and tried to remember his dream. slowly-every so slowly-images would flash through his mind,s eye. he saw skye on top of him, and then an image of a purple sky quickly appeared and disappeared. slowly he pieced the whole dream back together. after he was satisfied that he remembered most of it he pulled his laptop out of his backpack and started typing away in his dream journal. he wrote as much as he could remember, sights, sounds, smells, sensations. he drew a picture of skye,s face-his laptop was equipped with a special pen which he could use directly on the screen to draw images-slowly pulling it out of memory, feature by feature. there were already hundreds of entries. he separated out the ones that involved skye, his latest entry brought the count to twenty-seven. once again the drawing of her was nearly identical to the others, every detail of her was carved deeply in his mind. ,,"hey nik," a voice sounded as a fist punched his shoulder from behind. nikolai quickly shut the laptop and turned around. ,,"hey will.",,"what you doing out here so early?",,"just getting some fresh air," he said, taking another drag. ,,"ah yes, nothing better than fresh tobacco smoke," he joked as he sat down next to nik and took out his own pack of cigarettes. ,,"have you read the paper?" will asked.,,nikolai sighed. "what is it this time?" will was what the church liked to call a recreant, someone who hated the government and the church and all they stood for.,,"fucking government,s done it again. there was a peaceful protest against the islamic war on campus at uva and they marched in and arrested all of them for suspected terrorism. they even put one guy in the hospital for trying to quote the first amendment.",,"not much good in quoting something that doesn,t exist anymore.",,"yeah, no shit. and here, they arrested a hundred members of a mosque in kansas for bombing a patriot church. how much you want to bet that,s a load of horse shit?" will spit on the ground. "that,s what i think of this fucking country man. as soon as i,m out of college i,m getting the hell out of here. if the founding fathers, well hell, if any of the deceased presidents saw what state the country was in now they would roll over in their graves.",,"history does have a way of repeating itself. think of world war ii.",,"yeah, but the difference is the us won,t admit to being a communist state. they hide behind a bunch of political bullshit and still somehow try to convince everyone we,re a democracy. you know what this country,s problem is?",,"lack of patriotism?",,nik had had this conversation with will many times before. every time something new popped into the newspaper, will was there talking against it.,,"i,m being serious nik. the church of patriotism is the disease of this country. i still blame bush back twenty years ago for invading iraq.",,"why? you can,t blame him for what president walken is doing two decades later. shoot, if you,re gonna blame someone, blame the islamic radicals who flew planes into the world trade center, or blame the shiite caliph who declared america to be the enemy of god.",,"america is the enemy of god, or allah anyway, the government and the church has seen to that. i tell you. . .",,"hey will, i gotta get to class," nik said cutting him off.,,"okay, no problem. but hey, you coming to my club next week for the first meeting?",,"i,m surprised your club hasn,t been shut down yet by the college.",,"so am i actually. so are you coming?",,"we,ll see. i,ll let you know.",,"okay, later then.",,nikolai got up and grabbed his backpack and headed towards his class. ,,it,s not that nik didn,t care about politics or the current state of his country, he was actually quite concerned. but he followed a certain philosophy, why worry about something you can,t change? he was a ,rd year college student majoring in art-it,s not like that was the best field to make a damn bit of difference in politics. besides, most of america was satisfied with the current state of government, it was the young against the old. the younger crowd was abhorred by the obvious trampling of freedom while the older generation felt safe and secure against the outside world of evil muslims. and not just muslims anymore-now hindus, buddhists and jews were starting to see persecution from patriots. christianity was the only religion ,in the us, that joined with patriotism, forming a hybrid of god and country, a solipsistic oligarchy of patriot and christian teachings where the president ruled and the people are watched over by a patriarch in the heavens. surprisingly enough, the zealous compound of beliefs bonded pretty well. christians kept their god and their faith, but all their focus and attention went to patriotism and their country, one nation, while under god became an afterthought. classic religion was being overrun by this new religion, religion that centered on something you could feel and touch, something people would protect and fight for until the death.,,who could blame them though? even nikolai sometimes became seduced by the church of patriotism,s messages and the overwhelming feeling of pride and power that came along with the songs of the united states, glory and conquests. only sometimes though. . . ,,while the older generation felt safe behind their walls of tyranny created by the new patriot act, the young felt the withdrawal of rights, the reduction of freedom. freedom of speech was something of the past. you could get up in front of a crowd and call jews kikes and muslims towel-heads, but if a patriot is referred to as a dirt-fucker-or one of the other many epithets created for patriots-he or she would be arrested. the action happened much more at colleges because the largest majority of people who didn,t consider themselves patriots-or just didn,t give a shit-were college students. this is the category nikolai put himself under, he just didn,t care. he wasn,t raised religious and he could tolerate the college-mandated patriotism services once a week and be content. not will though. will had to be in the midst of it, trying to cause as much chaos as he could manage. let him, nikolai thought. i,m not going to get involved. he walked to history ,,, in the marshal building. ,,history was one of the classes he hated. it wasn,t so much that he didn,t like learning about the history of the world or of his country, it was the fact that so much of it was bullshit. history books had been all but rewritten in the last decade. the united states this, the us that. it was enough to drive nikolai crazy, especially american history. world history was bearable in his freshmen year because it involved other countries and he could overlook the embellishments about the united states easily enough. not in american history, he was so tired of it that he just started tuning it out and not paying a bit of attention, which would explain the ,, on his last test. ,,luckily, it was something he didn,t really need to pay a lot of attention to, his major was art, and art had little to do with what dead people did back when no one cared. so he texted friends in other classes and then laid his head down and closed his eyes. nikolai didn,t realize that the lack of sleep from this morning,s early awakening had left him so tired. he drifted into unconsciousness and,,inside. ,,nik is standing in the yard of his old house in shipman. his dog is jumping around at the feet of his little brother, only ten-years-old. the garden is beautiful, lilies, tulips, roses, and many other types of wildflowers sprout up from the ground to kiss the sky. the sun is bright, the trees rustle with a faint breeze. the air smells of spring.,,,nikolai looks around, happy to be home. he checks his watch for the time. ,, o,clock. he looks away at the house and sees the crack in the siding from when he had ran his bike into it. he checks the time again. ,, o,clock. nikolai realizes this can,t be right, it must be a dream.,,he jumps fifteen feet in the air with barely a bend of his knees and glides onto the roof of the house. he looks over the horizon. his eyes can see for hundreds of miles. he looks as far as the college, seeing students walking back and forth. he smiles and sits down. he reaches a hand out to the garden, trying to summon the flowers. his efforts are fruitless. he closes his eyes to concentrate. a thought occurred afterward that this was always a mistake in the dream world. he feels an odd sensation, as if he were traveling. ,,he reopens them to somewhere else, somewhere dark. he smells burnt meat, tastes it, breathes it. he raises his hand in search of a light. he puts his hand back down. he concentrates, focuses. slowly, light dims the room. there is a black door in front of him. the door beckons to him, calling his name loudly in his head. he walks towards it, the smell of burnt meat becomes stronger. he touches the doorknob and his hand becomes singed. he jerks it away and looks at his blackened palm. he looks away and imagines his hand whole and healthy. when he looks back his hand is normal with no sign of burning present. he looks on a hook near the door. there is a glove hanging on it. he puts it on and opens the door, the glove catches fire.,,,inside the room he sees a man standing over a wood furnace, his arms crossed, staring into the fire contently. the furnace burns with bright blue and green flames. nikolai steps closer to the furnace, the man is unaware of his presence. the heat expelling from the fire bathes him in warmth. he squints his eyes at the fire through the small window of the furnace. a man screams and presses his face against the glass from within the furnace. his eyes are bleeding profusely and are filled with horror, his face is half melted. he gapes at nikolai with half his mouth open, the other half is fused together by melted flesh. nik hears a voice inside his head. help me, says the maniacal plea. nikolai shutters fiercely and takes a step back, wondering what kind of hell he had conjured himself into. the man standing in front of the furnace becomes aware of his presence and turns surprised. the man,s rage-filled face quickly changes to that of a horned demon. the man becomes three times larger, muscles bulge out, his eyes turn a murky yellow.,,,"who are you,?" the thing yells.,,,nikolai can,t speak. i,m in control, i,m in control, just make him disappear.,,,"you are not in control here boy, i am," the thing roars. nikolai becomes covered in flames. he feels his skin peeling from his face, he smells his own burnt flesh. nik feels pain like none he,s ever experienced. he screams out and closes his eyes. get out of here, he yells to himself. he reopens his eyes to the man-demon laughing. ,,,"don,t leave yet, you just got here." the man lifts his hand and brings them down in a solid motion. nikolai looks up to see another furnace fall and encapsulate him inside. he slams down on his back onto a bed of hot coals. he squirms over and crawls to the door. the coals become lit, the fire rages within, igniting him again. nik looks out the window only to see the other man,s furnace facing him. the man is tearing his own flesh away in agony. nikolai looks away in disgust and watches his own flames turn from blue to green to white and feels the excruciating pain as it gets hotter and hotter. he screams and screams, he chokes on his own melting skin dripping into his open mouth. and he wakes up ,,outside. with sleep paralysis over nikolai suddenly yelled and fell back in his desk, knocking it over and himself in the process. after a loud clang and clunk he,s left lying on the floor beating out imaginary flames while the whole class stared at him.,,,"mr. petrov, are you quite done?" asked professor bilner.,,,nikolai shook his head and realized he wasn,t dreaming anymore. he got up, slightly embarrassed, and picked the desk back up. then he remembered the man, the demon. he grabbed his backpack and was out the door without saying anything and too quickly to see the teacher scowling at him. ,,,nik walked at a brisk pace down the flight of stairs and outside into the fresh air. he sat down on one of the steps outside the door and wiped sweat from his face. what the hell was that? he thought. never had he been in a dream that was so vivid, or painful. he had felt discomfort in dreams before, even been shot, but the pain was artificial, insignificant. it was just enough to know that he had been shot, but not enough to really hurt. but this dream. . . he shuttered. just remembering the heat brought more beads of sweat down his face and onto his lips, in which he almost gagged, remembering the taste of his own burnt flesh oozing into his screaming mouth. even now he was somewhat apprehensive about looking at his arms and torso, afraid that he,d be charred and blackened. he shook his head. it wasn,t real. it was a dream. get a hold of yourself, ,,,nikolai got up from the stairs and walked back to his dorm.,,