Star Kissed (2 page)

“I said, it looks awful!” She clenched the arm of the seat.

Lightening lit up the cabin bright as day. Suddenly, they broke through the clouds and into the calm, clear night sky on the other side. The shaking stopped, and the engines no longer sounded like they were ready to quit. Their whine faded to a grumble.

“Thank god,” Mandy breathed, relaxing. She switched back to the aisle seat and grabbed her neck pillow for a nap.

“Folks, this is your captain.” A staticky voice said over the intercom. “The good news is we made it through the storm. The bad news: we may have had an indirect lightening hit. It’s fried our radar but nothing else. We’ll continue until we reach an area with low or no storm activity, then land to switch planes. In the meantime, the flight attendants will come around with the beverage cart.”

Mandy rested her head back to doze, the drone of the engines in her ears. The beverage cart bumped her elbow, and she moved it. The flight attendant asked the muscular man what he wanted to drink.

Diet Coke.

She almost snorted. She needed something stiffer but didn’t bother opening her eyes, knowing she’d be sloshed by the time they hit LA if she started drinking now. Not that she drank normally, but today was too awful not to.

Another bump of turbulence jarred her. It subsided, and the drone of the engines soon lulled her into a deep sleep.

A dream unlike any she’d ever had began.

She was in a small, white room that resembled a hospital room, except the bed was only a foot off the floor and made of heavy plastic piping. The room smelled of something metallic instead of antiseptic, and there were no windows. The doorway was vacant of a door. A small plastic tray sat next to her bed, on it what looked like a Pez dispenser and another small, double-barreled plastic pen. She scrutinized them for a long moment, unable to identify the unusual dream items.

There were plastic sandals on the floor by her bed. Her grey hospital attire – a loose fitting tunic and baggy pants – rustled as she moved. They, too, were made of plastic-like material. She fingered her thin shirt then swung her legs off the bed. Settling her feet into the sandals, she walked to the doorway and peered out.

The hallway was lined with door-less doorways. A voice speaking some unrecognizable dream language called out to her from down the hall. She turned, taken aback by the man-like creature before her. His eyes were human, but his face was deformed and scaly, like he was half-lizard. He was hunchback, though still taller than any man she’d ever seen and covered in patches of scales and skin. If not for the kind brown eyes that crinkled when he made an attempt at a smile, she would’ve run. Or floated, because she didn’t feel at all connected to the strange world.

Dream,
she reminded herself. He wasn’t going to hurt her.

He held out something she didn’t recognize. She took the small object. The size of a Twinkie, its consistency was that of stiff foam. She squeezed it a couple of times and watched it bounce back into shape.

The half-man, half-beast touched something on the back of her neck. Her hand went to where his left, and she could feel a small metal plug at the base of her skull.

What the hell?
She traced it with her fingers. It was round, about the size of the plug for a cable TV wire.

“Is that better?” he asked. “Can you understand me now?”

“I can,” she answered and looked at the spongy object in her hand. “What is this?”

“Food.”

She tested it and grimaced. The size of a candy bar, it tasted as foamy as it felt with and had no real flavor.

Edible? Maybe in an emergency. Food? No.

“Even food eaten in a dream on a plane tastes awful,” she said. She handed it back to him. “You’d think they’d use that bail out money to make it bearable.”

“Does it not please you?” he asked, concerned. His whole face showed his disappointment with the expression of a cartoon.

“I’m not really hungry,” she said.

Voices came from down the hallway, and the creature took her arm in a grip that was surprisingly strong for an imaginary creature in her head and pulled her back to her room.

“You must stay out of sight,” he hissed. The voices grew nearer. “You must have triggered the alarm when you stepped across the threshold.”

“Alarm?” she repeated.

“Come,” he said and took her arm again, this time leading her quickly out of her room, down a hallway almost too low for him to stand upright, and down another hallway. “They heard you all were here, and I think my masters fear a raid. I will not let them have you, too. I saw what they did to the rest of –”

“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, baffled. “Who heard? What others?”

“In here.” He pushed her into a room the size of a janitor’s broom closet. It was uncomfortably small. “This is my room.”

“Oh, sorry,” she said.

“Why should you be?” he asked.

“Never mind. I’ve never had a dream like this. So bizarre.” She picked up another square, plastic-like object as she spoke. It was adorned with odd cuneiform script. It was too light to contain anything.

The lizard-man plucked it from her hand and set it down.

“Very dangerous,” he warned her. “Sit here.” He motioned to a small square plate suspended a foot off the floor.

She looked at it doubtfully but sat, surprised when it held.

“Now, I must find the medallion,” lizard-man said.

“Take your time. It’s a long flight,” she said and watched him lift a box off a suspended table, shake it, and open it. He looked inside with a frown, sealed the box, and shook it again. He reopened it.

“There it is,” he said and reached in to withdraw an object. “Sometimes I forget the code.”

Dear God, this is weird!
The seat beneath her was cold. She couldn’t remember ever feeling heat or cold in a dream before.

“Take this. Wear it,” he instructed her and opened his massive hand to reveal a piece of what looked like rounded teal glass on a woven leather cord. The glass bore more of the strange cuneiform characters. “It was lost by one of the Naki-gods.”

“It’s a beautiful color,” she said, marveling at a shade of blue-green only a dream could produce. “I hope I remember this.”

“You will if it’s around your neck,” the lizard-man said. He draped it over her neck then tucked the medallion into her gown. “Wait here.”

He left, and she heard the whoosh of an invisible door close. Mandy reached over to grab the box off the desk and opened it. It was empty. She sealed it, shook it, and opened it again, surprised when she saw the small pyramid object in the bottom. She closed and opened it again to find more of the foamy space Twinkies, nonetheless delighted by the magic box.

The half-man returned and took the box from her, setting it again on the table. He reached into a pocket and withdrew a pouch. He dumped its contents into his massive hand. Colorful glass shards filled his hands, their once sharp edges worn down by time, like sand glass. Pinks, blues, greens, ambers … the colors reminded her of Depression glass she saw in the windows of stores selling antiques in Temecula, near LA.

“They’re coming,” he said. “You must take these with you. Give them to a man named Urik, and only to him.”

“I don’t have any pockets.” She held out her hands, marveling at the waterfall of color. His words clicked. “Are we going somewhere?”

“I am not, but you are,” he said. “Right now. Do you remember how you came in?”

“I don’t even know where I am.”

“Aratta, the royal city,” he replied. “In the healer’s ward. You can descend via the low-lift to the lowest floor. After that, you –” He listed a series of directions that included references to things she didn’t understand. Seeing her blank look, he stopped and looked at her expectantly. “We need to get you outside.”

She shrugged. “Hell. While I’m stuck in dreamland, why not just jump off the roof?”

“Yes, that will get you outside,” he said slowly. “It’s a risk.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ll wake up before I hit the ground,” she said. “It’s not like you can get hurt in a dream, right?”

“Um, well, maybe not
your
dreams.”

“Look, this is getting a little weird, so let’s just do this.” She indicated the glass shards with her eyebrows. “What do I do with these?”

“Put them here,” he said and produced another necklace with a tiny box dangling from it.

She regarded it dubiously, unable to believe the tiny box would hold the double handfuls of glass she held. He opened it, and she poured the shards in. They fit, and there appeared to be room for many more pieces of glass.

“I need one of these,” she said, lifting the box to study it. “Maybe bigger ones for all my clothes.”

“They come in all sizes,” he said. He lowered it around her neck. “Ask Urik for one. Come. I shall take you where you can jump from the building.” He limped out of the room at a quick pace. “It is a very large chance you are taking that they will not be here, and if they are, they don’t know to rescue you. Even if they don’t, it’s a better fate than staying here. If you fall to your death, I can retrieve the necklaces before they get you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said, anxious to leave the dream. “Thank you for helping me. I think.”

“I cannot let my masters hurt you as they did to the others.” His voice grew sad. His sorrow bothered her. She didn’t remember people in her dreams having emotions, either.

“What others?” she asked again.

“The others on the craft you were in. My masters did horrible things to them. There may be another one or two left, but not on my floor. I cannot bear to see it happen again.”

The dream was getting too intense. And more real, too. The hallway was chilly and the medallion against her chest warmed by her skin. She began to feel uneasy for the first time since it began. It had to be time to wake up. No dream had ever seemed so real or long before.

He led her to a window at the end of one hallway. It appeared to have no covering, just as the doorways had no doors. When he touched the invisible window, it opened. A sudden gust of wind swept her blonde locks around her head.

He stood aside and waited.

Mandy went to the window. A heavy, dark fog covered much of the world around her, though she could see lights below dotting the fog. The sky was dark and the stars blocked by a bank of dark clouds.

“One ugly dream,” she murmured. “We’re not going to the roof?”

“No time,” he said with urgency she didn’t feel. “Remember, only give the shards to –”

“Urik,” she finished for him. “I got it. Is he waiting for me down there? I mean, if I don’t wake up first?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay then. It’s been nice talking to you … uh, what’s your name?”

“Gonor.”

“Thank you, Gonor.”

“You’re welcome, my human friend.”

She almost asked him what to do with the necklace bearing the teal medallion. He was clear about the shards but not about the other necklace.

Not that it mattered. She’d be awake in a few seconds.

Mandy shook her head and faced the dark fog, fear in her breast before she reminded herself this was all just some strange dream. She’d dive off the building and wake up on board the plane again. With a deep breath, she jumped.

Until she felt the cold rush of wind and the sting of rain, she’d been able to ignore her sense of unease. Panic bubbled at the all-too-real sensation of falling. She clawed at the air helplessly, as she dropped into a fog too black to see through. She broke free after a moment. The ground wasn’t far beneath the fog and rising up fast. A strangled cry tore from her throat.

Wake up!

And then she stopped falling.

Mandy pushed her crinkly shirt down. She was suspended in midair, twenty feet from the ground. Her arms and legs moved freely. No rope or other restraint was tied around her. She simply wasn’t falling.

Her terror faded again, replaced by confusion. This hadn’t seemed like a dream when falling, but now, suspended in air, it did. She looked down, feeling the eyes of people watching her.

The scene below was some sort of battle, which had paused to stare up at her. The men and creatures were divided into three distinct groups: those in black clothing that blended into the shadows of the dark world, men in green and those in silver uniforms. One of the men in black was pointing what looked like a bazooka at her, its muzzle glowing green. She looked down and saw a green dot on the back of one thigh.

When their initial shock wore off, the men began fighting again. The man with the bazooka moved it towards the edge of the battle, and her body followed it. He lowered the weapon’s muzzle, and she floated downward until her feet touched the ground. The man slung the bazooka onto his back, revealing a face that was half-human, half cyborg.

He shouted to the other men in black. The cyborg rushed to her and knelt, yanking two small black ovals from his cargo pocket. He pulled on one of her feet, and she careened into him, startled. He steadied them both then released her.

“Forgive me, human.”

“Sure,” she said. Her eyes went to the battle.

Why wasn’t she awake yet?

The cyborg grabbed one of her ankles and yanked. Mandy toppled onto her backside, jarred out of her thoughts. Irritated, she watched him roughly encase her feet in the same kind of odd, sock-like shoes she saw on his feet. He stretched forward and gripped her neck, rubbing the metal circle at the base. With a satisfied nod, he released her and rose.

“Put this on,” he directed her. “This will protect you from the graders.”

Though she had no idea what a grader was, she accepted the long coat. He pulled her to her feet and waited for a split second while she tugged on the coat. He reached forward, yanked it into place, and took her arm. The coat was heavy and awkward, too long even for her arms and legs with no buttons or zippers she could see to fasten it around her.

Stumbling over the coat, she let the cyborg lead her away from the battle into a dark city. The block-like buildings were made of something that resembled black concrete with no windows, and the streets were made of the same material. The thin little shoes were more comfortable than any she’d ever worn, rendering the hard streets cloud-like.