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In my dream, I’m still in my room. Instead of wearing the PJs I fell asleep in, I’ve got on a pretty white nightgown that the real Hope wouldneverwear. I’m not lying in my bed, but sitting cross-legged at the foot of it, staring at my closed door, willing it open.
It doesn’t—but that doesn’t mean thatnothinghappens.
As I watch curiously, the shadows in the far corner of my bedroom start to thicken. Dream Hope gasps. I remember… whenever the shadow creature came to watch me, that’s how he would arrive. In a mass of shadows before he separated himself from them.
Just like he does now.
Only… once the shadow monster, with his dual horns rising above his dark head, wafts away from the corner, drifting so that he’s only about five feet away from the foot of my bed, heshifts.
He changes.
He’s… well, he’s still a monster. But, suddenly, I can see what those shadows have long hid.
So tall that the tips of his shiny, black horns are scraping my ceiling when he pulls himself up to his full height, he’s twice as wide as I am, with skin the color of a Red Delicious apple. He has thick black hair, the same color as mine, but while mine just about reaches my chin, his cascades down his back.
And his eyes…
I’ve never seen his eyes before. I would’ve remembered if I did. They’re big and wide-set, glowing out of his strong features, a brilliant color that totally clashes with his skin tone.
They’re beautiful. And, though he is the opposite of any human guy I’ve ever seen, so is he.
Of course he is. I conjured him up in my dreams, even going so far as to make him shirtless so that I can drool over his muscular chest. If I was feeling a little racier, I might’ve gone for no pants, but his bottom half is still wrapped up in shadows from his waist to his calves. His feet are solid and red, though, and they’re standing on my floor as he looks down on me.
His expression is one of surprise. Almost as though it’s a shock for him to see me. Is it because I’m a human and probably very small and weak and pale compared to him? Or because this is my dream and that’s how I think a strapping monster like this guy would react to being in a room with me?
Who knows? Now that he’s here, I’m just hanging on, waiting to see what will happen next.
He opens his mouth, showing off a pair of fangs that would put any neighborhood vampire to shame. In a voice that’s not as deep as I would’ve expected from such a big guy, he says something but I have no idea what. It’s not any language I’ve ever heard of before, and if I thought I picked up ‘Hope’ somewhere in the middle of that… welp. It’s my dream. Why wouldn’t he know my name?
I wave at him. “Hi.”
He looks at his hand. For a moment, I expect him to mimic my gesture, waving back, but he doesn’t. Instead, his face screws up, forming deep lines that rival the strange ridges that are on his forehead.
Then, trailing one pointed claw along the top of his muscular arm, he keeps his eyes locked on me as he says, “Please.”
Hang on—
“You know English?”
If I conjured up a monster who knows English, why didn’t he say say so in the first place?
He frowns again. He lifts his hand, showing me his thumb and his forefinger, careful not to let his claws touch. As he keeps them apart, it’s obvious he’s showing off the slight gap between them as he rasps out, “Little.”
Okay. He knows a little English.
That’s okay. I mean, I’ve gotta be imagining this whole exchange in the first place, but I work at a library in one of the most diverse states in America. The only time Moira doesn’t have a conniption when she sees one of us with our phones out is when we use a translation app to service our patrons.
This is right out of my real life. Looking over at my nightstand, I see my phone where I habitually try to leave it. Getting up and grabbing it, I engage the translator app before moving so that I’m standing right by him.
I point to my mouth, then move my fingers, gesturing for him to speak.
It takes a second before he rattles off something in that same language from before.
Once he’s done, I tell the app that I don’t know what language it is, assuming that the people who programmed it should.
No dice. The translator app searches and searches and eventually spits out nothing that makes any sense to me.
Man. It would’ve been so much easier to see why the monster wants me to touch his arm if he could tell me. I’m pretty sure his ‘little’ bit of English won’t be able to help us out here when it comes to that, and since I’m probably the mastermind behind this andIhave no idea, it makes sense that he just wants me to do it without any explanation.
