Figment of Dreams
Fresh Blood

It was that time again. Every Monday morning, I dreaded that first class of the day with a passion so great, that it took all of my strength to walk down the hallway toward that dark little classroom.

It didn’t help at all that the nightmares were back in full effect these last weeks. I had barely slept last night and felt like I could collapse at any moment now.

Ever since I was little, I had these incredibly real nightmares. Some of them were rather plain and could be considered dreams, but most were so scary my shrink had even flinched upon my retelling of them.

I had no idea what the trigger was, but it started as soon as I was three years old. Maybe they had been haunting me sooner, but I did not recall that.

The nightmares were always the same seven dreams in rotation. The pool with the kid, the graveyard, the classroom, my old bedroom, the trailer park, the abandoned alleyway, and the warehouse. I had developed the ability to lucid dream so that I could determine a big chunk of each of those dreams’ outcomes to a degree. I was always fully aware I was in them. Yet, I could never seem to fix the ending.

Never.

And I had tried more times than I could count.

The fun dreams always took place in the same three scenarios: the beach, the mall, and the amusement park. I knew every crook and cranny of each of those ten locations, and I could actually sketch them out perfectly.

I had even google-searched for them but had never found any of the dream sites. Still, a part of me vividly believed I had been there before. Nobody of course, believed me, so I stopped talking about them. Just something I had to deal with regularly on my own I guess.

There was always the same boy in all of them, though. The same dark-haired boy with deep chocolate eyes who had grown up with me in those nightmares and dreams. He was there with me as a kid and now was there with me as well as an eighteen-year-old.

Another constant was present in the nights as well, someone I had never seen without his black hood. He had never changed in age throughout the years and had always been my murderer, the Dark Stalker, Ethan and I had called him.

It was that first hour of the school week I had a class with the Rainers. My favorite non-people. When they literally fell from the sky nineteen years ago the world went mad. Not only did all the theories about aliens turn out to be true, but they also looked just like us, except they weren’t us.

The word alien soon vanished completely, and they were called Rainers for god knows what reason. The world became divided, most were certain they were some kind of threat, here to annihilate the silly little humans. Until their leaders, the Trifecta offered us peace. They brought new sustainable energies which would save the earth for about a million years more than was foreseen in their oracle’s premonitions. In return they wanted a safe atmosphere for their kids to grow up in. Finding earth, with all its wars and famine, the most stable place to live in all of the galaxies.

Go figure.

So earth and the Rainers came to an understanding. A treaty. They arrived on our earth with about one million Rainers. They were dropped off, the spaceships returned home to the planet Caros where they came from, and they settled mostly across the North and South Americas and Europe. Most of them were not permanent residents, and they often traveled back and forth to Caros, therefore creating a system on that green planet with many stuff they had incorporated from earth.

I understood from my former best friend, Jax Skylark, that they were a few years more advanced than earth was but nothing too spectacular. Their world was quite similar to ours… except for you know… magic and all that jazz.

That was the general knack of it. Now our schools gave us something called: ‘Rainer Study’ each Monday morning.

In general, the two species didn’t really interact much. They had a much more distinguished sense of smell than humans and they always told us how unflattering we smelled. Rainer and people fornication were happening though, relationships, weddings, affairs… but it still remained a small percentage of the population. It wasn’t as accepted as it should be, after living with them for nearly 19 years, it should have been something that people acknowledged by now. Yet, it still remained a huge mystery why in fact they really came to our earth.

My dad was one of the believers in a bigger conspiracy. Thinking they were just biding time, for something larger. Like they were a Trojan Horse in our midst. Hence the name of their anti-Rainer society: The Trojans.

So I always stayed vigilant around my dad, not around the Rainers because why should I? The only Rainer family in our small mid-western town of Bridgeview, lived next door to us and I happened to have formed an immediate bond with them. Dad tried his hardest not to let this friendship happen but all of his efforts failed. Children choose their childhood friends without any preconceived notions, and I happened to have chosen Jax Skylar as my best friend in the whole entire world. And the universe. And beyond.

He was the oldest of three brothers. He was tall and had light blue eyes like a spring sky, a mane of unruly blond hair, and he had spent many years as a skinny lean guy, but in the last few he has muscled up. Always the broody, rebellious child with not many friends. I felt privileged to happen to be one of the only humans he could stand and even liked to be around. His dad Maddox, was apparently the earth liaison for the Tertin, something like the United States Senate on Caros. So even though they went back to Caros for two weeks each year, he was always on earth for the rest of their time. Jax and his twin brothers had grown up on earth and had taken a few holidays to Caros but had not been actually living there.

Rainers also age much more slowly but can become way older than humans, with an average lifespan of nearly 140 years. He was always accompanied by his younger twin brothers, Miro and Lenn, who singlehandedly put the Rainer-human procrastination rate way up. They were shameless flirts and nearly had half the school. They were one year younger than their older brother, but they all had classes together.

Because they were our only Rainers, in our Rainer Study class, we had the opportunity to learn about their world and culture and ask our questions. Our teacher was a Galaxsleaze though, as they call it. A woman or man whose fetish is Rainers. Which had no real meaning since they were 99.9% humanlike and shared as much DNA with us. Except for their secret to that lifespan, that was something we had not figured out yet.

The class was really really awkward, with everyone fully aware of her Galaxsleaze status. Especially since we all know how she tried to hook up with the Skylars’ daddy, Maddox, several times a year but the man had more sense than that and never went in on any of the advances.

When I was young I used to be really close to Jax. All through kindergarten and middle school, we were inseparable. Much to the dismay of my father. In the end, he accepted our friendship, because he saw no danger in Jax Skylar, however, I always knew my father wanted an insider in our family to report back to the Trojans. So I rarely disclosed anything that could be important to him.

Then one afternoon, four years ago, when playing Pokemon on our Gameboys in our self-made tree house, Jax kissed me. It was my first kiss and his as well. Puberty had started, and I knew my feelings had changed towards my Rainer best friend for a while, but I never knew his had as well. It was a damn good kiss and we spent nearly the entire afternoon smooching. Touching all over, needing more. On top of each other without having more than we should have, but always hovering on the edge. He made my insides burn delightfully, and I could still feel his rough hands caressing my body tenderly, needing more, needing all of me even though both of us really did not understand any of it yet. We didn’t talk, we just kissed until my lips were numb, but still, I craved more.

I went to bed that night in love with my best friend and I couldn’t wait until the next morning to see him, kiss him, hug him close to me and never let go. I could taste that orange soda he loved so much for years to come, I would associate it with him and had never drank another can since that faithful morning.

So I sprinted out of the house the next day and into his arms. He put me down, looked at me with this dead expression in his sky-blue eyes, and said: ‘We can’t do this anymore Lux, I just don’t feel the same way.’ I stumbled back and started laughing, thinking he was just playing. We were always teasing each other, that had been our MO.

He was the one who kissed me first!? I thought he was joking, but he really walked away from me then. He broke my heart and killed our fourteen-year-old friendship in about ten deadly seconds. I had no idea it could hurt that much, that one person could hold that much power over your heart and soul and I had been through the loss of a mother, but this was….a completely different kind of devastation that could ruin a soul.

I tried again the next day to see if it was just a funk but he was suddenly disgusted by me.

A week later in gym class, I heard Miro telling another dude that Jax felt like he was kissing a garbage bag, and that the smell was that bad.

That right there… broke my spirit in half. He was the one person I had always counted on, who told my deepest and darkest secrets too. We had spent holidays together, entire schoolyears glued to each other, many evenings just talking nonsense and looking at the stars, to his home, which he one day wanted to show me. He had been there for me when my mother died, held me after every nightmare, and was the only one that knew all of them by heart and without him, I wouldn’t have survived it. Any of it.

I was a mess for a really long time. It took me about two years to open up to new people again. To attempt to connect and try again took every ounce I still had left in me. So I made my first girlfriend a while back: Malin. She was really open and funny so the perfect distraction. Jax had broken my soul and my heart but it was time to move on from that. I was going to college next year so that I wouldn’t live next door to him anymore. The end of this long torturous road was ahead of me and I would be rid of my neighbor very soon.

Most of my classes were without the Skylars except the entire Monday. So here we go…I walked into class that day with my head held high. It was my first class back after the summer break and I had decided I was going to up the ante a little bit. I hadn’t seen my neighbors all summer since they used to spend theirs in their cottage on the beach on the other side of the country. One I have been familiar with for many summers.

I shared a room with Jax in that house and we used to have the best time, just playing on the Xbox or gossiping about our classmates or planning out our futures. He wanted to stay on earth since he had no business at Caros. He wanted to become a firefighter, and I dreamed of becoming a badass special agent. A pang of hurt hit me right in the chest again, this sometimes happened whenever I thought of Jax Skylar. But it was less than it used to be.

I bought a new wardrobe and spend a lot of time in the gym, I had gotten some highlights in my auburn hair, which was naturally unruly; now it fell into long curls down my back. A gift from my favorite new hairstylist. I wore skin-tight black jeans, with ankle boots and a fitted grey top with sleeves and shoulder slits. I felt good. I felt beautiful. I could face another year with him.

I spotted Jax immediately, in his usual seat in the back. His long blond mane in the usual disarray, with his casual jeans and black shirt without any logos or text on it. He looked like a young Kurt Cobain. A few new tattoos, random ones, were on his forearms and they were definitely new. A flashback of me braiding his hair one summer came back to me, he had a long hair faze a couple of years ago and he had let me experiment on him like he was one of my dolls. He had tolerated me a lot when we were young, but I knew he secretly liked it when I teased him like that.

He always sat in that same seat. Each goddamn class. When I walked in his head popped up immediately. Like he could tell I had arrived. Probably my smell that had tipped him off… For a minute, his eyes widened, and I saw something flash through those sky-blue gazers. Then he narrowed them, shook his head a little, and looked back down at his iPhone. Asshole. I sat in my usual seat too. It was on the right side of the classroom, with one desk in front of him.

Miss Neomi walked in extremely excited as usual. I knew Jax hated her as well, because of the way she had put his dad in an awful position with his human mom. Or so he called Linda since his biological mother had died when he was one year old while giving birth to the twins. Maddox and Linda had nearly broken up over our Galaxsleaze teacher, though.

‘I have some exciting news!’ she announced.

We were nearly all present including the Skylars, except Miro, who never made it anywhere on time. I was already rolling my eyes, annoyed with all of them and missing Malin when a tall and dark stranger walked into the room. He was about my age, nearly 6 foot 5, eyes as deep blue as the ocean, and hair a very dark brown, nearly black. It was cropped on the sides and it was a lot longer on top. Which flopped to the left side of his angular face. He wore dark designer jeans, dress shoes, and a dark blue dress shirt. I haven’t really looked at guys since Jax, I haven’t even kissed anyone since then, but this guy immediately caught my attention. Perhaps because he was staring straight at me like he was looking deep into my soul. He also had this look on his face, like he found something amusing and harbored an inside secret.

‘This is Kai Welkin, a new student and he is our sixth Rainer of Bridgeview.’ She nearly screamed that last part as if it was saying; ‘a new Rainer dad I can seduce’. She glanced at Kai with little hearts in her eyes like a cartoon character and pointed at me as well. I was becoming a little worried. I wanted nothing to do with him now I knew he was a Rainer. He would probably gag on my smell.

‘Please take a seat next to Lux, she will be your guide for the day.’ Oh crap, I forgot I had filled in the form before summer that I was willing to guide new students. I had not thought of the possibility of new Rainers in town…because that had not happened in nineteen years.

Kai walked over to me with a confident strut, with one corner of his lips tilted up. It was a cheeky smile, which even revealed some dimples. All girls in the class were already starting to drool over him. Oh boy. Behind me, I saw the movement as Jax sat up straighter. I felt his eyes on the back of my head as Kai sat down on the bench next to me.

‘Well… hello there.’ He said, eyebrows raised in appraisal. I swallowed and waved my hand feebly, not really looking at him. ‘Hi…’ I wasn’t warm with my welcome. He definitely noticed. ‘Not used to Rainers huh…’ he mumbled in my ear as he put his books on the desk and scooted in closer. I got goosebumps from his proximity which freaked me out. I moved a few inches further.

‘Very used to Rainers.’ I snapped back and probably said that a little louder than I had wanted because I heard a sharp intake of breath from the back. ‘Sounds interesting…’ that’s when I realized he probably figured me a Galaxsleaze. ‘No… not like that… and let’s just not talk, okay.’ I didn’t look at him, just kept looking forward. I needed no extra attention from him. He turned his head all the way, and I just kept my eyes glued on the chalkboard where Miss Neomi was writing down the continents of Caros.

’Baby, you can’t just not talk to me. You are my guide. Guides talk.’ He had a deep voice laced with a sarcastic edge. Like he was making fun of you all the time. The dimples popped again. I saw them through the side-eye I was giving him. I sighed and turned my head towards him reluctantly. I raised my eyebrow in a defiant stance.

’First of all, my name is Lux… and I can guide you around today. But it doesn’t require small talk. So please just… focus on the class.’ I nervously flicked my pencil up and down and was shaking my right leg. He smirked.

’Whatever you say baby.’ Again with that sarcastic edge. He was truly something.

As I was about to correct him again, but more firmly. The words ’her name is Lux.′ Rang out from behind me, I froze in place. Jax’s voice was laced with so much menace the entire room dropped several degrees. I hadn’t heard his vocal sound in so long and especially not when defending me. Especially not.

Kai turned around slowly. ’Ah I see… a Rainer boyfriend…baby you’ve been holding out on me?’ he didn’t hide his disappointment, which even confused me more. Please let this day be over soon, pretty please.

I shook my head. ‘Please drop it….’ I whispered exasperatedly. I wanted to sink underneath the desk and never come back up. ‘Ex-boyfriend?’ Kai whispered in my ear. His warm breath brushed my lobe. I felt a low rumble in my lower belly, my treacherous body betraying me. I liked it. I was attracted to him.

Damn it. Why me? Why Rainers? Why can’t I be attracted to normal guys for once!

‘He is nothing to me.’ With enough venom in my voice, I said that and I could feel it when Jax felt it hit home. Because the temperature seemed to drop a few degrees more from behind me. Kai just looked me in the eye with those ocean-blue saucers, not saying anything. Like he was assessing me. His eyes darted to my lips a few times. His nostrils flared. And then he was back looking at our teacher. He didn’t say a word for the remainder of the class.

As I was gathering my things, I noticed nearly everyone had already left the classroom. So I sprinted out to replace Kai. As I turned towards my locker, I saw Jax and Lenn intimidatingly standing over Kai at his locker. As they saw me coming, they sprinted away like their pants were on fire. ‘What was that all about?’ I slammed my locker open and hurled my books in. I had decided this day was already sucking, and I just wanted it to be over. Great first day back, Lux. Good job with kicking this year’s ass.

He just looked at me with his slightly crooked smile of his. ‘Baby, you really don’t know, do you?’ I rolled my eyes at him. I had no time for games. So my voice was firm. ’Tell me.. and don’t call me baby.’ He laughed a little fuller now. ‘I won’t tell you, that’s not up to me.’ And then he was walking away from me too.