Sleep Cycle - 1. Chapter 1

I hate dreams.

Same old shit, every night.

I go poof into some world that doesn’t belong to me, play along with a lot of nonsense, and then I wake up. Sometimes I remember the dream, sometimes I don’t. I couldn’t care less.

I don’t know what the point of remembering is, anyway.

I mean, dreams get me riled up. Sometimes, I dream that I won that contest.

Next day, in reality, I get last place.

Sometimes, I dream that a monster is eating me.

Next day, in reality, it turns out only my sloppy ass roommate let her pet gerbil escape from its cage and crawl all over me.

Sometimes, I imagine, next day, I learn, and it repeats over and over again, like history class. There’s nothing to dreams. They don’t apply to us as we are in the real universe. They’re useless. They’re humiliating.

Yeah, humiliating. Like this dream I’m having here. It’s the same one I’ve tolerated for a month. By now, whenever I find myself in it, I know I’m sleeping. I could give directions in this dream, that’s how well I know it.

So I’m walking down a dark hall. Same lighting, same cracks in the tiles, same voices clattering behind me. I should be running, but I don’t because I’m so afraid. I’m afraid of the people chasing me, of the walls—the horribly white walls—and of the possibility that I might never escape this place, wherever it is.

The walls around me seem to pulse and distort, and they’re white, so horribly white, but at the same time, they aren’t. I can see shapes and colors twisting in them, and terrible portraits and misery and I just want to go home.

And the people are getting closer.

My legs buckle. I know they aren’t going to kill me. They have what I’ve been looking for, what I’ve supposed to have been looking for all my life. But that thing… it’ll destroy me if I do take it. It’ll destroy my world.

And that’s all there is to it.

The dream breaks off right then and there, and my eyes snap open. I’m not scared or panting or anything, but numb. Indifferent. I can’t be affected because it’s not real. And anyway, I’ll never find that thing. I’m too much of a failure to find it. Someone else will, and I’ll never get close to any situation like that. Win-win, see?

So here I am, early morning. I’ve just had another one of these déjà vu dreams, and I’m lying sprawled out in bed. It’s cozy enough, and my wool nightgown coddles my skin. The room is cold, and a bit of air pokes under my blanket, nibbling my flesh, teasing me. I roll over, hoping that aforementioned sloppy ass roommate won’t notice me.

Too late.

Something big and heavy flops down on my chest, and wriggles around, making itself comfortable despite my vain efforts to breathe.

“Mornin’, precious,” comes a singsong greeting. It’s a husky voice. Supposed to be female. It makes me quake with irritation, and I roll around in frenzies, shaking off that lump.

She’s like a tumor. A benign one, but annoying and more trouble than it’s worth.

Gasping for breath, I manage to get into a sitting position, and, getting a firm look at my attacker, shoot her the bird.

She returns the favor.

“Whoa, extra grumpy today, ain’t we?” she chides, but I don’t find her funny. I only roll my eyes in reply.

Her name is Annette.

She’s four years older than me, but four inches shorter, so I guess that’s why I’ve had to coexist with this smarmy growth since I got here last summer. She’s the type who teases people even if they tell her not to, the type to invite herself to parties even if nobody likes her, the type to wear a bikini even if she’s grossly overweight.

Which she is.

Maybe not morbidly so, but her fat ripples out from beneath her tank top, and her potbelly billows up like a mushroom cloud from where her tight jeans redistribute the flab of her thunder thighs. Her skin’s uneven, but she has an all right face.

Except for that green hair.

That goddamned green hair.

It’s the shade of a lime out-of-season, and just as unappealing. At least it’s not nauseating neon. I hate it when people dye their hair. It makes them seem less genuine, somehow.

And then I remember that my hair is dyed, too.

Pink.

Our dorm matron here apparently sees us as living dolls, and insists on giving us makeovers every now and then. She says the dye is a way to identify us, not that I can see how a simple nametag wouldn’t help.

Sure, I know we’re just pawns, and yeah, we’re being turned into playthings of the aristocracy, but I wish she wouldn’t emphasize it so much right down to our appearances.

And Annette opens her mouth again. Sometimes, I don’t think she even realizes how much she can piss people off.

“Feelin’ better, Maia?” she asks, tossing me my bra. She’s not entirely useless, at least.

And it’s my favorite bra, too. A good long time went into stitching all the lace and frilly shit into it, so I’m glad she appreciates it as much as I do.

Taking a deep breath, I shrug away my testiness and pull off my nightgown, letting it crumple to the floor. For a second, I think about how it had a shape on me a moment ago, and now it was just nothing but a limp scrap of cloth. I guess the most important things can turn out to be nothing after all, like my dream.

Annette is staring at me as I try to get dressed. She’s insensitive like that. I blush and divert my attention to the floral wallpaper, but I still feel her eyes bore into my soul. I don’t know what the hell her problem is. She might be getting impatient with me, she might be spacing out, she might be some sort of pervert… The possibilities are endless.

She does this to me every morning, and I’m still not used to it.

Soon enough I shimmy into my skirt and button my blouse, depriving Annette of whatever she found interesting about me in the first place.

And suddenly, I realize I haven’t yet answered her question.

“I feel fine,” I grunt, raking my hair with a comb. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“A’right,” she replies.

It isn’t hard to satisfy her.

“You gonna use the vanity, Maia? I have’ta pop my zits.”

Charming.

I wave her over to it. I never use the thing, because that would require looking in the mirror. I don’t like them at all. There’s something narcissistic about them, and I just don’t care for my face.

Annette huddles over the vanity, squirming like some sort of overfed sea lion and scrambling blindly about for a hankie every time she lances a pimple and the pus seeps out of those grotesque blackheads that dot her skin.

They’re bandits, I think, bandits that robbed Annette of her beauty, and now she’s sending in the cavalry to exact her revenge.

I pull my eyes away from her, and return to that wall. I wish we had a window in our room. Too dangerous, though. To relieve my boredom, I try to think about happy things, about success, about beginning training today. Serious training, I mean. Not these little spells that our mentor taught us.

But my mind always skips ahead to the imminent war that’ll result from our work, so I switch gears and think about Annette again.

She’s finally ready, and we slip on our rain slickers. Annette hands a small dagger to me, and I give another to her.

It might sound excessive to go armed to the dining hall for breakfast, but it’s standard procedure around here, especially for our kind.

Annette. Me. A few others.

Because everything outside this manor wants to kill us.