Nightmares

Between Dream Recreation and Not So Morning Bliss

Seeing Nox again had me all over the map – figuratively and literally. What was I doing? I kept asking myself. I knew I’d seen him at the bar, but ignored it. I ignored the fact that Nox was in Vegas, I heard him the moment he stepped off the plane. Benji had been acting all sorts of weird. I was still dazed. But even after all this time seeing Nox, my pretty boy chased me across the country. And not because he had wanted to yell at me like everyone kept saying, he just wanted closure to know it was over. But neither of us wanted that. So I laid in bed with Nox draped over me like a hot blanket. He was asleep, I felt that tingle that meant he was calling me. I could slip into the dream. Could be with him, but I was having a hard time breathing. I felt off my game, yet Nox knew me even when he didn’t.

How had I been so wrong all this time?

I couldn’t lay there anymore, even with Nox curled around me so soft and tenderly. He hadn’t even gotten dressed after cleaning up. Which was unusual to say the least. He was acting more and more unlike himself and he was hiding from me. Well not hiding, I wasn’t seeing all the thoughts in his head – that was my own fault. I was out of his head. It was me who was off their game, not him. He was just Nox. Always the same guy. He was happier when I wasn’t in his head. His smile was infectious. His demeanor always bright. But I knew the moment I went into his head I’d see the tumbling, the rambling, the pain of his existence. He hid it so well. Why did he hide it from me?

There was a small voice in my head as I slipped out from underneath the man who kept telling me he loved him in off the wall ways. Never quite saying those three little words but saying them none the less. The voice told me because you’d pity him if you saw the truth. And it was right. I didn’t know how he survived day in and day out. Some days he was drowning inside. The moment I was no longer touching Nox, the familiar tingle vanished and I no longer had to fight the urge not to go to my pretty boy in the dream.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and stepped outside into the cool darkness of the night. I left the door open a crack so I didn’t need my key to get back in. Serenity was parked in front of the room in all her sleek gorgeousness. “Why aren’t guys like you baby,” I said out loud to my favorite possession. Well … I looked at the ring on my finger and smiled. Maybe not anymore. It was a simple gift but it had more meaning than anything else. I took it off and slipped it on my left hand. I knew when it fit my right, that it was made for my left. He’d known somehow. All his talk of patterns and whatevers he just knew.

I heard the sheets rustle behind me and I saw Nox flinch. Fuck! I pushed open the door and stopped the moment the lamp light hit his body. I had expected to see his naked body curled around the pillow, instead a black mound of something sat on his chest and Nox whimpered in his sleep. What the hell?

I took a step forward and the floor boards creaked and it’s fiery red eyes turned to look at me like an owl on a tree limb, a full fucking 180. It hissed at me then looked back at Nox and then back to me. It dug a claw into his chest with one of its back feet and Nox spasmed but no blood flowed from what looked like a painful wound. It hissed at me again, “Mine!”

There was nothing between me and it but when I grabbed it to fling it from Nox’s body it was gone, a puff of black smoke left in its wake. Gone like it never existed. Nox lay in bed peacefully curled around my pillow like nothing happened. I shook him gently and he looked at me through sleep crusted eyes, “Hmmm?”

I shook my head, “Nothing. Go back to bed.”

What the fuck was that?