Strapped

I had been having the same dream now for months, but it still rendered me breathless and shaken every time I awoke. In a startled jerk, I sat up in my cot and banged my head on the low gabled ceiling of my attic bedroom.

It was more of a cubbyhole, really. After my parents had died last year, I was forced to move in with my older cousin and her family if I wanted to continue my college education. She had a young family with four kids, so there wasn’t much of anything to go around, including bed space. Everywhere I looked there was lack; lack of food, lack of money, time, space, and, of course, privacy. But my cubbyhole was home now, however cramped, and I was going to have to get used to it. Especially the low clearance over my cot.

I sat rubbing my throbbing temple, and a low moan escaped my lips. My curly, dark hair covered half of my face in damp, unkempt ringlets from tossing and turning in a cold sweat. My young cousin, Lizzie, stirred and then sighed.

“Same nightmare? Again?” The last question was more scolding than concern.

“Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s all right, Mary. I wasn’t tired anyway. Mom should be home soon; I can make her breakfast.”

My cousin, Cheryl, worked night-shift as a pipefitter to support her four children while her husband worked during the day doing the same thing. It meant that they didn’t have the extra expense of childcare on a regular basis, and I watched the children once a week to give the couple a needed date night. Cheryl joked that she had a free live-in nanny, but I could see the sadness behind her smile as she said it. Never seeing her husband, except on date night, was an enormous sacrifice they made to make ends meet. And I was only adding to the financial burden.

Lizzie, Cheryl’s third child, got up and ran downstairs, still in her pyjamas. Her messy, long blonde hair flowed behind her in a carefree way that made me envious. I wished I had her energy and enthusiasm. I did, however, find solace in one thing–the dream had changed.

It started the same, with me coming up to a busy intersection on foot. Cars and pedestrians were milling about when suddenly I noticed my parents’ car stopped at a red light, mere feet away. I waved to grab their attention when a strange movement in the corner of my eye distracted me. I stood frozen in shock moments later as a wayward vehicle careened toward my parents’ sedan. What usually caused me to jolt awake in horror was the look of the driver in the black Cadillac about to collide with my parents’ car.

He was dressed in a black suit and tie, with a crisp, white dress shirt. His hair was coiffed in a slick but neat style reminiscent of the 50s, and he was wearing dark sunglasses even though the sky was overcast. There were others in the car with this stranger; all dressed the same as the driver though I couldn’t clearly focus on them.

I shivered as I realized there was something about his demeanour which indicated he was deliberately going to cause the collision. A split second before impact, the driver as well as the passengers of the dark Cadillac, transformed into strange looking dragons. They were small for dragons though I reckoned the average size of a dragon wasn’t exactly well documented. They also had no wings and sat in the car without a stitch of clothing. The murderous look in the driver’s eyes was so chilling that my heart skipped a beat and my blood froze.

This was normally about the time I woke up screaming. But last night’s dream was different in that there was a new character. A young man about my age was across the street from me and glanced in my direction. He had a strange looking polyhedron in his right hand and was holding his left hand up to it, which appeared to direct some invisible energy beam toward the Men in Black. As he did so, time seemed to stand still and the two vehicles–on a collision course–never touched. All traffic stopped as if frozen, including all the pedestrians.

I could still move as though I had a “time forcefield” around me and the same for the mystery man. I began to sigh in relief, only to be horrified once again as I realized the Men in Black were back in their human form and descended upon both me and the strange magic man. Two MIB for me and two for my would-be hero. One of my attackers looked up past me and smiled. I looked over my shoulder to get a glimpse of what he was looking at, only to see an entire army of dragons and gargoyles flying in on the offensive. Oh, shit! I didn’t need to ask whose side they were on.

“So Mary, did you have a good day at school?” Wayne, Cheryl’s husband, asked with a gleam in his eye. He knew that my lab partner was getting to be a handful in the flirty sense of the word. Wayne loved to tease me, especially because I was single. He thought my overly attentive classmate was a potential suitor. If only I were attracted to hairy, overweight nerds with acne and overactive sweat glands.

“Matchmaker, Matchmaker, make me a match,” Lizzie started to sing.

“Lizzie!” Cheryl scolded. She scrunched her face in a scowl that didn’t fool anyone; her eyes were playful and danced with mirth.

“No, it’s all right,” I smiled sheepishly. “I had a good day, despite my lab partner. I keep wondering how I’m going to keep his drops of sweat from smudging our lab notes,” I winked. “But seriously. The good professor has been watching me lately, and he invited me to join some sort of a science club today.”

“The Geek Squad?!” Wayne laughed, causing his large belly to jiggle. He was a meat-and-potatoes kind of man who treated drinking beer like it was an Olympic sport. Wayne thought watching sports while stuffing his face into a basket of Buffalo wings was every man’s God-given right and the reason our soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy.

“Ahh! Teacher’s pet!” Cheryl teased.

“Pffft, hardly. I thought the guy practically hated me. Little did I know it was some sort of test to see how I reacted to stressful situations,” I recalled. Professor Varner had been my teacher from hell until earlier today. He challenged my ideas in class, humiliated me every chance he got, and was more critical of my papers than those of the other students. But it was all a ruse to up my game. Apparently, the professor had pegged me from the beginning as a star pupil. Thank God he told me about his plan today; I was about ready to quit his class altogether.

“Well, at least now you know. This must be quite the club if they have professors scouting talent and then playing mind games with said talent to develop them more. What does he need you to hone your skills for? Saving the planet from a mad scientist? Or maybe the Iron Man needs a new suit designer?” Wayne could be very skeptical, yet his sarcasm made it seem less severe.

I didn’t mind living here with this wonderful family though I’d love to have my parents back–alive and well. However, I had always believed that hardship shaped aner into what ani would become. Though I wasn’t happy my parents were killed in that awful accident, I was grateful for what my life had become as a result of it. And much of it had been due to this family before me—full of love and laughter.

Jordan, Cheryl and Wayne’s oldest, piped in. “I had no idea you were such a geek, Mary.”

“Watch who you make fun of, Jordan,” Cheryl teased. “You might need her help with homework one day.”

Everyone was finished eating dinner and slowly rose from the table. Cheryl and I started clearing it slowly. When we were alone, she spoke so softly I almost had to strain to hear the words.

“Seriously, what the hell is this club all about?”

“I think it’s just some advanced stuff we are working on,” I shrugged. True, I was downplaying the importance of Professor Varner’s work, but I didn’t want to worry Cheryl. Apparently I would be an errand girl for some high-profile scientists, and the projects could revolutionize more than a few industries.

“Well, I’m so proud of you, Cuz. You would make Aunt Judy and Uncle Tom gush with pride right now,” she said remembering my parents.

“I wish they were here. I swear, if I ever get my hands on that drunk driver, I’ll wring his neck!” Unlike in my dream, my parents’ killer had not intentionally hurt anyone, but he had been just as careless.

“I know, Mary. Try not to think about it. Regret is a terrible thing, and it gets more bitter the older you get. You have a long life ahead of you. I’d hate to see you waste it looking back and wishing it had been different. Plus, you would be the one going to jail if you killed that bastard.”

“You’re right, but at least I’d feel like justice had been done while I rotted away in prison. I still can’t believe that the judge let him get away with it on a technicality.” I paused in frustration and then let the corners of my lips curl upwards. “Cheryl? If I went to jail would you bake me a cake with a file in it so I could escape?” I asked mischievously.

“No problem. I make a wicked double chocolate,” Cheryl winked.

“By ‘double’ you mean chocolate chip and Ex-Lax, so I can give it to the guards?” Cheryl smirked in response.

The last word was muffled by the crashing sound of broken flatware. I was peering out the front window and saw the black Cadillac from my dream parked on the street directly outside the house. Inside the car, I could make out a figure wearing a dark suit and sunglasses and in that second, I had dropped the plate I was clearing off of the table.

Concern coming from Cheryl followed a moment of stunned silence.

“Mary, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Her short strawberry-blonde pixie cut had one lock out of place, but instead of making her look unkempt, it managed to enhance her beauty.

I looked at Cheryl and back at the street. The Cadillac was gone. I ran outside and down the steps, looking in the only direction the sinister vehicle could have gone; we lived in a cul-de-sac. The car appeared to have vanished; there was no sign of it at all, and our street was a long one with no side roads or alleys. It couldn’t be.

Cheryl was opening the front door and peeped out questioningly. I opened my mouth to explain, but the words escaped me. I just shrugged and made my way up the steps and over the threshold. I needed to get some sleep so I would stop seeing things; unfortunately sleep would only bring more of the same images in my dreams. I probably needed to see a psychiatrist, but there was no way I could afford it. ‘I wonder if Cheryl would perform a lobotomy?’ I mused, then smiled to myself.

I walked down the now familiar street when I looked over to my right and saw my parents at a stoplight, laughing in their car. ‘I’ve been here before,’ I thought to myself. ‘I know this!’ As I mulled it over, I looked past my parents to the other side of the street. It was the man again, smiling at me like he had just spotted an old friend. Hmmm, odd. ‘But oddly not creepy,’ I noted as my heart skipped a beat. What the hell was wrong with me?

‘Oh! It’s the dream again!’ I exulted as I remembered.

’No!’ I shouted in my mind a second later as I realized what was about to happen. The man held up the tetrahedron made out of metal again, and I squinted to examine it further. The metal was just a frame and inside it was hollow with something spherical at its center. ‘Is that a piece of glass?’ I pondered. I gasped as it dawned on me that it was a crystal. I stared at it in awe, then shook my head to clear it.

The sound of a commotion brought me to the present moment which I’d been dreading. The black Cadillac was headed straight for my parents’ car. I watched Pyramid Man work his magic, and the scene froze. I suddenly remembered the dragon army and looked back. There they were!

’Perfect!’ I complained. But Pyramid Man was waving at me to come to him. I followed his instruction and ran toward him without thinking. Whoever this man was, he was obviously an ally. Though I didn’t completely trust him at the moment, hurrying to be by his side didn’t appear to put me in any immediate or obvious danger. Not going there, however, would deprive me of the answers I so desperately craved. This man knew something of what was going on, and I was going to interrogate him until I had extracted every last bit of information from his mind.

Though I rushed to his side mainly for a better understanding of the situation, I also felt an urge to be with him as though I belonged there. It was a strange sensation that made my belly do flip-flops, and I couldn’t articulate the feeling because I realized with a jolt, that I had never felt something such as this. We were like two magnets meeting, and I ran to him like it was the most natural thing in the world for me to be doing. No thought went into my actions.

Once we were together, he looked at me and smiled. He silently brought his hand to my chin and gently caressed it between his thumb and forefinger, looking pleased. The way he looked at me, I felt treasured beyond any amount of gold or precious jewels. The world fell away under his gaze. He grinned again–from ear to ear as though he hadn’t been sure it was really me and only now just realized it was–and leaned in for an urgent, yet very passionate kiss.

I was so shocked I didn’t make any move to protest and a moment later I had lost myself in the heat of his embrace. I felt a flood of warmth in my lower belly as all of the blood rushed out of my head and into my groin. As his kiss grew in intensity, I felt his wet, probing tongue lap quickly at my bottom lip, then dart into my now open mouth and play with my upper front teeth. The shock I felt just a moment ago had taken my breath away, but now his brazen actions coupled with my lack of oxygen, caused me to pant so that I was nearly hyperventilating. Abruptly, my amorous companion broke the lip-lock and peered at me straight in my eyes, hands on my shoulders.

“I didn’t mean for that to get so intense–we’ll have to continue that later. I love you, darling. More than life itself. But time’s slipping away, and we’ve gotta go!” He grabbed my hand and started running, almost dragging me behind him for a moment while I was catching my bearings. Whoever this man was, he was very handsome, and a superb kisser. I was still blushing as we ducked into a diner on the corner.

We sat down at a booth. “I brought the instrument with me, sweetheart. Hurry and use it on them before we end up as charred dragon food,” the man said.

“Use what?” I asked in disbelief.

“Don’t be silly, honey. You have the power to save us. So do it!”

Just then the door to the diner opened, and the small bell chimed telling the waitress there was a new patron. Only the waitress and all the other diners were frozen in place, and these new customers weren’t your average patrons at a greasy spoon. I muffled a scream as I realized they were the men from the black Cadillac.

I woke with a gasp and sat up in bed, banging my head on the ceiling. ‘I’m gonna need to put padding on that spot if this keeps up,’ I thought with a groan.

“Not again!” Lizzie exclaimed.

“Yes, but the dream has changed. I can’t explain it. It’s very bizarre,” I replied, a bit distracted. The new details of the dream, combined with yesterday’s events were puzzling.

“I wish I could help, cuz.”

“Yeah, me too. How about we make breakfast and watch cartoons?”

“Yeah!” She exclaimed and with that she ran downstairs.

I was more than a little nervous for my physics class today because I was being initiated into the club, and stuff like that always gave me the willies. I was sure I was just the victim of an over-active imagination, but secret societies with initiation rituals made me think of blood-drinking cults. I smiled at my silliness. I was clearly stalling, so I gave myself a quick pep talk.

‘This is going to give your career the boost it needs. It’s about time life dealt you a good hand, why jinx it with your negativity? This’ll be fine. It’s a university for God’s sake. This is just science; no cult here.’ This line of thought led me to thinking about the Skull and Bones, a secret society within the Yale crowd. I rolled my eyes at how I could over-analyze everything.

I decided it was easier just to put one foot in front of the other and try not to think so much. Easier said than done, for me, anyway. I loved to think, my brain always seemed to be going a mile a minute. Many people remarked that I just thought faster than everyone else and made connections where they only saw chaos. I tried not to let comments such as these go to my head. Sometimes being brilliant was as much a curse as it was a blessing.

I found my way to class and barely noticed my lab partner who then tried harder to get my attention. I thought we were discussing wave properties and working with a small water tank, but I couldn’t be bothered. I was too busy trying not to barf in the water from nervousness over the science club.

After class, I found my way to the front where Professor Varner sat doing paperwork. It was nerve-racking just walking up to him. Until yesterday, he was the teacher I hated most. That kind of apprehension at seeing him wasn’t going to go away overnight. But then he looked up at my approach and smiled and I knew I had come too far now to back out.

“You ready?” As he arose there was a zing in his step I was unaccustomed to seeing.

“Sure,” I stammered hesitantly.

“No need to be nervous. You’ll love the crew we’ve got. We are doing some amazing things,” his smile was genuine and welcoming. “Before we meet the guys, I’m going to take you to the anteroom where we do initiation ceremonies and prove membership to get in.”

“Like a secret handshake or password?” I asked with a twinkle in my eye.

“Sort of, you’ll see. No need to worry, you won’t be asked to drink blood or Kool-Aid for that matter.” He winked at me, and I laughed nervously.

We moved toward a large bookcase, and I eyed him questioningly where he pulled a particular book off the shelf, and suddenly a hidden door spun around. Professor Varner was grinning at me and walking into the cubbyhole which housed the spinning frame. I followed him, and he proceeded to flip the switch which spun the door. Okay, that was awesome in a Scooby-Doo way. Either that or I was suddenly part of a B-grade horror movie. Right about now was when a guy with a chainsaw cuts me up into tiny pieces, wasn’t it?

The secret room was very dark and had a strangely perfumed smell that I couldn’t place (incense?) until the professor lit a match. The scent of flint and candle wax wafted through the air as he set two lanterns alight, and then handed me one. I spotted an incense censor on the shelf beside where the lanterns had been, confirming my suspicions.

What happened next was amazingly benign compared to my wild imaginings and the macabre proceedings that I had conjured in my mind. I swore an oath where I pledged to uphold the values of the club, which I then read aloud. I was to aid fellow members above any non-member, as well as to keep the things we did secret. I had to do many hand gestures and other body movements at other times (all while blindfolded) but that was it, in a nutshell. I also agreed to be an apprentice to a mentor whom I would observe for a time. After this time, I would report my observations and undergo many sets of drills. Should I pass, I was a full member. If not, I would start the process all over again. All in all, not a bad deal.

“Bonne chance, mon amie!” the professor said enthusiastically. I wasn’t used to seeing him this chipper. “Well, moving along now … we have so much to cover before your next class. Which is …?”

“English, but it’s in the afternoon, so we have a few hours,” I reassured him. I was very eager, and the temptation to cut English altogether was strong. I wanted to allow myself more time.

“Well let’s get started, shall we?” He exclaimed as we walked down a musty corridor, lamps in hand. He stopped abruptly and held his arm out to stop me. Then, without warning, we were descending on a type of platform into a cavernous and foreboding chamber. I sighed in relief as it registered in my mind that I knew the room was so large because it was well-lit. At least the darkness had ended.

We arrived on the floor and dismounted from the platform which immediately began to ascend, concealing our humongous lab. ‘What the hell could we be working on?’ I asked myself. Here I had been telling myself this whole thing was no big deal, but now it was difficult to deny the enormity of the undertaking. I stood in awed silence as I looked all around me. A dozen or so scientists worked at several stations doing God-knows-what. There were a few sound booths, recording equipment, numerous large polyhedrons capable of caging several people, large crystals several feet high, and lots of books stacked about haphazardly. Along the perimeter were smaller rooms with only curtains for doors, and some sported only bead-curtains across their thresholds. Hmmm … campy … and bohemian. Not what I was expecting from a bunch of scientists.

“Mary, I’d like you to meet your mentor, Jacques.” I hadn’t noticed that someone had approached us. I arrested my gawking at the enormous lab and turned to look at my new handler when I stepped back in disbelief. Jacques was Pyramid Man.