The dreams were not just disturbing to both parties, but recurrent in being received by both unwilling participants. They ad caught on. This was a new game fate had thought up and neither wanted to play, but neither knew how to forfeit or call a draw. In truth the game had been thought up by another, not fate, though just as fickle and capable of being cold. In truth t was not a game, but mere imagination and ambition caught together like two opposing gales of wind of different temperatures and both caught in the tornado they had created with each other. In truth, it was not created just now, to punish two men for sins they just wanted to forget and thought themselves that they had atoned for them.
The origins of them they were only vaguely curious about. Once the migraine of sleeping in the wrong position, filled with fear and misery caused by some unknown force—because the force had been real, the ill feelings did not leave after waking up—curiosity turned to being pissed and more than mildly on slower days, which were often.
With the less disturbing dreams, Cid had gotten the courage to ask Vincent if he truly shared them. Once it had been confirmed the two men had nothing to speak of for the whole day, wondering if they should avoid each other or not.
Without asking, Cid found that Vincent had no idea where the dreams were coming from as well. The dreams were still coming just as erratically to Cid while just as steady to Vincent. The fact that Vincent had never found a bed other than Cid’s even after the first nightmare, was becoming less consolation than it should have been.
The dreamer was four-legged and charging through woods. Something was after them. Something was following them and salvation lay only in the tangles of branches and the labyrinthine trees. They were already bleeding. The creature they were had already tried to attack their enemy. That was all the dreamer knew. They heard crashing, distinctly that of their enemy crashing towards them from several directions now. Trying them in knots in a chase wouldn’t cut it.
They shot towards a tree, one with a huge mass of roots crawling up and over the dirt as if trying to escape, to become legs or tentacles and pull the tree away as if it had he same fear as the creature that the dreamer had become.
Angling up on huge hindlegs, they immediately began to dig with sharp claws and poking at the dirt and trying to pry a space between the disorganized roots. They had forgotten about the blood, the pain had bee too diluted to pay attention to anymore by the fear.
They were afraid, not just of death, but of pain before. Sever pain. Pain worse than they had now. They were going to be torn to shreds and they were going to feel every painful bit of it before they died, and they would not die until it was all thoroughly over.
Both of them woke up. Whatever the fate the creature had met—success or failure, escape or torture and death, they did not care at the moment. They wondered what they were both doing huddled under the blankets, their hands having scratched at the mattress.
Cautiously poking their heads out from under the blanket, they turned and looked at each other. Cid knew Vincent had seen the same thing. He also knew Vincent had probably shredded the mattress in his clawing.
Cid never liked to talk early in the morning before the sun was up or his brain either.
He kissed Vincent on the forehead and went back to sleep, settling his self comfortably—very comfortably, for Vincent did not react as if the hand Cid put over him were there to hurt him.