Chapter Text
The first time it happened, he was three year old.
William Graham was playing with his nanny and friend, Garry. He chatted cheerily when Garry hug him and touching his thigh. William thought Garry was always an affectionate man, and he laughing because his nanny’s touches made him tickled.
And when William grabbed Garry’s hand to stop him from tickling him, suddenly he saw something weird. It was dark at first, then a pendulum swinging, like the one that hanging in his father’s antique clock, before it morphed into an unfamiliar room. He confused, and more confused when his body moving itself. He shocked when he accidentally looked at the mirror. It was not his face, it was Garry’s. How could he be in Garry’s body? Then his mouth was moving to say stuffs he did not understand. And that’s when the weird thing he saw happened.
Because he did not understand and he was curious, he decided to ask his father later at dinner.
“Daddy, why do Garry sticking his ‘little Garry’ into a boy’s butt? And why he do not stop though that boy cryin’ to him to stop?”
A clang sound was so loud it made William cringed. He turned his head, confused, only to see a horrified look on his father’s face.
And the next day, he never saw his nanny again. There was a nice police who asking him many question about Garry that he did not quite understand; like is Garry touching him wrong or is Garry make him do something that he did not want to. But William happily answered him anyway, because he was a police and William wanted to be a policeman when he grown up.
He still saw the pendulum. In the street, in the kindergarten, in the neighbor, in the playground, in home. Sometimes it was vague, sometimes it was very clear. And because of that, William asked a lot of things that he did not understand to his father, earning a weird look from him but still answered his questions. William knew that his father holding quite a lot back when answered him, but he did not know why.
Then he accidentally saw a crime scene on the park. A murder one.
*
It is dark and empty. Glass shards and gravel crunch under my boot. I can feel the cold air burned down my throat when I suck it deep and the shiver blows the breath from my lips in a quick huff of steam.
I see him in a telephone booth. He is on the phone, talking loudly in this silent night. I have planned this carefully, but I don’t have much time. After he closes his phone, that’s when I lung at him.
I slash his throat first, deep, so he can’t scream. I lean back to evade the blood that sprayed toward me. I don’t want someone see me bloodied and calls the police before I can escape anyway. He takes me surprise by trying to punch me, it’s fortunate my reflex is good or he will knock me back. I kick him on his stomach, before gut him in a fast, quick, and strong. See his intestines hanging as he falls. It is messy, I know, but it’s worth. I’m grinning as I watch the life in his eyes dimming. I throw the knife through his head to finishing my work.
…this is my design…
*
He woke up at night, screaming and clawing and crying. His father was hugging him to calm him, but the nightmare made him so scared. His father told him a story, sang him a lullaby, his voice was soft and peaceful and loving, and William found himself lulled into the slumber.
But the nightmares were still coming, and William did not know what he should do to get rid of them.
He was five when he first stranded in this strange, white-blue dream.
He was running and running and running from the nightmare. He wanted to wake up, but he could not. His body could not move as he watching the first murder he saw happened and happened over again. He could not do anything when the first murder morphed into the second one. Not like the first murder, the second murder he saw through a crime scene photo on the newspaper. It was not as clear as when he saw the crime scene personally, but it still frightened him. Then there was the victim of the third murder, haunting him with her gory bloodied self, screaming as she gunned down again and again. The third murder he saw, not by a crime scene or newspaper, but directly. He was four and walking home from the kindergarten when a woman running toward him with a man holding a gun chased her. The woman gunned down right in front of him, sprayed her lifeblood onto his little body. He could remember her eyes, wide and horror. He still could feel the blood running down on his skin.
The nightmare tormented him again and all over again.
And then, he stumbled in to the whiteness and blue.
It was beautiful, all around him. Snow outspread all over the land, but he was not cold. The sky was so blue and clear and looked so close with little and big clouds adorned it, but he was not hot. Frost glinted on the branches of trees. The place was calm and peaceful.
He was wandering around there. Sometimes playing with the snow, making snowman, making angel. He had once run for as long as he could, and he found something that made him gaped in amazement.
There was unbelievable tall, large, strange glass wall that looked like spread miles and miles on either side and towering up to the sky.
He pressed his hands to the wall, wondering why there was a glass wall in here. It’s like the wall was here as a barrier. He confused why there was a barrier, as the sight on the other side was very similar to his side. Just snow over the land, and clear blue sky.
But he put aside his curiosity. This was the first time he had a good dream after so long, and he did not want to waste it.
When he woke up the next day, he was sad that the dream would not come again.
But, he was wrong.
Three days later he was there, inside the white-blue dream, playing happily with the snow.
And he was always been there every three days.
He found a marker one day, a black marker, almost buried in the snow. And he cheered at his finding. He used the marker to draw the glass wall, making animal, making mountain, making whatever a kindergarten kid could draw. And then he learned that the ink in the marker would never run out, even if you use it very often.
Three days later, on another visit to this dream, he pouted when he saw the pictures he drew vanished, leaving only a very clean glass wall. Apparently, every time he came here, the pictures he had drawn in the previous visit always disappear.
When he tired of playing or drawing, he always experimented with all the weirdness here. Through this, he learned that if he forced himself to sleep in here, he would go back to his previous dream before coming to here. He had even once punched the wall (because there were no rocks in there) until it break as he curious about the other side, only to feel unbearable pain and saw his hand cut off while the glass – magically – sealed itself back to normal, and he woke up with his hand paralysis for more than a week and had to go to the doctor.
He was never again curious about what was on the other side since then.
He was playing, experimenting, or drawing, whenever the strange dream came up. It was so fun. Well, for a long moment. But after months he played alone, he getting lonely.
He never had friend, in his school or in the neighborhood. Sometimes there were kids approached him, but they did not feel like a friend to him. A temporary playmate sure, but never a friend. The kids always looked afraid at him after the first time they played, William never knew why. And let’s do not forget about bullies. William was a brilliant kid, the teachers always praised him for his intelligence, and it made some kids feel envious. Most easy, if they only ignored him, but the worst was if they chose to bully him.
Alone in the real world, and alone in the dream. Added some nightmares he had since he was three, and you would have a suicidal kid.
But, no, he was not a suicidal, fortunately. Moreover, he did not want to leave his father alone anytime, he could not do that to him.
He did not mind being alone. But still, it was nice to have someone beside his father. Someone that could and wanted to be his friend.
And a year later, he found a broken blond teenager lying unconscious on the other side of the glass wall in his white-blue dream.