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The worst part about dream duty was the absolute ban on falling asleep, taking naps, blinking that one second too many that would compromise complete devotion to one's office. And adding to the mockery was definitely the dream production, which in the span of 13 years showed no signs of restructuring.
When on duty, Fear used to send a little prayer to whomever was in charge of the abominations he was supposed to witness, but every time he hesitantly looked up when he opened his eyes again, his hopes collapsed along with the quality of his dreams and his night. It was absurd to assume that the same director from Riley's birth was in charge, yet immersed in the vision of a herd of unicorns proudly flagging the grass of endless fields with their trot, reality took on somewhat bizarre overtones. Of course, from an objective point of view, the script was more realistic - it was no longer about the dancing unicorns favored by 6-year-old Riley and up, however, the lack of inventiveness would always be a criticism that Fear would advance and that made those nights endless.
So he was struggling to keep his eyelids open, in a precarious balance that forced him to keep himself awake so as not to land on the controls, clutching a cup of boiling coffee questioning whether taking a sip or spilling its contents on himself for more immediate effect, when a strange buzzing sound caught his attention; of course, when it comes to Fear, this can only be described with a leap in the air, a nearly shattered cup, and the back of the chair bravely used as a shield. Mustering all the willpower to discern what the origin of the noise was, his heart clenched tighter in his chest than in the case of actual danger.
"Oh, Anxiety, it's just you." Ignored by his colleague, leaving his mug by the controls Fear jumped down from his hiding place more worried than intrigued, approaching that massage chair that from the vibrations could be confused as an earthquake, on which Anxiety laid with her gaze lost in the void dressing an extremely pained grimace.
"Anxiety? Anxiety, are you all right?" She was completely unresponsive to any call, and Fear had to resolve to wave her hands in front of her eyes: they were definitely wide-eyed, but completely lost. Deaths of emotions had never yet been attested, but paranoia immediately arose; as a result, the caress that should have led to a gentle awakening turned into a well-aimed slap that catapulted the lost soul inside Anxiety and Anxiety onto the cold floor.
Fear jumped on her in full regret, mumbling an apology and helping get up on her feet; not that she was exactly aware of the events that surrounded her - her colleague's words slipped over her not so much out of spite but because she was still unable to comprehend them, and his presence was not acknowledged until, turning to the right, turning to the left and then focusing on the visage in front of her, the worries that had held her hostage faded to make way for others more present.
"Oh gosh, did I distract you? I swear I didn't mean to! I saw you so immersed in your work that I didn't even mean to bother you with a hi, I must have just let myself go on the chair..."
The two were regurgitating apology after apology so much that they could not even hear each other's words under the spell of their own guilt, but fortunately this vicious cycle was interrupted by Fear, who managed to catch her colleague's attention by interrupting his own stream of consciousness.
"I should have noticed your presence, don't worry... Wait. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be sleeping with the others?"
Anxiety's worries shifted abruptly from making up with him to doubts that had been firmly baring her eyelids all night.
"Me? I... I get little sleep of my own, no can do... with this head working, and working, and working, and working working working, huh?"
Anxiety had laughed it off, but the laughter she exhaled sounded almost like a sob. Fear's chuckle was immediately interrupted.
"I already have to worry about every eventuality, to protect Riley, right? So I can't relax much... especially since we read that article-" and slowly every part of her body began to shake, her foot tapping, her pupils looking around circumspectly, her teeth grinding against her fingernails, "that's right, the one where that sweet lady due to a gas leak has..." she swiped her thumb in front of her neck, even naming *death* was dangerous, "...and after all, how would we know? The five senses shut down during sleep, it only takes a few moments for a pipe to break, and we wouldn't even hear the hissing," and she plugged her ears, "or the smell," and brought her hands to her mouth, "or the heat of the eventual spark that will destroy the house, Mom and Dad, and our poor Riley," and she squeezed herself into a hug, "and finally without even knowing it we'll be dead! Dead! Dead!"
Somehow Anxiety had climbed over Fear holding that bowtie he held so dear, gasping within an inch of his nose; so the latter so calmly and so gracefully lifted that breathless heap and rested it beside him with a bonus pat on the shoulder and caress on the hair, which sadly had zero effect on her altered heart and respiratory rate.
"Well, Anxiety, if Riley ran into any risk at all..." Fear interjected, swelling with pride, "*I would know.*"
Anxiety woke up from her state of chaotic coldness and all her energy was dissipated in a resounding, "Oh?" When she turned around, her eyes grew wide in the shadow of a tower of papers that scraped the ceiling, meticulously sorted by degree of importance and alphabetical order.
"Is that what I think it is?" Anxiety stuttered with a tugged smile, scanning around in front of the gigantic work.
"Well," Fear began, feigning humility, "it's simply the documented collection of all the risks and dangers Riley has encountered and may encounter--only of today." Although he would have liked to maintain his tough-guy image, his nonchalance was betrayed by his clumsiness, that by leaning against his tower rendered his mania almost null and void, and by the annoyed expression he assumed after instead of receiving his colleague's admiration he got a suspicious look in return for his labors.
"I bet you haven't written *everything*," Anxiety commented meanly, crossing her arms, almost challenging him for the title of Riley's true protector.
"What!" exclaimed Fear, reflecting the same closed attitude, "take back what you said."
Anxiety looked down at the column of documents from top to bottom, gesturing nervously; "It is simply impossible, with all you have to do on the day to protect Riley, that the list is exhaustive! It is a presumption that only puts us in grave danger!"
As much as Anxiety's concerns were speaking rather than her own person, Fear's ego wound was nonetheless nicked. "Test me," he enunciated imperatively, putting on his trusted glasses.
A mocking smile spread on his colleague's face, which immediately disappeared to make way for the challenge. "So the stove is off?"
Fear licked his thumb, letting it slide over the stack of papers until, arresting expertly, he had extracted one that lulled gently in Anxiety's hands. "I have personally attested that Mom has turned off the stove," he repeated from memory without taking his eyes off hers.
Ansia frowned, stepping closer. "What about the gas pipes?"
"The structural plan of the house is safe and certified, we eavesdropped it from a conversation between Mom and Dad," he spat, returning the tone and leaving the paper on her head.
Without even inspecting the document, "And yet are the doors closed?"
"Doors and windows, double-locked."
"In case of fire?"
"The alarm is on and working."
"What about floods?"
"We taught Riley to swim just for this."
"What if an assassin targets us?"
"Hockey stick ready beside the bed."
"We can never beat him alone!"
"Mom and Dad are always there."
"What if they can't hear us?"
"The walls are thin."
"They won't be able to save us if Riley drifts away gently in her sleep!"
"We haven't received any termination letters yet, so at least we're safe for now."
"It could be worse than death! Riley could always wake up late..."
"Yet we set the alarm clock for 6, as always."
"A.m. or p.m.?"
"Of course, a.m.-"
Until that moment, the challenge had been a playful method of inflating Fear's ego, so seldom stroked, and passively stopping the constant stream of worries that overcame Anxiety with excellent reassurances. Overwhelmed by all those papers thrown at her, the latter had to disentangle herself, fueled by reasonable doubt, in the foliage of that forest, so that when she made her way our her smirk collapsed in front of her colleague's worrying and abrupt silence.
No one would had ever stared at a number with as much hatred as then Fear judged that 6, printed in block letters with a pride that made the lack of any other time indication infinitely more ironic.
The hint of the slightest concern in Fear's expression was enough for that well-loved pile of documents to be at the center of an explosion, in a chaotic whirlwind that followed Anxiety's turbulent and frantic steps, who with her hands in her hair already lamented, "Oh, no, no, no! I knew something wasn't right, I could feel it! And... and now Riley will wake up late, especially since she was exhausted after hockey practice, miss some very important classes, not to mention gossip or essential chats with friends--and that's it! Goodbye to our academic and social future, and I can already see her under a bridge begging for money before tragically dying from some unknown disease caught by the rats we will have been forced to eat, and our carcass will serve as a feast for raccoons! It's over for us!"
Fear had abandoned all mask of confidence and readiness, for the same plans had arisen in his head as well. Of course, that could have been the only outcome! He had already gnawed his fingernails down to the last phalanges and had even reached self-harm, but by the fifth blow given to his head some mechanism was set in motion and an idea came to him.
"Don't panic, there's still time..." he blurted out suddenly, drawing Anxiety's attention as he approached the command console so suspiciously, "we'll just recall the memory of when we set the alarm and make sure everything's okay! Brilliant, isn't it?"
Saying such, full of himself he clicked an innocent little button. Nothing. Maybe the tubes were damaged, or more simply the memories were placed far away?
Had they never thought so, a river of orbs flooded the HQ, slamming the two of them for good with its unexpected force. Peace and silence reigned, under that dim light the memories granted; that is, until two heads reappeared with their protests, one after the other.
"They look all the same!" began Anxiety, tossing copy after copy here and there, "how do we distinguish yesterday's memory?"
Fear shut up for a second, squeezing his brains for what was useful. "Right. Look... look for memories that have 10:43 p.m. as the time. At that time Riley set it." His memory was formidable.
"And with that you can't remember whether it was 6 a.m. or 6 p.m.?" Anxiety commented, in exasperation after yet another wrong find; Fear had *infallible* reasons as to why he remembered the time - first of all it was two minutes before a quarter to, then it was earlier than when Riley usually went to bed - not that anyone cared, and he had to stay focused on the research, not on his ego.
But by now he was the only one really focused. Anxiety had redirected her attention for a while now.
Thus, Fear found the memory he was analyzing straight on his nose, and another directed at his shins, one grazed his ear, and a hundred passed through him, summoned by the tube to the Archive. Handling an avalanche of bricks on himself, Fear also had to take in his colleague's speech, guilty of his pain, with a finger on the button.
"...You know, not to discredit your idea, which would have worked if we had all the time in the world, but, lo and behold...we don't have the time. It's hard to tell from here, but it might as well be 7 o'clock, 8 o'clock... oh God, think if Mom and Dad woke up before us! No, unacceptable, we cannot allow that, that would be the end. It is necessary that..." Anxiety's hands twisted in on themselves, her eyes fleeing intently to the command console, "...we must act, immediately."
Fear could not even recover from the blows, that he had to exhale his last breath as he saw his colleague's little fingers twirling indecisively on the console. "Stop, Anxiety, let's not panic," he rushed, throwing himself at her, who was drawn to those little colored buttons like a magnet, "we can't wake up Riley, absolutely not."
The frantic shakes that Fear imparted to her friend to bring her reason back had more the effect of cradling her worries. "It's a matter of very few seconds, a check and go, yeah?"
Fear was immovable. "Riley cannot be awakened except during an emergency."
Anxiety took her chances. "And is this not an emergency? It's the most serious emergency of all! Compared to imminent danger, here our little girl is risking a miserable life. Were it, I don'tknow, any risk at least her pain would end in an instant -- but no! Her despair will be prolonged for years, and years, and years again and again-"
"Okay, that's enough, I know the rest," Fear interrupted her, both because her words were beginning to make too much sense and because she had again begun to climb on him and threaten his bow tie. "And even if we wanted to, which is far from the truth," that reassurance sounded like the sweet melody of a meltdown to Anxiety's ears, "we would have to interrupt the REM phase, which is not only highly dangerous, but we would also receive a letter of complaint from the dream director!"
"It wouldn't be the first time that's happened!" she continued with the most innocent of intentions, yet a certain malice on the part of both of them made Fear hint at a conditioned *you're a coward*, fueled perhaps by visions of the past that now mocked him for kicking their little girl out of bed in the face of danger...of a dream.
So he turned his back on her, and tried to defend himself as best he could. "...At least I was justified in doing so!"
"But even now we are," Anxiety attempted immediately, her tone a few octaves higher, strategically placing a hand on his shoulder; to her horror, not only was she rejected along with her proposal, but shrugging her off with a blatant gesture Fear pointed to the giant screen still broadcasting Riley's dreams: they had missed a good chunk of the plot, because now the little girl was on the beach spotting dolphins, as happy as ever. No further argument was needed for his thesis.
Anxiety immediately sighed. "Ugh," she grunted as she rolled her eyes, "don't you understand that reality lies *beyond* this!"
Her breathing filled the room.
With those big eyes of his, Fear first stared at the floor, unable to respond; he looked up to that pleasant dream, made a joke with Anxiety standing in front of the screen, in a state between utter despair and stern seriousness. And then something compelled him to take a step back and leave her in charge; not so much the reasoning heard over and over again (which was perfectly reasonable anyway), or the pity felt for that tormented little being, but a certain twinkle in her eyes and a certain warmth in her breath that reminded him all too much that she, too, was determined to protect Riley, whatever the cost, and that not being able to act meant torturing her with the cruelest machinations.
Amidst the gratitude and joy Anxiety could feel for that act of pure goodness, she could not help but betray even thr smallest amount of guilt. She knew, she could see that Fear was against it. But it had to be done. For Riley, right?
"I swear it will be a matter of seconds, not even a moment, I promise." Thus reassuring him, Anxiety turned her back and went down with the buttons.
That hue so calm that the HQ took on at night, where dreams themselves were a welcoming background noise amplifying the tranquility, took on a violent orange tint, whose pungent, aggressive tones printed a big grin on Anxiety, and made Fear swallow loudly.
On the screen, figures and colors began to warp, damaging any sense of self, blending in with their neighbors, and losing sharpness, so that the studied scene proposed by the dream director had morphed into an indefinite, busy mess of colored watercolor-like blobs, continuing to fade as Riley began to wake up, leaving an increasingly prevalent orange in the room.
"Riley's waking up!" celebrated Anxiety with a high-pitched shriek; "Riley's waking up..." realized Fear appalled, looking around with the fear of being blamed for such wrongdoing and at the same time with the hope of being miraculously rescued from that situation. He felt surrounded, trapped, blinded, betrayed and traitor.
A few seconds, she said. Why were those seconds lasting so long? Maybe... maybe she wasn't supposed to be awakened after all. Of course she wasn't supposed to be awakened! What had gone through his mind? Yet ... was panic not making him think straight, or had it given him miraculous lucidity?
"Anxiety?" She seemed hypnotized by the colors on the screens, attached to the console like a fountain of youth. "Anxiety, I'm not sure about this..." Her fingers floated over the keys, tangled around the levers, dancing frantically one after another. "Anxiety, please!" There was only her and the controls.
What had to be done had to be done.
The same thought went through Fear's head as well. But how to stop such a force of nature? Focused to the point of not hearing sound, or sensing contact, or seeing beyond her objectives? Of course, she had to be distracted.
So he grabbed the first thing that came his way and threw it at her in a panic translated to a manly howl.
His plan was extremely effective: the blow to the head with a blunt object was certainly unexpected, but what shut Anxiety down for good was the electric shock that, going up through her fingers with a lethal tickle, paralyzed her muscles, fried her brain, and messed up her hair. The whole machine had short-circuited: it emitted deafening hums, coupled with dips and surges of energy, which intermittently made that room a dark hut and a blinding orange hell. Why? A liquid had seeped through the cracks of that old thing. What liquid? Nothing but cold coffee, spilled completely on the control surface by a twist of fate after its cup had bounced on the head of her colleague.
And Anxiety fell as a dead body falls.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God..." Fear brought his hands to his mouth to shut a cry of horror, and rushed to the rescue of the inert body. It was the second time in one night that he had slapped her unconscious face, and it certainly was not pleasant to see loved ones between life and death. "Anxiety, please, if you are alive wake up!" were the last words spoken before she blinked and took her breath as if it were her first and last.
"Oh, thank goodness you're alive." Alive was a good exaggeration: she pulled herself up to her seat with difficulty; her hair had taken off in all directions, as if lightning bolts had sprung from it; her fingers were toast, and it was a miracle her clothes had not spontaneously caught fire; finally, her frown was totally defeated, shattered, and dumbfounded, for her thoughts were still fragmented and had difficulty getting back on track after a bang and a fry. Yet, considering the chaos of lights and stimuli that the HQ had become, in that state Anxiety managed to focus on one thing:
"Riley is awake."
Fear turned around, and indeed their girl had opened her eyes, and was staring at the ceiling. "Oh, nothing happened after all." This statement cost Fear a dirty look that burned the back of his head. "Might as well check the time," he admitted then, waddling toward the console; Anxiety rolled her eyes, but at least her plan was about to be realized, so not too bad.
Elegantly, he grasped the levers and pushed full force; except that this did not happen, for as soon as he made contact with the console an electric shock went up and out of his every pore, petrifying his muscles, until his precarious balance caused him to collapse like a statue.
When he awoke, Anxiety had jumped to her feet and was dealing with a wooden stick, trying with every drop of sweat and every ounce of effort to get the handles to move from a distance. "They're... stuck!" she grunted, just as her stick snapped under the pressure of an unstoppable force and an immovable object. "Riley is stuck! She can't move!"
Fear immediately perked up, and slowly as a realization settled in his hands traveled all over his body, going from his back, to stroking each other, to plugging his mouth and then to his head.
"Oh, oh no..." he whispered, recognizing in everything he observed the symptoms and effects of the damage they had caused, so much so that he couldn't believe it himself. Maybe it was a stupid coincidence! Who was he kidding?
"Fear? What's going on? What is happening to Riley?!" Panic had led Anxiety to shake his colleague frantically, which did nothing to help him shake off the terror that had settled in him.
"Riley..." he uttered, not finding the right way to put his thought into words "We ... induced a sleep paralysis."
The two exchanged a terrified glance. Without even realizing it, they both found themselves wandering aimlessly around the HQ, taken by purest despair; Fear picked up each one of those dusty manuals scattered here and there, flipping through them with a frenzy that would never allow him to understand a single word; Anxiety had resolved to throw every possession onto the console, in the vain hope that some gear would shift and start working again - so the command center was now covered with shattered ideas, old boxes, crumpled papers, manuals discarded by her colleague, kicks thrown by herself that led only to a sore foot and a second fainting.
"There's nothing here!" finally sentenced Fear, throwing away yet another useless manual, luckily hitting Anxiety and awakening her from her slumber. There was probably a dedicated section somewhere, yet then they had neither the time nor the skills to check dozens of books... If we're being honest, it was in the one he had just discarded, but he would never know that.
Anxiety gathered all her strength to get up from the floor and approach Fear. "Riley needs to calm down," she concluded, covering her eyes in regret; then Fear, in front of what seemed blatant hypocrisy, blurted out:
"It would be very helpful if you stopped interacting with the console!"
The orange hue, although the energy came intermittently, became more intense.
"Me?" Anxiety's voice was filled with innocence, pointing a finger at herself; "I'm not touching anything, I swear..."
Fear looked at her colleague, placed by his side, and looked at the command center, placed at a distance. Now that she mentioned it, had the console ever stopped glowing of that orange? But of course! Not only had it stopped working, but it had also gotten stuck in the critical state. How lucky!
They began circling the console like vultures around a carcass, their eyes intent on any button, cord, screw that might arrest that disaster.
"Found it!" Fear had crouched on the floor, glaring at a panel at the bottom of the command center. He snapped his fingers, got his glasses and put his very limited electrician's knowledge to work. "Quick, screwdriver."
In a thousandth of a second Anxiety had run the HQ down and placed the required object in her colleague's palm.
The commands were simple and firm. "Take these screws away," complemented by a "bring me a crowbar," followed by a "hold the panel for me."
"Anxiety, I said hold the panel for me."
No response.
He slightly brushed his colleague, freeing his hands - she was cold and stiff. She was strangely petrified, her nerves on edge and so pale that she could have been mistaken for Nostalgia.
Oh no.
He didn't even know what strength he had managed to release from the quivering sticks that were his legs, lifting him off the ground. Well, he soon would have returned to it: he didn't even need an electical impulse to be knocked out, just the act of looking up and witnessing a monstrous grin, on which were counted hundreds and hundreds of sharp rotting teeth, emerging from inhuman concoction of limbs and flesh like a shadow, salivating disgustingly on Riley's neck, which certainly tickled her.
Fear went limp and fell dead weight onto the console. Even if it had half his face sizzling, the impact had perhaps shifted some gear, for now the HQ were illuminated with contrasting hints of orange and purple.
Riley's pupils, unaware even of why she had awakened in the first place, narrowed to a few millimeters; adrenaline was released in waves, stinging her skin and stressing those muscles unable to contract, quickening her heartbeat and quickening her breath; yet though she clenched her fists, though she pushed the air out of her lungs, though the blood flowed red up her cheeks, she could not move a finger, scream at the top of her lungs, escape what seemed like death itself.
Anxiety jumped at him with a shrill scream; "No, Fear, please don't leave, not now!" Not even one of his colleague's frantic panic shakes could bring him back to this world, or the breath-taking hug following a horribly perverse movement by the monster on the screen.
On the floor, attempting to bring the soul back into that little body, between CPR, mouth-to-mouth breathing, slaps, kicks to the shins, and even pseudo-hypnosis, Anxiety saw in of the corner of her eye that still-open panel under the console.
It was their only hope.
Terrified, she crawled face down to her target to avoid ending up like her colleague; she didn't collapse, but her hopes and nervous system certainly did when she shyly looked up and found herself in front of a tangled mess of cables, with no name or origin, distinguished barely by color - which in that state only gave her a headache - and with no security system. The first thing to do in case of survival was to put on a lifesaver and kick whoever had done such a horrible job.
"I... I don't... I don't know what to do, I don't understand..." Anxiety murmured more to herself than to the poor fainted guy; of each cable, one could not distinguish the beginning, end and vicissitudes, it seemed as if each had will of its own and slithered in a hypnotic and incomprehensible motion, whipping what little and limited knowledge she had into a soup of tears and oblivion.
Anxiety did not even know what it was that she had to *seek*, let alone *do*. So what was left for her?
Riley felt like a distant witness to the frenzy that had taken hold of her brain and the incomprehensible obscurity that stood on her body. After all, what was she? A helpless observer, unable to react and flee in the face of danger.
Blinded by the shadows that tormented her, a boulder fell on her chest, making it almost impossible for her to breathe, her pulse furious but mute under that oppressive weight.
And it would end there. There was nothing to be done.
Either that monster would end her woes, or it would be a heart attack.
Yet...
Nevertheless, in the face of this devastated resignation, one sentence echoed from afar, imposing itself before that approaching death:
*I want to live.*
A tear escaped down her cheek.
"To Hell with it!" In no time, Anxiety found the ball of cables in her hands, each forcibly torn, launching sparks like fireworks and dripping pitifully.
The console went off. The entire HQ, till then plagued by purple and orange flashes, went dark.
So that whirlwind of terror, stress, and lethal adrenaline dissipated as quickly as it had appeared; and the very illusion that had tormented Riley turned out to be, lo and behold, an illusion - it dissolved into the shadows where it had always belonged, and of its passing there was never a trace. When she sought air, her lungs swelled voraciously, her chest once again able to rise and allow her organs to breathe.
Anxiety threw that explosive tangle of cables to the ground, more tried than relieved. At best, the job was only half done, having to reconnect the wires in the right position (a task she was completely incapable of), with the risk of Riley becoming a vegetable; at worst, the damage she caused was permanent and Riley was *already* a vegetable. She tried to follow a path in that multicolored maze, but her eyes crossed and she lost her way. Oh God, what had she done? She had damaged the most important element of perhaps their girl's entire brain. What if they could no longer make her feel emotions? No emotions, no memories, just an empty existence. She was too young to... what if it could have been fixed, but only enough to make her aware of her misery? Could she ever have been happy again? Follow her dreams? Finish school? Have a family? Become famous? Die satisfied with her life, rocking in a chair at the ripe old age of ninety-two watching her grandchildren playing tag through cornfields? It was all her fault, her fault alone, that she would be tied to a bed, fed through a hole in her stomach, abandoned by those who loved her and at the same time incapable of love, hovering between humanity and bestiality-
"Leave it to me."
Those words came to her like an arrow sent straight through her skull, piercing that swollen balloon of worry; it emptied with a slow, soothing hiss, and an awkward, wide grin settled on that eternally frowning face before the sweet vision of Fear, ascended from his faint like an angel, intent on distinguishing the two terminations of a cable to expertly shove it into the appropriate socket. That was *peace*.
"So ... this should reconnect over there... right, and with that, if we get it over here, we should rearrange... now there's only missing... there, movement."
Biting his tongue, one eye closed, his hand steady and precise, the last cable was set and in place.
After all those interminable futile efforts, causing even droplets of sweat to drip from her temples, it was completely unexpected when Riley felt her own fingertips rise up from the mattress; she raised herself up on her own elbows, her own skin almost glued to the sheet; leaping to the edge of the bed, her first sensation was an intense cold at the base of her neck, soaked and hit by a gust of spring wind. And only then she could voice her only thought, fixed on those shadows that were now all too familiar:
"What the fuck happened?!"
Those two poor emotions felt the same way, staring at the screen horrified in their own way - Fear wiping his forehead with a crumpled paper, Anxiety clutching her sweater almost tearing it for comfort - and looking like someone who had survived a bombing raid, counting all the burns, dirty clothes and shocked expressions.
Their nerves were on edge; it made sense that, hearing a metallic rustling, they jumped into each other's arms. Fortunately, they had been unlucky enough that day - they had simply got the material proof of their fiasco, and also the first and possibly only consequence: a shining, glittering, flaming purple and orange memory that retraced in every detail the trauma caused by those two idiots.
They held it between their fingers as if they might be poisoned by it, and looked away as if they might be turned to stone by it. "I say, let's get rid of it," Fear commented, impassively; Anxiety joined hands, mirroring his attitude, "I agree wholeheartedly."
Riley would not have much time to ponder on it anyway, because interrupting his train of thought was the very annoying little song he had set as her alarm clock.
If Fear jumped in place, and his sweaty hands slipped the memory causing it to roll free on the floor, Anxiety turned completely red. She avoided her colleague's disapproving gaze, hiding within herself. "Oh, um, I guess we did set the alarm clock," she murmured forcing Fear to roll his eyes; he couldn't be too mad at her - as long as they had survived, it wasn't trouble.
"Good morning team!" Joy exclaimed, bursting into the room with her naive positivity. It was fortunate that she had not been present during that disaster, and the two culprits shared this relief with a knowing look.
"Oh dear, what happened to you two? You look like you fought a dragon!"
Very funny. Oh, Joy, if only she had known.
"What's this?" No gasp was as noticeable as those of Fear and Anxiety, and no smile collapsed like Joy's as the freshly baked memory concluded its wanderings beside the latter's little foot.
It would have been a difficult conversation to have.
And yes, they received the letter of complaint from the dream director.