Sol was tired of the nightmares.
To the normal person, living on edge would be something similar to a life in debt, or a
To Sol, it meant something else entirely.
The nightmares had come every night for the past month.
It had initially started off as something that felt more like a fever dream, an impression of a partially remembered experience that lingered in the mind.
But as weeks passed, those impressions felt more lucid. Sol began to remember newer details; new experiences that added more to the depths of fear he would feel every night.
Soon enough, the full nightmare played out like a movie, now lucid enough to never be forgotten.
They happened every night, every time Sol would close his eyes to sleep.
He would find himself in that hellish world, with blood-red clouds and black skies.
It tormented him, but even now, as the young teenager lay tucked in.
Sol found himself at peace. Soon, he would close his eyes, and revisit his second home.
Shortly afterwards, sleep came like a soothing lullaby, guiding him to his nightmare like a hunter's trap luring prey to their death.
Sol closed his eyes, and opened them, gazing at the familiar terrain with newfound disinterest.
The skies rumbled.
Leaves billowed about as a violent cyclone swept through the barren land that looked devoid of life, stripping the trees naked and whistling a horrific harmony.
Sol stood at the centre of a cracked tarmac road, fissures decorating its surface. In the distance, a clock tower chimed, a faint monotonous tune.
Each time he'd dreamt of this barren scape, the faint smell of ozone still lingered in the air, the darkened clouds still painted the horizon pitch black, flashing with red lightning that lit up the sky in a nature-orchestrated light show.
With even more details blooming to the surface, each nightmare experience he had of this place so far felt more vivid than the last.
DONG!!!
In the distance, a clock tower chimed. Its hour and minute arm pointed towards the number twelve, but it never chimed twelve times, at least not in Sol's dreams. If anything, he was bound to wake up any instant before it even chimed halfway through its journey.
That was usually how it happened.
Five more chimes came, and Sol still stood there, the wind howling in his ears. Something was not right, he had never stayed for too long in this lucid dream of his.
The clock had chimed ten times now. Sol's heart beat fast like it wanted to explode out of his chest. He knew it was just a dream, but something about this one was unsettling. He began to long for the warm sheets of his covers, the fluffiness of his pillow. If his physical body was somewhere out there, what was it doing still sleeping?
Eleven…then twelve total chimes.
Everything went black.
Sol jerked up from his bed, gasping for air as if someone had been choking him to death. The room was chilly from the air conditioning, but beads of sweat cascaded down his face, his bare chest, and even soaked him in the crotch.
It was not like him to get this spooked. He reached for the bottle of water on his bedside drawers and took a huge gulp.
What was he spooked for? This was just a dream wasn't it?
He remembered his cat, Stacy, her bed usually nestled under his. Judging from the vibrations coming from under the bed, he could tell she was awake.
He reached for her from above the bed, inserting his hand in the empty space between the bottom of his bed and the floor. As he would've expected, she licked and nipped at his fingers. He stroked her fur and heard her purr. Stacy had lived with them for years. She was the one thing that kept him from running insane in this crazy world.
She latched onto his arms with her tiny paws and he hoisted her nimble form up on his bed. Maybe one day, it would be a woman he would be laying with, but for now, his cat would do perfectly.
Of course, he only cuddled with his cat. Who didn't?
He checked the time on his phone. The screen flashed 1:00am. He knew he needed to get back to sleep. Today was going to be a big day for him. He was finally going to the college of his dreams. All those years of international exams and school work finally paid off.
Judging from how rattled Sol was when he woke up, he never expected sleep to come so swiftly. With his ginger cat in his arms, a strange calm settled over him as his eyes fluttered close.
Even as he dozed off, he could still hear that clock chiming, somewhere in the back of his head.
——
"Sol, wake up!"
He felt an arm violently tapping him on the shoulders.
"Get up. You'll be late!"
Sol's mom, Sally, stared at him from across the bed with a slightly worried expression. His looks were basically a duplicate of hers. With their beach blonde curly hair and charming blue eyes, one might have mistook them for siblings.
"We have to check in early. You know the student rush will be crazy today."
"I'm up, I'm up." Sol said as he sat up on his bed, beckoning at her to stop shaking him like he was dying.
Sally was a single mother with an only child, Sol. After his dad passed away, his greedy uncles took everything and left his family with little to spare. His mom had managed to scrape a living out of it all. She worked three jobs, and he went to school.
You could say that Sol owed his academic prowess to Sally. Because of her, he worked twice as hard in school. He aced his papers, and enrolled for every exam he could think of, and finally got a scholarship to study at an elite school in Exlor City, the country's capital.
Sally was elated, even more than Sol was about his own cholasship. She watched him like a proud mother as he gobbled the big hearty breakfast she made. Sol squirmed under her cheeky gaze.
"Mom, you've been looking right at me for the past ten minutes." Sol said, distracting Sally from her staring.
"Oh, sorry. I'm just so proud of you, Sol. You'll do well in Triad college. I'm sure of it. But still…"
Sol rolled his eyes. She was about to bore him with the same lectures she always gave him.
"Stay in school. Don't waste your time with parties and bad friends, girls especially, and most importantly…"
"Don't drop out.", Sol completed her sentence for her.
"You've told me this a thousand times mom."
"I just want you to be safe, happy, and most importantly, focused. Baby, you can tell me if there's anything you need. I want this to work out for you." She stated, wrapping his hand in hers.
Max suddenly thought of those dreams he'd been having, wondering if he should tell Sally. . Last night's experience was something he didn't want to repeat.
He decided against it, assuring her that all was fine, and watched as she bounced away happily, leaving he dining area to haul his bags all the way to the truck outside.
He had never seen his mother this filled with joy in a long time.
After his father had died, she had lost all forms of happiness. This was something of a rarity. He didn't want to ruin that for her.
Besides, she would probably just assume he was being paranoid, like she always did.
"You'll be fine", she had said over the past two weeks that Max had begun seeing things.
After much pressing, she took him to a doctor who ruled it out as some figment of his overactive imagination, which sounded almost too convenient for an explanation.
But then, he had gotten used to it, so it didn't bother him quite as much as it did when it started. Sol dismissed it as simply one of those things. He did have an active imagination. The doctor was probably right.
This was definitely not an ominous foreboding of a world-scale apocalyptic event.
'It's real-life, not a WebNovel.' Sol thought to himself as he continued his meal.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
"Your things are heavy, Sol. Finish up your food quickly so we can…"
Sally stopped dead in her tracks at the doorway, Sol's bags still scooped up in her arms.
"Mom?"
Sol noticed her trance-like state and looked past her, to what she was so transfixed on outside.
Only to realise that it wasn't just something, it was everything.