A New Phase - Chapter 1
#1 of A New Phase
A dream is just a dream... Or is it?
A New Phase
Chapter 1
Jack did decently in Corporate America, though not as well as many others. He had a job working customer service at a call center that he didn't utterly hate; he had an apartment and was saving up for a house. He had a queen size bed all to himself right now, but it was ready in case he got a wife. All in all, he really wasn't bad off. Heck, he even was free from illness and such as a general rule. Needless to say, this is why he was beyond the "growing" point of "growing concerned" over his recent issues and well into the "concerned" part.
He had been sleeping badly. Well, not precisely sleeping badly. He had been having odd dreams that woke him up, for lack of a better description. It was costing him sleep nightly. He couldn't call them BAD dreams, either, just odd.
The problem started slowly, just hazy visions at first, nothing really to wake him up. They caused interesting memories of themselves, but otherwise were fine. Then the dreams began to grow more vivid and more realistic. They were never really enough to wake him fully, just to make him toss and turn in fitfulness and thereby lose sleep.
His days at work were getting to feel much longer. His days in general weren't doing much better. The interruptions in his sleep had been costing him, making him more exhausted by the day. He felt as if he was seeing shadows of things on occasion. People - or something - moving out of the corner of his eye. But when he snapped up and looked, nothing there at all.
He had tried treating it with over the counter sleep aids, herbal remedies, and just about everything else he could do for himself, but to no avail. He went to bed just a bit earlier; 9 pm this eve, hoping to get some extra shuteye. But things went as always from recent times.
He heard a somewhat-female voice saying goodnight, though apparently not to him. After all, he was already asleep! Then weight on the bed, followed by a body lying beside him. A bit of a tug on the covers, and he woke up with a start. He felt the bed beside himself just briefly. Nothing there. The covers felt the same as when he had gone to bed. It was that damn dream again.
He sighed and relaxed again, working to get back to sleep. It was always similar. Voices in his apartment, people lying on his bed while he was asleep. Well, perhaps you could say they were people. Seemed to have a bit more body hair, or wore a fur coat. Hard to tell in a dream, though.
Halfway back to sleep, he felt something brush against his cheek, startling him awake again. This time he sat up and looked around, but still found nothing. With a sigh, he laid back down to sleep. He was vaguely aware of voices as he was drifting off... ~He reacted? How odd. Well, that does happen sometimes. Don't worry about it too much. Rest well.~
The next day went much like the previous few weeks. Feeling half-awake, half-dazed. He woke with a start when something brushed past his back suddenly, but of course there was nothing there. He would have to consider getting some professional help for this. He glanced sharply at a shadow moving in the corner of his vision... nothing. Yes, he would make an appointment tomorrow.
The homeward drive was so bad that it almost made him consider calling for a ride. He was seeing things that weren't there... hallucinations from tiredness? But he still felt the need to not hit them with his vehicle, which put him into some near scrapes with others. He managed to get home safely, but exhausted.
Feeling far too tired to want to make dinner, he decided that he would end up calling in to work tomorrow. No, wait... today was Friday... No work tomorrow. Bah. Sleep. Sleep was good. He stripped off his clothes with a bit of difficulty, and did something that he had not done in ages: Fell asleep at 7 pm.
Had he been more aware of things, and less zonked out, he would have found it interesting that though he went to bed sooner, the disturbance didn't start until around the same time as usual: around 10 pm. The voices again, though he could not make them out fully, other than that they didn't seem fully English in dialect, yet he could understand them well enough. Then the weight on his bed, and an obviously fur-covered hand stroked his forehead. Whatever it was in the dream got under covers with him and snuggled up against his side. Yes, definitely covered in fur.
He awoke with a start, immediately trying to think of a proper string of half-muttered half-obscenities in his drowsed state. He suddenly froze, fully awake, and very much aware of the warm, furred body pressed against his side, an arm draped across his. He leapt out of bed in a panic, stumbling over the blankets that were dragged with him and taking a spill. Hand on the windowsill, he hefted himself up and looked over at the bed. From the dim glow through the blinds, he saw something sitting up in his bed, two eyes glowing with reflected light. They eyes blinked out a few times as they looked at him, but the creature made no move.
Shielding himself somewhat with the blankets that he dragged off the bed, he backed away a little. "Who are you? What are you? What are you doing in my bed dammit?!" he demanded in a hissed voice.
This caught the creature's attention apparently, as it responded quite plainly and distinctly in a vaguely female-seeming voice: "HOLY SHIT!!" In a flash it was off his bed, running on four legs out his bedroom door, shouting something that he couldn't completely make out. His blood chilled as it was answered by at least two other voices, obviously from within his apartment.
He scrambled back over his bed, trying to find both a bathrobe and his aluminum flashlight. The latter would be good for both illuminating the situation as well as whacking things if need be. He managed to drag the robe over his shoulders at least as he heard voices approaching the bedroom door.
"Calm down, this doesn't help matters," murmured one.
"Okay, are you CERTAIN he saw you and not something else?" asked another.
He aimed the light towards the door and hit the switch to illuminate a perfectly framed trio in the doorway. A trio of... Well... Animal people. Something that looked vaguely canine, maybe a coyote or something, was on one side of a red fox, and a wildcat-spotted feline was on the other side. They were definitely animals, right down to the shape of their legs and their complete lack of clothing, though the cat had a pouch tied to its waist.
"What the hell is going on?!" he demanded, prompting all three of them to look up at him in sudden surprise, then look BEHIND themselves questingly, as if somebody else was standing there. "You... you... fox thing... and cat! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!" he demanded again, close to hysteria.
"Oh... crap," muttered the feline eloquently. "Um, I'll go get help." With a spin, the cat dropped out of sight past the doorway.
He was about to shout again when the fox suddenly wailed, "This is all my fault, isn't it, Farren? I screwed something up, didn't I?!" She burst into what seemed like tears, dropping down to her haunches, whimpering and whining quite avidly.
The canine-like creature to her right... Well, he had decided the fox was a 'her' based on the "voice" and the lack of apparent male genetalia, though there were no breasts either... glanced at him briefly, then promptly went down to its own haunches beside her. "No, no, come on, snap out of it. Selkine, listen to me, there is no way you could have done this. There's no way this could be your fault. Can't you see? He's as frightened and confused as you are. Come on, drag yourself together!" He decided that this creature was potentially female also.
"DAMNIT, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" he shouted, for he was indeed quite along the line of panic. "Somebody just give me some goddamn answers!" His voice was edging on hysteria.
"Calm down," the canine said to him. "You don't want to wake up your neighbors." She stood up and took a step towards him, holding out a hand. "Just please, calm down, this panic won't do anybody any good."
"STAY AWAY!!" he screamed, and threw the flashlight straight at her head. This was a move he had practiced quite a lot in fact. The impact power of four D-cell batteries in the aluminum frame was pretty substantial, and generally enough to keep any attacker at bay.
However, in this case, things weren't quite what the flashlight expected. No canine skull was there for it to crack against, just straight through the creature as if she weren't there at all. Sadly, the doorframe was not as lucky and took quite a dent from the impact. The flashlight fell to the floor, rolling slightly on the carpet, leaving the canine backlit and Jack staring in shock. "You're not real..." he muttered, then suddenly bolted straight towards the canine, fist swinging hard at what he expected to be open air.
That point brought his second surprise. Her paw came up suddenly, palm open and fingers splayed, and his fist was caught and held in a vice-like grip. Not painfully tight, but not giving. He flailed with his other hand, and this wrist was also caught, then he was spun around and put into a lock hold.
"Really, you do need to calm down," murmured the canine in his ear, her body pressed close to his back as she rearranged her grip.
The voice of the cat returned, "I'm back! Holy... What the hell happened? Never mind. I've got help, but the police are also here. This could get messy." He decided that the cat was also female, though the voice was much more husky. Either that, or they all just sounded female.
"Don't worry too much," said a new voice. "I'll take care of things as best as I can. Use him to open his bedroom window. Quickly now." Huh... Yes, this voice was definitely male.
He felt himself being hustled by the canine, though not cruelly, to his bedroom window. The cat came along, and grabbed one of his hands from one side, while the canine grabbed the other, and placed them on the window. The next thing that helped confuse him was the fact he could no longer see his own hands, or arms, or anything else of himself for that matter.
"Lift, open the window!" hissed the cat. Her fingers curled around his and hooked them under the window frame, pulling up on it with his fingertips. They slipped at first. "Come on, cooperate, or there'll be more trouble, and not from us," she exclaimed, exasperated. He regained his grip and tugged the window up with their guidance. Outside he could see several police cars in the parking lot of the complex, lights flashing. Then he heard a loud banging at the door.
"Push the screen out," commanded the newest voice. "I have a glamour ready."
The cat and canine moved his hands again, and he cooperated, placing his palms against the edges of the screen frame and pushing until it cracked and popped out. The noise immediately attracted the attention of several of the officers outside, and flashlights were quickly directed his way. Then he was shoved aside from behind, and a dark shape that he could really only half-see leaped out the window onto the rocks just outside, and took off to the right, away from the police, who shouted and promptly gave chase.
"Back over here," said the new voice, whose owner he had not yet seen. "Near the light!" He was aware of the heavy boots of police officers outside by the window as he was dragged back by the cat and canine. "I'm very sorry to have to do this..." said the voice, close to his ear. Then something hit him hard across the back of the head, and he nearly blacked out, being lowered to settle on the ground carefully by the two holding him just before lights came in the window, quickly followed by officers with drawn guns.
He moaned, dizzy as all get go, trying to get back to his feet and unable to see clearly. "Over here!" one of the officers shouted, moving to his side while two more went past into the rest of the apartment.
He, however, was just upset about the pain in his head. His vision was starting to clear up somewhat at least. He felt a warm hand suddenly cupping the back of his head where he had been conked, and the pain began to fade as a voice whispered in his ear, "Now, pay attention. They cannot see us. They cannot touch us. At all. If you speak of us, you will be dragged off as insane. You need to tell them that somebody was in your house. You threw the flashlight at them and missed, then they grabbed it and whacked you before going out the window."
He blinked a few times... No pain anymore, but less sense in his mind than he would like. He wanted to scream and cry, but he felt strangely calm. He gave a glazed look at the officer beside him and his eyes widened for a moment as the spotted cat crouched down there too, halfway inside the officer. "Don't worry," she murmured, "You can do this."
"Are you alright? Are you the resident here?" asked the officer. He nodded numbly and mumbled an affirmative, then something about somebody in his house. He groaned and winced, touching the back of the paw that was against his head as the pain returned for a split second.
"Stay still," the officer insisted. "It looks like you got hit on the back of the head." The officer looked up at one of the other officers outside the window, "Call in a 907N." The officer then returned his attention to him. "Just lay down, we're getting help."
He lay down on his side, now really more confused than anything. His mind was fuddled from a lack of sleep as well as the recent events, so everything was quite a blur. He vaguely heard officers discussing the situation, snippets of conversation and radio calls. Apparently whoever had run had not been caught. They had let other officers in the front door as well. Soon paramedics were there and checking him out, then putting him on a gurney.
As he was being wheeled out, he heard his neighbor talking. "Yeah, I know he hasn't been sleeping well. But I heard him shouting, and then a loud thump against the building. That's why I called you guys. Then some more shouting. Crap, is he gonna be okay?" He was shortly out of range of that conversation.
He tried to bring some sense to his fuddled synapses as he saw the back end of an ambulance at the top of his somewhat blurred vision. However a furry face suddenly made its way into his line of sight. Gray, canine... a wolf. "Rest now," the wolf murmured to him. He recognized the voice as the unidentified one giving orders in the apartment.
Jack opened his mouth to object and complain, but the wolf pressed his muzzle against Jack's lips and blew softly. Jack felt a lightheadedness creep over him before he could utter a thing, and felt himself beginning to drift to sleep as he was loaded into the ambulance. His head lolled to the right, and the last thing he saw was a paramedic sitting on the bench, and the faces of the cat and the fox looking at him. The ambulance began to move, and the faces didn't, left behind as if they were standing on the ground beneath it. But that was all he remembered before he fell asleep.
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