Free Phantasos by Robert Barnard

talk about it.”
    “Come on. You’ll feel better.”
    Lauren rolled her eyes. “I had the dream again. The worst it’s ever been.”
    Benji took a deep breath, exhaled sharply. The dream. The dream . She needn’t have to say more—though he hoped she would, she always felt better after venting—and he knew exactly what the dream was about. If the conversation had stopped there, the entire matter would have went unspoken. Benji would have known exactly why Lauren was so distraught.
    “What happened differently in this one?” Benji asked, not sure that he wanted to know the answer.
    “It’s Alley’s…you know…and we’re all standing around in this great big church. I mean, the building is three times as tall as it is wide. The arches seem to go on forever, reaching for the sky. It’s hard to see through the stained glass, but it is dark out. It’s about to rain, if it hasn’t already. I can’t tell. Anyways, we’re all there, and we’re walking up to him one by one. And my parents are a wreck, your parents are a wreck, everyone—they’re just in absolute agony.
    “And it’s my turn to walk up, and I look over into the…you know…and he’s lying there, so still.”
    Lauren stopped, rubbed her eyes with her palms. Her thinly applied eyeliner started to smear.
    “Only this time, something isn’t right, it isn’t the same, and I can tell. I can just tell. And I reach down to feel him, or to hug him, just one more time and he springs up. He springs up, turns his head to me, and opens his eyes. Big, red, fiery eyes. And he screams—he screams in this inhuman voice—he screams: ‘This is all your fault. This is all your fault and you know it, you worthless bitch.’”
    Benji froze where he stood. Shivered. “Then what happened?”
    Lauren choked for a second, then said, “Then? Then this tall, gnarly goon is standing above me, saying ‘Wakey, wakey,’ with his stupid smile.”
    Benji nodded, then went back to tossing things into the garbage. He didn’t want to let on, but just the mere mention of Lauren’s dream had upset him, too.
    “Well? What do you think?” she said.
    Benji raised his eyebrows high, tossed an empty two-liter of Coke into the nearly filled trashcan and said, “I think it means we shouldn’t watch so many Nightmare on Elm Street marathons at The Marquee.”
    “You’re right,” Lauren said. “You’re right. It’s just that—anytime we’re on spring break, or summer break, or any type of vacation where I’m home and my parents aren’t, I feel so much responsibility to look after him. I constantly fear that I will fail him. That I’ll forget one of his meds at lunch, or that he’ll fall down the stairs while I’m watching TV or tanning in the yard.”
    “He’s not…” Benji paused. “He’s not a paper doll,” Benji said.
    “He might as well be.”
    “You worry too much. He’s a tough kid. You’re stressing yourself out needlessly.”
    “Maybe,” Lauren said. “But it doesn’t necessarily help when I catch you speeding down Shady Reach at one hundred miles an hour, and neither of you are wearing a helmet.”
    “That was a one time occurrence,” Benji said, “and I promised we’d wear them in the future.” By now the kitchen was practically spotless. He started taking down some deflated balloons. “Besides, haven’t I repented?
    Lauren smiled. “How late were you two up playing that infernal game?”
    “At least midnight. Maybe later. We got pretty far, too, just to find out that there isn’t a save feature.”
    “So you lost all your progress?”
    “Yeah, pretty much. Alley found this clever trick in one of his magazines, though…early on in the game, if you get a flute, you can sort of fly back to where you were…” He could tell by Lauren’s face that she was losing interest.
    “Fly? On a flute?”
    “It’s kind of convoluted, but it works. You’d think for forty-five-freakin’ dollars, there’d be a save feature built