Free Protagonist Bound by Geanna Culbertson

becoming progressively more lucid. As a consequence, they were really starting to bother me.
    It used to be that I could just push them all away at sunrise. However, as they’d grown clearer, more eventful, and more consistent, it was like their images had begun to loom over me like ghost memories.
    My friends could tell I was being affected, but they knew well enough to leave the matter alone since, as mentioned, I wasn’t too keen on sharing. As a result, I was left to my own devices for sorting out these feelings of unease and trepidation.
    When morning classes finally ended and lunch came round, I found myself uncharacteristically lacking in hunger. So, instead of joining Blue and SJ in the banquet hall, I spent the hour wandering the school hallways, reflecting privately on the matter of my dreams.
    Most other sections of Lady Agnue’s were deserted during lunchtime. That is, aside from the traditionally armored guards who constantly patrolled its red-carpeted corridors. Every nine minutes on the dot, one would predictably pass whatever area of the school I happened to be strolling through and raise a metal-covered arm to his helmet to salute me as I went by.
    It was pretty much as close as a girl could get to being left alone around here, so I ignored their presence and allowed myself to get fully lost in my thoughts. Specifically, the unpleasant ones that I so often tried to evade but could never seem to utterly escape.
    I shook my head and groaned at the frustration.
    For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why my dreams were so messed up. I mean, what kind of person even had reoccurring characters in their dreams anyways?
    Ms. Natalie Poole had been a regular visitor to my sleeping consciousness for some time. She’d even aged over the years as my dreams about her had progressed. More disconcerting still, she had begun to appear in my dreams more frequently as I got older. While I used to average one dream about her per month, in the last year they’d begun coming on a weekly basis.
    Natalie aside, my weird, indiscernible dreams taking place in Book were eating away at my peace of mind. These shouldn’t have bothered me as much—being so fuzzy and all—but this notion was offering less and less solace in recent months because they, too, were beginning to get clearer.
    I was starting to make out faces and conversations more easily as if I was witnessing them firsthand. The sharper these visions became, the more I felt like I was suffocating from an irrational form of claustrophobia each time I woke from them. Which was just exhausting.
    To make things worse, these dreams were a walk in the clouds in comparison to the more unsavory nightmares I had of Book—the ones Blue had been referring to earlier this morning. Those were about death.
    Such ominous dreams had always been way blurrier, so it was difficult to make out many details. But let’s just say that the main event of what was unfolding within them came across very clearly and very permanently.
    Beyond that, even in recollection I didn’t want to get into it.
    Believe me, I’m doing you a favor.
    The victims I envisioned in these nightmares were different each time; despite the general haziness within my subconscious, I could ascertain that. Strangely, though, these nightmares (like my dreams of that odd, other world) also had reoccurring characters. Two if we’re being specific.
    The first was a girl. She was much harder to make out than Natalie Poole. But from what I could gather, she had tan skin, dark hair, and a laugh akin to a serpent’s giggle.
    If you’re trying to imagine what that sounds like, by the way, think tinkling bells mixed with the sadistic hissing sound a rattlesnake might make just before lunging for your throat.
    The second member of this chronic duo I kept dreaming about was a boy. Judging by the sound of his voice, I garnered that he was in his early twenties. Alas, past that I was unable to make out a more detailed