He was running. He didn't know why but he just kept running. And for some reason, he figured someone was chasing him and there was but a little gap between them.
"Geo, watch out!" a shrill voice from behind startled him. Just as he froze on his steps, the floor broke forth with fires from hell.
So hot that it scalded him and he was almost sure that he burned to death on the very spot. Whoever that was who tried to warn him from the accident, was a moment too late.
For the being whom he faced with at the moment was the God of Death himself. The sight of the ghastly figure and it's dreadful scythe was already enough to kill him just from terror and shock. There was nobody to interfere what Death intended to harvest from him.
"Geo, watch out!"
Once again, he heard the same shrill voice. He thought it was only an echo in his head but naturally, a slender woman from which the voice belonged to, stepped in between him and Death.
With a surprising ethereal surge, this third person sliced Death into thin air. Death was now but a glowing streak of wailing entity.
He thought when the woman captured Death, all dangers were at bay. But somehow, he thought wrongly. With little hesitation, the woman released the glow of Death's final form upon herself and she started to change.
The change itself was a great struggle for her. Though there was a remorse note in her screams, there seem to be no regrets. Somehow, the determination she held was more frightening than what had become of her.
As he lay almost probably lifeless, he thought, the subtle steps of her approach towards him was not of haste. Her calmness after what she had went through was unexplainable yet it gave him hope that he was after all still held life within his weak heart.
"Geo, I'm glad you're okay," she whispered as he faintly flickered his eyes open and saw her smiling down at him.
"Am I alive?" he heard himself murmur.
"Of course you are, dear," she bent closer to him. He thought he saw the moon fluttering beside her, glowing softly with each stroke of it's tiny wings, making his eyelids heavier.
And he soon fell into a deep slumber. But he knew he was not alone for his eyelids were still heavy and the moon was glowing more luminously at his bedside, humming to him a familiar yet distant lullaby.
And for a time, it all seemed like an illusion. Nothing was ever there. Not Death. Not the woman. Not even the moon.
It all seemed like a complicated dream.
As he tossed in bed, a tall and pale skinned man appeared at his bedside gushed in relief.
"My son!" he gasped. "Hath not mine Beacontine failed me, ye would have returned to thine sweet home. Oh, what enormous a grief hath befallen on thy father for losing thee."
There was no alarm in the man's voice yet they seem to rumble with a deep sense of loss and of words that a little child's mind like his did not fully comprehend the meanings.
"Ye shall one day return to me," the man noted in such confidence after the long winded poetry of heart brokenness.
"And be glad, my child, for in patience of time, the day ye return wilt be the glorious of days time shalt ever see. - Farewell, Bartholomew."
And the man vanished.
"And be glad, my child, for in patience of time, the day ye return wilt be the glorious of days time shalt ever see. - Farewell, Bartholomew."
And the man vanished.
Just like any other dreams before, as soon as he awoke, every last images he had seen dissolved with the first ray of light that reflected from the walls of his bedroom.
He did not give in any effort whatsoever in trying to recall what dream he had. There was of no urgency or importance in remembering any of them, far more than having it related to the real world he woke up to.
As he stepped out of his room, he saw that his mother was faithfully preparing breakfast, as she had always did every other mornings. And his father, clad in a suit, ready to leave for work, was having a word with an old lady.
The old lady, he instantly recognized as his grandmother, was dressed to leave for somewhere. And upon the sight of him, his father gestured him to bid her.
"Where are you going, granma?" he asked, as he wished she was just heading for the central park or the groceries, yet something in him tells him she's not.
"Granma's going back to Twinbrook, dear," she replied with a tone that makes her seem upset with the decision herself.
Her hands clasped, he noted, it was a sign that she's not going to change her mind no matter how much he plead her not to go. And there was something disturbing about that black gloves she wears every time she wanted to return to her town.
"But I don't want you to leave," he tried pleading anyway.
"Stay at school, Geo," she ignored his plea and gave him a loving look. Whenever she called him that name, something from the back of his mind tried to burst, but nothing ever emerged.
And there was a certain painful cut about that look even though she hid it very well behind her shades. It was something he could not figure out and it bothered him not knowing what she's thinking at times.
Even the sound of his grandmother's steps leaving the patio beats in his head, familiar silent thuds hidden in the brink of his memory. A memory that didn't seem to be there.
He watched his grandmother left in a yellow cab, who did not look back at him even once to wave goodbye. He wondered if he did something wrong. Something that made his grandmother left so early in the morning.
"Come on in, son," his father called. "Breakfast is ready."
His father's words fell on deaf ears.
Geo stood silently as he watched the cab vanished out of the neighborhood, tears welling up in his eyes for no apparent reason.
His heart ached with such an unexplained complexity he don't know where to begin.
He knew he had forgotten something...
