New Short Story: Emma!

New Short Story: Emma!

Emma’s dreams seemed to be getting stranger and stranger as she grew older.

She could remember when she was very young, she would have vivid dreams of flying through exotic places.

Snow covered mountains, rainy forest, and dry deserts to name just a few.

As she grew older, and technology advanced, she soon came across pictures of some of the places she had visited in her dreams.

While her curiosity was peaked, a fear grew inside her. She couldn’t understand how she was able to dream of places that she had never been to, or even heard of.

She used to tell her parents about her dreams when she was little, but once she realized they were real places, she was afraid of what they would think.

Once she had left home for college, it was easier to keep from telling her parents, but she was still unable to fully understand, or control what she was dreaming.

One of her college courses was in psychology, and one day in class, her teacher began talking about ESP, Telekinesis, and Aural Projection.

When she got back to her dorm, she got online, and began learning everything she could about Aural Projection.

The clock on her phone showed 3:00 am by the time her eyelids got heavy and she fell asleep.

She had studied a few tricks about controlling dreams that she hoped would help her determine if she was in fact aural projecting, or if she needed to look into other possibilities.

That night she dreamt she was flying over the city, but instead of just being an observer, she used a trick she had read about to realize she was in a dream, and attempted to control what was happening.

Before she knew it, she had taken control, and she began flying side to side.

“Yahooo!” she yelled, as she swooped down towards the ground.
She still didn’t know if she was only dreaming, or really projecting, but she didn’t care. She felt free, and she was going to enjoy it.

As she looked below, she saw cars, people, and bright lights all around her.

It was a while before she realized that she couldn’t hear anything. There was no sound, and she was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it immediately.

Not being able to hear freaked her out. Unless a person has ever been completely deaf, it would be hard to duplicate the utter lack of sound. For someone like Emma, who had never, even briefly, lost any part of her hearing, it was truly frightening to her.

She jolted awake.

She was happy to have her hearing back, but she was disappointed that she had woken up. She didn’t know if she’d be able to take control of her dream again, or know for sure if she had been projecting, or only dreaming.

Even worse, she couldn’t get back to sleep.

The whole day while in classes, she counted down the time when she could get home and try again.

When the professor dismissed the class, Emma jumped out of her seat, surprising the rest of the class.

She didn’t want to accidentally wake up this time, so when she got home, she took a slightly higher dosage of her sleep aid than normal.

It took a couple of hours before the medicine kicked in, but when she started to feel the drowsiness fill her, she laid down in bed, and excitedly waited for sleep to overtake her.

Once again, she found herself flying through the clouds above the city. She thought it was strange that she didn’t find herself appearing in some exotic location, but she also knew that it would be easier to locate details of her flight within her own city.

Out of instinct, she lowered herself into an ally. She wasn’t sure how this worked if she bumped into people, but she figured for now, she’d just observe.

Panic sunk in again, when she landed on the ground, but didn’t feel anything. No pressure, no texture, nothing.

After a few steps, she was able to adjust. She was then able to walk somewhat normally.

She wondered the streets, taking in as much as she could. She was looking at bar signs, papers on the ground, anything with a date, event, or something significant that she can compare to the next day when she woke up.

From time to time, she would fly back into the air in order to travel to another parts of town faster.

She was studying a piece of paper on the ground, when a woman walked right through her.

The woman walking through her caught her off guard, and she turned to see the her walking away.

She didn’t feel anything when the woman walked through her. She only knew the woman had, because she had blocked Emma’s view of the paper.

She watched as the woman began to shrink in the distance. Emma was about to move on, but suddenly another person walked through her, making her jump once again.

People walking through her was beginning to freak her out, and she was ready to get back in the air, out of the way of people, but there was something off about the person that just walked through her.

She could tell it was a man, but that was all.

Curious, Emma began to follow him. He seemed to be following the woman.

The man followed the woman around the corner. When Emma rounded the corner herself, a horrific sight awaited her.

The man was attacking the woman. Emma couldn’t hear, but she could imagine the sounds that was being made by the struggling woman.

She watched as the man pulled a knife out of his back pocket and began stabbing her.

Emma ran to help the bleeding woman, but when she tried to grab the man, her hands went right through him.

All Emma could do was watch the murder happen, unable to do anything to save her.

Is was at this moment that she hoped it was only a nightmare. She no longer wanted to be projecting.

Emma couldn’t move. She wanted to fly away, but she was held in place by the disbelief of what she had just witnessed.

She watched as the man wiped his knife off on the woman’s dead body, and then stood up.

Emma no longer cared if this was only a nightmare. She wanted to memorize every detail of this murderer. She wanted to find him and see that he was punished.

The man stood up and turned around, facing Emma.

All of a sudden, the man’s face contorted into an evil grimace, and he charged right at her. Emma’s whole body tensed, ready for his attack.

She woke up with a silent scream stuck in her throat.

Once her heart rate had returned to normal, she ran to her computer to see if anything about what she had seen had been reported.

Her cold sweat grew colder, as the story of the woman she had witnessed being murdered, was on the front page of the local news site.

She walked to where her phone was lying on the counter to call the police, when she heard a knock at the door.

The knock startled her, but she walked to the door to see who it was.

She opened it and dropped her phone, when she saw that the killer was now standing in front of her.

“Who are you?” he asked, as she stood there frozen.

Emma wanted to scream, but she couldn’t move.

“This is your only warning,” the man continued. “Stay out of my way, you freak, or I will kill you.”

He bent down, picked up the phone, and held it out to her.

Unable to stop herself, she reached out and took the phone out of his outstretched hand.

She stood there paralyzed as he walked away.

When he disappeared down the stairs, she quickly shut the door, and called the police.

“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator asked.

“Yes, hello,” Emma started. “The woman that was murdered. The killer was just at my door.”

While she waited for the police, she went back and forth on what she was going to tell them. She knew she wouldn’t be able to tell the police what she had seen without being committed, or at the very least, not believed.

When the detective arrived, she lied and said she had been on a walk when she saw a man following the woman from the picture. Emma told them that she had lost sight of them when they both vanished down the alley where her body had been found, and she had continued her walk.

“He must have seen me, and found me somehow,” she lied.

The detective finished asking her his questions, and then left, giving her his business card and instructions for her to contact him if she remembered anything else.

She only hoped that the description that she had given him was enough for them to find him before he could kill again.

Part of her was afraid to fall asleep, but a larger, stronger part of her felt compelled to find a way to stop the man from killing another woman, even if that meant distracting him by revealing herself.

She took the same dose of her sleeping aid that she had the night before, and it wasn’t long before she became drowsy. She laid down, ready for whatever may come.

Once again, she found herself flying over the city. Now that she knew she wasn’t dreaming, but was in fact projecting, she was able to focus more.

She traveled straight to where the first attack had happened. Since she didn’t have to worry about exhaustion, she began flying in a circular pattern, slowly widening the area she covered.

While she knew there was a chance the killer wouldn’t strike again so soon after killing that woman, Emma was prepared to patrol every night until she found him.

As long as there is a chance to save a life, she thought. I’m going to try.

Time was starting to pass, and she knew she would have to wake up soon, when suddenly, she felt something wrap around her waist, like a lasso, and jerk her out of the sky.

Emma imagined that this is what a fish must feel like, caught on a line, and no matter how hard it struggled, it was slowly pulled towards its doom.

She struggled against the invisible rope, but to no avail.

Though she didn’t feel pain, she bounced hard on the ground.
She stood up, struggling to regain her bearing.

When she turned around, she found herself face to face with the same killer, who had killed the woman in the alley and had showed up at her door.

“I warned you to stay away, bitch!” the man spat.

Emma didn’t know how he had been able to pull her down, but she didn’t think this lunatic would be able to hurt her.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Emma said. “I’m going to keep patrolling until I find a way to stop you and see that you’re brought to justice.”

Her eyes widened when a glow surrounded the man, and he seemed to duplicate, so that she found herself facing two killers.

The glowing version of the killer stepped forward, and before Emma could react, he punched her in the gut. She was surprised at how much pain she felt.

Excited by the pain he saw she was in, he began to wail on her, striking her with a barrage of punches and kicks.

After she had fallen to the ground, he paused the assault long enough to enjoy the fear in her eyes, before he finished her.

Emma desperately searched around her for a weapon, but she was unable to touch anything. A powerful fear began to consume her, but rather than paralyze her, it empowered her.

“Now, you’ll know what it feels like to die in your sleep, freak,” the man spit at her and closed in to complete his attack.

Emma screamed as loud as she could, though it was more mental, than verbal.

As the man came in for his final strike, he vanished.

Emma looked past were the glowing attacker had been standing and saw that the solid version of the killer had collapsed. There was a giant gash coming from his head, and when she moved closer to get a better look, she saw that a brick had been impaled into his skull.

While she did a quick search to see who her savior may have been, deep down she knew the truth. She had somehow mentally thrown the brick at him with enough force to kill him.

Emma awoke in her bed, feeling spiritually sore.

She knew what had happened that night was real. The killer was dead, and while she felt guilty about having killed someone, she took solace in the fact that she had taken a killer off the streets, and possibly saved lives.

Fear was soon replaced with courage as she realized that not only could she patrol the streets in her sleep, but that she had learned that she could also move objects with her mind.

A smile crept across her face. It was time to begin her training.

Antonio Garcia