Author's Note: I Don't Know by Nick Hakim is actually the inspiration for this chapter! Happy reading everybody! 

--- *** ---

--- Dream ---

Inebriating sweet dreams. Sweetening the very tongue tip of the despondently sleepy child to savor the cloying flavor of the wild dreams pelting down eagerly its emphatically imaginative blizzard of thoughts. Contracted shut eyelids solemnly dedicated to the reverie realm like a mother's mellifluent lullaby breezing softly her little sweet ray of sunshine, enticingly emboldening it to drift off asleep sooner than later. Stitching deftly the thinly seamless fabric of the abstractly wild dreams embroidering the hurricane of thoughts' vigorous reproduction and their vividly explicit dream scenarios tinting their visual eyesight. It was one of the most heartwarmingly comfy realms to feel like home, yet senselessly treasuring pearly every ounce of the beauty coma and its inexorable remnants.

In the meantime, the British compatriot portioned his night with the stranger man he bumped in the bar just almost an hour ago, besides exchanging opulence of blunt shenanigans trancing their ineludibly tipsy slurps twitching their nude lips. Oddly, Timothy's unconditional comfort warmly settled in the pit of his stomach and frequently ruthless grooved in the company of the cryptic man whom he subconsciously awarded him with modicum of his uniquely divine, untouchable trust to not populate the bar any longer. In front of the other nobodies' gruesomely inquisitive optics examining the panorama in a piercing scrutiny like bloodthirstily ravenous eagles. In front of the nobodies' broadly prim, deftly ravenous smirks wearing a thousand patterns of derision, aloofness and childlike inquisitiveness sprawling across their mildly damp-stained oral slits. The pungent reek of human flesh, sweat, lethally intoxicating liquor and tobacco no longer wafted in their amenable noses. The rich medley of jovially blatant drunken shenanigans, mere chats and the music's lullaby aggressively howling to sidetrack them with the foggy racket.

The mildly younger man, who absorbed his sharply resplendent accent to keep in touch with the former devotional member of the church, was actually in his early thirties. First and foremost, the cryptic character's body structure was seamlessly average with well-sculptured muscles punctured underneath his pair of dark denim jeans and chiffon lily-white shirt as its hideously stubborn buttons concealed his thickly dark chest-hair's wire except for the only one button that was left undone. He stood 5'11 solely, which crudely realistic portrayed him as a tad shorter with approximately inch than the British compatriot. His neatly combed lion mane of lavish golden strands curtaining his ghostly pale, freshly young-looking façade, and cascading his broadly muscly shoulders. In addition to his young-looking physique, his huge roundish lapis lazuli abysses wore a thousand patterns of stark enigma and monstrous kindheartedness, eerily controversial commingling together to craft the enigmatically majestic canvas. His masculinely charming facial attributes accented his outstanding light eyebrows exquisitely matching his fashionably cordate lips and nose. Last but not least, his Swedish roots amalgamated his birth town of Kossuth, Iowa, intercrossed exquisitely his enticing abysmal lilt bonded with his ancestors' physical characteristics.

His identity was the shadow of the fallen angel, or rather, the devil with multiple personalities that can buff his humor and attitude anytime with the gruesomely sable brush painting his tall figure in the darkest hues of the cryptic paradox. It could show his true colours sooner or later. Or eventually in a New York minute. Nobody was familiar with him except Matthew Parker, who could play the role of an antagonist and protagonist in his own story of his life as a daredevil one of a kind.

Matthew Parker's flat wasn't much expansive at all, nor problematically miniature as it could be a home sweet home to only one inhabitant. Just a mere home that could deposit a handful of people or a nuclear family as well.

Meantime, the male duo sat on the dining table and scarcely having any intentions to lift their rears from the peeling off cherry wood chairs, whereas they crooked their masculinely potent, nimble fingers circa their scotch glasses of axinite sinfully insatiable liquor, partly engulfing the entity's surface. Whiskey-stained lips curved into dimly prim, weak smiles fiercely relentless etching their oral slits to indicate their powerfully far-fetched earnestness, shimmering in the corner of their abysses.

The dully last quarter agate moon had already scrambled on the ethereally eternal horizon of its nocturnal starless panorama. The extraordinarily hedonistic palish gleam dimly impaled every stranger's peripheral chasm once their bewitched ogle pierced the starless nocturnal sky's authentically luxurious, yet ordinary landscape.

Perhaps it was approximately ten o'clock tonight. The unnerving tick of the progressing time was enveloped in rogue's subtlety.

"How do you even cope with the alcohol, despite the fact that you used to be a priest," The suddenness of the Swedish compatriot's blatantly bleated belch pitching the very walls of the kitchen meagerly caught off guard the former pious man of the cloth, whilst readjusting his pristinely delicate, slim fingers dancing circa the scotch glass of the scrumptiously lukewarm liquor, and eventually fixating his warm coffee brown chasms on the blond. An incredulously frigid odium stung the older gentleman's appealing facial attributes at the barbarically blatant belch, due to the fact, he couldn't put a finger on the sympathetic people that absorbed him with the fierily sophisticated medley of sorely flagrant scurrility, godless mysticism and offbeat goodwill of the Swedish compatriot's mental anatomy. On top of that, the former aspiring Monsignor isn't a keen fan of certain people not stifling their bluntly reckless, mindless eructation unless it was a baby that hasn't even descended his toddlerhood or a really close friend, or relative of his."Tim?"

"I'm not drinking much and it is just rarely, you know, Matt." Timothy's lazily fleet, benevolently sympathetic smile dawdled to fall from his alabaster façade, refraining from twisting his mouth in a crude denunciation about his spontaneously reckless eructation. Now, the alcohol gravely took a toll on the duo without shadow of a doubt. The indubitably booziness clouded Timothy and Matthew's depths, accompanying the luminous glossiness tangoing perkily upon their unearthly timeless jet-black pupils."It reminded me how I drank a tad wine on the Fridays as usually." Thereafter, the older man managed to lift up the entity and wrap his naturally pale-pinkish, deliciously plumpish lips around the rim of the glass to swig a handful of meekly tiny sips scorching his strawberry-coloured tongue. The mild contrast between the almost emptied scotch glass of the Iowanian and the British compatriot's partly full spoke volumes about the versatile pace they were perpetually advancing to manipulate. "It was just part of the dinner menu as I shared it with somebody, whom I seriously deem as my big cheese."

"Good for you, Tim!" Bobbing incessantly subconscious his head in solemn agreement even when it was the least necessary, consequently the Iowanian maneuvered the palm of his mammoth, marbled hand to swat mischievously faint, bearing a semblance as if one of his best of friends rewarded him with a pat for his outspoken confession. "I bet it is a wee hypocritical the priests and the nuns to claim that they don't even dare to take a meek sip from an alcoholic beverage once in awhile." Then the former ambitious Monsignor's cinnamon brown big, rotund moons scanned the kitchen subconsciously, yet the fogginess of the inevitably invincible alcohol's apocalyptically voracious weapon dumping its aftermaths' raw wounds blotching surreptitiously their eyesight and their language like an antagonistically rich beehive of nail-biting bullets.

"You are actually right!" The haphazardness of Timothy's baby-pinkish, plumpish lips rippling in the scornfully wry chuckle following the fluent rhythm of the fair agreement overwhelmed the nocturnally uneven doldrum, settling conveniently in the blond's apartment, and that was solely disturbed by the platonic pairing's drunkenly passionate colloquy they have profoundly built through the elapsing time. "But it is not right to drink a bit too much. I mean out of the boundaries and ending up like three sheets to the wind." Maintaining to stabilize the adequate eye contact, meantime, the blond channelized his only free hand's long slim fingers to joyously flip a fistful of his extravagantly greasy gilded locks. The nimbly ailing zephyr of the hair flip refreshingly dim fanned the younger gentleman's fleshy layer of his skull.

"Exactly! How is the bourbon?"

"It's pretty good."

"Think twice!" Suddenly, Matthew maneuvered to lull his wet, strawberry-coloured tongue to lick gamely greedy his upper and lower sticky bourbon-stained lips, whilst his tongue crafted the cutthroatly infernal, intense caution and lugging up his scotch glass to tippling in a handful of giant sips the rest of the remaining alcoholic beverage."Your facial expression is like a book with widely opened pages for me even if I'm tipsy." The painful skepticism inscribed the very facial features and lower eyelids of the Iowanian, whilst his eyelids' tenderly fleshy muscles struggled to blink reluctantly at Timothy's revelation, tingling its exceeding alarming tones which arrantly tinted the cusp of the sugar-coated exaggeration and the bare truth. Notwithstanding the circumstances, the Iowanian's exceedingly uncommon inwardness of his accent has tinged his utterances and altering the British compatriot's coziness in his company megawatt intensifying on a preternaturally fiendish level.

"There is no lie." Shortly after whimpering the mutter under his breath that was oddly distinctive for the Swedish compatriot, thus the older gentleman managed to take a modest sip of his glass.

"For which time I am going to listen to the same old lie?" All of a sudden, the former religious clergyman registered to choke on his final sip before the unhallowed apogee's peak, whereas loosening the grip around the entity and nestling his virginally delicate, marbled fingers circa his Adam apple, struggling to seethe the heinously headstrong thickness encumbering his throat muscles to rebel against the inevitably detrimental passivity. The undeniably bone-chilling timbre punctured the Swedish compatriot's enquiry that slenderly caught off guard his guest as the bitter lump sinisterly bashful postponed to gush down his liver. "It didn't age well." The last thing before the eventual blackout of the former holy priest was contemplating through the absolute reality's abstractly raw prospect of the ordinarily furnished kitchen coupled with Matthew's pools of abysmally spine-chilling ocean blue, unceasingly unremitting darkening its healthily natural nuances. The atypical chilly climate pebbled the platonic pairing's nipples even though their hardness was so relevant, so garish and so vulnerable beneath the fabric that enough guarded to expose their absolute reality's retribution. "The poor Timmy!" In the interim, the Swedish compatriot manifested to heft his rear from his peeled cherry wood chair and tiptoed to the unconscious former member of the clergy, whose arcanely tense muscles didn't reciprocate to any kind of a motion or the gentlest touch emanating the host, himself. "You may have lost your way."

--- *** ---

--- End of Dream ---

--- Back to Reality ---

--- Later that Day ---

"C'mon, Tim!" The haphazardness of the Afro-American's elvish, chocolate hands villainously morbid clawed the British compatriot's broadly muscular shoulders to snap him out of his catnap, whereas the infantry of childlike prying jewels skittered urgently swift to the landscape of their inmate's undeniably obdurate attempts to dwell Timothy out of the reverie realm, and drowning sweetly in the unworldly abyssal gracing him with dim drool of his faintly indistinctive snores swelling his frail lungs. "Wake up!" As soon as Timothy came to his senses and pinching widely opened his huge, roundish bijous to embrace the illustration of the prisoners occupying the dilapidating godforsaken opera's interior, besides anticipating for the show's saga, the British compatriot's baby-pinkish, chapped lips crumpled in the rueful gasp, blowing a fatalistically high-pitched kiss to the site's lethal doldrum and the walls witnessing the ode of the uninvited guests.

Once the dull daily episode's anomaly tranced into the inescapable nocturnal exploit staidly shaded the arrantly starless sky, consequently the reassuringly velvety birdsongs vanished in the thin air and replaced with the fierily perfervid crickets' joyful warbles. The relentlessly clear-cut big, round adamant moon brooding aimlessly and pearly cherishing the graceful solitude, sensing certain quantity of the audience's fixated jewels on the roundish satellite and admiring its uncannily extraordinary prospect, offering the unmitigated tranquility.

A quarter an hour bled in a few hours' agitated anticipation for the tonight show's start. The icily tedium silence asphyxiated the dilapidating cracked grizzly walls of the opera house, which was once engulfing the visitants with the scintillatingly brilliant dazzle of the luxurious interior's discreet details until a few centuries later the gradual trance in the apocalyptically unspeakable disruption, escorting modestly the bountifully luminous layer of dust complimenting the royal armchairs, the wooden rostrum and the gigantically crimson satin curtains framing the void space. It once reminded of the magnificently sonorous opera house that wreathed in its cozily promising, invitingly warm hug the visitants to spend a handful of hours boring their fairly razor-edged gemstones on the rostrum and the frequency of the singers and actors performing their own roles. Now, it was the new abode to the invisibly horrifying shadows, demons and ghosts of the occasional victims' final destination as they couldn't know it was any longer if they will flee the demolished façade alive, besides dearly awed in the performances' authentic aesthetics.

Frank, Olivia, Robin-Mary, Elias and Timothy have conquered their own individual seats unlike their leader, who had disappeared in the dressing room of the artists. Yet, their vocal tissues could reproduce solely ferociously impulsive noises at the top of their lungs and throats with exception of conjugating a pretty straightforward utterance, instead of using the miserable sheets of papers and pens to dabble down their true emotions, sentiments and confessions eventually.

First and foremost, the Bostonian has decided for today, due to the fresher's initial appearance in the past few days, consequently to attend the nigh opera and enforce the jailbirds to watch the phenomenally thought-provoking performances as she isn't part of the audience at all. The dim illumination in the site merrily flickered monotonously continual and the unshakably invincible pitch-black darkness dueled with the artificially profuse aureate light. Furthermore, the otherworldly icy climate blew an invincible kiss to ripple the uninvited guests with gloriously inescapable huddle of horripilation onto their overall legs and arms.

"Holy crap, Oli! Be careful with the kiddo! He just woke up." Seconds before the eerily foreign echo of the flock of diligently repetitive footsteps whispered against the podium, thereafter, the widower channelized his deft fingers dangled around his fountain pen to jot down his recent revelation emanating from the plenteous fuel of his blizzard of thoughts at the dynamic prospect. The altruistic concern vastly sojourned high-strungly glamorous luminescence, in fact, he wasn't a vehement enthusiast of witnessing how his former rival was being forcefully writhed, snapping him curtly out of his unnatural reverie and its dear soldiers guarding his train of thoughts.

"Blame it on Oli, Frank! I bet Tim had a spectacular catnap." Meantime, Elias manipulated his masculinely meaty, nimble fingers to scribble clumsily, whilst darting his brutally honest onyx minerals launched a fleet glimpse at the former aspiring Monsignor and the redhead as he knitted his masculinely dark, thick eyebrows to the bridge of his nose. The hoarseness of Elias's gutturally straightforward, demonical snicker teased his well-carved and berry-coloured, dry tongue eventually. Demonically forgetful to the series of elaborated footsteps piercing the platform and hair-raisingly unimaginable suffocating the hush, thereafter, the large frame of the emcee towering the peripheral gazes of the meager mass of audience.

"We can only presume. Furthermore, he's tremendously lucky the High Countess isn't nearby at all, you know! She will be the core of another bland din as it always happens even for such petty things like falling asleep like a tired dog." Seconds before shifting their ultimately utmost attention to the host, whose very presence enveloped in an irrevocable limbo, thus the redhead's pads of her fingers daubed warily to scribble on the sheet of paper her recent response. Notwithstanding the circumstances, the brunette was the sole jailbird who wasn't paying any heed to her allies' prattles as their communication's adequate maintenance was established in blanks.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to this evening's presentation." Suddenly, the troop of vowels and syllables' stubbornly reckless duel to articulate the Japanese compatriot's brief introduction to the tonight's show in the opera house, whilst his pale-pinkish, starkly glossy lips effortlessly forceful augmented the hugely beaming grin embellishing his parchment face and faintly creasing his lower eyelids bonding his light-heavy wrinkles. Meanwhile, his pitch-black moons darted to the modest horde of prisoners he could candidly reckon them as his little audience. His sable moons kindled its deliriously indomitable flares of marvelous charisma and fabulous magnetism tinting his gawk, during his declaim. "Tonight, things are not what they seem, for tonight, your eyes may not be trusted. Take for instance this elderly, yet enigmatically charismatic woman, waiting for her lover to be the true knight in the shining armor. Surely there is nothing to fear from this sweet, pretty charismatic elderly lady." Muffling the blatantly mewled dry cough with the palm of his mammoth, parchment hand, therefore the host's Adam apple struggled to forge its nirvanic catharsis of the soar thickness encumbering his tender throat muscles hypodermically. Eerie flat lines lazily abraded the horde of jailbirds' pink mouths, while honing their ears to eavesdrop attentively every segment of the monologue. 'But don't let me pull the wool over your eyes. See for yourself what lies beneath those covers. And now on the show!" Moments before retiring back to the other side of the cabaret, the suddenness of the significantly dexterous manipulation of the flickering lights beguiling to switch off the lights in a jiffy, following the sharp accent of the projects' orbit, pale enough to detect the once shadow figure of the preternatural appearance of the blonde sitting on the satin crimson piano stool.

The infernally bewitching silhouette's gigantic form embroidered on the monumentally lavish curtains transcended the real epitome of the horror or rather the phantom of the opera, whose show was currently only in the spectral's bare hands. Yet, the phantom of the opera's silhouette was arrantly emulating to a power-hungrily domineering woman, whose leadership once was gloving her infernally sprightly hands, subsequently the saga of the iron fist was just the fresh dawn.

The ineludibly gracious fragrance of feminine perfume heinously baneful tainted unremittingly the partly illuminated site.

The cryptic older lady was no longer foreign to the palish spotlight and the eager ocean of abysses pronging the phenomenally gruesome, yet thought-provoking vista. During Frank, Elias, the brunette and the ginger's utter focus darted to the performance's prequel, in the meantime, the former ambitious Monsignor's painful incredulity twisted across his youthfully handsome facial features and parting his naturally nude pink, deliciously plumpish lips in a wide O at the vista of the artist he has anticipated agitatedly to step on the cabaret tonight the least.

Hopefully that wasn't midst his chaotically hysterical dreams' surrealistic compounds brewing and cooking inside his forest of thoughts. 

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✞ What are your thoughts on Timothy's dream? ✞

✞ What are your true impressions on the cliffhanger? ✞

✞ I hope you candidly liked and enjoyed the chapter as well. If you really liked and enjoyed it, don't forget to pour your genuine impressions on the chapter as a feedback! Don't be shy!  ✞