Jesse's POV

I opened my eyes, still safely laying on the couch. I looked around, making sure everything was still there.

"Phew," I murmured, "I'm not dreaming."

I suddenly heard a noise coming from on the floor by the couch. I tried turning my head to look, but it was almost as if it was frozen. I tried pushing harder, but that created a tingling sensation to move up my body. It wasn't the good kind, either. It was more like pins and needles were stabbing me. I was completely frozen, except I could move my eyes. I tried as hard as I could to look down at what was on the floor. I saw in my peripheral vision something loudly eating. Closing my eyes for a moment, I felt something on my chest.

I opened my eyes, and it was sitting there, looking at me directly in the face. It's entire front side was just a mouth, with blood and saliva dripping from its sharp teeth. I screamed as I tried to life my hand to throw it off.

A burning pain erupted through my hand as it broke free from its frozen spell. I yelled in pain as I topped off the couch, now my entire body feeling like it was on fire. I was screaming bloody murder now as my skin stung. The creature snorted as it jumped toward me and started getting bigger.

"Jesse!" exclaimed someone in the distance. I looked over as Lukas popped his head up from his bed and looked at me. His eyes grew wide and his mouth dropped open. I could hardly breathe. The burning got more and more intense as the creature advanced. I laid on the floor, choking. My vision was getting weak. I grabbed my neck. The creature was hovering right above me. I screamed more. It opened its mouth about to bite me, when it halted. Something loud came from behind it. My pain suddenly stopped.

It groaned in agony as it exploded its insides everywhere, covering me in its thick, dark red fluid that had an awful smell. The monster was completely gone though, except for the bits of its bowels that had exploded onto me and Lukas who was standing eyes bulging, sword in his hand. I was busy sputtering out the bitter goo from the monster out of my mouth and wiping its entrails off me.

"Gross!" I said as I threw some on the floor.

"Ugh, ditto," Lukas replied, "I don't even know how I did that. I heard you screaming and saw this... creature, so I stabbed it, trying to get it off of you. I didn't even realize this would happen!"

I looked at the creature more closely now that I could see clearly again. Its body was slug-like, brown and slimy. Its way-too-big mouth was gaping open as a puddle of drool trickled out into a puddle. It had black, beady eyes at the sides of its head. There was a hole in its side where the explosion had come from with the same red fluid dripping from it. Lukas winced as he cautiously poked at it with his sword.

"Lukas, you twerp! You ruined it!" someone exclaimed.

"Huh?" he said as he looked around.

"I was having so much fun watching, then you go and spoil it all!" the voice continued. Two yellow lights appeared out of the darkness, then Nightmelody stepped out of the shadows looking cross.

"I had worked so hard on it too!"

"Nightmelody!" Lukas and I exclaimed together.

"No need to be so formal; my friends call me Melody... well, you know, if I had friends they would call me that... anyway! What was I just saying?"

"Did I do something wrong?" asked Lukas.

"Oh, yeah. Yeah, you did. Wait a minute, wait a minute!" her voice started drifting upward. She floated up onto the creature and exclaimed, "I finally did it! They told me it wasn't possible, but I did it! Shared dreams are possible!"

"They? They who?" Lukas asked.

"It's a metaphorical they, but let's not split hairs here. Jesse, you tried to enter your dream too early! You came into my realm while I was still preparing for tonight's torture session! But you came in here before you even started dreaming! That's how I'm not singing!"

"So... am I dreaming or not?" I asked.

"Now... yeah." Nightmelody said, "Technically. Earlier you were in an in-between phase called sleep paralysis where basically your body goes on lock-down and whatnot... that's when I usually pick my songs and prepare your dreams... wait, what am I doing? I'm supposed to be torturing you!"

"I think you've already done that, Melody," I said as I pointed to all the guts covering my front side. I felt a little weird calling her Melody and I wasn't sure how she'd take it. When I did say it, however, for a moment she looked as though she was about to burst out crying, but she didn't.

"Yeah, but I was created to give you nightmares every night," she explained, "Daddy will be mad if I let one night slip. He gets mad a lot." She put her hand on her chin and thought for a moment.

"Tell you what, Jesse. How about I let you skip the nightmare tonight, IF you let me do something to you in your waking life. To tell you the truth I won't be able to affect you too much while you're awake because I'm a dream element. It'll defiantly save you some agony."

"Really?!" Lukas and I exclaimed at the same time. She scowled at Lukas.

"Not you, blondie! You're supposed to be with Ombrexi!"

"What? Who?"

Before he could talk anymore, Melody waved her hand as he shrieked in anguish and vanished.

"But you, Jesse, you can be free. But just tonight. I'm not sacrificing my job for some... overall-wearing scrub."

"I'll take it," I said happily.

"Hey, don't celebrate or think we're friends or anything. We're not. This is only because you woke yourself up in sleep-paralysis and ruined the monster I had been working on for tonight."

"Alright."

She extended her hands toward me and lowered her head.

"Just remember," she said, "I'm coming back tomorrow night."

A purple blast came from her hands and covered me as everything grew darker.

Lukas's POV

I woke up in bed the next day and looked around. I was completely clean, thankfully. I decided to go by and check on Jesse and see if she was awake or not.

I got up and tiredly sauntered across the room to the couch where she was.

"Jesse?" I asked softly, "You awake?"

"Ugh, yeah," she said croakily. I looked over at her on the couch. She was curled up on her side and had her arms crossed around her.

"Are you okay?"

"No, I've been awake for a while actually with a splitting headache and my stomach is killing me. 'Not being able to do very much' or whatever Melody said was really an... understatement... agh!"

I reached down and felt her forehead (with m good arm, obviously) and found it drenched with sweat.

"Whoa, you're really hot," I said.

"Excuse me?!" she demanded.

"What? Oh, no, like you're sweaty. Really sweaty. Do you need to stay home?"

"That's legal?" she asked.

"I mean, I guess it'd be fine if you're sick..."

"I'm not sick," she said, "Nightmelody put some sort of spell on me." She began to sit up, but grabbed her head.

"Agh...!" she exclaimed.

"Jesse, you need to rest whether you're sick or not," I said. She gave a sniffle reply and laid back down.

"I'll be back after school," I told her as I put my things in my inventory and began to head out.

"Okay... I'll be here."

At school, I walked the halls alone. Just going through the motions half-heartedly. I apathetically went through the day, glumly walking through the halls alone with nothing to say. What was becoming of our group? We were falling apart. It was like something hung over me, draining me out, physically and emotionally. I couldn't function right. I kept on forgetting things and zoning out.

It all continued until lunch time, when I happened upon someone very peculiar.

I sat at the table my friends and I normally sit at, all alone. Just sitting there thinking and starting at my hands.

"Do you mind if I sit here?" someone asked. I glanced up and saw a girl with rose pink hair that had bangs that swept across the side of her face and sea green eyes with dark eyeliner surrounding them, which made them look bigger somehow. A friendly smile was spread across her dark red lips as she looked at me with sympathy in her eyes. She was dressed in black and gray clothes with a jean jacket and a black choker. I thought it was weird how someone just wanted to sit with me. I mean, I'm not all that popular. I mostly stuck within my group of Jesse, Petra, Maya, and Aiden, and I didn't know this girl. But I was all alone, and it seemed like someone to talk to was what I needed. So I told her I didn't mind.

"I just thought you looked lonely, and I normally see you here with your friends, so I just thought you'd like someone to talk to," she said as she scooted out the plastic chair across from me.

Weird. That was exactly what I was thinking.

"I don't think we've met," she continued, "My name is Erin." She smiled and held out her hand.

"Lukas..." I said as I shook it, "You said you've seen me here before... but I've never seen you."

"I get that a lot," Erin said, "I'm slightly an outcast here. Not like people are mean to me, but I don't exactly have the personality to be considered 'popular,' so I mostly hang out with people that look like they could use a friend." She paused, then continued, "I hang out with outsiders instead of insiders because they need me more. The people that don't get recognized enough to have many friends."

"Gee, thanks," I said sarcastically.

"Or," she added, "people whose other friends aren't able to be there for them when they need them."

I looked up at her in confusion.

"How do you know so much about me?" I asked.

"I'm a people watcher. I think I'm pretty good at it too, if I'm allowed to say so myself, ha."

"So... you stalk people?" I asked. I sort of regretted it once it came out of my mouth, though. It sounded like I found her distasteful or something.

"No, I wouldn't put it like that. I don't do it on purpose, really. I just notice things that others wouldn't normally notice."

"Huh, that's pretty cool," I said.

"Thanks," she said coolly, "That's something I don't get a lot. Some people think observance is creepy."

"Well, it can be... at times," I said.

"I don't try to be creepy," she said, "and I wouldn't say that I am. It's really all about perspective. I try to stay on the half full side."

We talked together for the rest of the lunch period, seemingly never running out of things to say. I was almost able to forget about everything that was going on, I was just able to talk to a girl I had just met, even though it felt like we had been friends for a while. And it was nice to not talk about Order of the Stone type things, just normal people stuff. She didn't even mention my cast, which would have made me explain the whole deal with Pickaxe, and Petra, and I didn't want to talk about that right then. No planning or talking about missions, just talking.

The bell rang, signaling the end of lunch.

"Well, Lukas," Erin said, "It was nice to get to know you. It feels like this is the first time I was able to carry out a normal conversation with someone in a long time." She smiled.

"I could say the same thing," I began, "Wait, what?"

Her face immediately faded from happy to worried.

"Oh, well, I just meant that, like, I don't really talk to people that much, you know? Well, you might not know because you've got some good friends, but what I meant was that, uh, I can't talk to people that much. Okay, bye!" She gave me a little wave as she slung her backpack over one shoulder and strolled out of the cafeteria. It was weird how she acted so cool up until a certain point; something must have touched on something she didn't want to talk about. Yet, she still could keep her cool as she exited the cafeteria.

"People are pretty weird in this dimension," I said to myself as I gathered my things, "but I like that."

There was something that I noticed about Erin while we were talking, though. Despite her positively cool nature, she seemed... sad somehow. It wasn't because she was wearing mostly black and grey either. I didn't know, it just seemed like she needed someone to talk to too. She seemed to deliberately avoid certain subjects too, like her family. I wasn't sure why, but I assumed that they might have split or deceased, the normal reasons why someone wouldn't want to talk about their family. I could respect that.

Another weird thing is that I didn't see Maya and Aiden that day. I had no idea where they were. I thought they might be at school, but I didn't see them in the cafeteria, and that's when the whole school is in one room all at once. Maya usually sits with the cheerleaders (and I noticed their table looked significantly gloomier, but I didn't blame them) and Aiden usually sits either with us, or at a different table just by himself for some reason. Through the day I kept having this thought lingering in the back of my mind that would say,

Pickaxe got to them. They're dead, but nobody will find out because it's Pickaxe. He killed them and there's nothing you can do about it.

But then I would remember,

Wait, I thought Gabriel and his friends were sent to be corrected in some kind of insane asylum where he would be fixed into the Gabriel the Warier that we all know and love in present day.

I just couldn't help but worry, though. They wouldn't just vanish like that without telling us.

Something was going on.

---

Hey, guys. How has your day been?

Sorry for the late chapter; I've been kind of busy lately and haven't been able to post on Wattpad. I was just hoping you didn't think I forgot I was writing this or something. (Or that I died)

I'm pretty aware that almost all of my followers are fans of Lukesse, and while I don't really ship it, I love putting in ship teases whether I ship it or not. That's pretty much why I made Lukas and Jesse spend about half the chapter being (almost) alone together. Also Lukas mistakenly calling her "hot." Real smooth, blonde guy.