I Must Be Dreaming

Welcome to... Three Sides of a Triangle

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Foreword from the Author
What is fear? Fear is a chemical reaction in the brain that strikes whenever you experience terror. Fear is primal. Fear is baser. Basically, fear is an emotion, and no one is without fear. Fear is what drives us to defend ourselves and our loved ones when needed. Most of all, fear comes from the unknown.

The unknown is what we don’t know, or what don’t want to know. Yet all the time, it comes to us in the strangest ways. That’s what ‘Three’ is all about: striving to discover the unknown; about three people struggling to uncover the unknown—before their fear gets the best of them.

Here’s to fear; how it drives us, how it saves us, and most of all, how it scares us. Hopefully people don’t say they aren’t afraid of anything. They would have a big part of themselves missing.

Dedicated to Maria and Francis, my cousins; Without them, the experience of fear would be nothing.

Escape Artist
Tick, tick, tick…ugh, the sound of it was so painful. The darkness I had awoken in was smothering and uncomfortable. It smelled of musty old food and hangover vomit. I always noticed the difference between hangover vomit and the aftermath of a total gorge-fest.

I could hear my breathing in the hot air, relaxed and unlabored. Beneath me, I could feel the smoothness of polyester. I was almost certain I was lying on a bed. I felt around for anything else on the bed. After all, waking up in a dark unknown is suspicious, and you never know what could be in there. Nothing on my left or on my right; my feet were bare so I could feel whatever was down there. There was something wet and slightly warm. My extremities weren’t bound in any way. Who would put someone in a weird room without making sure they couldn’t escape? The thought of it was strange.

Escape, my mind said again. Did I have to escape from this room? If I woke up in some place I had no idea existed, did that mean I was trapped?

“Please…” a voice from somewhere close whimpered. “Please, someone help…”

It was definitely coming from a female, and she sounded frightened. Who wouldn’t be—besides me, of course?

I started to lift myself off the bed. Surprisingly, I felt heavy with fatigue, but I managed to sit up anyway.

“Oh God, help me…” the girl whimpered again through sobs.

“Who’s there?” I called to her. I heard her gasp.

“Please help me!” she called with desperation in her voice.

I started to stand. It seemed to take me a decade to do it, but I soon found myself on my feet. The girl was sobbing by now, saying things like ‘help’ and ‘save me’ in between choking sobs. I felt around the wall for something, and kept watching my step. I was barefoot and there could be anything on the floor; obviously I needed to be careful.

“Please, whoever you are!” the girl shouted. “Please save me!” She sniffled and whimpered. “It’s so wet here.”

It’s so wet here…if she was somewhere wet, that narrowed my choices down to pretty much just a bathroom somewhere close by.

“Oh God, please help me!” she shouted when I saw her. I found her in a bathroom with the light barely flickering on and off, dangling on a cord above her. She was sitting in a bathtub, bound by a rope to the faucet. Sloshing through wet clothes and towels, I trudged to the bathtub and tried pulling her out. No such luck. The rope was a strong one.

“Please save me…” she whispered. I tried to undo the tight cords. They slipped off after what was at least three minutes of desperation. My hands were bleeding by the end, but she was standing outside the bathtub soon enough.

“Oh, I can’t thank you enough for—”

Crash!!! The flickering light that was dangling above her head fell into the water. An old pair of Ben Franklin sunglasses lying in the tub glimmered and jarred and shook with electric sparks. And I was in darkness once again.

Crash…psssszzzhhhtt…I heard those sounds above me, and it made me wonder more as to where I was. All around me, there was old and stained wainscot lining the walls, and furniture I would find in an old lady’s house—an old lady who moved out years ago. Everything was lacy and rotting. Fabrics had dark, rotted holes in them. The only thing that wasn’t ugly and abandoned was this big colonial fireplace that looked so old Thomas Jefferson must have had it in his living room.

“Are you about done looking at the fireplace?” A little aggravated, I looked behind me. There she was again, the woman who woke me up. I had found myself tied to a couch when I came to. I was almost certain she was either Thai or Khmer. Lucky for me, she wasn’t one of those stupid girls who can’t do a thing when in a situation like this.

“Yeah, I am,” I replied to her. She let her crossed arms drop to her side and walked to the foot of the stairs. A worried expression crossed her strong, hard face. Then she sharply looked up—a shuffling noise erupted from the top of the stairs. I suddenly tensed and found myself reaching over, grabbing a heavy candelabrum. When you wake up in a strange place, you can’t help but feel an intrinsic need to defend yourself.

The door nearest the stairs started to swing open. The woman next to me seemed to tense and assumed a Bājíquán position. The shuffling grew noisier. I strengthened my grip on the candelabrum. The door started to open more. The woman next to me moved into a stronger position. I began to raise the candelabrum, just as the door opened fully. The first bare foot stepped out and moved out more and more until I could see a whole body—two, in fact.

“You can put that thing down now,” the woman beside me said.

She had relaxed out of her Bājíquán position and was standing idly at the foot of the stairs. The person who was barefoot started descending, holding someone else’s arm. Soon, they were at the same floor we were.

“Any of you happen to know where we are?” the raggedy girl holding onto the barefoot guy’s arm asked.

“Nope,” the woman next to me said.

The raggedly girl—who I noticed was soaked—sighed deeply.

“Well, my name’s Erin,” she sighed.

I nodded my head and dropped the heavy candelabrum on the carpet. So I thought—I had dropped it right on the Khmer woman’s foot. She cried sharply in pain and kicked my directly in the sternum with the same foot that I had dropped the candelabrum on. The wind was knocked right out of me; her kick was so much stronger than I would have thought.

TO BE CONTINUED