One day earlier

Moments after falling asleep for the night, Tyler woke up only to find himself surrounded by complete darkness. It wasn’t the kind of darkness that you could ever see at night; this was a total, all-encompassing shroud of nothing. It somewhat reminded Tyler of the time he had gone spelunking with his father—before his father’s death, of course—and they had been told by their guide to turn off their flashlights. Tyler remembered that the total absence of light, along with the damp chill of the deep cave, had fascinated him. He felt nothing even close to fascination now.

This strange place, which was growing increasingly familiar, caused Tyler to have no control over his body—if he even had a body here. He tried to open his eyes, but he had no eyes to open. Nothing existed in this place except for his own consciousness. He tried to breathe, to move, to do anything, but he had no lungs, limbs, or body. He knew that he should have a body, and remembered vividly what it felt like. However, no matter how hard he stretched his mind, he couldn’t even feel the ends of his fingers. After what felt like ages of trying to move, he sighed—figuratively, of course—and gave up. His only proof that he or anyone else had ever even existed were his own memories, and he had begun to doubt even their validity. After an uncountable period of time, which could have been minutes, hours, or years, Tyler finally woke up with a start.

***

He awoke in his own bed, which had never felt more comfortable than it had felt at that moment. Being able to feel, see, and move had rapidly become a rare commodity in which he cherished every moment of. The same dream had occurred every night for about three months, but he had never grown used to the nightly out-of-body experiences. Tyler was not devoutly religious, but he couldn’t imagine the dreams to be any worse than the lowest circle of Hell itself.

About five minutes after escaping his nightly blank dream (as he had ruefully named them), Tyler mentally prepared himself to leave his bed and begin a new day. He had learned from experience that if he stayed still and dwelled on the dreams he had, his day would start off poorly.

Just as he was about to leave the comfortable confines of his bed, a knock came from his bedroom door. Without waiting for a response, the perpetrator burst through the door and gleefully hopped inside.

“Tyler, are you ever going to get out of bed? Your alarm went off twice, you know.” The intruder was a young boy who looked to be about 12, which was two years younger than Tyler. His unruly white hair and brilliant gold eyes contrasted perfectly with Tyler’s pitch black hair and irises of deep violet.

As soon as the intruder’s words registered in Tyler’s mind, he bolted upright. “What??” Tyler shouted as he immediately jumped out of bed and began to get dressed.

“Whoa, calm down there Ty, I haven’t even left yet!”

“Then get out, Gray! I need to get to school!” Tyler could hear Gray’s cheerful laughter as he shut the door behind him. Grayson Fullman was Tyler’s younger brother, but if Tyler was a moonless night, Gray was a clear, sunny day. Despite their contrasting personalities, hair, eyes, and the two years separating them in age, they looked shockingly identical. They both carried their mother’s thin, defined jawline, and their father’s young look and smooth features. Their hair even parted the same way. In spite of everything, though, Gray and Tyler were as close as brothers could possibly be. Though Gray was in his second year of middle school, Tyler had just started high school.

Tyler was only about three months into his first year of high school, and people already knew him as the guy who was always late. It didn’t used to be that way, but ever since Tyler’s first blank dream, he could never seem to wake up on time. And so, he began his daily routine of scrambling to get dressed, eat breakfast, and bolt out the door. Luckily he only lived a half mile from his school.

“Take care at school, alright?” Tyler’s mother called as he stepped out of the door of the apartment, the bags under her eyes looking even heavier than usual today.

“Of course I will, Mom.” Tyler’s expression was somber when he said this, but he was turned away at that moment so his mother couldn’t see. Come on Dad, he thought with a sigh. Why did you need to leave us like this? Tyler only had a few memories of his father, and only half of them were good ones. Some of his most vivid memories though, were of his father’s occasional rants. Tyler never remembered topics, but the seriousness in his fathers tone always scared him. It sounded as if he was in constant danger. And, just after Tyler turned seven, his father passed away in his sleep. The doctors found no apparent cause, as there was nothing wrong with his body. It was as if he had just… turned off.

If a random passerby were to watch Tyler as he jogged in the direction of his school, they would wonder if he had a loose screw. That was because he was constantly checking a watch band on his wrist. He wouldn’t even go ten seconds without checking his watch. However, it wasn’t because he was concerned about the time. 120 bpm, Tyler thought while sighing inwardly. So this is as fast as I can run.

Finally, about five minutes later, Tyler made it to class.

“Tyler, nice of you to join us,” Tyler’s first period Spanish teacher joked as Tyler found his seat. “Since you decided to be late once again, how do you feel about answering our little question?” The teacher sneered while pointing to the blackboard as the entire class burst into laughter. Fortunately, the question was a simple one.

“How do you say ‘I am very busy today’ in Spanish?” Tyler read out loud from the board. “Hoy estoy muy ocupado,” he answered immediately. Unbeknownst to the class, Tyler was to languages like Mozart to music. Not because he had any kind of fascination with languages, however he was fluent in six, and could vaguely understand many more. Understanding of foreign languages had always felt completely natural to him. He hardly even needed to study to understand a new language nowadays.

Mrs. Sánchez, the Spanish teacher, covertly gritted her teeth. She had been trying to catch Tyler off guard since the beginning of the school year, but had never succeeded. It frustrated her that Tyler could be late almost every day, not pay attention in class, and still be the top student. When Tyler saw her tense expression, he showed a tiny smirk.

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School had always been monotonous for Tyler, but he still attended in the hopes of someday supporting his mother with a high paying job. Sadly, that’s how the world worked. No matter how capable a person was, the only way to make money was to attend college and receive a degree. Maybe if something interesting happened to me, I wouldn’t feel so bored, Tyler thought.

About five and a half hours later, school was over and Tyler was knocking on a certain door. Now Tyler could finally do what he had been looking forward to all day.

“Come in,” an aged masculine voice drifted through the door. Tyler silently turned the handle and stepped into a dimly lit room. He stood in an old office with a single desk, and cheesy motivational posters plastered all over the walls. The only occupant looked to be in his late sixties, with long white hair and a medium length beard. The friendly wrinkles around his eyes showed his smile better than his lips did, and he had piercing blue eyes that held wisdom beyond what even his age should be capable of.

“What brings you to my office this afternoon, Tyler?” Dr. Hardwell said as a warm smile showed on his face.

“I’m still having those dreams, Dr. Hardwell. I know you said to just forget about them in the morning, but they’ve been messing up my sleep schedule and making me late to school. It’s even worse than having nightmares. At least in a nightmare, something happens. These dreams are just plain boring.” When Tyler was saying this, he was only half telling the truth. The full truth was, these dreams truly frightened him deep in his core. Not necessarily because of the dreams by themselves, but from what he believed they represented.

As Tyler spoke, Dr. Hardwell leaned forward and fixed his gaze, the smile no longer present. He didn’t move to speak until the words that now filled the room settled. Even then, he pressed his lips together once again to gather the last of his thoughts.

“First of all,” Dr. Hardwell finally spoke, “don’t underestimate the terror of a true nightmare. I know your dreams must be difficult to overcome, but there are always worse things. However, my advice to you is to be patient. It will pass, even if it is in a way that you cannot predict.”

“Don’t you have some way for me to make them stop, or something?” Tyler blurted, somewhat frantically. He had been suffering through these dreams every night, and he didn’t want to exercise patience any longer. Dr. Hardwell took even longer to respond this time. Finally, he sighed and began to speak.

“If you truly are adamant on doing something about these dreams, I have a bit of a proposition,” he said while opening one of the many desk drawers in front of him. “I know that part of my job as a psychologist is confidentiality, but I felt the need to speak to one of my colleagues about your fairly unique situation. Even for him, despite his specialty in the land of dreams, he hasn’t heard of a case like yours before. However, he has knowledge that may help you, and he told me to give this to you.”

Dr. Hardwell gently removed a beautiful envelope with gold leafing and bold red lettering on the top flap. As the psychologist passed the envelope over to Tyler, he could see that the letter was firmly sealed, in an old fashioned style with crimson wax. The intricate crest embedded in the wax seal was unfamiliar to Tyler, but he could tell that it portrayed a beautiful crown with a foreign symbol perfectly wrapped within.

“What is this?” Tyler asked with a look of doubt on his face.

“It’s a letter from my colleague. I don’t know whether he can help you or not, but that letter should help you turn in the right direction.

“I can tell that this… colleague of yours has a taste for the theatrical,” Tyler said with a weird look on his face.

“You have no idea,” Dr. Hardwell chuckled. Tyler naturally moved to open the letter, but Dr. Hardwell swiftly stopped him. “No, not here. Wait until you get home. It’s not for me to see what is written.” Tyler’s eyes briefly jumped back to the psychologist’s face, his expression shifting to one of puzzlement. Shrugging it off, he dropped the issue. He would just need to read the letter later. He slid it into his back pocket, stood to shake the old psychologist’s hand and stepped out the door. Now he had something small to look forward to, at least.

As he walked home from the school, he wondered who Dr. Hardwell’s mysterious colleague was, and why he would write Tyler such a fancy, confidential letter. For that’s what it said on the top flap of the envelope. The word confidential was written in red, bold letters that couldn’t be missed. Perhaps the sender was just a very eccentric psychologist, but it intrigued Tyler beyond his day to day routine.

Tyler soon made it back to the small seven story apartment complex where he lived with his mother and brother. It wasn’t a terrible place to live, but it was the best that his mother could afford with her job as a night nurse in the emergency room. With a tiny grin, Tyler began the long climb up the stairs to reach the seventh floor.

For a normal person, climbing seven flights of stairs was only mildly uncomfortable, if not easy. However, Tyler’s body was not quite normal. He was born with a terminal heart condition that the doctors said would kill him before he reached 21 years of age. Additionally, for every second his heart rate went above 140 BPM, minutes would be taken off of his life. For this reason, he always wore a heart rate monitor on his wrist that would intensely vibrate if his heart rate ever spiked above 130. Whenever he did any sort of physical activity, such as running to school when he was late, he was very careful to control his heart rate so that it never went into the danger zone.

Tyler took his time as he moved up the staircase. Unluckily for him, the apartment wasn’t fancy enough to have an elevator, so he needed to make this climb every day after school. When he finally made it to the top, he was panting slightly and beads of sweat beaded down the back of his somewhat pale neck.

He stood like that for a little while, leaning against the door to his family’s apartment. Instead of entering, he rotated back towards the staircase where the roof access was. Gritting his teeth, Tyler began to climb, painstakingly slow, up the final flight of stairs. At the top, he opened the hatch with a tiny key he kept on a chain around his neck. Finally, he was able to sit on a small bench that overlooked the city in the distance. As he sat on the bench, panting lightly, he reached into his back pocket and gently tugged the mysterious letter free before placing it on his lap. He took a deep breath, and then slowly lifted the letter from his lap. He would finally get to read the contents of this mysterious letter, and maybe even get rid of his blank dreams!

*Thump-thump*

Suddenly, before Tyler could even break the seal, he felt an excruciating pain in his chest. He abruptly leapt to his feet, letter still in hand, and began clutching his chest in pain. Am I… am I having a heart attack? Tyler thought sluggishly, his vision blurring due to the pain. Am I… dying?

Tyler had always been afraid of death. Maybe it was because it had always loomed over him, with its wicked scythe constantly hovering over his flawed heart. Perhaps it was simply a natural fear of the unknown—the infinite beyond past the veil. This was the true reason why he hated the accursed blank dreams with such a passion. Not because they were boring, and not because he was afraid of the dark or claustrophobic. No, it was because of what he believed they represented. He knew it was childish and naïve, but he had always felt the creeping suspicion that each blank dream brought him one step closer to his inevitable death. And, now that he felt like he was dying, he did not want to spend an eternity inside of another blank dream—with no body, no senses, drifting aimlessly in an infinite void. He at least wished that, if there was an afterlife, that it was nothing like his dreams.

Tyler was still twitching in pain, holding his chest, when a sudden gust of wind snatched the envelope from his hand and carried it towards the edge of the roof. By complete instinct, Tyler leapt to try and catch it. Unfortunately, in his pain, he had somehow moved closer to the edge of the building’s roof than he thought. Before he could react, Tyler was already falling.

Oh, well. If I wasn’t already going to die, I guess I just sealed my fate, Tyler thought darkly, moments before impact on the pavement below. The instant he collided with the ground, everything went black.