Mena was so relieved the new Dream Exploration class only had her and Janus in it. Everyone else did not have a vendetta against her and wasn’t someone who would lob unfair judgement at the professor for something out of their control.

Mena was so happy that she did not mind that Stellaris’ Sun Tower now had a positively psychedelic glow to it. Neon lamps of green and blue magma billowed at the door. Five multicolored dreamcatchers dangled from the sunroof. The room was now painted a garish shade of purple and green tie-dye.

The old headmaster wobbled inside without a care in his mind and immediately began his lecture. “When I was a young buttercup of merely thirty-seven, my father always told me, ‘Son, when are you gonna get a real job and stop chasing those rainbows in your mind?’”

Roy G Bivion giggled mirthfully and flipped onto a purple cloud he had conjured with his mind. “Well jokes on you, Daddy-O. Royboy is still chasing those rainbows while you rot in the ground.”

He gave a mischievous grin followed by an odd laugh that sounded like, “Ee hee hee.”

The only person who even smiled was Janus and Mena assumed it was more because he mentioned death.

“BUGGALOOH-BAH!” the professor screamed and made a larger cloud appear out of nowhere.

He laughed to himself. “I got a copyright patent on those magic words so if any of you steal them, it’s fifteen years in prison.”

“Now,” Roy said with a grin behind his crazy glasses. “Down to the real business. I’m gonna take you chickadees down on a journey through the center of your mind, where you’ll get to see what truly lies within. Then…because this is a class as imposed by Grand Master Stellaris, you will write about your true subconscious desires for homework.”

All the girls in the class exchanged uneasy looks over someone as truly weird of Bivion knowing their subconscious desires.

“I’m going to hypnotize you with these rainbow specs of mine and while you’re zonked out, you’re gonna ride the tin-toy daisy train all around your brain…TOOT TOOT…Any takers?”

All the girls leaned back in fear, but Janus, ever the hazy one stepped forward.

“Ah yes,” Bivion said. “Here’s a grateful dead. I can’t wait to see what’s inside your rotting brain.”

Janus happily rattled her bones and danced in place. “Ooh I can’t wait to either,” she squealed happily.

Janus sat on the larger cloud next to Bivion. Once she was comfortable, Bivion said to her in a wavery voice, “Now look into my kaleidoscope eyes.”

Everyone watched tentatively as Janus stared directly into his constantly shifting rainbow glasses. Soon her eyes mirrored the same patterns in the glasses, and she closed them.

Five minutes of silence passed before Janus awoke with a phew.

Bivion bounced excitedly on his could. “Did you ride the daisy train?”

I did,” Janus said dreamily. “It was fun…”

“What did you find at the center of your mind?”

Janus’ eyes were bright. She gave a proud smile and said, “Plague, famine death and decay.”

The room was dead silent after her exuberance.

Bivion crossed his arms and gave a polite nod. “I’d expect nothing less from the daughter of that hooded guy who reaps people for a living. That, my cheerful corpse, is your purest essence.”

Janus beamed and walked back to her seat. But when she did, all the girls around her moved their seats away. Janus didn’t seem to mind at all, after all, Mena remained beside her.

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Bivion cast his kaleidoscopic glasses onto Mena. “Ah…how about you, my rainborn friend?”

“Me?” Mena asked pointing to herself. She was the only other girl at the front of the room. Mena gulped loudly, but she knew she couldn’t refuse.

Mena sat uncomfortably on Bivion’s rainbow cloud. She crossed and uncrossed her leges and squirmed, not wanting to catch the glance of his swirling spectacles.

“Come on, Mena,” Janus called out to her friend. “It’s fun. You get all smiley and ride a rainbow powered flower train through the recesses of your skull!”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Mena muttered.

The toothy wizard grinned with his eyes covered by whirling, spiraling glasses. “That’s no way out,” Mena said, holding her breath. “Here goes nothing.”

She investigated his glasses and instantaneously, she was blinded by every color of the rainbow. Space and time had melted through her ear, and she was being pulled inside of it. Mena’s entire body inverted on itself. Everything went from infinite colors to pitch black, and she found herself standing inside her ear canal. Standing on a lumpy, bumpy floor covered in a greenish-yellow sticky substance, Mena gagged. “Yucko!” Mena gasped. “Looks like my lip isn’t the only thing that needs waxing.”

A puff of steam hissed through the air, followed by the chug of a locomotive. A whistle tooted a friendly tune to the sound of the children’s ditty “A Gisket, A Gasket,” causing Mena to turn her head.

Traveling along a self-growing vine trainline was the most colorful steam engine she had seen since the trainbow last semester. A large white and yellow flower spun on the front of verdant green locomotive. It pulled several matching carriages of white and yellow with spinning floral wheels. As the engine passed, the driver, who seemed to be a daisy with an engineer hat and opposable leaves, waved and pulled a candy cane shaped lever, causing the train to give a merry toot.

“Miserable magicaps,” Mena muttered, “Remind me to never drink any of Gemini’s LS-Tea.”

Mena screamed as another daisy jumped in her face. “Hi, I’m the Daisy Conductor,” she said in a high-pitched squeal that rivaled the annoyance of Mena’s self-made scarecrow, Straw-Woman.

“Not like I have much of a choice,” Mena glared at the figment of her imagination.

“That’s riiiight,” the daisy exclaimed. “We’re taking a voyage straight into the center of your mind where we’ll see what makes you tick.”

The door to the carriage opened and Mena climbed inside. The seats were all composed of green stems tied together. “You don’t want to know how those are made,” the daisy sang as Mena sat down.

“I wish I brought some notes I could take,” Mena thought.

“Wait a minute,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m me, duh. Of course, I know what makes me tick.”

“You might be surprised,” the daisy snicked. “And we’re off.”

With another whistle train began to roll. “This is such an odd first assignment,” Mena muttered as they traversed her ear canal. “Couldn’t we have told him our names and what we wanted to be when we grew up?”

As the train traveled further and further through the ear canal, the passage grew wider until she found herself staring at the large pink cranial mass she called her brain. Mena marveled at its sight. “It’s much bigger than I thought,” she said astounded and scratched her head. “I wonder why I don’t use it more often?”

“Next stop,” the Daisy Conductor called. “The brain.”

The train launched itself off the end of the tracks, kamikazeing itself into the brain with a smushing sound.

“Derrr…” Mena said, momentarily stunned from the train colliding with her head. But when she shook it off, she found herself in a sparkling, kaleidoscopic void. Several objects and people passed her. She soon realized they were indelible facets of her life.

There was a giant cup of homebrewed eye-of-newt spice latte with a hint of whipped cream frothing at the top. “The best way to start the morning,” Mena said licking her lips.

She eased up against the train seat and sighed as Fabias passed by on his nightrider broom. A gust outside stripped him of everything but a speedo covering up his chiseled, musclebound body. “Hubba hubba…” Mena said drooling. “Perhaps this isn’t such a bad trip after all.”

Taylor Witch, a slim, blond witch singer with red lipstick passed by on a giant autobroom. She bellowed out her latest hit, “Toil and Trouble.”

“Ah yes,” Mena said, with her hands on her cheeks. “The voice of my generation.”

Janus and May followed the starlet with excited waves. Mena was all smiles. “Wow, this is really my happy place! I love my thinker!”

But there was one last thing at the far edge of her brain. Mena craned her neck to catch a glimpse. It was the visage of a woman. Mena squinted her eyes; she looked awfully familiar. It was a beautiful witch with long brunette hair and chestnut eyes. She smiled from her thin but perfectly shaped lips. It was Mena’s mom, Arabella, but as Arabella’s profile turned, Mena gasped.

The other half of the woman’s face was a pink and corpselike. Her hair was a gorgon shade of purple and her eyes were crystalline and frozen with tears. “No…no…” Mena screamed.

“I can’t live without you daughter,” Anguish sighed with her deep inhumane voice. “And you can’t live without me. Your blood is mine. Now…come back to your mother.”

Anguish began to cackle as her mouth swelled. It grew large enough to swallow the train, and it did. They plunged into infinite blackness with Mena screaming.

Mena awoke and flung herself out of a bed, panting and sweating.

Immediately, Stellaris and Bivion ran over to her.

“Where am I?” Mena demanded.

“The infirmary,” Stellaris said. “It seems your dream exploration went awry…”

“Seems ya had a bad trip,” Bivion laughed.