Dorian Montoir
May 12, 2018 12:46 PM
A bad night for both of us (tag Vlad) by Dorian Montoir
It wasn’t completely unheard of for Dorian to end the week facedown on his bed, feeling completely devoid of energy, and like he was using what little he had remaining to forcibly hold his brain together when it seemed like it wanted to collapse into a pile of goo and seep out of his ears. Thus he hadn’t thought anything of it when he’d felt exhausted at the end of the first week back in classes, after not really having a proper holiday. He had sprawled on his bed for a while, wondering whether he would recover enough energy to be decent company to anyone except Melody, but had eventually given up any delusion of getting back to normal, and crawled into bed fairly early. He crashed out almost as soon as his head hit the pillow, and for the first few hours of the night, he slept soundly. But as he slept, his temperature began to rise.He was making his way to MARS to visit Jehan but for some reason all the doors were locked. Except for the art room. That opened. To his great surprise and delight, Émilie was there, standing at an easel. She glanced over at him, but returned to what she was doing, looking preoccupied. Her easel was facing away from the door, so he couldn’t see what it was that so absorbed her attention that she hadn’t even said hello. He ventured over to investigate, and found that the canvas was covered in Chinese characters. He realised with a start that it was his own middle name, written out again and again in red paint.
“Eh, Émilie - nǐ wèishéme zuò zhège?” he demanded. Whilst Chinese culture generally felt red to be deeply auspicious, this also meant that it was used on the stele that recorded the names of the deceased - writing a living person’s name in red was considered terribly unlucky. And his sister knew this, so why was she doing it?
“Duìbùqǐ,” she apologised, “Méi bànfǎ.” It can’t be helped. What was that supposed to mean? But before Dorian had time to question this odd response, he was suddenly sitting in Transfiguration. And Professor Skies was telling him that he had to go and borrow something from Professor Wright. But he didn’t want to, because he knew (he did not know how he knew, the knowledge just came to him in that way that it sometimes does in dreams) that the Charms classroom was full of monsters.
“Bù ānquán de,” he protested. It’s not safe.
But of course, Professor Skies didn’t understand him, and was still telling him to go.
“Yǒu guàiwù.” No… That still wasn’t right. Monsters. He needed to say monsters. “Guàiwù,” no, it had happened again. Monsters! The word was so clear in his head, why couldn’t he make it come out? “Guàiwù! Guàiwù!”
And this part was a recurring dream he had when stressed - that he was in class, or some other important situation, and he could speak only French or Chinese, however hard he tried. Or he would be finishing off an exam, only to look back over it and realise, with no time to redo it, that he had done it in the wrong language. He had these dreams whenever his classwork was getting to him, but it usually was just a matter of class work, not a matter of life and death. He also didn’t usually start talking in his sleep, but between the vividness of the dream, its frightening nature, and the way the fever was making him restless, he had started to murmur. When he’d first protested against Professor Skies suggestion, telling her it was not safe, he had muttered something - at that stage shapeless, not yet words. He made several small noises of distress, and the word Guàiwù came out clearly, and frightened sounding, once.
And now he was in the corridor by the Charms room. And he was somehow moving towards it, or it towards him, but it was getting closer even though he definitely did not want it to be, and he knew there were monsters behind the door, and his name had been written in red, and-
“Jiùmìng!” he cried, not really sure who he was asking for help, holding out his arms, ready to push back against the door that was looming closer and closer “Jiùmìng! Tíng! Tíng” Even if they couldn’t understand the words, couldn’t they recognise the panic in his voice? Why didn’t they understand when he was screaming? “Yǒu guàiwù! Wǒ bùxiǎng sǐ! Tíng!”
He woke himself up with the last of his yells, disoriented, his arms falling to his sides, and his voice catching in his throat as he realised he didn’t need to yell any more. It wasn’t real. He was safe. Safe in Teppenpaw, in the room he shared with- oh.
“Sorry, Vlad,” he whispered into the darkness, because he suspected that as he had yelled loudly enough to wake himself up, he had disturbed his room-mate too. The very, very thin plus side was that Vlad probably didn’t understand what he’d been yelling. It probably was not particularly comforting or pleasant to be awoken by shouting in a language you didn’t understand, but was probably mildly better than hearing shouts of ‘Help!’ and ‘Stop!’ and ‘I don’t want to die!’
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Dorian Montoir
A bad night for both of us (tag Vlad)
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