The Shadow Rises

Well... I guess this ring has some magic to it after all..." Trent said to himself. He backed away slowly avoiding the pitfalls of his roommates room. He wasn't entirely sure how it had happened, but he was very sure that he had somehow just found himself inside another person's dream. An event which, had he been asked the day before, he would have told you was impossible in anything other than a campy sci-fi movie.

Returning to the cramped and dirty living room Trent searched for the letter that had come with the ring. He had just kind of tossed it aside after giving it a cursory reading earlier.

At the time it had seemed unimportant, a mere scrap of yellowed paper on a trinket someone had left on his front door. Now however it seemed slightly more important.

His eyes caught sight of a glint of yellowed parchment sticking out from under the edge of the couch. Trent dived for the parchment, bruising his knees and his ego slightly in his haste.

Trent read the letter again, studying every line as through his life depended on it. He had always been taught that if something was too good to be true than it probably is. There is always a catch. Trent read the letter out loud:

To whom it may concern

Don this ring and you may find

A way to tread another's mind.

The power to go from here to there

As easily as you breathe the air

A word of warning you should mind

Do not seek what you should not find

For darkness rests within us all

and it may bring about your downfall

"Don this ring and you may find, a way to tread anothers mind." Trent said, "Well there is nothing overly confusing about that." He supposed that technically he had been in her dreams, though that could easily be considered part of her mind.

"The power to go from here to there, As easily as you breathe the air" he read. This line was a bit more confusing. Did it mean that it would make him strong and able to keep going long distances without getting tired as easily as he breathed? Or did it mean something more esoteric, like that he could teleport?

"Do not seek what you should not find." He mused to himself.

"That sounds ominous" a voice said from behind him

"holy shit!" Trent exclaimed in surprise, he jumped involuntarily. He hadn't heard his roommate come up behind him, so focused as he had been on reading the letter.

"Jumpy much?" she asked, giving him an inquisitive look. "Since when have you taken to writing brooding poetry?" she enquired

"It's not mine, I found it in the hall" He said. He knew he looked guilty, he always did when he lied, and he knew as well that she could see right through him.

She raised an eyebrow and said nothing, letting the silence sit between them for a moment.

He tried to reach out to her mind the way he had before. His senses could detect her in the way they always had, but it was almost as though he had a new sense. Her mind almost vibrated in front of him, sending off stray signals like sparks from a campfire. It was confusing and he was unsure what to make of it. So many thoughts flitted through her mind that he felt like he was going to have a seizure trying to grab onto every stray spark.

"why is he looking at me like that" came a thought. "is he looking at my tits?"

He traced that thought back to the center, ignoring the stay thoughts and perceptions that bombarded him as he immersed himself in her mind. He could feel her growing anxiety and frustration as on the surface silence continued unbroken between them. To the outside observer it would look like he was simply staying at her.

"maybe I can try calming her" he thought to himself. He reached the core, he smothered the fire, trying to calm the vibrations and emanations that were erupting from her. He immediately felt her mind rebel, fighting against his touch.

"what is going on!?" came the thought.

He ignored the thought and focused on enforcing his will upon her.

"shhhhh, be calm" he commanded

With this final command he felt her resistance to his presence crumple beneath his touch. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she dropped towards the ground.

Trent jumped to catch her, grabbing her around her waist as she collapsed. He struggled against her limp weight, trying to ignore the feeling of her breasts pushing up against him.

He carried her over to the couch, trying in vain not to let her dragging feet make a mess as they knocked over piles of objects. He set her gently on the couch and covered her with a blanket, trying to think what else he should do.

"I guess I was a bit too heavy handed there" he said to himself, "Instead of just calming her down I put her to sleep."

Trent felt her mind as she slept, the fires of consciousness still burned within it, however it had dimmed significantly from before. He was not sure what would happen if it went out all together but he was sure that he did not want to find out right now. He did his best to stoke it, under his gentle caress it slowly started to brighten.

He glanced at the clock that hung by the door. He hadn't realized that so much time had passed. He realized that he must have spent more time in Eva's dream and playing with the ring than he had thought. He had always heard that time passed more quickly in dreams than it did in the waking world. Leaving Eva to sleep peacefully, her breathing slow and even as she rested in a deep dreamless sleep he moved to go change into his uniform and get ready for work. Trent always prided himself on being clean cut and professional in his attire, his uniform crisp and clean, but today would have to be an exception to that rule.

Rustling through his closet he found his uniform shirt in the back, carefully segregated from his casual clothes, the way you might segregate a patient with a dangerous infection to keep it from spreading. When he had started his job he had liked the way the uniform made him look, he had found the stripes and colors made him look dashing, now he felt more that it screamed of minimum wage and long hours being yelled at for just doing his job. The one recompense for the downside of his job was the people he worked with. The nurses and doctors at the clinic where he spent so many of his waking hours were kind and friendly, in many ways giving him the motivation he would otherwise have been lacking to attend work so consistently.

Grabbing his coat on the way out Trent wound his way through the maze like corridors that honeycombed the inside of the building. Many times when he had first moved into his building he had become turned around, ending up at blank hallways and dead ends before finally memorizing the path to his apartment. The upside of the building he lived in was that in the heart of downtown Portland it was close to everything and even had a pub on the ground level that he enjoyed dining at on a regular basis. The downside was that every hallway looked the same, and while the building was well insulated the sounds of the city never really stopped.

He stepped out into the late afternoons sunshine and closed his eyes momentarily in enjoyment. The sounds of the twin fountains that guarded the front of the building cast a soothing cascade of sound that he had always found peaceful. Rain and frequent gray skies aside, Portland was a lush, green city that he wouldn't trade for anything.

A new sound intruded on his introspection, disturbing the placid moment that he had been enjoying. Senseless and inane chatter surrounded him, sounding as though he had set foot into the middle of a crowded mall instead of the front courtyard of his apartment. But the sound was off, it echoed off walls that didn't exist and pressed into his consciousness in a way that shouldn't be possible, given his close proximity to a foundation that normally did an admirable job of blocking out all sound.

As Trent watched the flood of humanity that crossed in front of his building, the unadulterated flow of individuals owed its presence to his buildings proximity to both the Portland State University campus as well as the normal downtown fare, he realized that the sounds he was hearing was the thoughts of all of the people who were around him. The sounds echoed around each other in a senseless babble of voice. Trent covered his ears to no avail, trying to block out the babble before it overwhelmed him.

He remembered the way that he had adjusted his thoughts when he was listening to Eva. He pictured a dial in his head, reaching back into his mind he adjusted the dial, trying to change the way the power was manifesting the thoughts of those around him. The babble began to recede and changed from a cacophony of sound to a gentle murmuring.

He pictured the thoughts of the people changing from a voice to more of a visual medium. Having always been a fan of the sims he used the frame work, forcing it into place. All at once the voices ceased and the normal sounds of the city drifted back around him, wrapping him in a cocoon of normalcy.

Trent opened his eyes and looked around him. A girl passed him heading out to the sidewalk in front of his building, a small green gem hovered over her head, pulsing in time with her thoughts. Looking around him he could see every person around him had a similar object floating above their heads. He found that if he focused on an individual gem he could hear the thoughts emanating from it. Something that he had not expected was the diversity of the colors and appearances. Unlike in the game he had used as a model where every gem was virtually identical, here there were as many shapes and colors as he could imagine, each one unique in its own way, belying the diversity of the individual that they represented. Trent decided that he much prefered this to the way it had presented initially, the gems were virtually unobtrusive while still offering him the chance to snoop when he so desired.

Trent walked down the street towards the bus stop where he always caught the bus to go to work. He passed people heading to and from their jobs and observed the minds of the people around him.

A portly woman with jowls hanging down from her cheeks exhibited a thick, nearly spherical gem somewhat resembling a hamburger in shape, while a grouchy looking elderly man exhibited a gem with sharp spear shaped protrusions protecting an interior that looked delicate and fragile.

As he approached the bus stop one mind in particular immediately caught his attention. It hung above the head of an attractive girl who appeared to be in her late teens or possibly her early twenties. Unlike the other minds he had seen that seemed to exhibit traits that connected with the individual they represented hers appeared to be a stark contrast. She was pretty and put together, a professional shirt and blouse worked well with a gentle brushing of make up, enough to cover any flaws in her skin without overwhelming her natural beauty. Her mind on the other hand radiated pain and despair on such a visceral level that Trent almost stepped back in shock. Her mind had been twisted by something dark and insidious and it was all he could do not to weep in utter empathy with her pain.

Her mind almost seemed as though it was emanating from the bottom of a deep well, struggling through layers of darkness to reach towards the sun the way a twisted skeletal tree still grasps at the sky.

Trent reached into her mind to examine it, instead of hearing a voice the way he had so often before his mind became overwhelmed with an image, an HD video of what the girl was picturing in her own mind. She stood at the brink of an overpass, standing on the pitted concrete barrier looking down at the cars and the sidewalk below. The sensation of both overwhelming dread mixed with a sense of expectancy and resignation. She took a single step into the yawning abyss and her foot caught only air, she tumbled head over heels before smashing into the pavement below with a heart rending explosion.

Trent gasped in shock, ignorant of the looks he was getting from the people around him.

He watched in despair as this vision played itself out over and over again before his eyes. The thought consumed the girl in front of him and twisted her mind, he could sense only the barest of barriers between thought and action. She clearly had been thinking about this for some length of time and very little held her back from making this dream a reality.

In a flash of insight this girls life unspooled before his eyes, abuse and pain from an early age from people who should have been her champions in the world had left its mark and a series of abusive relationships had done little but reinforce her own belief in the futility of life. Although she worked a good job and lived in a nice apartment she had nothing in her life but her cat, no one whom she believed would miss her except for her manager, and only then because of the inconvenience it would take to replace her.

As tears rolled down his cheeks Trent vowed that he would not allow this lost soul to suffer in silence, something had bestowed this gift upon him and while he might not be a knight in shining armor, neither was he a heartless sociopath.

He reached forth gently, caressing her mind with the tenderness and care that one might use to brush the face of a sleeping baby. He sought out the dark places in her mind, the crevices that hid her pain away from the light and shined a beacon of empathy into them. Her smoothed over her rough patches. In her mind as the vision of her own destruction started to play itself out again, but this time he inserted himself into it. As she prepared to step out to meet her oblivion he reached out and caught her, pulling her into the safety of his embrace. The vision shattered in an explosion of light within her mind, so disrupted by this alteration that it could not persist. Someone reaching out and caring about her, without asking for or needing anything in return was such antithesis to this darkness that it could not abide its presence.

This time it was the girl who gasped.

Their eyes met from across the bus stop and somehow she knew that he had reached out to her. Though she couldn't feel the changes that he was making in her mind, she found that her mood had inexplicably improved. She was by no means euphoric, but she was in a better state of mind than she had been before.

Trent relaxed his hold on her mind, breathing a heavy sigh. Working with that level of precision and care had been more mentally taxing than he had realized when he was doing it and he found himself mentally fatigued. When he looked again at the girls mind he saw that it had shifted, although it still looked twisted it was far less dark and distorted than it had been when he started. He saw now that she was thinking about calling someone from work and going over a list of things she needed from the supermarket instead of repeating the vision that had appeared to be so much of an obsession when he had started.

It was at that moment that the bus rolled up to the bus stop. Reaching into his bag Trent pulled out what he called his "fuck off headphones" a large pair of over the ear headphones that he typically wore on the bus in order to prevent awkward conversations with random bus patrons. At times he didnt even have them plugged in when he wore them. Making his way to the back of the bus he sat down alone near one of the windows. As the bus started to pull away from the bus stop his eyes again met those of the girl, she seemed to radiate gratitude, though she clearly was unclear what had happened.

The rest of the day passed in a blur as Trent tried to focus on his work. The lure of peeking into the minds of those around him was almost irresistible, however he found that each mind he listened to wore him out more and more, by the time the day was done he was nearly asleep on his feet in exhaustion.

***

Trent walked into the apartment, kicking the door shut behind him as he dropped his bag by the door. He shrugged out of his uniform coat and shoes and sighed in relief. Ever since he had been a kid he had hated wearing shoes, a sentiment that had magnified since he joined the working world. Instead of simply being uncomfortable shoes now represented work as well.

"Im home!" he shouted into the empty room.

"how nice for you!" Eva shouted back from behind the closed door the led to her room. When they had initially moved in together he had thought he was being chivalrous by giving her the master bedroom, though to be honest he figured he probably would have lost if he had tried to fight her for it anyway.

He slid down the hallway to his own room, stopping only momentarily to slip out of his uniform and into a pair of gym shorts and a t shirt, his preferred attire for lounging around at home, and dropped onto his bed with a grunt.

He reached out, finding the warm pulsing ball of thought that emanated from Eva's part of the apartment. He instinctively slipped out of his body and towards her room, like a moth to a flame. He found that by concentrating he could see though her eyes by listening to the thoughts and intercepting the signals.

The process felt a little like possession, and he wondered sarcastically what that would make him. He sunk more deeply into her mind embracing the sensations that she radiated, he could feel the cramp she had in her left calf from stretching earlier in the day, and the sensation of the cold smooth wood under her feet. She opened her eyes, which he only just realized had been closed, and he found that he was in her room. She was looking down at a table where a various assortment of makeup was piled before looking up at herself in the mirror. He found himself instantly aroused when he realized that she was standing in front of her mirror with little but a bra and panties on.

His own mind emanated his arousal, and without meaning to he allowed it to seep outwards. Her nipples hardened and he could feel the processes in her body start to speed up as she began to share his excitement. He realized that this could easily become a feedback loop as he was both aroused, and since he was connected to her mind he could feel her own growing arousal which caused him to become further aroused.

One hand slipped up to her breast and she began to fondle and kneed the soft flesh through the thin material of her bra absent mindedly.

Trent shuddered in his own body, the unexpectedly powerful stimulation she felt as she massaged her breasts caught him unprepared, he could feel his cock harden further causing it to nearly stand at attention.

He sighed as the fatigue started to rest upon him. He wanted so badly to see where he could go with Eva but a day of walking though other peoples minds wore heavily upon him.

"It's amazing how much a life can change in a single day" he thought to himself

He felt himself drifting and pulled his mind back into his room.

In between blinks his room disappeared from around him. He stood on a branch of an enormous tree. Beneath him the world stretched away, clouds drifting in lazy patches beneath him. The tree he stood upon was impossibly large, a single branch easily as thick as a city sidewalk.

"I should be cold" He thought "or unable to breathe"

Although he had never had a lucid dream before it didn't take him long to realize that he must be dreaming. He had been in his bed only moments before, laying down after a long day.

Above him stretched the infinite dome of the heavens, a million blazing stars covering it in broad swaths.

"Well if I am going to dream, I should at least have fun while I am doing it" he thought to himself

Trent reached within himself and altered the dream. Under his touch the dream shifted, changing from the fabulous dreamscape that he had started in to something a little more mundane. The bathroom from his apartment. He shivered as the walls finished solidifying around him firming into reality. They wavered slightly the way the street shifts in the distance on a hot summers day before becoming still. He turned around finding that the bathroom was not empty.