"Wet Dreams"

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...



It was a Friday. Marilyn had just gotten up, ready to go to work, when she found her twelve-year-old son, Max, lying face-down on the living room floor.


It was a horrible sight, a horrible sensation, but even when she found out he wasn't dead, there was still something terribly wrong. Marilyn was standing by the phone, ready to call for an ambulance.. when she heard Max coughing. She turned around and saw he was getting up. He was coughing up water. Was he choking?


"Everywhere I look, they are there. What is everyone doing?"

"Max, honey? What's wrong? What happened?"

"I just see faces. Faces staring blank as they go on with the routine."

"Max, please, are you alright?"

He stood, staring. After a few seconds, he held his head and nearly collapsed again. "Ugh...mom, it hurts to breathe."


Marilyn decided to let Max stay home from school that day. Instead, she let him rest up and promised to take him to a doctor if he's still felt ill on Saturday. He slept most of the day, waking up with a scream several times. It was always the same nightmare that woke him up:


"In my dream, I'm a spaceman. That's what they say I am. Nothing but a spaceman...always pushing it all away. Trying to get to that one place I call home. The journey begins, forcing a new life with the unexplained, a creeping rush that surrounds me.


"And everyone around me, their faces are so scary. Like blank, but...their eyes and mouth are big."

"Shh, it's okay, Max. It was just a dream. Everything's okay."


Marilyn didn't think much of it. She was worried, yes. But she assumed he was speaking purely out of stress. "Kids do that." Right?


Later that day, she heard Max scream even louder. She checked on him, only to find him huddled in the corner. He claimed that someone was tapping on his window. "Honey, we're on the third floor. Nobody was tapping on your window, I promise." Then she gave him his fourth glass of water of the day. He's gotta keep hydrated.


In the night, Max woke up only once. He had a different dream this time:


"Nothing is here. Memories are not clear. They were looking into something much worse than what I thought I was. Looking around, I don't see any faces. Yes, I am lonely. It's to be expected. I'll sleep now."


As she left the room, she saw a string lying on the ground, going out the door and into the darkness. That wasn't there before.


When she checked on him the next day, she found his bed empty, the covers rustled. His mattress was soaking wet. Max was nowhere to be found.


As she stepped outside to look for him, the rain pattering onto her head, she got a sudden idea. "I should go to the pond." On the way to the pond, the people she passed looked peculiar. Their faces stared, blank, as they went on with the routine. Yet their faces were odd. Contorted. Distorted. A ghoulish caricature.


Marilyn paid it no mind. The longer she was in this rain, the more she felt sure that she had to go to the pond as soon as possible.


At the pond, she found her son. "Maxwell Kalan, there you are."


The odd part is, she didn't say that. Odder still, she was shocked to find Max jumping into the pond after hearing his name. She looked into the pond. She couldn't see him.


"Marilyn Kalan, there you are."