The Sandman’s Awakening: An Urban Fantasy

I can see people’s dreams and nightmares.

Dancing lights and shadows playing above their heads in 3D, like a movie without a TV.

I first noticed back when I shared a room with my older brother. I was so excited for Santa to visit, I couldn’t sleep. My heart was in my throat and energy zipped through my veins as I tried to listen out for the sounds of hooves on my roof and footsteps as Santa stomped towards the window — because we all know he comes through windows now, not chimneys.

Though my brother says that’s just as creepy.

But to a kid, none of that mattered. I wanted to see Santa for myself.

Except, that night, all I saw were my brother’s dreams. Not that I knew that’s what they were at the time.

In the dark of the night, as I poked my face from under the thick duvet and stared into the nightlight-lit gloom of our room, my quest to see Santa was distracted by a dancing show of dusty lights and shadows above my brother’s face. A boy sliding down a hill on a snowboard, and laughing with mates.

I called his name, but he didn’t answer. But the show changed.

I left the warm embrace of my duvet and padded over the carpet to lean on his bed and look closer, reaching out for the show.

The boy fell off the snowboard, and my brother flinched.

My hand went straight through the dust. Nothing was there.

I asked him about it the next day, but he had no idea what it was about.

Since then, I tried to stay up as late as I could to see it again. Each night I could stay awake long enough, it appeared above my brother’s face.

Different shadows and lights this time, like he’d left the TV on. Except it was black and white, like the olden days.

I ran into my parents’ room, and they had black and white TVs of their own above their heads.

No one believed me when I tried to ask about it. I kept quiet.

It took years to realise it was people’s dreams, or their nightmares. But I learned early on that I saw no dreams or nightmares for myself.

Instead of seeing them for myself, I saw theirs.

I tried telling a roommate once. Years later. We’d been drinking, and he’d been telling me about a weird dream he’d had the night before. I knew. I’d seen it. Though I wish I hadn’t. I learned as I got older sometimes it was best not to see people’s dreams.

He laughed. Didn’t believe me, asked if I was the sandman or something.

“Don’t be ridiculous, mate,” I said, tossing my screwed up sandwich bag into the bin. Goal. “The sandman can control dreams, can’t he. I can’t.”

Or could I. I’d never tried.

It wasn’t long before he crashed to sleep, drunk, and the grey and pale dust spiralled around his head in a strange cloud of drunken dreams. Curious, I got up and reached out my hand.

But what did I make him dream about?

In the dim, I saw the motorbike racing poster above his bed.

Let’s try that.

I held out my hand again and concentrated on the dust, imagining amongst the strange spiralling a racer zooming out from the cloud and skidding around a corner on a race track.

The dust moved, but no bike came.

I scoffed. Of course it wouldn’t work.

The sandman hadn’t been seen or talked about for centuries. As if.

I was just about to climb into my own bed when out of the corner of my eye I saw a bike racer leap out of the dusty cloud above my friend’s face. I froze, knee on my bed.

Hands raised again, pointing towards my friend, and this time I thought harder. Bike turns to a crappy little bi-plane.

Don’t ask why.

I tried to really visualise it this time, and then it appeared in front of me, zooming over my friend’s head.

A laugh of disbelief burst from my mouth, and I sat on the bed, grinning ear to ear, still wild from the booze.

Wings fall off …

In the dust, the plane plummeted, and my friend cried out and fidgeted.

Land in a giant pile of marshmallows …

He did, and my friend let out a sigh in his sleep.

I stared at my hands, grey in the darkness. What if I WAS the sandman?

I can see people’s dreams and nightmares.

But not my own.

The Knight Who Can’t Remove Their Helmet — Fantasy Story Ideas

Thinking about that scene from Shrek where he doesn’t want to remove his helmet and makes some excuse about helmet hair.

But what if there was a knight who couldn’t actually remove their helmet because they’d been cursed.

For one, people probably wouldn’t believe them. Would they just get used to making lame excuses like that to try get out of actually explaining the real reason, to avoid all the disbelief and explanations and arguments?

‘Oh, forgot to wash my hair last night. Looks awful. Don’t mind me.’

‘Bad hair colour job. New fairy hairdresser couldn’t get their hands around the spells. It’ll wash out eventually …’

‘Got in a pub fight with a barbarian. Face looks like I was sat on by a dragon. Didn’t want to shock you. It’s meant to be your big day, being rescued and all.’

‘Lost a bet with a wizard and they said I had to keep my helmet on for a year. Only a few more months to go!’

‘You know what, just looked at my face today and thought it wasn’t the day for me. Worse thing was, the mirror agreed.’

And why would they be cursed to wear a helmet forever in the first place? Too ugly? Too pretty? Gods were jealous? Drunk wizard mother got frustrated that their freckles looked too much like their father’s?

Then how would you fix it? Can’t get kissed by true love: helmet’s in the way.

I think the best story would be a self-acceptance one. Helmet finally pops off when they accept themself.

What other lame excuses do you think the knight could make about why they’re not going to take the helmet off?

At last she leaned in and whispered

(Writing to a writing prompt. There was a beautiful line in Memoirs of a Geisha as I was doing a blackout poetry with my old copy of it. I couldn't use the line in that poem, so I wanted to use it in another piece of fantasy writing. Here's what I wrote.)

Ahead of me, not several steps, a creature so fair, the likes I’d never seen before and was sure I’d never see again. Leaves woven into her deep brown hair, and skin the colour of rich moss. She turned my way, and her eyes were molten bronze and seemed to stare into my core, and then a playful smile danced upon her face.

She skipped my way, and had I been paying attention to her feet, I’d have seen roots stepping on grass. A tree spirit.

She stopped just in front of me and held out a hand, delicate fingers made of light brown twigs, but more supple than a gifted weaver, running through my long hair. Her eyes showed almost as much awe and I was sure were mirrored in mine.

My breath caught to have such a vision so close to me, and I was certain my thudding heart would be heard in the silence that followed.

At last she leaned in and whispered. “I’ve not known a female human before … they only send the males. Do they hope you will sate me?”

I swallowed. For years, the town had been sacrificing men to this creature to sate her urges as a bargain that she’d help control the forest and not let it overgrow the human settlement. But once she’d finished with them, the men never returned.

I was part of their new plan.

I stared into her eyes as bravely as I could, keeping her gaze, hoping for the sake of my little siblings I could satisfy her long enough to keep them safe even for a little longer from the wild and enchanted trees.

“Very well, then. This will be fun,” she purred softly like the wind brushing the leaves.

She took my hand and led me deeper into the darkness of the ancient and overgrown forest, and I swore I felt roots twisting about beneath my feet.

I steeled myself, trying to be brave, until she turned her divine face back to smile at me as she walked, revealing several rows of sharp, thorn-like teeth.

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