What A Nightmare (Gemma)

Jorge was visibly shaken. Sitting up on his couch, trying to get his bearing on the world around him, he spent his time, sitting in the dark, trying to separate fact from fiction. His head was a jumble of thoughts memories that he could have sworn were real but the backdrop of the city ruins proved them to be false. They had to be false! One glance around his room showed that his apartment was fine. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the entire place. It was solid, structured, exactly like he remembered it!

But, even so, why was everything so vivid about this dream? A normal dream he could just shake off but for whatever reason this one was sticking with him. No matter how hard he tried, his mind kept drifting back to that ruined scenario.

What the hell was going on?

>> "Jorge? What's wrong?..."

That voice. That melodic voice. There was really only one thing that could have shaken him from such horrible thoughts, and it was the voice of someone who he had dreamed had died from a explosion of fire and rubble. He turned, his eyes saddened, tinged with tears over everything he had seen in the three years that spanned a single dream. And there she was, standing there, a look of concern on her face.

It was a strange thing to have this nagging sense that the person you are staring at was supposed to be dead. Even if it was only a dream, it was a pretty vivid one that he felt was going to shake him up for the rest of the morning. At least until the light of day broke over the horizon to exposed the unharmed city around him.

His gaze locking onto Gemma’s, Jorge slipped onto his feet, stepped over and suddenly pulled the dark skinned woman into a tight hug. He just had to make sure that she was real; that he could feel something physical about this woman who existed only as a phantasm in his dreams. Arms wrapped around her shoulders, he held her close as he felt the single and smallest of tears trickle down his cheek and onto her shoulder.

“Oh god…you’re…you’re alive…” he whispered, feeling her heart beating against his own skin. “You’re alive…you’re alive…” he repeated, over and over…

>> "Shhh, it's okay…I'm alive. We're fine. It was just a dream, Jorge. Everything is fine."

Though Jorge should have felt almost childish at the situation, for a moment, he really just didn’t care. After waking up from a dream like the one that he did, he was just relieved to have things around him challenge what he just dreamed. A world of terror, of smoke, of fire, where death was a constant and people merely shuffled about, waiting until it was their turn to pass on; it was just horrible. Jorge couldn’t stand the idea of it but he just couldn’t shake the dream.

For all purposes, in those moments that he had been asleep the three years in the dreamscape seemed absolutely and beyond a doubt real. He felt ever scrap, could recall every detail with a clarity that only existed with memories. Most dreams a person could forget not long afterward, but not this time. Not this dream.

A shudder flew up his spine as he remember Gemma’s death and the lose of Chase. All he had to remember them by was his wedding bands and fuzzy memories that were being replaced by duty to protect a dying town. Just the thought of it made him hug his fiancée a bit tighter before he loosened his grip.

“It was just a dream,” he mumbled as he loosened his hug and slowly stepped back, sitting at the edge of the couch. He was obviously a man struggling with his realities. “So real. It was…It was so real…”

Jorge slumped back into his seat a little, trying to calm his racing mind as memories kept cropping up to jab at him whenever he felt he was beginning to settle. He didn’t like this feel. It was almost as if he didn’t know reality from the dream world anymore. Try as he might to separate the two, it became so difficult because both had such a sense of realism. He needed to focus on what he could feel, see, and touch right here and right now, as opposed to what he remembered. At least until he got his bearings again.

Gemma, the sweetheart that she is, joined him on the couch and leaned against him. He sighed, reveling in the sensation of just having her nearby, taking in the sight of her, the feeling of her warmth, even the scent in her hair. It was all so calming.

>> "Do you want to tell me about it?"

He still hadn’t looked her way. The detective remained staring forward, his eyes lost in the darkness of the early morning hours as he tried to bring some sense of normalcy to his mind. That dream…so real…

In all honesty, though, he was not exactly sure how much he wanted to tell Gemma. He loved her, very much, but telling her meant remembering details about his nightmare and he really didn’t want to do that. But, he knew he couldn’t keep her in the dark about it either. It was obviously affecting him and she was concerned. Marriage is about talking to your partner, not keeping them in the dark.

“It…it was horrible,” he whispered as he slowly cautioned a glance to her. “It ended, Gemma. The world ended…”

>> "Well, that's how you know it was just a dream…The world ain't ending without my permission."

They were words of comfort, Jorge knew that. But at the same time he felt a void in his chest that swallowed up all her warm thoughts. He knew that Gemma was a hellcat, that she wouldn’t go down without a fight. But there really isn’t much that she could have done when she was being atomized by an explosion that leveled an entire city, followed by the decimation of the world. She was gone, in his dream, and there was nothing he could have done to stop it.

“That’s the problem,” he whispered in a voice that seemed almost hollow of hope. “You were dead. And I couldn’t save you. And Chase…he…disappeared. I couldn’t find him, no matter where I looked.”

In the end his description was almost like a standardized, anxiety riddled dream. But he knew that there was something more to it. There had to be. Otherwise he would have been able to move on now. Sadly, though, all he was left with was this impending sense of foreboding. Almost like he knew something bad was still in the air; something connected with his dream.

His eyes still averted, Jorge began to describe everything he could of his dreams, everything with vivid detail. He spoke of the Town in the middle of Central Park, the people he worked with (a lava shifter named Aedus, the mansion student Gina, some ex-politician named Markus, giant red creatures called Abyssi, a scrawny kid name Miles, and a vampire, Zelek). He even went into detail about the Amazons, the murderous band of women (knowing only a few by name) that preyed on his Town’s inhabitants, the church of Sebastian that constantly tried to push into his town’s limits, even the hive towers that he saw out on the horizon, across the river. All of it was explained with such detail that it was as if he had actually lived it, than dreamt it.

It was only after he was done that he turned back to Gemma, locking eyes with her. He didn’t know what was going to happen, but knew that he loved her, and he was not going to let go of either her or Chase. No matter what happened to the world it was going to be his duty to keep this family together, through everything.

“I love you,” he whispered, finally gaining back some of his composure. Time ticked away and he knew it was only a dream. It had to be.

RIIIIING!

Jorge blinked and turned to the ringing cellphone on his coffee table. Who could be calling this early? Quietly he picked up the device and glanced at the screen. It was his office. After excusing himself, Jorge flipped the phone open and held it to his ear. He really should get more sleep but when duty called, it rarely cared.

“Cervantes,” he said, weariness from his dream beginning to set in. He was almost ready to drop back to sleep when the voice at the other end of the line sobered him up. A look of confusion and concern flashed across his features as he listened to the person on the other line, shaking his head slightly and holding the phone tightly to his head. “Uh..y-yeah, yeah I got it,” he muttered with a hoarse throat. As he finally closed the phone, he turned to Gemma, the look of a frightened rabbit on his face. “My god…t-that was the precinct. Gemma…I wasn’t the only one…”

>> "Chase."

Even before Gemma could have answered her ringing phone, Jorge was already up like a bullet. A fear settled in his stomach that indeed Chase must have suffered from the same nightmare that he had. If the precinct were getting calls in that people were having massive nightmares all over town, then Jorge had little doubt that mutants were involved. On top of that, he had little doubt that Chase had to have gone through the same thing.

He shuddered to think of it. Chase, he had no idea where the boy was in his dream. What could he have seen?

Pulling on a pair of jeans, and grabbing his leather jacket to pull over his shirt (he would have to go to work, but not until he saw Chase), he could hear Gemma’s sweet and calm voice informing whoever was on the phone that they were on their way. It was obvious to him that Chase had indeed had the same type of dream.

As soon as he was dressed, and grabbed his badge, Jorge slipped back out into the living room. He could hear the worry in Gemma’s voice but she had managed to keep her cool on the phone.

“Gemma? Is Chase okay?” he asked. “Come on, we’re going there now.”