Dream Haunter

~
Prologue
.
~

“
Do you really love me?” she
asks, her heart pounding in her ears from the excitement of Adam’s
lips against her temple. He nestles his head against her shoulder,
his raven colored hair brushes against the soft skin of Melody’s
neck.

His lips are a few inches
from her ear; they slowly part as he speaks, “Yes.”

 
Goosebumps prickle
across the back of her neck while the room begins to spin, fading
away into a haze of white, as the icy wind pulls her from the steam
filled dream.
 

Chapter one

     
Melody’s eyes slowly open as she sits up in her tangled
sheets, arms shaking under her weight. The soft, white cotton
sheets cling to her skin from the sweat dripping off of her. She
blinks, the morning sun blinding her for a few short moments while
she reflects on her sultry dream. Last night’s dream was just one
of the many frequent dreams about Adam that have been gracing her
sleeping mind for the past four months; like clockwork Adam calls
to her each time her head hits the pillow. At first, she considered
these dreams just another hormone driven fantasy from being away
from her boyfriend, Sam, for the span of the last four months, but
once she realized that these dreams were taking control of her
life, she forced herself to stop.

They are persistent little buggers,
though, stealing her subconscious from her when she is at her
weakest and has no other choice but to witness these hauntingly
beautiful dreams. Melody drops her head back on the soft feather
pillow, shutting her eyes briefly; Adam’s face haunts the inside of
her eyelids. Every striking detail of his tanned face is in front
of her, his bright azure eyes ready to take her away when she asks.
She grunts, trying to push the image away before it can take hold
of her again. Melody’s alarm screeches from the wooden night stand
next to her bed, reminding her of her coffee date with Sam. She
throws her feet over the side of her bed, her body mourning the
loss of warm sheets which had been so lovingly wrapped around her,
as her feet hit the floor before she makes her way across her
brightly colored bedroom.

She plops herself down on the wire
chair in front of her vanity, pushing the fluffy black pillow
around under her butt, assessing her face in the mirror in front of
her, before attacking her thick red hair. Her fingers grasp the
wooden of hairbrush before she pulls it through her hair, trying to
think of topics to speak of with Sam; it’s been so long since she’s
last seen him.

Melody has been in deep, sappy love
with Sam for two years now; she doesn’t just say it, but believes
it with all her might. She sits her brush down, picking up the
silver frame from her vanity. She stares at it a moment, her flat
iron warming on the table next to her. A sad, sweet folk song
reverberates through her pink speakers as she looks over at the
shiny silver frame that holds a photograph of her and Sam. She
looks over the image of her standing next to Sam.

His index finger is gently playing with
the ends of her thick, red hair. She comes up to Sam’s shoulder,
which is short, and isn't the skinniest, but Sam tells her she’s
perfect.

She smiles, Chester, Sam’s long-time
best friend, had taken this picture the night Sam played solo at a
coffee shop across town that was having an open mike night for
local artists.

Sam sat on the wooden
barstool, his arms comfortably draped over his tan colored guitar
while Melody sat awkwardly next to the stage, watching her new
boyfriend as he sang his heart out in front of her.

She watched him delicately
pluck away at his guitar strings, his fingers quietly move from one
string to the next, as to not disrupt the sweet conversation that
they were having with the audience.

She envied him. He was so
calm, so comfortable, upon the stage.

He sang a slow love song to
the coffee buzzed crowed, but the words had no real effect on them.
Instead, the melody rang from the brass strings of the guitar and
floated their way over to Melody like a soft, unexpected summer
breeze.

His leafy green eyes met
hers for a brief moment.

And suddenly the bustling
coffee shop began to slow until it came to a complete stop. The
sound of coffee being ground, people laughing, and the slow ticking
of someone typing on their laptop in the far corner of the room, it
all turned into a soft haze around the two of them.

Something inside of her sang
back the soft, sweet melody to Sam.

Melody pushes her hair behind her ear,
blushing at that tender yet simple memory from two years ago, when
they had just started to date. Though Chester has never said it to
her face, he approves of the relationship between Sam and her.
Melody gently sets the picture frame down, picking up the now hot
iron and running it through her hair.

Chapter Two

    
The
bus tires bounce as they drive over a pothole. His fingers cling
tightly to the chain attached to the ruby red heart pendant before
it falls from his hands.

“
Sam, Sam, Sam… never
pictured you for a softy, I'm disappointed.” Chester
says.

Chester is the drummer, also known as a
world class lady killer and Sam’s best friend. Sam hurls his
paperback mystery novel at Chester’s face.

“
Says the guy who girls
throw eggs at.” Sam retorts.

 
Chester shrugs,
flopping down in the seat next to him. “Least I ain’t
whipped!”

Sam smiles, shaking his head; he’s
gotten surprisingly used to Chester’s jabs along with the smell of
socks and Doritos.

“So how much longer until we get back
in town?”  Sam asks, trying to hide the eagerness in his
voice.

Chester’s shoulders lazily rise and fall as he
thumbs through the creased ink pages of the novel. “Tomorrow
morning?”

Sam’s skin tingles with pure
excitement; he’s missed her so much. He had felt so bad for even
thinking about taking this trip because Melody had cried the moment
before he jumped onto the bus. It broke his heart to see her cry,
so much so that he almost pulled his bag from the bus and called
the whole thing off, but she wouldn’t let him. His lips twitch into
a subtle smile, thinking about how she has always been there for
him. When he and his parents had their fall out a few years back,
she was the only one that could save him from falling into the dark
abyss of self-loathing, and she continues to do it every
day.

That’s not to say that Melody doesn’t
have her own baggage; she’s deathly afraid of women her own age.
Sam is one of the only people that knows of this. She had explained
her anxiety to him when they had only been going out for a month or
so, after his first solo performance. That was the night Sam fell
in love with her.

The icy air of the fall of
Wisconsin had chilled Melody so cold that her bottom teeth were
hitting her upper ones, and she was shaking so bad Sam couldn’t
tell if she was just cold or having a seizure. He draped his
favorite leather jacket around her shoulders, his hands lingering
on her shoulder for a few moments longer than he needed before he
pulled them back and clung to his own arms. They walk past a group
of party hopping girls, even though there wasn’t anywhere to
“party” other than coffee shops and lodges. Their glossy eyes
stared down on Melody, glaring at her for no real reason as they
passed. Melody’s beautiful blue eyes stared at the frosted pavement
as though it was the most interesting thing she has ever seen. Once
the group had passed she looked up at Sam, her cheeks red from both
the cold and embarrassment.

 “
I guess this is one
way for me to tell you of my life long struggle with girls,” she
said, “They hate me. I don’t know what I ever did to piss my own
gender off, but they hate me.”

The two of them stopped at
an intersection, the little red hand across the street commanding
them to stay off the road. Sam looked down at her, tugging on the
sleeves of his shirt to warm himself, and to distract himself from
how close she was standing.

 “
Their loss.” he said,
his voice turning into vapors in front of his face.

Melody’s perfectly round
eyes stared up at him; they bounced from his lips to his eyes as
she threw her weight from one foot to the other.

To this day Sam doesn’t know
what got in to him at that moment; maybe it was the emotional high
he gets when he sings or maybe the coffee, or maybe just Melody’s
presence. He took a step closer to her, gapping the distance
between them, the smell of her perfume tickled his noise and
reminded him of the earth after rain. Sam licked his lips, taking
in the details of how her copper hair fell over his leather jacket
like the strings of his guitar stretch across its neck.

“
Sam…” Melody whispered as
she nervously watched him get closer.

He gently held his lips a
few centimeters away from hers, breathing in the smell of coffee
that floated from her mouth like smoke, before he lightly kissed
her, and to his surprise, she kissed him back.

Chester throws the paperback book back
into Sam’s lap, snapping him back to reality and away from the part
of his brain that stores his favorite memories.

“
So you got any big
‘romantic’ plans for you and Melody when you get back?” Chester
teases.

Sam smirks and runs his callused finger
tip around the grooves in the perimeter of the heart pendent,
silently reading to himself the words, “I love you most.
Sam&Melody.” he had engraved in it. He looks up at Chester,
knowing he doesn’t care about Sam’s love life, even in high school
Sam was the emotional romantic while Chester was the heart breaking
quarterback.

“
No, I'm not going to give
you something to tease me about.” Sam says as he tucks the heart
pendant back into its white box.

 
Chester rolls his
eyes, scuffing Sam’s hair before standing. “You’re my brother! You
know I wouldn’t do that.” He winks as he treks down to the
bathroom.

Chester isn’t Sam’s real brother, but
he might as well be with how much he knows about Sam. He has saved
Sam from every piece of crap people have thrown at him since their
junior year of high school; plucking Sam and his guitar out of
dumpsters and closets has never been an uncommon situation. Sam
rarely fights, especially when it comes to himself; it hadn’t been
until Melody came along that he had ever felt protective of
anything.

Chapter Three

 
Melody’s legs go
wobbly with nerves as her feet pound down the cement staircase of
her apartment. Even though she is the one that lives right next
door to the pun-fully named café “Drink it Black”, which is nestled
in between her red brick apartment and a book store called The Book
Mark, where she works, she’s the one ten minutes late.

The cold Wisconsin air whips around her
as she checks her thick red hair one last time before venturing
into the vinyl record covered walls of the café. The smell of
coffee and cupcakes fall on her like a warm blanket, making Melody
de-thaw some, so she shrugs her light brown leather jacket off her
shoulders as she makes her way to where Sam sits nestled in the far
corner of the room with his nose in another one of his thick
mystery novels.

She stops for a moment, standing behind
a wooden bookshelf as she looks at Sam, who is still engrossed by
his book. Her feet tingle inside her black and white Converse as
she watches him, taking in his diamond shaped face and ash brown
hair. He chews on his bottom lip, his finger already under the worn
page, ready to turn it to see if the murderer really is the butler,
and if so the book would be totally cliché and he would tell her
not to read it. Melody leans away from the shelf for a moment,
taking a few deep breaths before spinning on her heels and walking
to Sam’s table, some new indie band starting to pound through the
speakers; she can feel the beat in her chest.

“
You look like a truck hit
you!” Sam jokes as Melody sits down across from him in one of the
multicolored, oversized, arm chairs at the coffee shop.