Chapter 3: The Bite of Dreams

James walked into Arthur's house, pushing on the door and shoving it through the rusted hinges' screeching. Arthur was lying down on the higher bed, "Why the hell are you situated on my one, Arthur?" "You know both beds were once mine." "Ay, and it took you more money to pay your rent back then." "At least that development I'm content with. But I would rather like to be higher." "Write a children's book or two and you'll get the plush throne." "Says the guy with twenty two balls of crumpled paper in his trach can. I counted." "Should I question why you were rumbling through my garbage. Both what I wrote and the material I wrote it on." "Don't beat yourself up. And I was cleaning the house." "The house doesn't seem clean. You sure you weren't checking my notes to plagiarise them?" "The psychedelic sh*t you write. I would rather take a goddamn ton of LSD." "Does my book disgust you so?" "Not really disgust, more shame. Its embarrassing to live with the guy who wrote, and I quote." Arthur fumbled with the pages of the book he was reading, evidently one of James' own, ""The power of friendship was as powerful as the white plate armour the paladin wore.' Yeah, if that does not make your face red for writing it, I don't know what will."

"Is it really that bad?" "Did you not hear the quote?" "I did, but it felt write to add it at that time." "Well that was ill-conceived." Saying that, Arthur went back to his book, not the one he had quoted before. Apparently, he had set down at least two books on James' mattress. James, somewhat dejected, walked to his desk, and hunkered down to write more trash. As time passed, James could hear Arthur grumbling below his sheets. It had been an hour and a half since James had entered the apartment, and half of the past hour Arthur had spent in futile attempts to cover himself with his bedsheets and pillow, trying to sleep through the glaring nightlight set on James' table. Worst of all, his grumbling had disturbed James, lot more than his snoring ever would, but James could not abandon his current task, to record his useless imagination and use it to print cash for him and his publisher. "James, turn off the goddamn light and go to bed," Arthur bellowed. "First thing, you are sleeping on my bed, so going to bed might prove a challenge. And secondly, uhm, I have too good a idea to resume my slumber and the subsequent nightmares, which might help in making me forget my idea." "If I agree to come down to the lower one, will you stop your whining and writing and please 'resume' your slumber?" "Not likely, mate." "Make, it, likely." "Now who's whining?" "Still you, I think. See man, I have a job to do tomorrow, unlike you." "Is my toiling not as honourable as your job as a servant who serves food." "My apron is more worthier than your 'children's' protagonist's armour. And it has less blood on it, even if I work with dead mammals and birds." "What the hell does that even mean, you utter nincompoop?" "It means that my job isn't hardly as cutthroat as yours. And I haven't lost touch with my ma." "Go to sleep, man. I'll switch the goddamn light off. Don't think this is done, though." Without replying, Arthur resumed putting his pillow on his face to drown out James' whinging. He rolled to face the wall, and James switched off the light on his table, and walked to the bed. Despite his previously stated compromise, Arthur had not changed his bed, and James just went to sleep on the lower, yellow mattress, tired of arguing.

As James lied on the rock hard bed, his mind wandered to his life before, before he had joined Arthur as a roommate, before he had met Kate, before he had began ignoring his 'ma', before he had lost the spotlight. His life had been better back then, and untimely berating by sleepy friends was less common. Arthur was exhausting to James, always acting as if his unimaginative job was a loftier goal than James'. How a man could be so daft, and so unsubtlety wrong, James would never gather. That was the fate of the unremarkable and unimaginative majority, the fate of nincompoops like Arthur, James assumed.

James ran though the green woods, vibrant and blown by the wind, and felt his legs hurt like hell. A white knight pursued James, brandishing his word, slick and red with blood, in a position ready to attack James, and slay the useless and ultimately inconsequential sack of blotted flesh where he stood. The little coward would in the end just be some red on the warrior's blade, a puny speck of sand in the giant desert of history. The blue eyes of his hunter blazed in the blue of the sky, dark blots on the light background of the heavens. The armoured adversary eventually caught up with the writer, and in the end the pen was woefully blunt compared to the sword. James' eyes closed to welcome the dark.

When they opened, James felt heavy in his movement. When he looked down to see his now flexing fingers, he was surprised to see them armoured with white plate, gold at his fingertips and in the middle of his palm. His other hand, his right one, held a blooded sword in its grip. James tightened his fingers around his weapon, and held his head up to find the coward, holding his hands up to block the oncoming blow. The face of the hunted was that of Arthur at one second, Kate's at another, James' ex-girlfriend's, James' mother's, Will's, and finally as it watched its hunter stare into its worthless soul, James'. James, in the armour, raised his sword. As he lay down his blade, it sliced through the back of his prey's neck. As the idiot was laid down on the cold floor, his face ended up staring at the white knight. His face was twisted, seeming unlike any James had seen before, both edges of his lips twisted, the right corner curled up in a joyful smile, the left wrinkled down as a poisonous frown. His eyes were heartless, lifeless, and hell on earth, to be seen straight on, a bloody and dim reminder of the pathetic coward's mark upon the world. His neck, compared to the bleak colour of the dead boy's pupils, was red and pink, and the flesh below his sword-torn skin was pink and bloody.

James opened his eyes, and his body was not heavy to move. When he flexed his fingers, he was disappointed to find it bare, no white plate and no gold. His right hand did not grip a sword, only the sweat he would commonly accumulate during nightmares. But the dream he had experienced was not a nightmare. If one did not end with a noose around his neck, then the dream was hardly a nightmare. The power of taking the coward's worthless life curled a smile on the left edge of James' lip. He looked above, and found the above bed bare. A look around the room, after he had completely got up from his piss-stained resting spot, got him the information that Arthur was not there in the room. But the loud flush from the toilet brought to him his roommate's location. The boy came out, with his blue uniform worn, his beige jean's zip lowered. Thankfully for James, Arthur wore a underwear below his pants. He highered his zip, and spoke out, "Sorry about yesterday." "Uhh, cool." "You don't have something to say too?" "I don't have to say sorry about yesterday!" "You called me a damn 'servant'!" "Was it a lie?" "Just bye. And go to hell." James smirked now, "Godspeed, then." Arthur opened he door, and walked out of his house. James smiled, smirked really, till Arthur was out the door, into the green world that was outside, but switched to a frown when his roommate was out of his line of sight. James walked to his desk, and sat down into his desk. He felt too lazy to brush his teeth, and far too lazy to have a bath and get out of the clothes he had gone outside with the day before. His paper still kept the remains of the story he had begun to write yesterday. It would be about how the paladin was supposed to fight for the honour of a town, fighting against a literal inversion of the paladin's white and red gold armour. The evil knight's black armour was with red gold detailing, and a helmet with a literal dragon on it, so it would tip off the children that he was evil. James resumed his writing, setting down his idea for the introduction of the new villain. 'The church bell rang, and the towns folk came out of their houses to see the visitor, a black armoured knight. Our hero is present in the crowd, and smiles to see another of his kind in the quiet town. The black warrior highered his sword, and pointed it at our confused hero, challenging...….'

James opened his eyes. The heaviness of his garb tipped off on his current situation, another dream. He looked around, not as surprised as he was the night before, when he saw his gauntleted hands. The world around him seemed vibrant, as if a child who had not dissolved his water colours had coloured in a colouring book. The plants looked like it would be drawn by Arthur, who was sh*t at visually communicating his already unimaginative ideas. But under its lousy cover, the world James stood in was beautiful, blues and greens and reds, all coloured in the vibrant hue of his land of imagination.

The environment around James also contained a broken down town. The paint chipping, the rooftiles all cracked and fallen from the top of the white houses. The church bell rang, and just like that, the church was coloured in, an imposing white building from James' low perspective, but measly compared to the metal giants of the real world. The townsfolk were also drawn in, made as if amateur had drawn them, overexpressed noses and scraggly hair, dot eyes and mouths that were just a curve, brown clothes, hands with four fingers, and feet which had no toes, even for those with no drawn shoes. The gates, which were just a single line in breadth. opened to a newcomer. The black knight, unlike the people around him, seemed as real as James own armoured body. its black armour shined in the yellow and orange sun, and the dragon on its helmet was imposing and fearsome to look at. James did not wait for the armoured warrior to raise his sword, and charged at the shadowy figure. When he sliced through its armour, his sword went right through the shade's plate, right through its skin, as if the thing was actually a shadow. James tried again, aiming at the dragon crested helmet of the shade, directed to the unarmoured neck. But when the steel figure retaliated, its bite was real as hell. It's needle worked at James' plate, and reached his skin. The prick was cruel, passing through James' underclothes, right into his flesh. The pain was unbearable, and James felt his armour disappear from over his limp body. He was left with his clothes bloodied and red, and the now stationery shade just looked upon him, its blue eyes blazing. The curves that were the crowds' smiles stayed upright, and the brown peasants crawled to the author on the floor. They sat around his twitching body, and like carrion crows, began gouging on the bloody raw flesh of the writer. James closed his eyes to the horror.