Divinity: The Gathering: Book One (3 page)

Zen to Five is a popular sushi karaoke bar on the outskirts of college town owned by my other best friend Joel Carson’s aunt and uncle.

China rolled her green eyes at my negativity, “You preach about that every single time. Don’t worry, he won’t. I’ll talk to him, and if I can get it all set up will you go? I mean if anything— killer sushi, come on.” She added and nudged me to consider it.

I shrugged a shoulder and sighed.

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I answered; finally giving in and closing my eyes, momentarily thinking about the dream again.

“Well, I’ll round up the posse anyway so we can make this happen.” She smiled excitedly.

Personally, I think I needed something stronger than getting wasted to get a break from all the haunting visions and nightmares…like a lobotomy or something.

“Guess I’ll catch up on some homework then. I don’t wanna go back to sleep.” I sighed as I slid off the barstool and headed toward my room.

“Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? Were there demons in this one too?” She called.

I turned to face her as I stepped into my room about to close the door, “Not just demons, and if there’s any significance to it, believe me China— you won’t wanna know anyway. See ya this afternoon.”  I said closing my door.

II: Starling:

            
 
I
actually arrived to my first morning class early after stopping for a quick breakfast of an overripe banana, strong, sludge-like espresso and chasing it all down with a five-hour energy drink.

Not smart.

The caffeine high was cooking my brain now; assembling and carrying out both thoughts and actions before I could even physically act on them, so I hoped no one mistook me for being some sort of speed or meth addict. I thought I’d have hours before the ugly crash and burn but no— I was paying the price now…during the most mind-numbing class on my schedule.

China was right.

This lack of sleep was killing me physically. Maybe I was so far under with fatigue that I have been hallucinating.

No, I knew better.

The things I see and dream about have been with me since childhood, but this was the first time I had actually physically moved from one room to the other without realizing it though. It worried me because who was to say next time I wouldn’t end up outside somewhere on the campus lawn, in the parking lot or possibly half naked in the middle of the corridor and get locked out?

I tried to stave off an oncoming yawn as I glanced at the time on the display of my cell phone. Eight fifty two in the a.m. and I was aching with exhaustion. My eyes burned and watered as my mouth opened of its own volition. I took in a suction of breath that morphed into a long, obnoxious yawn, which took my body temperature down a few more notches to prepare for sleep or a coma.

I’ve survived being in comas before as a child. Being ill to the point of death and wishing I could just die to end it several times in my life before and of course, one of the most major, devastating natural disasters of all time by the name of Katrina. Even the emotional loss of my parents and my Grandmother couldn’t equal the fear and devastation that I both felt and witnessed in these recurring nightmares. My experiences have all been really, really bad but the events in my dreams would make all of that seem like simple annoying obstacles at best.

If I could describe just a few of my dreams to anyone, it would sound like the ranting of a person one step away from being committed to an insane asylum.

Thousands of space ship looking things in the skies, massive tidal waves and walls of water all over the world, huge mutant scavenger birds, the earth opening up and thousands upon thousands of demons, angels, warriors and armies of both light and dark coming from the deep depths of the earth and the sky— would about sum up my history of nightmares in one paragraph.

              I had no gifts. I was no psychic or clairvoyant, and I certainly don’t claim to be the religious type but if what I had witnessed in my dreams were actually going to happen in some way, shape, form or means it would shut everyone up no matter how much money you had, what you chose to believe or not believe in or what religion you were.

             
It was all draining and maddening because having the dreams alone didn’t count being constantly stalked and occasionally taunted by those black shadows and spirits for years ever since I can remember. I only trusted my grandmother, China and Joel with the details of my experiences and what I could see. Joel used to tell me he could see things too, but he never paid them any attention, almost as if he didn’t acknowledge them then they didn’t exist. I believe in all of it though. Good and evil do exist, and they have to be represented by something. The darkness for one— something I’ve been afraid of since my childhood.

My grandmother had told me that she had a
lready known of my ability to see them, and that she knew why, but she wouldn’t tell me those reasons until the time was right for me to be able to understand it as a gift. That time never came or maybe she just forgot about it, I supposed.

She got really sick five years ago and passed away in a hospice while in a coma. Her health had deteriora
ted when she caught severe pneumonia and an aggressive tumor growth in her brain.

Though I perpetually wondered what she wanted to tell me, I never pressed her for it. Even when my parents were alive, she had always been the one to take care of me when they worked and traveled, so we had been very close. My grandmother was a wise, beautiful, strong and deeply religious woman. Her take on that issue was that religion was in the heart of the beholder and that each one of us has our own unique relationship with God or whatever the person believed in as their God.

I missed her so much.

Even though China and Joel kept what I told them to themselves, which is why we were all such good friends, I knew hearing it all freaked them out underneath the surface of their thoughts, and I couldn’t blame them. J
oel seems more accepting and understanding than China does about certain things though, and that in itself was a unique connection we had established and maintained as friends. I think that’s why we hit it off so easily right off the bat when we first met.

After so long, seeing shifting shadows
or faceless masses of dark movement out of the corner of my eye has become as normal as seeing clouds and birds in the sky. I’m no longer as frightened as I used to be, in knowing that they were always around. Shadows were just the elemental parts of despair and evil. It was the physical demons who frightened me the most.

I typically saw shadow beings
, and faces roiling menacingly among large masses of people…looking for a potential victim to influence or someone to siphon negative energy from. They were more prevalent in the dark, for some reason, which was why I never slept in complete total darkness. I had to leave some source of light running, whether it be the television, dim lamp or a night-light. Silly and juvenile I know but if anyone could get a glimpse of the things that I’ve seen both in real life and in my dreams— they’d completely understand why.

I never stuck around when I saw any kind of frenzied dark shadow activity
, because I knew better and every time the outcome and results have always the same…destructive and tragic. I felt guilty though because I had this sort of visual advantage but there was nothing I could do to stop, warn or prevent something from happening without looking insane or crazy. I had previously been there, tried it and even now a few people already thought that about me as it was anyway.

I was new here to Indiana when I got accep
ted, and started my freshman year at the University of Indiana at Bloomington last year. I had gone back to Key West Florida with my grandmother after the disappearance and supposed deaths of my parents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. During my senior year there, I had begun applying for colleges anywhere that there was no ocean— so I wasn’t really picky on which college I chose.

I don’t even know why I was here. I only decided to go to college because it was the one thing I promised my grandmother that I’d do. She encouraged me to go out and see the world on my own, that the world held far too much beauty and experiences to stay stuck in one place. She had hope and faith in the bigger scheme of things regarding humanity, and maybe that was where I got some of my personal ideologies from. However, now, that all changed for me. What with everything g
oing on these days and news stories about people going on killing rampages…I couldn't care less about ‘seeing’ this self-destructive world that would meet its cataclysmic and horrific end soon, according to my dreams.

So anyway, I go by Star but my full name is Starling. I’m sure it was cute to my mother when I was two, but as I got older, I found Star more mature sounding and when I started junior high that’s what I preferred to go by. My mother and Grandmother, both of native Jamaican and Spanish descent, were the only ones who had ever been allowed to continue to call me Starling.

My father was white…well, more sp
ecifically of French and Canadian roots, and he had been a Master Sergeant in the Army. He had been on vacation in the Caribbean Islands when he met my mother in Jamaica and within ten months, they got married…coincidentally, a month after I was born. That makes me what some would consider, mulatto or Creole. I do get mistaken for either Spanish or Caucasian at times, especially in the winter when I can get pretty pale, and because of my hair texture, but I pretty much maintain my light beige skin color all year long.

Well, my personal reverie over the past along with the endless droning of Professor Phillips monotone, flat voice wasn’t helping me at all now and certainly didn’t kill any time. I sighed glancing at the time again on my phone. Only eight minutes had passed since my initial yawn.

How could I be crashing after only an hour since my caffeine binge already?

I felt my lids begin to droop yet again, and my head commenced to falling forward; making me jerk involuntarily. That woke me up and now I was feeling somewhat like an idiot and embarrassed knowing that someone— especially my best friend Joel sitting beside me had just seen that.

  If I had known philosophy was this damned…philosophical, I would have chosen to take it after lunch instead of eight a.m. in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good debate and discu
ssion on plausible theories and issues but today was not one of those days.

Why had I taken Philosophy anyway? Oh that’s right. I thought it would be an easy A for one even though it held no benefit for me career wise to which, I still had no idea what I wanted to do let alone what degree path I wanted to pursue either.

I already changed it twice.

             
Professor Phillips’ rigidly, sharp voice startled me, “Miss Roberts, would you care to read the notes that we took yesterday on Lombroso’s theories and beliefs?”

My eyes widened fully with false attention, and I
stiffened like a child who had been caught picking their nose as I sat up, confused for a moment. I attempted to stall by shifting through the incomplete notes that I had scattered in front of me— of no relation to the context of the discussion apparently, and cleared my throat.

“Um,” I began.

The immediate shuffle of papers whispered all around me, and heads turned in my direction followed by sighs of annoyance from behind. Out of a group of sixty people, and he’s able to single me out? Was I day snoring too? You know, that moment where you haven’t quite fallen asleep but all the sounds around you fade out and the only one that finally shocks you back to focus just as you fall asleep is the sound of your own snoring?

I knew he was doing this on purpose. I’m an adult, if I wanted to sleep, it was my own decision and fault if I missed anything wasn’t it? This isn’t high school! My mind wanted to scream at him.

Professor Phillips was a broad man with an extensive, yet doughy torso, small paunch and sticks for legs. He looked to be in his late fifties, and always looked so damned serious, miserable and annoyed all the time. I find it sad for anyone to walk through life like that, and it made me wonder if he ever laughed, told a joke or just did something corny for the hell of it. Making practical jokes by virtue of picking on me of all people right now— didn’t count.

Maybe that was why that large sha
dow over his head was swirling above him, dipping in and out of the corners, sliding down the walls like ooze and lingering just above his head. It had distracted me, and I watched it with intensity as it formed faces in the roiling smut of itself, leering at me as if giving me a raspberry and then baring its sharp teeth would either scare me or hurt my feelings.

              The shadows were nothing more than extremely ugly, juvenile, immature, conniving, evil and malicious entities that fed off of anger, fear, pain, hate and sorrow. The fact that they were here, made it known that in this very room, at this particular moment, there was much of that going on right now, and it was sucking it all up. My guess, as it hovered above Professor Phillips, was that he was the one inviting it in the first place, and I wondered what his issues were.