The Kingdom of Morpheus

[Dranzer]

“**** you, you ruined my high!” She screamed before her fist lazily struck him in the face. Digits stroked the scruffy cheek gingerly, a cocky smile of amusement spreading its way across his lips. That was the thanks you got for resuscitating someone, who knew? “I love heroin addicts,” he mused to the blonde woman on the other side of the stretcher. She shook her head in agreement, the stress of the night showed on her face. This was the last call they were taking before clocking out and going the hell home; it was decided over the last espresso shooter they shared in the cockpit of the ambulance at around 4:30.

“I’m gonna get some air, I’ll be right back – I think I left my bag on the sidewalk,” he said before removing himself from the cabin. The forty years old woman was still muttering and cursing when he closed the door behind him. Toby took a deep breath of fresh, night air and leaned back against the doors of the ambulance. It was his third night shift in a row and he felt like he had been in the twilight zone since midnight. He shook his head in an attempt to wake himself up – no dice. Tobias made his way to the sidewalk and bent over the bag he had left. Hand grasped the handle and picked it off the ground before he made his way back to the driver’s side.

The door swung open and he threw the duffle on the floor. Blue eyes peered up at the black sky: a full moon. That explains the abundance of wack jobs, he thought. His gaze fell down from the sky and onto the street where a loan tabby cat resided. A crooked smile flashed its way over his scruffy visage, deciding to extend his short break and make his acquaintance with the fur ball; he had a soft spot for cats. Mid purr the feline tensed its muscles, causing the medic to arch a brow before the sound of tires screeching on concrete hit his ears. The cat scurried away, but Hardesty wasn’t so lucky – he stood up to full form before the vehicle made contact sending him flying. The sky rotated with the street in his somersaults before he landed head flat on his chest on the pavement. Then everything went black.

---

Eyes slowly opened to the bright rays of sunshine that blazed through the leaves of the canopy of trees. He was laying on his back on the forest floor, still in his work clothes. He sat up slowly, even though the persistent feeling of exhaustion had seemed to dissipate completely. Five foot ten form made its full height when Toby stood up to examine his surroundings. The paramedic was seemed to be at the edge of a forest between a deep thickness of trees and a clearing. He was too puzzled to make much sense of anything before his blue orbs took hold of the vision of a palace in the middle of the treeless space.

It was spectacular to say the least and appeared to be constructed completely out of gold. He shook his head in attempt to shake the vision of the building away, but it proved useless. Am I dead? he thought, making his way slowly towards the steps that would lead to the entrance of the exquisite specimen of architecture.

[Heartless Angel]

Zach lay in his bed, in a mostly dark room. He looked up at his cieling, decorated with the image of the night sky. His arms behind his head, and one leg crossed over the other. He'd been laying like this for over an hour, just thinking. It was late, but he still wasn't quite tired enough to sleep. He glanced over at his collection of guitars and let out a sigh. "Too late at night for that...", he mumbled. Ideas for new songs flowed through his head, but he couldn't let any of them out at this hour.

He rolled onto his side, and covered himself up. "Don't really want to sleep yet, but what else am I gonna do at 3 AM?", he asked himself. He lay there, bored for around 20 minutes before he was able to fall asleep...

---

His eyes remained closed, but suddenly he could see that the area had become brighter. He assumed it was his bedroom light being turned on. He mumbled something incomprehensible and rolled to his other side, as he usually did when someone tried to wake him up. He closed his eyes tighter, trying to ignore the light, but to no avail. "Damnit... makin me get up to turn the damned light back off...", he mumbled, as he sat up, and opened his eyes.

Much to his suprise, he was not in his bed, and the light was the sun. He looked around for a few seconds before realizing he seemed to be in a forest. "What the **** is this?", he asked himself, as he realized he wasn't tired, as he thought he should be after having been woken up. He got to his feet and looked around some more. "I fell asleep.... and now I'm here. There aren't any forests anywhere near my house... I'm not tired even though I just woke up...", he said to himself quietly. "I'm dreaming?", he asked himself. He sighed. "Yup, that's gotta be it", he said, as he began wandering through the forest. Before long he came to the forest's edge where he saw someone else, someoe walking towards a large golden palace.

"A golden palace... why the Hell am I dreaming about this?", he asked himself, attempting to analyze his own dream, but to no avail. He sighed. "Well, I don't think I'll learn anything standing here. May as well enjoy the dream.", he said, as he began making his own way towards the palace.

[Michael Swayne]

The day started out as normal as it could for Wang Lan. He showered, got dressed in his red tour guide's outfit, fed his cat Mao Mao, and went to the airport. Lan would be meeting some zoology class from America there to give them a tour of the zoo. It was the company's policy to have the guides start with the group fresh off the plane. Lan would have preferred to meet them at the zoo, but he needed the money. With only five recent jobs interpreting for big clients, his guide pay was what kept him from being sent back to America. You can only stay in China if you work after all.

Lan met the group on their tour bus and introduced himself. “Good morning, my name Wang Lan, and I will be your guide at the zoo today.” The class was shocked to hear Lan speak English so fluently. Lan looked away from the Americans, but he heard every word. Then, one student spoke up, “Hey, Wang, where did you learn to speak English so well?”

Lan was used to people calling him by his last name. It is how they do things here. “Well, I was born in America, and lived there until a few years ago.”

“So, you speak Chinese, too?”

“Yes, it is required as a guide to be fluent in both Mandarin and English.” Lan went to the driver of the bus and asked how much longer till they arrived. He made sure to speak in Mandarin to impress the Americans. It worked, they seemed so amazed. Lan was used to this kind of attention, but he didn't like it much.

The visited the entire zoo. Saw every animal, and spent nearly an hour looking at the pandas. The pandas were Lan's worst part of the tour. “Yeah, you may look cute, but you're still a bunch of bears. If you could get the chance you would rip our faces off.” Lan thought to himself.

Eventually, the tour came to a close, and Lan waved good-bye and left with his company's signature departing “Zai Qian!” (Good-bye). Lan took the subway back home. Back at his 15th floor apartment, Lan picked up Mao Mao and walked to the balcony. The city was beautiful at night. Lan sat in his chair and Mao Mao instinctively jumped on top of him and fell asleep.

“I don't know what you're so tired for, you stayed here all day.” Lan closed his eyes and fell asleep as well.

---

Lan awoke to the sun beaming down on his face. He stood up and rubbed his eyes to get the sleep out of them. When he opened his eyes, he saw that he was in a garden enclosed by what could have been 30-foot-high walls of gold brick. He looked up and saw a cloudless sky. The floral scent of some flower Lan had never smelled before invaded his nostrils. Lan tried to find this flower, and traced its scent to a plain green shrub.

Lan inspected the shrub, but found no flowers, no fruit. He wondered how this shrub could smell so nice. “I must find the person in charge of tending this garden and ask him about this plant...and ask him where in the world I am.”

[Quistis]

"Well that certainly was a nice dinner Leon, oh I meant..interview." Mina grinned at the man with brown hair and brown eyes standing by her apartment door. She was leaning against the doorframe slightly intoxicated by the few glasses of wine she had that night as she held her door open. She did come to interview a Mayoral candidate's aide but dressed as if she was going for a date with her black dress and heeled shoes.

"Oh you're welcome. So..are you going to invite me in or not?"" Leon replied leaning in towards the brunette with green eyes while giving her a sly smile that could melt most women's defenses.

Well, most.

"Maybe some other time, I got work tomorrow...and so do you." Mina smiled, feigning sadness as she slammed the door close and giggling as she sorted through her purse and pulled out a small notebook she secretly stole from Leon earlier and jumped to her unkempt bed, skillfully kicking her shoes off in the process.

Hah! Let's see what your boss is REALLY up to: 'Strikingly handsome young man running for mayor with a squeaky clean record'. Too good to be true...If I could find some dirt here it would be my big break.. She thought as she browsed through the notebook's contents. Not a few moments had passed and she suddenly felt that her eyelids weighed a ton and was desperately trying to fight sleep like she was fighting for her life.

"Who's there...so.....tired---" were her last thoughts as she heard the lock of her door clicked and a set of footsteps were approaching behind her.

~~~~~~~~~~~

"Get out!" Mina exclaimed as she sat up and found herself sitting in the middle of a clearing in the forest.

What the hell? Where am I? she wondered as she lightly pinched her arm to make sure that she wasn't dreaming.

"Ouch...this is real?" Mina asked herself as she stood up and fixed herself. She could feel the softness of the grass on her bare feet. The sunshine and fresh air was a welcome surprise from the urban and crowded living in New York City where she lived.

Suddenly, Mina heard a rustling sound from the brush behind her. She then quickly picked up a small branch that fell off the tree and faced towards the noise's direction.

"Who's there?"

((could be anyone of the other chars or no one lol))

[Rowan]

Its been 3 months since Dorian began teaching at Stockholm University. He had been teaching for as little as 2 years before feeling the bitter bile of regret that perhaps teaching others wasn't in his best interests. Perhaps he was depressed. Its the early morning in Dorians suburban home. He sits sipping intently on his gin whilst basking in the dimly lit golden light emitted from the fireplace opposite his red leather armchair. "knowledge remains sacred and powerful. For thoust that seeketh power knows no limits, words are the ultimate source" Dorian muttered to himself. Dorian pondours his existence and the existence of life. He calculates. He measures. He creates and defines. Never satisfied with his conclusion, he starts again from the begining, Muttering to himself over and over.

The sound of consistent light rain pattering on the tin roof prevents Dorian from concentrating and he eventually loses his train of thought. The glass in his hand begins to reflect odd shapes in the dimly lit room. Dorian begins to notice what is happening inside the glass. The alcohol had turned black and white shapes began floating to the top, dancing around inside the glass. Reflections from the glass began growing larger. "What... is this?" Dorian exlaimed. The rain outside had become heavier, the sound now sounding like rocks falling from the sky smashing onto his tin roof. Dorians heart rate rose, he could feel a presence in the room that was forcing him to move from one side of the room to the other. Standing in one spot for too long made him feel as if he was being targeted. He couldnt bring himself to stop running around the room, something was chasing him. He could feel it right behind him. The rain now thundering down on his now regretted tin roof, sounding like bowling balls smashing against it from thousands of feet in the sky, he couldnt hear anything but the blistering bangs coming from above his head. Then in a split second, everything stopped. "... Have I become deaf?" Dorian wondered to himself. Everything stopped, as If all sound had ceased existence. He no longer felt scared or worried. A weight had been lifted.

Dorian walked to the front door and opened it. He was not at home. He was somewhere he'd never seen before. It appeared as if he was in the middle of a forest and his house was the center of it. He looked behind to see his suburban home had become a log cabin. Flabbergasted by his surroundings, he began to explore. Sound had return as he noticed the rustling he made from going through the dry bushes surrounding his home. As Dorian made his way though the bush, he noticed someone standing just a few feet in front of him holding a branch.

"who are you?"

[Aerif]

One of the main benefits outlined to Magdalene when she had been promoted had been the delightful promise of having less paperwork attributed to her work. She hadn’t realised that when they had said she would have less paperwork for the more general tasks it meant that there was a tidal wave of paperwork associated with some of the more unusual cases associated with her position, not to mention the fact that the promise of less paperwork had been a complete fabrication in itself. There was undeniably more paperwork.

Her fingers bounced gracelessly off of the keyboard as her head lolled to the side, she had been typing for over an hour whilst trying to research a suspected terrorist attack in Derry. The night before had been a long one out on the streets that had ended in an arrest. A violent arrest which accounted for the unfortunate amount of paperwork associated with the case. A post-it note was stuck to one of her monitors with unidentified handwriting scrawled on it and she was trying to identify whether or not it was written in English when out of the blue, the small pound-shop Christmas tree that was balanced precociously on the other monitor fell onto her keyboard producing a line of garbled nonsense causing her to look up suddenly to find the perpetrator.

A man in thickly-rimmed glasses was leaning over the monitors; it was his jacket that had sent the little tree shuttling towards the earth although he didn’t seem to notice that he had done it.

“Wanna grab a caw-fee?” he said in an awful imitation of a ‘New York’ accent.

“Sure,” she replied in the same terrible drawl.

She pulled on her jacket, scarf and gloves and followed her colleague out of the building, almost slipping on the icy pavement, an incident that did not go unnoticed by her colleague.

“How could you possibly slip right now, when you managed to arrest a guy so magnificently last night in those heels?” He laughed.

She blushed modestly, although he had a point. The criminal she had been pursuing the night before had managed to pin her against a wall in an alley despite her backup being only a street or so behind the two. Although he had both of his arms pinning her, she had managed to grab his right arm and wrench it back before pivoting on the spot and bringing up her leg to catch the back of his shoulder blade with her knee and pulling him to the ground, handcuffing him by holding him in place with her knees. All done in a pair of irresponsibly chosen heels.

“Is it too much to hope that we’re actually sneaking to the pub?” She responded, pretending to ignore the teasing.

“It’s not even eight in the morning, don’t be such a stereotype.” He sounded slightly disappointed.

“Top o’ the mornin’.”

She realised that she had perhaps been a little too over-enthusiastic with her gestures when she realised that there were several people staring at her. She also realised that they had walked past the coffee shop that they usually frequented.

“No ‘caw-fee’ then?” she asked, knowing the answer before speaking.

“No, I’m afraid not. You made some progress on that case concerning the IRA’s terror threat, and I think we should investigate it in person. How did you make the connection anyway?” He asked inquisitively.

“It was a video shop. In the middle of Derry. In 2011. They’re not even a hobbyist shop, they’re somehow getting a hold of some of the more modern titles on VHS, which can’t be legal in the first place but that’s obviously not the main issue here. The names just matched up and the fake business provides some form of cover up.”

“Well when we get to Londonderry, we can have a wee look-see. It seems a little too obvious but there have been worse cases. Remember the guy who slit the throats of all of those children – who then turned out to be working in a Halal slaughter-house?”

"It was a Sunday, I was at church that day.”

“Such a stereotype.”

A short while later, the car hit a patch of ice and swerved a bit, causing Magdalene do sit up rigidly and really pay attention to where they were. It was abnormally dark even for Winter – but up ahead there were a few men carrying torches all facing the same direction, staring directly at a police car on the other side of the road. A few seconds passed and as the time ticked away Magdalene remembered that her training was supposed to prevent her being caught out by such obvious incidents. But it was too late.

A fireball consumed the police car and destroyed front of the shop it was sitting outside whilst the men with the torches looked on. A fire started on the upper floors of the building and the neighbouring shops became wrecks in a matter of seconds. Unsurprisingly the people inside of the shops were killed, the police car was reduced to a frame, and the car unlucky enough to be passing it at the time – the car that Magdalene was sitting in, was flipped and the passenger and driver thrust into darkness.

---

When she opened her eyes she was lying face down, her chin resting on some cushioned surface which turned out to be the softest grass she had ever encountered. There was something sharp sticking into her stomach, and when she rolled over she discovered a small flower that had remained uncrushed despite her lying on it. The first thing she felt was the warmth in the air, far too warm for gloves and a scarf. Far too warm for Belfast.

She stood up and shed her heavy winter garments. She was aching too much to consider the possibility that she may be dead. Surely there was no pain in purgatory?

But her surroundings seemed so heavenly; there was bird song in the air and a gentle breeze running through her chestnut hair. It looked like she was in a garden, though she couldn’t be sure of it. There was another person present as far as she could tell, but he was at least 10 metres away and her eyes were adjusting to the light. She wasn’t going to risk calling out to the person, so she began slowly walking towards him.