I was at my childhood home, sitting in the walnut tree in the front yard and watching the large oak that was closest to the house fall to the ground piece by piece. It was as though it were aging rapidly, petrifying in a span of mere moments. The sky was full of patchy, dark gray clouds � so dark that it looked like I was experiencing life in black and white. I just sat and watched until the oak was down. Everything had an otherworldly, eerie beauty.Then I went to the side of the house and saw a rectangular opening in the ground, inside which was a purple and white vortex. Just as I was seriously considering jumping in out of sheer curiosity, Dungeon Master jumped out and, without a word, immediately began laying heartstones to border a large squarish area. (All the heartstones looked like the Stone of Astra.) On the side that we were on, he placed an extra line of heartstones to give us more protection. Just as he finished this, Venger erupted from the ground, surrounded by heartstones!
Dungeon Master and I were outside the heartstone-enclosed area, presumably safe from Venger. But Venger was in a rage, and braved the line over and over as he tried to get to us, though each pass painfully weakened him.
He had crossed the first time, and I jumped into the area. He came back, and I jumped back out. He crossed again, falling as he did, and Dungeon Master pushed me back inside. Once more Venger and I traded places, and this time, he seemed to be considerably weakened.
I stopped, the double line between us, and said, "Why are you doing this? It's me! Don't you recognize me?"
"I do not know you," he said.
This devastated me. I wondered if he came from an alternate universe, or if he had somehow lost his memory. "Venger, don't you remember me?"
"I have never seen you before." He rushed at me again.
I grabbed two heartstones and held them close to me, hoping Venger would hesitate to attack, but he continued to chase me and strike at me when he could.
After a while, I could take it no more. I couldn't fight him. I couldn't bear acting against him, whether he knew me or not. I threw the heartstones away from me and let myself fall to the ground. Dungeon Master made to protect me, but seemed to realize I didn't want his help.
I shouted that I would rather die than be denied by Venger.
Venger closed on me. He knelt down to my level and watched me as though undecided as to what to do next. The way he looked at me. . . . He seemed not to have expected a surrender of this kind.
I closed my eyes and waited, believing he was about to kill me. But he didn't. Instead, he held me. I looked at him and saw the Venger I knew.
"You remember me?"
"Yes, I remember you." He said it as though he had all the time known me and had been testing me or playing a game with me.
It was night. On his nightmare, we flew to my hotel room (or apartment), and then we made love in the tub � I on top of him.
Afterwards, we went to a house where there were a lot of people. I couldn't say they were friends, but they were familiar to me. Venger disguised himself as a human, and looked a lot like Marilyn Manson. His skin was white; his long hair was black; and he wore a lot of gothic makeup. And I looked much the same. We had supper there and hung out on their back porch, sharing a reclining lawn chair.
The house was on the edge of a town. I had a cigarette with one of the men there. We watched a fight break out in the town, glad that the violence didn't reach us.
Then Venger simply wasn't there anymore. I was going to spend the night at this house. I offered to wash the dishes, but as I washed and cleaned up, things kept breaking. None of the mishaps were really my fault. It was just an old house and worn out things were finally giving up as I used them. Nobody held it against me. I made friends with one of the girls there and we talked at the kitchen table until I woke up.
