The Sleeping Beauty - Book 1 - Chapter 15
The bright door from the Nightmare Realm spat me out on the corner of a dingy street in the middle of gods knew where.
Fairy tales are real.
Rose Briar is a diabetic college student without insurance. She’s been scraping by through a combination of maxing out credit cards and relying upon the kindness of strangers.
Unfortunately, she’s spent every dollar at her disposal. There’s no money left to buy her life-saving insulin.
Without her medication, Rose falls into a diabetic coma. She tumbles into a deep slumber and wakes up in a fantastical place called the Dream Realm, where fairy tales and legends of old are still very much alive.
She has one chance to wake up.
She must trek across the world, visit the most powerful object in the land, the Obsidian Spindle, and entreat with the fates; the only beings powerful enough to send her soul back to Earth.
But evil forces don’t want her to leave. They will stop at nothing to capture her and make sure she never goes home again.
Now, with the help of her half-gorgon girlfriend and a mysterious red rider, Rose must race across the land fighting dragons, monsters, and the forces of the Wicked Witch, Nimue, in order to reach the Obsidian Spindle before her body dies on Earth and she’s trapped in the Dream Realm forever.
Will she be able to wake up? Can she survive? Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
The bright door from the Nightmare Realm spat me out on the corner of a dingy street in the middle of gods knew where. Angry people walked back and forth briskly, repeatedly banging into me.
“Excuse me!” I said.
“Yeah!” a black guy with a long, unkempt beard shouted back. “Excuse you!”
At least they speak English, I thought to myself. I glanced around, trying to catch my bearings. Before I could, a big, greasy hand pulled me from behind and yanked me into a nearby bodega.
“You come with a flash, aye?” a squat man with no neck and a red nose said. “Etsop just sending anybody through portals nowadays. Don’t you know how to be discrete?”
I felt one of my snakes peak out from under my wig and pushed it back. “Apparently not. Some people say it’s my biggest flaw.”
The shop was small and cramped. There was no order to the food on the shelves. Bags of chips sat next to cookie dough, and cans of Dr. Pepper teetered on top of a rack of newspapers.
The man’s bloodshot eyeballs looked me up and down. “You have bigger flaws.”
“Thanks. I don’t have enough anxiety as it is.”
The man walked behind his counter and picked up a meat cleaver and used it to hack off the legs of a chicken.
The pay counter also acted as a makeshift butcher shop, with different cuts of meat displayed in a glass case below him, and links of sausages hanging from above.
“You really think Mydnyte is gonna let you through that door?”
I shrugged. “Either that or she’s gonna eat me.”
The man chuckled. “I don’t think you’re her type. She doesn’t like reptiles.”
“I’m half-human.”
“Maybe she’ll only eat half of ya.”
“Do you know where she is?”
The man looked up from his cleaving. “What’s to say I’m not her? That’s a very heteronormative definition of femininity.”
“You are talking about her in the third person? Usually people don’t do that about themselves”
“So? Maybe I ain’t everybody.”
“Are you her?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
The man scoffed and shook his head. “I’m just saying…rude.”
“I don’t have time for this. Do you know where I can find her or not?”
He nodded. “I do. Or, that is to say, I know where the door is. Mydnyte’s not far away from it, but I can never track her. Demonesses are wily, you know.”
“Okay, so where is the door?”
“You get right to point, little one, don’t you? Don’t you know you catch more flies with honey?”
“Why would I want flies?”
“It’s an expression.”
“I know. I always thought it was stupid. I want flies to go away. So, tell me where she is, and I’ll buzz off.”
The man laughed ruefully. “She’s gonna love you. Take the back door. Down the alley. You’ll know it when you see it.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re in way over your head. If I was any kind of nice, I would tell you to let her go.”
“Let who go?”
“Your love. You don’t hide it very well. You need to hide it better with Mydnyte. If she smells love on you, she’s going to gobble you up. There is only one thing she responds well to.”
“And what’s that?”
“Revenge.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
The back door of the bodega led into an alley piled high with trash and dumpsters. The walls, an old brick façade, were riddled with graffiti. It stank of rotten meat so badly it was hard to keep from dry heaving.
I stepped over soggy boxes of cardboard and around overflowing dumpsters. Different doors lined the walls, leading into various buildings. I wasn’t sure which door would take me to the Dream Realm, but the bodega owner seemed sure I would know it when I saw it.
And then I did. There, at the end of the alley, a door, torn from its hinges and resting against the side of a derelict building. Its frame was rotten to the core, and I doubted that it would even open for me. However, I was certain it was the right door.
I searched the sky and all around me for a demoness, but all I saw were rats scuttering around the alley. I sidled up to the door and placed my hand on the rusted knob. Turning it slowly and brushing off the rust that flecked off on my fingers, I opened the door, only to find nothing but hollow emptiness on the other side. There was nothing.
A childish voice cut through the air. “I have to bless it first.”
I turned around but nobody was behind me. A black cat rushed across the alley and grabbed a rat trying to scurry through a hole in the wall to safety. There would be no safety for it, though, and it was caught in the cat’s claws before it could disappear. As it brought the rodent to its mouth, the cat grew, doubling in size, and then doubled once more. Its paws became fingers, which became hands, and when it placed the rat in its mouth, the mouth turned from a cat’s mouth to that of a human.
An alabaster woman with black eyes, dressed in a black gown, stared back at me from where the cat had been. The eyes had no white. They were completely onyx. Her teeth were sharp, and a forked tongue flicked the last specks of blood from her mouth.
“Mydnyte?” I asked.
“That’s me,” she said. “Are you another foolish mortal, come to unbind yourself from the coil that keeps you alive, and feed your spark to me?”
“No,” I said, straightening my shoulders. “I am here to gain passage to the Dream Realm.”
“To me, they are one and the same. I haven’t granted passage in many moons.” Mydnyte lunged toward me, but I didn’t flinch. “I smell magic on you, mortal.”
I pushed back my hoodie to reveal the snakes on my head. “I have been getting that a lot recently. I am a gorgon.”
“Yuck,” Mydnyte said, her lip curling. “I don’t do reptiles.”
“Good,” I said, curtly. “Cuz I’m not here to be eaten.”
“Why are you here?”
I thought for a moment. I thought back about what my mother told me about Hera, and how she is bound to the Dream Realm. “I’m here to kill Hera.”
Mydnyte laughed and her screech filled the air. “That is rich. Very rich. What makes you think you can kill a god?”
“I can’t,” I replied. “But the Obsidian Spindle can, and when I get there, I will use the wish the Fates give to cut the thread that binds Hera’s life.”
“And why would you do that?” Mydnyte said, intrigued.
“It’s easy. Gorgons used to be the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Look at us now. Loathsome creatures, hunted nearly to extinction, and I’m sick of being hunted.”
“You have a certain charm to you. An acquired taste, to be sure, but I could find you beautiful.”
“She cursed my mother. Monster hunters have chased us for generations. Hera needs to die, and I’m going to kill her.”
Again Mydnyte laughed, taking a step closer to me when she finished. “You make me laugh, mortal. I know you are lying, but even the mere thought of killing Hera, and allowing me to leave this place, is more joy than I have had in eons.”
“You’re trapped here?”
“I am cursed to guard this door until Hera no longer needs to be bound within the Dream Realm.”
“So, if she dies, you go free.”
“That is the oath I made to the goddess Nox many centuries ago, when she granted me eternal life…for a cost. I did not know how high the price.”
Mydnyte shut the door closed and tapped on it three times with the tips of her fingers. When she opened it again, I no longer saw the ground, but a beautiful forest overlooking a quaint town. However, all was not peaceful. Dragons flew over the buildings, burning them to ashes. Screams of agony filled the air.
“You better hurry,” she said. “It looks as though great danger is afoot.”
I didn’t say another word. I ran through the door and into the Dream Realm. I would not let anything happen to Rose.
Fairy tales are real.
Find out by reading The Sleeping Beauty today. If you love mythology, fairy tales, and dark fantasy, then you’ll love the first book in The Obsidian Spindle Saga.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.