Hunted by Dean Murray Page B

abandon as he crossed the last
few feet towards me. My back hit the wall and I suddenly realized
that I didn't have anywhere else to go. I tried to make the wall
disappear—it was my dream and he'd just finished telling me
that I should be able to control my surroundings, but it was almost
like there was an unseen pressure holding the wall in place.
    He
took one final step forward and picked me up by the throat again.
With the transformation to his beast form the bandages had
disappeared, but the glowing slashes across his chest hadn't gone
anywhere. In this form they were actually bigger and bleeding more
light than they had before.
    As
the pressure around my neck grew to the point where I couldn't
breathe I did the only thing I could think of. I tried to focus on
the real world, tried to push the dream away, but it was like there
was something holding me there, some unseen wind that pressed me back
against the wall.
    I
pushed harder with my mind and then suddenly the wind stuttered and
the Native American started to disappear. That was all I needed to tear myself
free of the dream, but I was pretty sure that he hadn't let me
go voluntarily. The wounds and the energy he'd expended in an effort
to keep me there had simply been too much for him to sustain.
    I
was pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to escape if his
concentration hadn't wavered there at the end.
     
     

Chapter 9
    I
was undeniably jumpy the next morning. I didn't seem to have any of
the physical signs of nearly dying for the third time while dreaming.
My neck wasn't bruised or anything, but when I climbed out of bed my
gray pajama pants slid down off of my hips as soon as my feet touched
the floor.
    I
grabbed my pants, pulling them back up before they hit the floor and
then went to retie the drawstring, but it turned out that it hadn't
ever come undone. I always tied my bottoms so they were pretty loose,
but I was sure that when I'd gone to bed that the pants had been
plenty tight enough not to fall down on me like that.
    I
crept into the bathroom and looked at myself in the full-length
mirror on the door. Cindi had been going on about the fact that I'd
been losing weight for long enough that I'd finally started to
believe her, but I was still shocked by what I saw in the mirror.
    Cindi
was right, I'd been losing weight for a few weeks now, but the
process had accelerated. When I'd looked down at myself during the
dream with the Native American I'd seen a body that was still a little on the
plump side, but the reality was that I'd lost nearly all of the baby
fat that had hounded me for so many years. I was as skinny as any of
the other cheerleaders, as skinny as Cindi even. I wanted to say that
it was inexplicable, but I knew that wasn't the case.
    The
Native American had given me the answer, probably without even realizing that
he was doing so. Being in other people's dreams was burning up so
much energy that the calories taken in during the course of the day
weren't keeping up. It was incredible, but no more so than the fact
that I was sharing dreams with people I'd never met in real life.
    I
untied my pants and then retied them again, tightly enough this time
that they wouldn't fall off my ever skinnier hips. Having the
drawstring that tight bunched the fabric around my waist up, which
made me frown. These pants were one of the newest articles of
clothing I owned. I'd purchased them a few weeks ago after I started
slimming down. If they now fit this badly then I was in trouble. The
rest of my clothes were going to be even worse.
    My
fears were proved out when I started getting dressed half an hour
later. My 'skinny' jeans were in the dirty clothes hamper and I had
to hold up the next best option, a pair of shorts, with one hand to
keep them from sliding down while I hunted through my half of the
closet for a belt.
    By
the time Cindi came out of the shower I was on my third belt and I
was starting to lose hope. None of my belts were small enough. So