All i can do is sit here and laugh;
As i decide what to make for his epitaph.
Destroying him like a parasite to it's host;
Feeding away at his melancholy ghost.

A rap, a knock at the seal of his coffin;
A hand breaking out to show his life isn't stopping
The dead, the alive and all of the 'round
Won't stop a zombie from beneath the ground

Do you think you could make it die?
It will always haunt you despite your lie;
You couldn't just put a false fear on the shelf
Because the only thing to fear is fear itself!

You don't have any magic, you are not an elf;
I lied, the only thing to fear is fearing yourself!
It's impossible to hide your fear with "invisibility"
When you will always be stuck in this Dream Reality.

- Dream Reality (Vincent Crapello)

What is it you know about me? You know about my love for Ghostbusters, sure. But do you know what I look like? Do you know how I dress? How about the types of things I like, ie music, food, colors, or even do you know what my day is like? I didn’t think so. But the things I bet you wonder the most are what goes through my mind, basically dreams, and fears. This story is the real life of me, or is it a dream… or is it just a dream reality? Right now I will tell you that the only part of this that is real is what seems real everything else happens in dreams.

* * *

February 9, 2003 6:15 AM

“Yeah and then so I just had to say it out loud,” blared Howard Stern as the alarm clock struck 6:15 in the morning. “What is wrong with you man?”
“No what is wrong with you?” Vin grumbled through his pillow as he hit the ‘sleep’ button on his alarm clock. “I can not believe Winter Break is already over.” He said as he crawled out of bed and turn on the light. Vincent Crapello was a slightly shorter than the average boy, with dusty brown hair, tan skin and a pretty athletic build. Vin put on his “You’d be beautiful if you were somebody else” shirt, and tugged up his jeans, which were four sizes too big around the waist. Walking into the bathroom he switches the light on and he shuts the door, locking it. He takes off his glasses and places them on the porcelain counter-top. Twisting his contact lense case open, he looks up at the mirror, his eyesight is extremely bad so he moves into the mirror more to see his face. “No new pimples, that’s good.” He pulls off the cap of the case and he sticks his index finger into the solution, pulling out a flexible clear lense. Placing it into his left eye he blinks a little bit and then does the same process with the right eye. Now that he can see clearly, he looks at his hair. “Great, bed-head,” he says as he flips the top of the Dep 10 hair gel bottle open. Squirting a little bit into his right palm he runs it back through his hair, then another squirt and runs his hand forward through his hair, then one last small squirt and through the sides of his hair making it all stand up straight. He takes out a bottle of red colored hair gel and spreads a small amount along his index finger. He colors his bangs red and highlight the rest of his hair with whatever is left on his fingers. He walks into his room and grabs a camouflage belt, a leather bracelet with metal symbols attached to it, and a Back To The Future watch he got with a DVD trilogy set for Christmas.. Then he rushes down stair, the clock now reads 6:40. “Wow did it take me that long to wake up today?”
“Did you wake up Stephen?” asked his father who was sitting at the kitchen table reading The Star Ledger.
“No, I will get right on it, master.” Vin says in reply. With that he was up the stairs again and knocking on his older brother’s door. “Stevie, time to get up.”
An incomprehensible groan comes from the other side of the door and Vin walks back down into the kitchen. He grabs a box of Trix cereal, a bowl, a spoon, and of course some milk from the fridge. Sitting at the table he poors the cereal and milk into the bowl. Taking a huge mouthful of cereal, he wraps the belt around his right wrist , puts the watch on his belt ring at his pant line, and buttons the bracelet onto his left wrist.
Just seconds later Vin’s mom comes into the kitchen apparently tired from last nights sleep and she waves to the conscious two at the table.
“Is Stephen awake?” Vin’s father asks just before they here walking and a bathroom door slam just above them.
“Yeah,” Vin replies as he takes in another huge mouthful of cereal. “Where’s Brody?” he mumbles through the food. Almost immediately after he says this, a small seven year old Bichon Frise with a handkerchief around his neck comes flying into the kitchen after his trek down then stairs. “Hey pooch,” Vin says as the dog walks past him. Vin looks at the clock and now it says 7:09. “Well, I guess it’s time for me to go.”
“Is Scott picking Steve up?” Vin’s mom asks him.
“Most likely,” Vin says as he grabs his coat, CD player, and bookbag. He gets to the front door and he squishes his feet into his shoes, throws on his coat and rushes out the door.
He sprints down Mansfield Avenue as he sees the school bus shut its doors and he runs like he was an Olympic gold medalist. Trying to stop he slide to a halt on the slush covered ground and he bangs on the door of the bus. The doors open and he climbs aboard.
“Thanks a lot, Joe,” Vin says to the greying Siberian bus driver.
“No problem, go sit down,” He replied in a Siberian accent.
Vin takes his seat, the very last on the right side all the way in back. Plopping into his seat, he puts his headphones onto his ears and presses play on his CD player. He can easily here Rufio start to play considering the volume is all the way up.

January 3, 2003 10:39 AM

It was Vin's English class now. Everyone in the class knew he was obbsessed with Ghostbusters. He was shaking, kind of like a nervous shake. Today he was to read a story he wrote for a picture prompt. Before Winter Break he was given an assignment, look at a picture and either describe it or write a story about it. The picture looked kind of like a haunted house, an old building in the city, and a bunch of faces in the windows.
"OK, Vincent, why don't you come on up here and read your story that you wrote?" Vin heard his English teacher, Mrs. Vandigriff say.
"What if they dont like it?" he thought to himself as he stood and shuffled his way to the front of the class. "Uh...Hi kids, how is ev..ev..everyone today?" he studdered nervously, Vin wasn't a big fan of being in public. "OK! S...so our story starts, it's June 9, 2010, 11:32 AM. Peter Venkman was rudley awaken..." Vin read his story for about five minutes, it wasn't too long but Vin was going to extend and finish it for his favorite place to be, Ghostbusters.net. "And so the Ghostbusters had fended off yet another evil spirit." he said in closing. Looking around the room for people to comment all he saw were people with there heads down and others staring like they were completely braindead. Vin took a big gulp and tightened the belt on his wrist, still standing there even breaking a sweat in anticipation and nervousness.
"Freak!" someone yelled and out of nowhere came a crumpled up ball of paper. In an attempt to not get hit by it he dodged but his arm hit a pile of books on the teachers desk, knocking them all to the floor. Laughter erupted through the classroom as the bell rang. Vin sighed deeply and bent over picking up all of the books and placing them back onto the desk. He rushed out of the classroom and to the next class.

January 3, 2003 8:59 PM

Vin is home now. The rest of the day went as usual, people making fun of him, he gets hit in the face with a misguided volleyball, the usual. When he got home with stains of all sorts on his shirt, his mother had asked him what happened.
“School is just freaking stupid that’s what!”
“Why? What happened?” replied his mother.
“I hate everyone in this town, I want to move.”
“Don’t worry, ‘all you have to fear is fear itself.’ ” she quotes.
“I have no fears!” Vin said abruptly and ran downstairs. He goes onto his computer which sits in the back of his basement family room. Logging on to AIM he looks at who is on. His buddy list is separated into certain sections: Special People, which had his best friends, girls he liked, and family members; People, which were people that he was friends with but only friends; More People, which was people that he wasn't too friendly with but still worthy of talking to; Even More People, which were people he either didn't like, didn't know, or had gotten their screen names from friends; then there was the section entitled Ghostbusters.net. That section encluded anyone who he had the screen name from members of, well apparently Ghostbusters.net.
"Let's see who is on," he says to himself reading from the bottom up "Kingpin, Daryl, Zack, Chad, Chuck..." he read "Oh look, Jackie and Rae are on, hmm," then he sees that the girl he belives he is madly in love with is on but idle and has an away message up.
"x0 Aguilar 0x: HEY!! I see you aren't here, but i just wanna tell you I love you and I have been thinking of you all day!
PunkRockPromQueen auto response: Hey I am not here right now so leave me one! I love you Vin!!!"
Vin sighs and then clicks on the "Boards" link on his AIM buddy list. His buddy list shows and animated Slimer flying around the Ivo Shandor building.
"I wonder what is on the boards today," he says to himself as he looks around the website. He then goes back to his buddy list and clicks on the chat room link. Almost immediatly a new window pops up and it asks for his screen name and password. He types LordVego into the name box and types his password in under it. "LordVego has entered the chat" it says in red typing at the top of the chat box. There are five other people in there, Zack, Texasgb, river_of_slime, some guy with the screen name Red Ketchup and Kyleogb1983. They all greet him with a good "Hey Vego" and Vin replies. About an hour later into his conversation, he says he has to leave and go to bed. After saying goodbye and signing off he climbs the stairs and onto his computer in his bedroom. This computer is where he keeps all of his documents and homework items, and this computer he will use paint or any other useful items, other than the internet. He goes on and he goes into a story he got off of GBN a while ago, it was saved under a Microsoft Word document entitled The Insane Lives On.
"Why are some of us labeled insane? What is insane? Is it the amount of fear that haunts us everyday, or is it the lack of love in our lives? If this is the case, then we all are insane." he reads in his head. About ten minutes later he finishes up his reading out loud "What would happen? Before he could think a second thought he did it, he slit both of his wrists. He slid out of the computer chair, onto the floor. And slowly, but surely, he bled to death." he finishes his reading. He stands up from his desk and stretches.
"Great story," he says to himself as he walks into the bathroom. He takes off his clothes and hops into the shower. Turning it on he flinches at the cold. A short time later, when he is done washing himself, he turns off the water and gets out of the shower, he takes his contacts out and places his glasses on his face. He walks out of the bathroom and crawls into bed, shuts his eyes and falls asleep.

* * *

Vin was awaken with a start by the the blaring racket of an alarm sound. Then a man busts into the room and turns on the overhead light.
“Ruffio! Wake up!” Vin’s glasses weren’t on yet so he couldn’t see who it was that would actually wake him up with such a sound, and call him by what he likes to be called none the less.
“Wha? Why, who? What’s going on?” Vin says groggily as he closes his eyes due to the light shining from above.
“Come on! We have a class five! Get out of bed, it’s Peter’s job to be the lazy one!” says the man as he quickly leaves the room.
Vin bolts completely upright and throwing the glasses on his face his eyes flash open. “Where in God’s name am I?” he says outloud. Looking aorund he notices he is in a room he has never been in before. Four twin sized beds were also in the room, each not made. He looks out the window and sees buildings across the street as barely any light shines through. He looks at a clock flashing 2:24 AM on his bedside table. “This cannot be real, not real at all!” He says climbing out of his bed and looking at the khaki flightsuit on the footboard of his bed. At this time a man, again, busts into the room.
“Come on! Get your flightsuit on and contacts in and hurry!” said Dr. Raymond Stantz, “Didn’t you hear Winston just now?” he says as he, too, leaves the room.
Vin sees a mirror just behind his bedside table with his contact lense case there on the it. Rushing over to it he takes off his glasses and puts in his contacts. He, then, jumps over to the bottom of his bed, and pulls on the flightsuit that was there, he zips it up to the bottom of his chest and tugs boots onto his feet, making sure to tuck in his pant cuffs to the top of his boots. He sprints out the room and down the pole he sees in the hallway. When at the bottom he sees things like he never imagined. In the back of the room there is an office with walls about 3-4 feet high but no ceiling, a staircase to the basement, and a secretaries desk with a computer. On the other side, in the middle of the room, there it was, the most beautiful thing you would ever imagine: the Ecto-1. Standing by it was, of course, Ray, then Dr. Egon Spengler, Dr. Peter Venkman, and Winston Zeddemore. The four get into the car.
“Get in the car, man, we have to hurry!” exclaimed Venkman.
Vin nods and hurries to the Ecto and gets in. He sits down in the back seat with Ray and Peter. They speed out of the room and as they go down the street and Vin looks back at the building. He sees a red brick firehouse with a sign hanging about the garage doors. The sign only to be known as the No-ghost symbol of the Ghostbusters. He grows wide-eyed and sits down facing forward trying to run through his mind what this could be.
“A dream…it has to be a dream.” He thought himself. He stared out the window at the streets of New York.
“Are you OK, man?” Winston said to Vin, waking him up out of his trance.
“Huh? Oh, yeah fine, thanks.” He replied as he spun his head around to look Winston right in the eyes.
The Ecto-1 came to a screeching hault outside of a small broken down apartment building in what looks to be the Bronx. The four Ghostbusters get out of the car and look around waving the PKE meters in the air. Peter pops his head into the car and looks at Vin.
“Are you coming or what?” He queries.
“Oh, jeeze, yeah, sorry,” Vin says as he climbs out of the car “So how does it look?” he asks Egon as if he had been a real Ghostbuster all his life.
“The readings aren’t too powerful but we definitly have something here!” Egon replied walking towards the building.
Winston and Ray open up the back of the Ecto-1 and pull out the rack of proton packs. Ray, Peter, and Winston get their packs on. Vin walks over to the rack and picks up the pack. A lot heavier than he anticipated he almost drops it, even though it is still only 40-50 lbs. He flips it onto his back and he buckles it on. Egon does the same thing and with that they were ready.
Egon turned the knob slowly and pushed the door open. It creaked and fell to the floor, kicking up a wave of dust. The five men walk through the threshold into the darkened building.
“It’s a little dark in here…” Vin says looking around as a bright light in the shape of a man flashes past him and up the stairs.
“There it goes! Get it!” Yells Ray as they start to chase the light up the stairs. The Ghostbusters chase it without problem of disfuntion due to the pack, Vin struggles to run with the clacking positron collider waying down his torsoe.
“Hurry up, buddy, you are acting like a newbie!” Peter yells down the stairs at Vin who is having a hard time controlling his proton pack. From Vin’s view he can’t see the Ghostbusters anymore, so guessing they got up to the same level as the ghost already Vin starts to sprint so he doesn’t miss the action.
Vin gets to the top level and sees the Ghostbusters dodging the ghost left and right. The ghost, not seeing Vin, speeds at Egon. Vin fires up his neutrona wand and sends a proton stream flying at the spectre, catching it in mid air.
“I got it!” he yells frantically as Winston and Peter also catch the ghost in their streams. Egon, who was on the ground just before recovers and also holds down the ghost with a neutrona blast. Ray goes over to the side and gets on one knee with the ghost trap. He sends the trap rolling under the ghost.
“One…two…three!” He yells as he steps on the foot switch to the ghost trap. A bright light eminates from the open trap doors and all five look away from the bright light, the four turning off their proton streams. The ghost gets sucked into the trap and it closes. “We got it!” Ray yells throwing his hands into the air.
Back in the Ecto on the way back to the firehouse, Vin, again, zones out while staring out the window. “That was amazing!” he thinks to himself “But how could any of this behappening? The Ghostbusters aren’t real at all, and if they were why would I be one? I don’t have that kind of responsibility…I can’t even be a mod at GBN.”
“Hey, good job back there,” Ray says to Vin, waking him up.
“Thanks, I do what I can,” He says with a grin.
Winston leans in to Vin and wispers in his ear “Hey, are you OK? You seemed like tonight was your first bust.”
“It was…” Vin mumbles.
“What was that you said?”
“Nothing,” Vin says as he goes back to looking out the window.
When they reach the firehouse Vin immediatialy gets out of the car and heads up the stairs to the rec room, as does Peter. He plops down on the couch in the center of the room, in front of the tv. He picks up the remote control and flips through the channels. Pete comes over and sits on the couch next to him and gives him an odd looks as Vin just stares at the tv screen.
“Something wrong? You seemed a bit out of it back there at the bust. Are you going to be OK?”
“This can not be real.” Vin said in reply.
“What do you mean? What can not be real? I don’t like it when Egon says things like that, I don’t like it when you say it either.”
“This is a dream!” Vin says as he turns off the tv and shoots up off of the couch.
“What are you talking about? What dream?”
“I am not a Ghostbuster! They aren’t real! It would be impossible!”
“We are here aren’t we? I mean we aren’t illusions.”
“You see? There, right there is proof that this is a dream!”
“What do you mean?”
“The line ‘you are here aren’t you, I mean you aren’t an illusion’ is from a play entitled Blithe Spirit that I had to recite a scene from for my Drama midterm! You just took that line out of my mind, er um, I took it out of my mind and made you say it!”
“Alright, I will play with this and let me ask you this: if this were a dream, why would you know? Most people never know if they are dreaming and even more can’t control it when they do know.”
“Oh, you do have a point. But the physics of busting ghosts is literally impossible.”
“Maybe we should have you talk to Egon about this one.”
“No! He will think I am craz…wait, you know what? Yeah, lets talk to him.”
The two walk back down the stairs to find Ray and Winston working on the car, and Egon working on Janines computer.
“Hey Egon,” Peter calls him over, “me and Ruffio seem to have a problem, will you come here for a second?”
“I am busy…” He says not looking up from his work.
“It’s urgent,” Vin chimes in, “I mean, really urgent.”
With that, Winstons head pops out from under the Ecto’s hood and Ray slides from under the chassey.
“Is everything good?” Winston says while whiping his mouth with a dirty rag.
“Yeah, what is it?” Ray says while struggling to sit up off of the trolly.
“Ruffio here seems to think that this is a dream,” Peter says as he nudges Vin forward.
“A dream?” Egon says finally looking up from the computer. “Please explain.”
“Well, for one thing I am not…how ever old it is that I am. I am only fourteen years old!”
“Ah, fourteen…fascinating, keep going,” Egon says stepping away from the computer desk and advancing on Vin and Peter.
“Well, the possiblitly of being able to ‘bust ghosts’ is rediculosly low. And, if it was possibly, why would I be one? I would love to be one but I don’t think I would be able to pull it off.”
“You have been doing pretty good for the past year…” Ray tries to compliment.
“There was no past year! This is a dream! Why is it you don’t understand this?” Vin starts to get frustrated.
“Well if this is a dream, then that past year comment was made up. It was made up by your mind none the less. Meaning that if this is a dream this is how you want things to be, or there really are paranormal forces at work here. There is a possibility that we are all in here as some sort of hidden message trying to be unlocked by his unconsious mind.”
“English, please, Egon?” Peter says.
“I get him, he is saying that we are just figments of a fourteen year olds imagination. I don’t believe it. Are you starting to, Egon?” Winston says.
“I don’t know whether to believe him, I mean it does make perfect sence. I will believe basically anything after some of the things we have seen.”
“You haven’t seen anything! Your memories are all Real Ghostbuster cartoon episodes I have seen in the past!”
At this, Janine, who was on the phone writing things down the whole time interrupts the group saying “Guys, we can’t have an argument right now, we have a job!” She hands Egon a slip of paper with the address on it and with that they were all in the Ecto as if that argument never happened.
On the way to their bust there was an awefully akward silence considering that ‘dream or not a dream’ argument had gotten to them all and they were think. All were thinking accept for Vin who was positive on it’s being a dream. How can a dream be so real, though? There was all the proof it was a dream, but the feeling he had, the intensity and the realism all went against the facts of it being impossible. Then out of nowhere Ray cracks Vin in the head hard with his nuckle.
“Ow! What in the hell was that about?” Vin said. Painw as shooting through all his body, a lot more pain than there should have been from such a small hit.
“I was just seeing if you were dreaming, when people get hit in dreams, they tend to wake up.”
“Yes, scientific studies show that those kinds of things have tendencies to wake people up, I just don’t see why you didn’t,” Egon said with a confused look.
“OK, so, we found out he is sleeping or what?” Peter asks.
“I have no idea, I mean why would he not be able to wake up? There would have to be an explanation, maybe…just maybe he is trap, like this is some sort of parallel universe,” Egon said.
The Ecto-1 pulled up to what looked to be just another broken down old dump of a building with boarded windows and a completely run down structure. As Winston, Peter and Vin get the packs form the back of the car, Egon and Ray take PKE readings. Vin gets a feeling in the pit of his stomache and a tear wells in his eye.
“People don’t cry in dreams…” he says outloud.
“What do you mean, bud?” Peter asks him.
“A tear just formed in my eye, for one, I can’t cry, it’s like and inibility I have, and another rhitng is, whenever I have cried in dreams, I never felt it…I really feel it.”
“Why would you be crying?” Winston asks.
“I have not the slightest clue, I just got a feel…” Vin says getting cut off by Egon.
“We have very strong readings coming from that building!” Egon says pointing to the building.
“What in the?” Vin says surprised as he sees the building that was the run down dump a few minutes ago has now turned into the Ivo Shandor building from the original Ghostbusters movie. “That is just plain messed up, I mean really.”
“What is?” Ray said as he straps on his proton pack.
“Nothing, let’s go.” Vin says as he walks into the building.
He opens the door and he sees the lobby to the Sedgewick Hotel, as also shown in the first Ghostbusters movie. Knowing where to go, as he has seen the movie many times, he heads over to the elevator. There waiting for an elevator is a portly old man.
“What are you, some kind of a cosmonaut?” Asks the old man.
“No, we are exterminators, somebody saw a cockroach up on twelve” replies Peter as Vin stares in utter amazement at the goings on.
“Must be some cockroach,” says the man also staring but staring at the odd garments of the five men.
“Bite your head off, man,” he says as the elevator reaches the floor and Vin rushes in. The rest of the Ghostbusters follow him.
“Going up?” Ray says to the old man, poking his head out of the elevator.
“I’ll take the next one,” said the man as the doors closed. Ray pushes the ‘12’ button on the elevator wall and the vibrations show that it started to go up.
“Please don’t say it, please don’t say it… this can’t be the scene, Winston is here, he wasn’t at the first bust…” Vin thinks in his head as the elevator goes up. He looks around the elevator and notices that Winston isn’t there. “What the?”
“You know, we haven’t had a successful test with the equipment yet…” Ray says.
“He said it…” Vin thinks out loud but quietly. They go on to finish the lines from that scene and the elevator stops, the digital numbers above the door read ‘12’. The doors open and the four get out only to be greeted by and exhausted Winston and the stairwell scene from the Ivo Shandor building. “Well, that is just plain odd.” Vin says as he sees not only the Ivo Shandor building once again, but Winston and the rest of the Ghostbsuters are leaning along the railing of the stairs as if they had been climbing the stairs the whole way.
“Where are we?” Peter says.
“Not again,” Vin mumbles to himself.
“Somewhere in the teens,” Ray yells back at Peter as the climb the stairs.
“OK tell me when we get to twenty, I am going ot throw up.” Peter says with a lack of breath.
They get to the level which can only be recognized by the long stretch of hallway holding Louis Tully and Dana Barret’s appartments. While walking down the hallway a terror dog, also from the first Ghostbusters movie, breaks through Louis Tully’s door, slamming into the opposite wall, and running down the hall and out of sight.
“Shouldn’t we go and, you know, get that?” Vin says as he notices the dog run away.
“Go get what?” Said Ray.
“Forget it,” Vin says as he walks up to Dana’s appartment and jiggles the door knob. “It’s locked.”
Winston walks up to the door, grasps the knob and turns it, pushing the door open slowly, “Works fine,” he says as he walks in to what looks like the same scene of Dana’s apartment at the end of the movie.
The rest of the team walks in with the acception of Vin who is standing out there wondering why the door didn’t work, then it popped into his head that it must be a dream. Vin walks in and the door shut behind him.
He spins around and looks at the door, but there is no door, only a big, black, empty area. He turns back around to where he was facing, but when he turned around he saw not the scene from the end of the movie, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, it wa like he was just floating there. There was minimal light, hardly enough to see anything, but somehow he saw everything of the nothingness. He spotted the four Ghostbusters and ran to catch up with them, each walking around cautiously as if in a terrorist raid for the military. A strong wind picked up and started to blow down on the five men, each holding their gun in hand.
The wind grew strong and a slight light started to appear with a gigantic cloud of black smoke under it. Through the smoke you could see glowing yellow eyes, but that was it. The five retreated back a few feet, all aiming at the cloud.
“On three!” Peter says as they position themselves to fight.
“THREE!” They all yell at the same time blasting the smoke cloud with their proton streams. The streams go right through it and into the darkness.
“You think you can stop me?” The cloud laughs, “You are small and pathetic little beings and you all deserve to die!” With the word ‘die’ the five people get blown back many feet, the cloud seems to grow larger, “You are weak, your fears destroy you on the inside!”
The Ghostbusters all get up and circle the cloud each sendiong more proton streams at it. The cloud just laughs sending them back in a pile in front of it. Vin sits there, his heart racing, his adrenaline pumping, and his brain working more than ever as he slowly starts to shake.

* * *

It was 6:45 AM, Vin’s mom walked up the stairs to wake him up. She gets to his bedroom door and goes to knock. She hears sounds coming from the inside sounding like wimpering mixed with exhasperated breaths of air.
“Well, he had a rough day yesterday, I will let him sleep,” she wispers to herself as she backs away from the door, and back downstairs.

* * *

Vin, shaking and shivering in fear, thinks of what they can do to stop this thing. He was very afraid. Not only washe afraid of the giant cloud about to kill him, but also thefeeling he might never wake up. All of the sudden a flashback popped into his head. He was fourteen years old and he had a bad day at school, his mother had said something to him.
“You have nothing to fear, but fear itself,” he remembered it. He stood straight up and slowly walked toward the cloud.
Repeating that quote in his mind, he grew cautious, but still trying to minimize his fear.
“Nothing to fear…fear itself,” he says repeatedly outloud, but quietly so only he can hear it. The wind grew strong, very strong, but couldn’t knock him down, the sound of the wind was as if there was a freight train somewhere nearby, “Nothing to fear…fear…y…yourself…” a thought popped into his head. “You have nothing to fear but fearing yourself! I get it now! I am not afraid! Show yourself demon!”
The cloud lowered and a blue light started to glow from the center of the cloud, the blackness of the cloud started to fade away, the wind calming. Then, through the cloud, Vin could see a figure walking towards him, it glowing blue. The cloud disappeared as the figure walks entirely out of it, Vin walked up to it to get a better look. There he stood face to face with something more terrifying than ever imagined, himself at age fourteen.
“I am not afraid of you,” he said, even with his voice trembling and his body shaking.
“You fear me more than you think, admit it, you think you are worthless, you think you have no friends, you think you suck. Well guess what, you don’t have friends, you are worthless, and you do suck.”
“You leave me alone, stop haunting me!”
“You will never amount to anything! You will always be completely worthless and never have any meaning!” The blue form of Vin sounds frustrated as the wind picks up.
“Yes I will! You stay away from me, and never come back!” Vin shouts over the wind.
“You have no life and you are the worst part of your family! You know why you don’t have any friends, a girlfriend, and why people make fun of you? You are a loser and always will be! You fear me, you fear yourself! You will always fear me because you have no meaning!” says the blue Vin as the wind gets much stronger and a slight growling type sound is heard.
“You are way wrong! I do have a lot of friends! I could get a girlfriend if I want! And you know what? I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU!” He says.
The blue Vin backs up yelling, his blue eyes now glow yellow and he grows maybe nine to ten feet tall, turning into what looks like a terror dogs head. The only difference was the ears were much longer, the teeth were enormous, and those eyes, those glowing yellow eyes. The body was quite humanoid. His arms were long, his hands had huge claws on them, his whole body was very muscular looking, the monster towered over Vin, drool forming in his mouth, it breathes heavily.
“Are you afraid now?” says the creature, bending in front of Vin to give him a good look at his face.
“Are you kidding?” Vin says and smacks the thing on the side of it’s head.
It stands straight up and screams. The most blood curtling yell ever, it sounds as if it is half animal and half human. The creature then explodes into a cloud of black smoke, those yellow eyes still staring, and it disappears.
Vin turned around and ran back at the guys, “Hey guys, did you see that?” he says, as excited as a four year old who built a sand castle all on his own.
“Yes that was very nice, but I bet you didn’t know that the stars at night shine big and bright, deep in the heart…of Tex…as,” says Egon, but his face started to melt at the beginning of ‘stars at night’ and he melts into non-existance. Vin looks around at the other guys, frantically, to see what is going on. They all melt, as does Vin’s black surroundings.
His new surroundings are very familiar to him. He blurrily sees across from him is his desk, entertainment center and TV, to his right his his guitar and bedside table, to the left is his closet and bedroom door. He had woken up, the nightmare had ended. He looks back on his bedside table, the clock reads 1:07 PM. He had realized something: He shouldn’t be afraid of himself, and he should have btter confidence. The next day, Vin would have been a whole new person, same style, same clothes, new outlook on everything.