Trent Ch. 01: The Ring

Trent sighed as reality came back into focus. He had been dreaming about the cute brunette that lived down the hall from him, and had been dragged back into reality kicking and screaming. He always woke up just before the best part. Like most males in his early 20's, sex was something that was pretty much always on his mind. The literal girl of his dreams had been just about to disrobe when something had interrupted him. The girl down the hall was a solid 10, while Trent generously evaluated himself at an 8, on a good day. Which to be fair, being an 8 is nothing to sneeze at, there are many people who are much lower than an 8 who would kill for that. Unfortunately Trent put himself firmly out of her league, and thus regulated their relationship to the land of dreams.

Trent was drifting in his life. After finishing college the year before he hadn't made any significant progress. At 23 he felt as though he was in his prime, but instead of living life to the fullest he just felt like he was spinning his wheels. Fresh on the heels of a messy breakup with his girlfriend of 4 years he had yet to put any real effort into finding a job with the degree that he had spent so much money on (well him and his parents...).

He rolled over and caught sight of himself in the mirror, pausing to examine his reflection. Trent was the lucky recipient of strong genes that had enabled him to stand three inches over six foot, literally towering over many of his peers, and he had found to his determent that he often had an ego to match. A strong masculine jawline was shadowed by a beard that served the dual purpose of saving him from the fate of having to shave on a daily basis, while also helping him not look like a 12 year old. Once upon a time a thick head of dark brown hair had graced the top of his head, but when the first signs of thinning and shown its ugly face he had gone a bit overboard in shaving his head before deciding that the clean approach was something that suited him.

Trent glanced around his apartment, attempting to figure out what it was that had woken him up. If he had ever had illusions about what it would be like to live with a female room mate they hadn't lasted a day into the actual experience. Dishes and dirty clothes were piled haphazardly around the apartment, and while some of them were his he had long ago given up on trying to stem the tide against the flow of detritus. When all was said and done the apartment may have resembled a crime scene where a small bomb had gone off but under the rubble was a decent apartment. Hardwood floors and granite counter tops alone would have placed the place well outside of his price range without the addition of a room mate.

"did something fall over?" Trent asked himself. Beyond the typical disarray that plagued his house hold nothing appeared to be out of place. Stacks of DVD's and video games formed a small mountain in front of the TV and while stacked dangerously they all appeared to still be in order. Stillness reigned in the apartment and Trent lay back on the couch in the vain hope of getting another hour or so of sleep before he had to head off to work.

He rolled over onto his side, using the overstuffed cushions of the old blue couch to hide from the early afternoon light that was streaming in through the window. Portland was a city that was known for its rain and clouds, but now that he was trying to get some sleep all of the darkness seemed to have disappeared and left a bright, blue, cloudless sky.

Although he did not exactly love his job, he didn't dread having to go to work either. His job could, (and had) been described as "dead end". Years of working in private security had helped put him through college while providing him with a roof over his head with only a modicum of debt. The additional fact that he could play games on his laptop and eat junk food while he worked didn't hurt matters either.

But all the video games playing in the world didn't make up for the lousy pay check and lack of upward mobility. His pay was so meager that after rent and food pretty much all that he had left was just enough to pay for bus fair, with barely a few nickles left to rub together. Lately he had started to think that he had reached the point in his life where he was starting to think about a career instead of just a job. It didn't matter any that most girls laughed at him when he told them what he did for a living, there just isn't anything all that glamours about being a "rent a cop" as his ex had called him.

Thinking about his lack of finances brought him around to the subject of his room mate as it always did. They had something of a complicate relationship something between a love/hate/lust relationship. Eva was someone he had attended school with while working on his bachelors (while secretly drooling over). While they had run in some of the same circles and had a few friends in common they really had not interacted with each other a great deal. Somehow he had managed to convince her to move in with him during a key point where they had both needed a room mate and before he had gotten to know her. He had assumed that he was lucky to convince her to share an apartment with him (see the previous comment about the preconceptions he had about living with a female room mate). Long silky black hair cascaded down her back and framed a face of startling beauty. Deep brown eyes the color of the forest soil after a storm peered out of skin that was a dark olive complexion.

All of this masked a personality that was about as inviting as a bobcat that had been shoved into a post office box, which is to say abrasive. When they weren't fighting about the piles of laundry and dishes that she left around, or the string of guys she brought into the apartment, then she was complaining about his "hogging the TV for his stupid video games" a comment that he considered to be just short of blasphemy. Although he lamented their living together at times, in the end she was probably one of his best friends. The nature of his not so secret crush on her was also something of a running joke with his friends, and the fact that he had seen her in every state of dress one could imagine by virtue of their living together didn't do anything to move him out of the impenetrable prison known as the "friend zone"

Just as sleep appeared to be on the horizon again a sharp rap at the door brought him back to consciousness. Its reintroduction into his apartment helped him to realize that this is what had woken him up in the first place.

"Ugh..." he grumbled to himself as he climbed to his feet "this had better be important"

Reaching the heavy oak door that served as the only entrance to the apartment he undid the lock and swung the door open, only to be greeted by... nothing...

The well lit hall way ran for a stretch in either direction. The soft nondescript carpeting muffling all sound that might be made by a would be prankster.

Silence reigned in the hall and nothing so much a whisper hinted at the presence of another person.

"assholes..." he muttered under his breath.

He turned to go back inside his apartment and something bounced against the wall. Turning to look he noticed that a small, ornately carved wooden box had been placed just outside his door, caught by his foot as he turned. He stooped to pick it up, glancing suspiciously in both directions down the hall again.

Small enough to fit in one hand with only an edge to spill over the box was covered in ornate carvings, some kind of shell or stone having been inserted into its surface to add color to the spiraling designs that scrolled over its surface, giving it an almost hypnotic effect. A small gold colored latch secured the lid.

Trent was suspicious. He was positive that this box had not been here when he came home from a friends house earlier in the day and he wasn't sure why someone would leave something like this in front of his door. While he was no wood worker he was sure that the small box was not something cheap that had been picked up at the dollar store. It had the heft and weight of something of quality.

As he was turning the box upside down to see if anything had been written on the bottom his thumb caught the latch by mistake, flipping the lid open. Immediately the lid sprung open as though it had been loaded with a spring and two small objects plummeted from it.

Time seemed almost to slow and his eyes caught the glint of yellow as a ring of pure gold tumbled through the air, coming to rest on the ground between his feet. What he noticed immediately was that the ring didn't bounce, it hit the floor and rested with a disturbing sense of finality and weight. A small piece of yellowed paper came to rest next to it.

Trent picked both of the object up off the ground. He had expected the ring to have weighed an inordinate amount by the way that it had fallen but it rested in the palm of his hand lightly. The metal shimmered in the light of the hall way and it felt warm, as though it had been left in the sun instead of in the dark within the small box. Writing that he didn't recognize was etched into its surface. Trying to read the words hurt his head, he turned his attention to the piece of paper that had fallen out with the ring.

To whom it may concern

Don this ring and you may find

A way to tread another's mind.

The power to go from here to there

As easily as you breathe the air

A word of warning you should mind

Do not seek what you should not find

For darkness rests within us all

and it may bring about your downfall

Trent rolled his eyes.

"ugh... rhyming? Really?" he said, smirking to himself "it probably doesn't even fit"

Trent slipped the ring onto his middle finger and was surprised to find that it fit him as though it has been measured for his hand. Slipping it off he tried it on his index finger, ring finger, and thumb in succession, each time the ring fit perfectly.

"well that is a bit odd..." he said to himself

Trent slipped the ring onto his ring finger. Twisting it around he admired how it looked in the later afternoon light. The heat that he had felt radiating from it earlier seemed to have increased since he had put it on.

An odd sensation formed in the back of his head, as though he was hearing someone whisper without there being any sound. He strained to focus on it and the sensation increased to the point that he could make out a voice. While he immediately recognized the voice as his roommates he could not make out what was being said. He followed the sound without sound towards her room. While he had not previously been aware that she was home the emanations were coming unmistakably from her room.

Trent slunk down the hallway to just outside her door, listening at every step of the way, following the sound like a bloodhound. As he reached her door he paused momentarily. The sounds in his head were clearly coming from just beyond the door, however his ears reported only silence. He slid the door open quietly, waiting for the explosion that would surely come as soon as Eva realized that he was coming into her room without permission.

Nothing happened.

Peeking around the door Trent saw that she was asleep, the covers pulled up around her.

The sound was now clearly coming directly from her. Now that they were in the same room he could hear the sounds clearly. It sounded as though it was a running narration, an unbroken flow of thoughts as if she were telling a story.

He focused on her straining hard to hear what she was saying. Like tuning a radio dial her voice became more clear and stronger until all at once a picture erupted above her. The narration had ended and a picture had taken its place. Hovering above her was a cut out in space, as though someone had opened a window into another room.

The distortion in the air hovered above her sleeping form. Trent moved closer, carefully avoiding the piles of clothes and other assorted objects that littered the floor of her room. So intent was he on what was going on that he almost stumbled over a pile of dirty dishes stacked haphazardly beside the bed, missing it only by the grace of a beneficent god.

He could see what appeared to be a library, stacks of books edging the window. Trent ran his hand through the distortion, attempting to determine if it was solid or some sort of trick of the light (though he wasn't counting on that...). All of a sudden the room jerked as though the building was in the throes of an earth quake. Trent wen sprawling head first through the distortion.

He found himself standing in a room, rows of books stretched in all directions into the distance in some sort of twisted parody of a library. He vaguely recognized the architecture as belonging to the library from campus but only in a superficial way. He stepped closer to one of the rows of books and found that instead of words the spines of the books contained a shifting mixture of gibberish.

"Hello?" Trent called. His voice echoed oddly in the cavernous space. He walked along the isle. The last thing he remembered he had been standing in his roommates bedroom looking at what he thought must of been the dream that she was having, touching it had upended the room and he had found himself here. The room he was in strongly resembled the room that she had been dreaming about but he didn't see her anywhere.

He was vaguely disconcerted at the way the architecture shifted when he wasn't paying attention to it and he instinctively reached out and tried to stabilize it. A ripple spread out around him, flowing through the air. Everything the ripple touched stopped shifting, firming into place. The room about him seemed as through it gained a level of reality, as though it had gained some sort of substance it had previously been lacking.

Trent heard something as he passed one of the aisles and noticed his roommate standing before him. While the rest of the area seemed to have become more substantial the ripples of reality didn't seem to touch her, she stood in an oasis of distortion. He noticed that she didn't seem to be aware of his presence. Watching her his eyes nearly popped out of his head when she reached down and pulled off her shirt, revealing that she wore nothing underneath. With the exception of an awkward encounter where he had walked in on her in the shower, an encounter that had ended with him getting a black eye from a deftly thrown shampoo bottle, he had never seen her completely undressed before. He ogled as her lush, full breasts dropped down, freed from the cotton prison of her shirt to hang before him. He had guessed that she was well endowed, but he had no idea of the full extent. The thought occurred to him that if this was her dream she might be... augmenting her endowments but he doubted it.

She turned finishing her disrobing in one swift motion and stood before him in all her naked glory. She had a body that was somewhere in between a professional athletes and a porn stars. Lush curves in all the right areas but tight and toned in the others. She would have been equally at home in a dirty magazine under a teenagers mattress or in the movies breaking men's hearts. He felt momentarily uncomfortable, aware that he was intruding on something that he should not be seeing. Another, darker, part of him told him that they were in a library, so clearly she had a latent exhibitionist streak in her. Besides, this part of him argued, this is only a dream so that could hardly count.

He watched as she sat, spreading her legs. Her pussy was clean and smooth without a hair to be seen. She slid her fingers back and forth over her clit eliciting a quite moan of pleasure. Wrapped up in her pleasure she stroked her clit. Noise's sounded from elsewhere in the library. All at once shadowy figures appeared in some of the nearby aisles. Trent jumped, surprised by their sudden appearance. Each figure came from a different part of the library, arriving to watch the show Eva was putting on. She began to work at herself with more enthusiasm, her movements increasing in speed. She clamped one hand over her mouth in a vain attempt to muffle the sounds of her pleasure.

The figures around them began to take on the shapes and forms of men and women, some of whom Trent recognized and others who were simply strangers. Each individual started to engage in sexual behaviors as they watched her, spurring her on, Tent stood anonymous among the crowed as the stroked and rubbed themselves to her display, and orgy of erotic behaviors. Giving up any pretense of restraint Eva began to fondle herself as she stroked her clit, her body rocking and her hips bucking in wild abandon as she tried to fuck her own hand. Her cries echoed through the library. In an echoing crescendo she arched her hips shuddering convulsively before collapsing on the ground, her breasts rising and falling in an inviting display as her breath returned to normal.

Darkness started to seep in around the edges of the books, a spreading of the shadows that occurred naturally as they rose to consume everything around them. Trent was confused and terrified, unsure as to what was happening. Eva continued to rest on the ground, her breathing having slowed to the deep and even rhythm of sleep. The ground abruptly disappeared from beneath his feet, he fell through the air as the darkness rose to consume him. Just as everything disappeared he found himself back in her room, standing over her sleeping form.

He realized that her climax in the dream must have signaled her shift into a deeper, and dreamless stage of sleep. He saw that she had shifted slightly while he had been in her dream exposing the tops of her breasts, which he saw were every bit as fantastic as they had been in her dream.

"Well... I guess this ring has some magic to it after all..." He said.