Symphony of the Universe: Unwanted Children
This is a story about Seth Ignatious from the series Symphony of the Universe.
Seth knew that Adelle had powerful dreams, dreams which sometimes disturbed her in the waking hours. She has asked him about it a few dozen times, but no book Seth had ever read contained the answers to that mystery. Considering the large number of books Seth had read, this was a bit of a surprise. He had told Adelle about Shamanistic dream visions and other various new age answers, but this failed to satisfy her curiosity about her dreams. Seth had told her of the science of dreams, the studies of the various cycles and stages of sleep, but this also did nothing to sate her. Adelle's dreams were more than regular dreams, they were occasionally prophetic, occasionally horrific.
But this is not a story of Adelle's dreams. This is a story of one of Seth's. For although Seth had an easy time falling asleep around 4 o'clock in the morning, he did not have an easy time with his own dreams. He was dreaming of endless fields of tall dry beige grass, of dingy skies. He was dreaming of a half-collapsed farmhouse and of his old friend Milton.
In this dream, Milton and Seth were both ten year old boys. Seth was thin and skin and bones, all limbs and scraggily hair. Milton was rough and tough, sunburned and scowl faced. Milton was drawing a pentagram with a stick. Seth was leaning against the fallen farmhouse.
"What are you doing Milt?" Seth asked.
Milton snapped the stick and offered half of it to Seth. "What are YOU doing?" he sneered.
Seth frowned. "You trying to summon someone up?"
Milton said. "We are summoning someone up."
Seth shook his head. "Two devils is already too much for this little town."
Milton grabbed a clump of dirt and threw it at Seth. "Shutup ya wuss. We're going to bring out the big one."
Seth said. "I won't do it Milton, I'm not summoning anyone."
Milton rushed Seth, arms flailing, every intention to pummel him. Seth escaped a few blows, but soon Milton was slamming and kicking and windmilling away. Seth finally threw Milton back and then started running.
Milton chased after Seth, but slowly. Milton yelled. "I'm going to tell him that you didn't stick around because you were too much of a puss. They'll bugger you backwards and split your insides when they catch you!"
Seth kept running, he didn't dare to look back. He was pretty sure that Milton didn't know how to complete a summoning ritual, but he wasn't entirely sure. This bothered Seth a great deal. So did the words "The big one" - what did that mean? A lord no doubt. Demonic Lords were the worst kind of trouble Seth could think of.
Seth tripped while running, he fell flat on his face, hitting chin first and knocking off his glasses in the process. He thought he heard ringing in his ears, the ringing sounded like a telephone.
It was a telephone. Seth woke up. The phone was still ringing. He picked it up.
"Seth old buddy old pal!" exclaimed Milton. "Long time no see. I need your help with something. I got a problem, a big one."
Seth hung up the phone. Adelle was waking up, she was stretching out.
"Good morning princess." said Seth. "We're going to go visit your Aunt Gretel."
"Who is Aunt Gre-" Adelle began.
"Pack up." said Seth. "It'll be fun."