One idea was that our two adventurers wouldn’t just wake up in the dream worlds just like that. I invented a device, the so-called Ecom, which allowed a controlled journey into the dream worlds. Later I scrapped the idea again. It was far too technical, took up too much room in the stories and shifted the genre more towards science fiction than I liked.
Besides, I wasn’t sure which narrative perspective to choose, so in this story I tried the third-person limited narrator.
The following text was meant to serve as a prelude to the actual series. It is a flashback that was supposed to familiarise the reader with the two protagonists and explain the beginning of the first episode.
Milk Money
He was most afraid of Mondays. Not that Dian liked the other days of the week much better when he had to go to lessons, but on Mondays he always got the money from his mother that the primary school collected for the coming week’s milk. This presented him with a huge problem, almost unsolvable for an eight-year-old child.
He sought his way out by hiding well. In the schoolyard stood a play castle in a giant sandpit. It had three floors and a slide. The bottom floor was low and the entrance so narrow that you could only get in by crawling. Inside it was dirty and smelled strange. Nobody played in this place voluntarily. For Dian, it was therefore the perfect refuge. During breaks, he would immediately run to the castle, crawl into the hiding place, sit on a small board opposite the entrance and watch the schoolyard through a knothole.
His archenemy Batty would never find him here, he hoped. Batty was a pupil in the fourth year. Nobody could say who gave him this nickname, but all the children called him that. He was the main character in their nightmares. Every Monday he walked across the schoolyard and collected the milk money, although not on behalf of the school, but for himself. If you didn’t hand over the money voluntarily, he would help it along, which eventually earned him this name. Dian’s mother had once explained to him that Batty didn’t have it easy at home and that was why he was so mean. That didn’t make being beaten up by him any more pleasant.
On this Monday, too, Dian sat in his hiding place monitoring the schoolyard when he heard a voice from the entrance.
“What are you doing there?”
Startled, he turned around and looked into the face of a girl he guessed to be his age. She had light blonde, shoulder-length hair and wore a white coat. She was probably new at the school, because he hadn’t noticed her in the schoolyard before.
“Hiding from Batty,” he answered.
“Who is Batty?”
Dian peered through the knothole. “He’s the big boy over there who’s just taking Anni’s bag of gummy bears.”
The girl looked out over the schoolyard and saw a very burly, chubby boy who was about ten years old and looked like trouble. He was currently stuffing a handful of gummy bears into his mouth whilst looking out for his next victim.
The girl looked back into the hut. “How long do you want to hide from him for?”
Dian shrugged his shoulders. “Until next year, maybe. Then he’ll change schools.”
She sighed, crawled into the hut and sat down next to him on the bench.
“Why don’t you fight back?” she asked.
“He’s much stronger than me.”
“And why don’t you run away from him?”
“He’s faster than me too.”
Her ice-blue eyes looked at him with a mixture of pity and despair. Then she slowly shook her head.
“I bet you have something he doesn’t have.”
“Yes, my milk money.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
She poked her index finger into his forehead.
“I bet you’ve got brains up there! And Batty looks like his mum still has to tie his shoes for him every morning.”
The girl looked around. The play castle was built directly on the sandpit and had no floor of its own. A few leaves lay around in the sand. In one corner lay a few crumpled tissues, cigarette butts, and the shards of a broken beer bottle. In the other corner, something was buried in the sand. She pulled at it and held an old skipping rope in her hand.
“Do you know what? I’m going to help you,” she said, grinning. Then she explained her plan to him.
Break time was already half over, and Batty was still hungry. He was on the lookout for that weakling who had milk money and sometimes a cereal bar on him every Monday, but he couldn’t find him anywhere. He was tired of always having to look for his victims. It would be much easier if they brought the things to him voluntarily and then let him beat them up afterwards.
Suddenly, he saw his next target standing next to the play castle. “Gotcha!” he shouted triumphantly and started running.
When he reached the castle, the boy was still standing there. He was trembling with fear, but he didn’t run away. The girl next to him was new here, Batty suspected, because she had her arms crossed and didn’t seem to be afraid. If she thought he wouldn’t beat up girls, she was in for a surprise.
He stood menacingly in front of Dian and made himself look broad. “Go on, give me the money!” he demanded loudly.
Dian took a deep breath and shouted with a trembling voice, “No!”
Batty snorted. “Do you think I won’t beat you up right in front of your girlfriend?”
The answer came from the girl: “Do you think I’m just going to watch you do it?”
“You keep out of this!” barked Batty, pointing his finger at her like a gun.
“Why? Are you scared of me?” she asked, grinning.
Batty’s face turned dark red. He wasn’t used to getting backchat. He had to assert himself, command respect.
“I’ll beat you both to a pulp,” he panted, taking a step towards the two children.
“Now!” shouted the girl.
Dian had kept his right hand hidden behind his back the whole time. In it, he held sand, which he now hurled into Batty’s face. This stopped his attack immediately. He screamed with rage and began rubbing the grains out of his eyes.
The girl pulled on the end of the skipping rope she was holding in her hand. She had previously knotted a large loop into the rope and buried it in the sand. When the provoked bully took a step forward, he stepped right into the trap. The loop pulled tight and wrapped around his legs like a snare. Swiftly, the girl tied her end of the rope to the castle.
“You little shits!” panted Batty. He tried to walk towards them, but stumbled over his bound feet and fell flat on his stomach into the sand. He tried to stand up but got more and more entangled in the snare. Finally, he thrashed about like a giant fish that had just been pulled ashore.
The girl crouched down next to him. “Listen here, Batty,” she said with calm words, “today was just for fun. If you beat up other children again or take something from them, I will come and truly hurt you.”
She took Dian by the hand. Together they ran to the fence at the other end of the schoolyard and watched Batty from a safe distance. He had meanwhile stood up and was trying to undo the snare, but the rope tied to the castle pulled taut and tightened it again. His screams of rage echoed across the entire schoolyard.
“You see,” said the girl, “strength alone doesn’t help if you don’t have any brains.”
Dian nodded. “Do you think he’ll be even meaner now?”
“I don’t think so. I’m sure he’ll leave you alone from today on. What’s your name, anyway?”
“Dian. And you?”
“My name is Miray.”
The school bell rang.
“I have to get back to class now, Miray.”
She nodded. Dian stood up, waved goodbye to her once more and then walked to the school building. When he turned around to look back at her just before the door, she had already disappeared.
Dian hoped to see Miray again the next day, but he couldn’t find her anywhere. She didn’t come on Wednesday either, nor the following week, nor ever again after that. By the time he moved from primary school to secondary school, this episode from his life already seemed to be forgotten.