DYLAN CRANE
Another day gone by, the sun setting behind the small red-brick buildings of the small town of Holland with it's last beams of light barely piercing through the blinds of Lou's Vinyl. Dylan was on his way to the place just in time to close the locale and say another routine good night to his boss and best friend, Lou. He took one more hit from his cigaratte before throwing it aside just in time to enter the store. His hand firmly grasped around the door's handle pulled it downwards and pushed the large glass barrier encased in iron.
As he put his first foot inside the shop an endearing bell sound went off right above him, a small copper alarm device Lou put up to know when someone gets inside his little disc store. He closed the door behind him with one hand, while the other one brushed against his hair strands, pushing his thick black hair aside. The place was fairly empty with slightly dimmed lighting, one bulb sporadically flickering in the background while an older man was casually brushing the floor few feet away. Lou looked up, his right hand still holding the brush while he swiped his sweaty forehead with the left one: "Thought you said you fixed the lightbulb", insinuating at the one flickering in the back. "Oh, yeah." - Dylan responded, not flinching for a second, slowly walking over to the older gentleman, reaching out his right hand as in to take the brush from him: "I thought I did."
Lou just gave him a smirk as he left the stick in the boy's hands to continue the work. "Finish up here and get to bed. We got a lot to do tomorrow." - Lou continued as he made his way towards the storage to leave his working hat: "We have a delivery coming in."
"The new CDs I told you about?" - Dylan inquired while leisurely brushing away the dirt off the white tiles that were laid around the shop.
"Yup, those." - Lou continued as he now strolled towards the doors.
"I'm telling you, those will sell a lot more than this crap." - as he pointed around the vinyl disks, Lou's favorite.
"Hey, we may be close but you don't get to disrespect Righteous Brothers." - the veteran exclaimed in a serious manner, but gave a small grin at the end just to make Dylan sure he was kidding. The boy smiled back as he continued swabbing: "Good night, Lou."
"Good night, kiddo."
The doors closed, the night finally arrived and Dylan finished up. He left the broom in the back, went back to the door and turned the sign on them so that the "Closed" side was facing the outside and promptly locked them while pulling down the small curtain fixed just above the glass. He then turned the lights off and slowly made his way back to his room where his loyal friend Miles was. The small pup hastily jumped off the bed and onto Dylan's legs. He gave the dog a quick rub on the head and then took his clothes off, set up the alarm clock lying just next to his bed and laid down. With both hands tucked under his resting head and Miles curled up between his legs he quickly fell asleep, tired from another long day.
DREAMWORLD
Not much longer after closing his eyes, Dylan found himself deep in a dream. However this was no ordinary dream as he realized. At first he thought it was another one of those dreams where you become aware of it, but this felt a little different. Not only did it appear to be very convenient to do whatever he wanted to, he realized it felt too real to be a dream and it scared him a bit. It was a dark space with a light breeze that gently caressed his skin. It wasn't necessarily dark, just void of any content as it seemed, because he could quite vividly see himself, despite no apparent light source present. It was disturbingly realistic yet clearly unreal. He felt a little anxious to be experiencing something like this and was unusure how to snap out of it. Not much longer, from this vast void that stretched in all directions into the unknown, an eerie echo suddenly announced itself: "What...? What is this place...?"
Despite all his instincts going against it, he decided to head in it's direction regardless.
