HANNAH PILGRIM

dream catcher

First published by Honeycomb Publishing 2021 Copyright © 2021 by Hannah Pilgrim All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission. This novel is entirely a work of fiction.The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental. Hannah Pilgrim asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. First edition Cover art by Hannah Pilgrim This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy. Find out more at reedsy.com

Dedicated to every Trans girl and boy out there. You’re so strong, though you shouldn’t need to be.

Contents 1 Chapter 1

1

Afterword

8

About the Author

9

1

Chapter 1

Abby looked around with a start, she was in her secondary school dining hall, “Hello? Any lights on in that big noggin of yours?” a familiar voice across the table from her said, it was Johnathan, one of her secondary school friends, what was she doing here? Hadn’t she just… “What? Yeah, I’m here.”

She responded. Her eyebrows furrowed in

confusion as she looked around the dining hall of Winchester college. It looked exactly the same as she remembered, the old stone walls, the intricately carved wood panels, and arched ceiling beams, even the same old paintings of the same old ex-students and teachers. Why was she back here? She hadn’t been here since before she had to switch schools before graduating, and that was years ago. She couldn’t remember any of how she got here, it was like peering into the abyss if she tried. Pure emptiness peering back at her. Jonathan was looking at her expectantly over his fork of roast beef. “well?” he said, using the fork to point at her “how’d you think you did on that science Mock, Ethan?” Abby froze. He had used her old name, her deadname. She wasn’t Ethan anymore. She was Abby. She paled as the memories of this day that she had tried so hard to bury came flooding back. This must be a nightmare. Her worst day. Please, she thought, don’t make me relive this, anything but this. But if the 1

DREAM CATCHER

part of her that had created this dream heard her it didn’t respond as Jenkins, an older boy with jet black hair and a mean streak that had always revelled in inflicting suffering on the younger boys, rushed into the hall with a book clutched in his hand and a whisper on his lips. Just as he had done those years ago. The beginning of the end. *** A cloaked armoured figure opened their eyes groggily to arched wooden beams. They had to find Abby. ***

Abby watched in horror as the whispers spread through the hall and slowly infected each boy, sending them into stunned silence and causing them to swivel in their seats to stare at her. “Why’s everyone staring at you, Eth?” Jonathan whispered to her and for a second she could have sworn his eyes were black but then he blinked and she must have imagined it for they were as blue as always. The hall had fallen completely silent now, barely even moving, like a wolf moments before it strikes. She screwed her eyes shut and tried desperately to wake up, she pinched her arm as hard as she could. It didn’t hurt at all. Please, don’t, not thi“I was just looking for my homework in the dormitory when I found Ethan’s diary on the floor,” said Jenkins theatrically for the whole room to hear. Abby was still in the nightmare. She opened her eyes and saw him walking slowly but surely into the centre of the hall, where she was sitting, holding the black diary aloft proudly for each boy to see. “I thought to myself, what pansy has a diary? So naturally, I opened it and began to read.” A small snigger spread around the room and Jenkins dramatically pretended to take out a pair of reading glasses and perch them on his nose before opening her diary and beginning to read. “Dear Diary, I feel so uncomfortable all the time. Everything about my body, 2

CHAPTER 1

even my voice, disgusts me and it’s only gotten worse since puberty. I don’t feel like one of the boys or a boy at all.I wish I were a girl. I wish I didn’t” With this he slammed the journal closed and the hall came to life with hushed whispers. “Boys, we have a tranny in our midst.” He exclaimed to his captive audience. “Ethan?” Jonathan spat her old name like it was poison. It burnt her core. “Is it true? Are you a… one of those things, those abominations?” This was the worst moment of the day that she was outed, the moment she could never forget, try as she might: her oldest friend looking at her with unadulterated disgust like she was shit on the bottom of his shoe. “I’ve been friends with a freak all this time?” Slowly Jonathon picked up the steak knife that he’d been using for the beef and raised it above his head. Abby looked quizzically at him through blurry vision, he hadn’t done that the first time, everything up until now had been exactly the same. Quickly two things happened at the same time: his eyes turned pitch black, she was sure she wasn’t imagining it this time, and he slashed down with the knife across her face. Instantly searing pain flared into existence across her face and when she brought her hand to her face it came back slick with crimson. “Fuck!” She yelled from the red hot pain. Pain in a dream? As if this wasn’t weird enough. Jonathan raised his now bloodied knife again and as she looked around she saw that the eyes of Jenkins and the other boys had turned the same pitch black and had begun to get out of their seats with their own steak knives. She ran. Out the lunch hall of black-eyed studen-things that had begun hissing laughter at her. Out the cloister and out the main college entrance into the street. Jonathan, closely followed by Jenkins and the others were hot on her heels. She took the left road, past a small pub then the right road past a little church and looked behind, the mob was gaining on her fast. There was no way she could outrun them. A cloaked figure with a large two-handed sword strapped to their back appeared from a small alley in front of her and yelled out to her in a deep, somehow androgynous, voice. 3

DREAM CATCHER

“Abby! Get behind me.” As they said this they pulled the sword from their back and held it steady in front of them, their trained expertise in wielding it obvious even before a single swing. Abby didn’t need to be told twice and quickly scurried behind the mysterious swordsman, up close she could see that they were wearing a set of dark metal armour under the cloak that had tiny gems, perhaps diamonds, inlaid in its surface that shone and almost looked like a starry night sky. She had never seen anything like it. Their sword had a long thick blade made from the same metal but it seemed to shine even brighter, almost glowing and at the bottom of the leather-encased hilt was a circle of tightly wound string in a cobweb-like shape, it was a dream catcher where the pommel usually would be. The mob turned the corner and ground to a halt. “You,” said Jonathon accusatorily to the person Abby was hiding behind but his voice was all sharp and wrong like it was being played backwards on a record player. “We have no quarrel with you, just let us have the dreamer and we won’t have a problem.” “You know I can’t do that, Daememor, Abby is under my protection. Leave now or be destroyed.” The knight responded, twirling their sword threateningly in a figure of eight pattern. The mob simply laughed and continued to advance once again, though the alley was too narrow for them all to fit at once.The knight didn’t seem surprised or even phased by this and fluidly switched from the figure of eight to swinging at the first boy/thing that stepped towards them. The blade became a blur and whistled through the air towards them, slicing its body in two down the shoulder in a single blow as if they were made of paper. The two halves slowly slid apart, oozing a thick black goo-like liquid, when they hit the ground they simply disappeared into nothing but a small puddle of the black goo. The rest of them seemed more careful now but still advanced towards them both. One lunged in with their steak knife but was deflected by their sword before it got too close, the arm that lunged was swiftly dismembered for their troubles. “What the fuck is going on?” She asked the cloaked person as they dodged a knife aimed at their head and then stabbed back, leaving another small puddle 4

CHAPTER 1

of black goo. “I thought I was dreaming but when they cut me I really felt it and everything feels so real and even my subconscious would struggle to come up with something as batshit crazy as this an“-Duck!” The Knight interrupted and a knife flew above Abby’s head, missing only by a few centimetres before they plunged their sword through the chest of the thing that threw the knife. “-What the fuck are these things, who even are you? What is happening?” “Who I am isn’t important right now, you can call me Gail if you want though, I’m here to help you. You are dreaming but not like you’ve ever dreamt before.” said Gail. Another slice of their starry sword and another thing that looked like a classmate from school turned into a black puddle, only to be instantly replaced by yet another one of them stepping forward. “These things are called Daememors,” Gail continued “they’re demons that go into people’s nightmares, make them relive trauma and feed off their negative emotions. When they finish feeding, the victim dies.” Jesus. Fuck. Why are they after me?” Slice, another Daememor down. “Daememor feeds off people’s negative emotions not just for their own enjoyment but also for energy to survive. The most potent sources for them being shame and self-hatred…” Stab, another puddle. “And I’ve got a lot of those? Block, dodge, slice and another down. “Basically, yes.” Gail had cut down seven or eight of the Daememor but Abby could see they were beginning to tire, their once smooth and expert sword swings and stabs were slowing down and becoming sloppy. One of the demons with the face of Henry, a polite younger boy that had slept in the bed next to hers, feigned a stab to Gail’s head but then sliced down at the last moment and cut between a gap of their armour at the elbow. Their knife came away covered in blood and Gail cursed before swiftly beheading it. And so it continued, Gail would kill two or three and then one would get a lucky cut or stab. There were too many of them 5

DREAM CATCHER

Fuck she was going to die here. Maybe this is what she deserved. She was a tranny after all. An Abomination. She- He was a freak. Their voices had always been in the back of his mind, even when he was outed and started presenting as a girl.Their voices and violence were always present, even when their owners weren’t. They had become his own voice and his own violence. He could never be a woman. Just a boy pretending to be one. They were doing him a favour, doing what he was too cowardly to do himself. There were only a few of the demons left and a sea of black goo on the ground around them but Gail’s movements were slow and sluggish like their sword was the weight of the world and their cloak was a tattered bloody mess. Ethan had accepted his fate. “You know we are right, Ethan, don’t you? We were always right. Tranny.” It was Jonathon, or rather the demon that looked like Jonathon, though was there much difference between the two really? He had a smug smile stuck to his face. Gail fell to their knees, barely able to hold their sword up. As Gail fell, their hood slipped back and revealed a beautiful woman’s face. It looked just like his mother. He closed his eyes, he was ready. And then snapped them open a second later.Gail’s face didn’t just look like his mothers, it looked like his own. Like his face but what he had always wished, crying in the mirror, it had looked like. NO! He couldn’t die here, not now. They had only just begun their journey as the real them. It was going to be hard but with just one look at Gail, they knew it would be worth it all. She was beautiful and true and she was what Ethan was going to become. She was a guiding star. Abby picked up the sword from Gail’s weak, tired grip and held it aloft. She wasn’t an abomination. She was Divine. She was Transgender. She was Abigail. She plunged the mighty sword into the Jonathon Daememor and it screamed out in anguish “NOOOOOO-” A brilliant white light emanated from his body and enveloped and erased the last remaining demons. 6

CHAPTER 1

It was over. Gail smiled weakly and said to her “There’s a lot more to the world than there seems. There’s a lot more to you than there seems. Good luck out there Abby. You’re going to be brilliant. Time to wake up now.” Abigail opened her eyes, ready to start a new day. THE END

7

Afterword

Trans is Beautiful. You are Beautiful.

8

About the Author Hannah Pilgrim is a 20 year old university student and writer. She likes reading and writing Sci-Fi, fantasy, and poetry. She is a queer transgender woman and often explores themes of identity, gender and memories in her works. When she’s not reading or writing she loves to listen to RnB music and comedy and DnD podcasts. You can connect with me on: https://hazapilgrim.wixsite.com/mysite-1-1-1-1-1-1-1/dream-catcher https://www.instagram.com/hannahsswords

9