Vaylavyne and the Depths of Drasharrow

By N. Femia

Somzoas Megini has never been normal a single day in his life. He was born with purple eyes, and there's a dragonfly detective that lives inside of his imagination that communicates with him. When Somzoas thinks he's embarking on a regular New Year's vacation with his friends to Mexico, many strange things begin to happen all around him. Without any choice at all, Somzoas finds himself in a new dimension where he meets certain evil entities with supernatural powers that are plotting to overthrow the universe . . .

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642992366

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Vaylavyne and the Depths of Drasharrow

N. J. Femia

Copyright © 2018 by N. J. Femia

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

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Chapter 1

The Notorious Nightmares

Running along the shoreline on a relatively white sand beach among a multitude of avid sunseekers and lake bay swimmers were two men, one woman, and one boy. Unlike the others who were on the beach, the two men and the woman were clothed in casual attires that were unsuitable for sprawling in the sun or swimming in the bay, and as they ran past the citizens who were dressed suitably for the overall setting, they went by unnoticed as if they were invisible.

One of the men was wearing a grey long-sleeved shirt, grey jeans, and grey sneakers. The other man was wearing a beige long-sleeved shirt, beige khakis, and beige loafers. The woman was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt, white leggings, and white moccasins. The boy that was chasing the woman and the two men was wearing a blood-red short-sleeved shirt that was plastered with black skulls, along with a blood-red bathing suit, and black sandals. Even though the four of them were on sand, they couldn’t nearly sprint as fast, yet, to them, from the amount of adrenaline rushing inside their bodies, they felt like they were travelling at the speed of sprinting jackals in a savanna.

KEEP GOING! shouted the man in grey who was running parallel alongside the woman in white as he looked back at the man in beige. HE’S GAINING ON US!

They kept moving. In due course, the man in grey and the woman in white reached a cluster of multicolored beach tents and umbrellas for a short breather, away from the shoreline.

They were panting excessively. The man didn’t even know the woman by name, yet he felt like he knew her his entire life. These feelings of his were also true concerning the other man who had fallen behind, and he did not know him by name either. As the two of them were waiting, the man looked deeply into the woman’s eyes, staring at their unique color, for the color of his eyes were also distinctive, yet they were different from hers.

They were soon united with the man in beige.

Did we lose him? he said with much flounder in his voice.

I think so, said the woman, struggling as she spoke from the pain in her lungs. I don’t see him.

We can’t stop now, said the man in grey who had stopped first. We have to get to a clear and secure location.

He then walked away through the throng of individuals on the beach, and the other man and the woman followed him. It was so crowded that they nearly had to twist and turn their bodies to get past everybody there to avoid bumping shoulders.

After a short walk, they came to a part of the beach where there was a small strip of shops that were all apart of the same dual storey structure where many cars were parked diagonally; an extensive boardwalk was nearby that led to the other parts of the beach. The man in the beige shirt stopped walking, separating himself from the other two once again. He shoved his hand into one of the tight pockets of his beige khakis, and fumbled around.

Do you have the key to the car? the man in grey anxiously asked.

The man in beige eventually pulled out a single key from his pocket.

Yeah! he then exclaimed elatedly. I got it!

A pointed object emerged from the front of his neck as he said this; a knife had jabbed him from behind, and he instantly crashed face first on the sand. The boy wearing blood-red had murdered him, and was ceaselessly stabbing him in the back as he lay dead on the beach, brutally. With every stab the boy administered into the man, a vast number of people that were scattered on the beach disappeared into thin air.

The man in grey immediately glanced at his woman friend.

RUN! he screamed wildly.

He then began to approach the boy in blood red. YOU KILLED MY BEST FRIEND!

The man got closer to the boy, but the woman had refused to listen to her friend’s words and grabbed him by his hand.

LET’S GO! she demanded. HE’S TOO STRONG!

HE’S JUST A LITTLE BOY! the man said in return. HE’LL PAY FOR WHAT HE’S DONE!

The woman’s grasp failed to hold the man back. He sprinted toward the boy, only to be slashed across the stomach from his blade.

The man shrieked in anguish. He looked down to see some blood seep through his shirt, as the boy continued to stab the corpse. The woman in white took the hand of her friend again and forced him away.

The blood continued to seep through the man’s grey shirt, more copiously as he and the woman now found themselves running away from the boy again. The more they ran, the more exhausting it became from the heat of the sun, and the more they progressed, the more people unexplainably vanished from plain sight until it was only them and the boy remaining on the beach.

The boy was satisfied with what he had done to the dead man in beige, and was now very fiercely pursuing his new targets. Faster and faster, he was catching up to the man and woman who had gotten away. He sought after them with the same thirst for bloodshed, even more inclined to make another kill from watching them attempt to escape his boundaries.

Just as the boy was getting close enough to make another attack, the two friends spotted something pink that was partially buried in the sand.

OVER THERE, DO YOU SEE IT? the man shouted.

I CAN SEE IT! the woman responded.

JUMP!

The woman dove onto the sand, as did the man. They each put both of their hands on the mystifying pink object and said, Propose us.

Just like the other people on the beach who had vanished into thin air for no apparent reason at all, the two of them vanished as well upon saying these words.

They instantly appeared on a small island in the middle of an ocean, still lying on sand; however, their clothes had disappeared, leaving them completely naked.

The man’s slash wound had somehow healed. There were three palm trees on the island, each three different sizes in height. In front of the man and the woman was a clear message written in the sand that said, DO NOT FRET, MY CHILDREN, FOR THERE IS A GREAT POWER WATCHING YOU.

Then they both looked up and saw a rustic wooden hilt that was secured to a piece of metal floating in the air; the metal was shaped like a cylinder, and looked like it had never been sharpened. An ancient-looking grandfather clock formed from pristine white stone was situated behind this wooden-and-metal object. It was persistently gleaming with flashes of blinding white light, which was being produced by its golden pendulum that was swinging back and forth robustly and relentlessly, as its hour hand and minute hand, which were both of the same royal blue color, gyrated around the gold numbers of the dial deliriously. The wooden hilt lifted higher up into the air, and then it forcefully lowered the piece of metal that was attached to it into the sand, releasing an eclipse of moths that were camouflaged where it had struck as the two people who were witnessing what was happening embarrassingly covered their exposed body parts.

The presence of the grandfather clock completely mesmerized the naked man and the naked woman with an indescribable sensation . . .

However, none of this actually happened in the regular, everyday world. There was no beach congested with citizens, there was no murder, and there was no island. It was just a nightmare that someone was experiencing that ended up becoming quite an amazing dream, and when this individual woke up, he didn’t even think twice about it and he simply went back to bed. The man wearing grey in the dream before finding himself naked on the island was, in fact, the dreamer himself.

This is what happened on Boxing Day to a young man named Somzoas at one thirty-nine in the morning when he woke up from the dream, before going back to sleep. Somzoas is a dreamer by day, and more frequently than he would prefer, a nightmare victim by night. But dreams and nightmares such as these are just normal occurrences for him. His dreams are usually very mysterious and are filled with cryptic symbolisms, as his nightmares always seem to have the same recurring theme: an utterly terrifying situation where a blood-red color is always present.

When Somzoas was a child, his parents took him to see a psychologist to help him cope with his consistent visions because they were occurring at such a high frequency, but that didn’t stop them. Then they tried a therapist, and that failed too. Everyone who has offered their own explanations concerning his dreams and nightmares, including the two paid professionals from his childhood, have never made much sense to Somzoas, and so he stopped trying to ask people for their opinions on the complicated matter a long time ago. Nowadays, Somzoas just tries to live his life to the best of his ability, firmly believing that his condition is impossible to diagnose from any human’s opinion.

Reverently, these constant complicated dreams (the good ones and the bad ones) aren’t the only things that separate Somzoas from the common breed of humanity. Certain characteristics of his, both physical and mental, also push him further away from being ordinary. Not every person has the ability to communicate with a real, living, thought-producing detective that lives inside the imagination of his or her brain that they fabricated themselves, and Somzoas doesn’t know a single person with organs of sight that resemble the same color as his that he’s had since he was born.

Little does Somzoas know that, within less than one week’s time, during the course of his holiday vacation with his friends before the new year would even arrive, his entire life was about to change dramatically in a way he hadn’t had the slightest clue of predicting. A new series of events was about to unfold that would slowly start to bring him closer to the answers behind these characteristics about himself that he always wanted to discover . . .

Chapter 2

The Peculiar Phone Call

Somzoas Luigi Megini, rightful son of Fabian Eugen Megini and Polly Julinha Megini, was born around the end of spring. When the doctor gave Polly her ultrasound during the second trimester of her pregnancy, he noticed something he had never stumbled upon in his career—something even biological science couldn’t explain: the computers could not identify Somzoas’s genetic code. When the obstetrician held Somzoas from the moment he was born, he did not exchange looks with the common blue, brown, or green pair of newborn eyes. He did, however, exchange looks with a puzzling pair of pure purple eyes, and as he stared into them profoundly, he forgot to share the baby with his mother, but it doesn’t quite end there. The boy’s weeping tears were of the same purple as the boy’s eyes, and by the time the morning-shift workers had arrived at the hospital, there was a line up of guests who were there visiting other patients to see baby Somzoas and his purple eyes. His story even captured the headline of an Ottawa newspaper the following day: The Purple-Eyed Child. Not long after Somzoas’s birth, his family moved to a neighborhood just north of Toronto, where Fabian Megini started his own construction company, specializing in the development of middle-class residential suburban homes.

To this day, Somzoas is still anything but normal in almost every aspect of his life. He is a striking muscular twenty-four-year-old man with brown hair and a pencil moustache that’s always trimmed finely and a buzzed head that is always cut to an ideal length that shows no traces of his scalp alongside a very visible laryngeal prominence jutting out of his neck. Currently, his university grade point average where he’s studying to become a lawyer is extraordinary, and his teenage history includes many days and nights with uncommon adolescent occurrences, such as volunteering at hospitals and shelters, fundraising, attending Italian and French class three times a week for an entire decade from the age of six to sixteen, and, of course, studying for tests and completing assignments on time for maximum marks throughout his entire experience of schooling, whether it be elementary, secondary, or post-secondary.

Amanda Cynthia Megini, Somzoas’s older sister by three years, was born around the middle of autumn. Amanda has shown Somzoas a very serious way of living throughout their lives that he believes shaped him into the kind of person he is today. She owns her own dental office, and manages a team of more than ten hygienists as the only certified dentist.

Andrew Noah Megini, Somzoas’s younger brother by three years, was also born around the end of spring, five days before Somzoas’s third birthday. Andrew is the hotshot that all the women want. He seeks athleticism, and is planning on securing a career in the big leagues for hockey without the assistance of anybody other than himself.

Joanna Victoria Megini, Andrew’s fraternal twin who was born two minutes after her brother, is acquainted with the more popular young women these days, but only if they’re as intelligent as she is. Joanna is the president of a human rights club at her university, and is aiming to achieve a career at the United Nations someday.

Samantha Brittany Megini, the youngest member of the Megini household, was born around the final weeks of winter, seven years after the twins. Samantha looks up to her older brother Andrew who often teaches her new things about sports, and she’s the only girl in her hockey league from her exceptional talent on the ice.

Despite the fact that the serious Amanda, the athletic Andrew, the popular Joanna, and the unusually gifted Samantha are very interesting characters, they are not like their older brother, because Somzoas Luigi Megini is not a typical human being when it comes to normality and basic science from his purple eyes and his genetic structure. More examples of him being different than the regular bunch include the fact that he’s highly ambidextrous, he watches television shows that his age group doesn’t watch, he prefers jeans instead of track pants, he wakes up early instead of sleeping in, and he chooses to heal illness naturally with his own body instead of taking medication.

Inherently, he is also particularly curious, but his downfall is his indecisiveness, although he doesn’t like to admit it. Things are hardly ever certain for him. There are a few components of his life that are certain to him, though. There’s his love for his family and friends, his passion for reading and writing literature, his longing to live in world peace, and his feelings for a special girl in his life . . .

Her story, too, is a mystery. On the night of December the twenty-first of the same year of Somzoas’s birth, she was discovered outside of an abortion clinic in a dumpster in Denver, Colorado. Strangely, there was a note attached to her that was written in resplendent cursive writing, displaying a riddle that said,

My name starts with the first letter of the alphabet. Other letters in my name include the fifth letter, the ninth letter, the twelfth letter, and the twenty-fourth letter, but that is not all of them. Each letter in my name cannot be used more than once.

The baby’s deep-blue eyes amazed Raphael and Valeria Meafi, the couple who found her. They suggested that somebody in the abortion clinic tried to save her life by hiding her in the dumpster. The couple transported the baby girl to the police station that night, eventually adopting her as their own after the child was temporarily placed in an orphanage for two weeks. During that time, Raphael and Valeria came to the conclusion that the name Alexis was the answer to the riddle they found with their new baby girl.

Raphael and Valeria ended up moving to Canada that same year after adopting Alexis, where Raphael secured a job at Fabian Megini’s construction company, just weeks after adopting Alexis. They quickly became well acquainted, and have been good friends ever since. Valeria Meafi chose the name Deandra as the middle name for Alexis to honor her deceased sister who had perished in a motorcycle accident at the age of eighteen.

Somzoas thinks about Alexis constantly. When he’s around her, it’s the only time his thoughts are pure without his indecisiveness because of his infatuation for her, and he has yet to lay his purple eyes on something he thinks is more elegant than her beauty. Somzoas is too afraid to tell Alexis how he really feels because he knows there probably isn’t a chance, and she would probably think he was crazy if he told her he loves her out of nowhere after all these long years of friendship, and nothing but friendship . . .

At the Megini residence on Boxing Day, a typical afternoon dinner was transpiring. Polly, being the loving and protective mother from her own mother who raised her to be, was always wondering what her children were up to.

Where are you going, Amanda? she shouted from the kitchen table. Dinner’s ready!

I said I have to run by the office quickly, and then to the grocery store! Amanda shouted back from the front foyer as she slipped on an expensive hooded coat. There are things that need my immediate attention! I’ll be home later!

Amanda opened the entrance door of the house, and then she closed it immediately once she had stepped passed the threshold. She fumbled around inside the outer pockets of her coat with her partially frozen hands, looking for the black-and-pink winter cap that was inside; when she pulled it out of the left outer pocket of her coat, she neatly secured it to her head and walked toward her luxurious vehicle that was covered in snow on the driveway.

Polly’s attention returned back to the dinner table.

Eat some chicken, I made it just the way you like, she said politely to her daughter.

I’m not that hungry today, Mom, replied Joanna as she stared down at her food, twirling some green beans with her silver utensil.

The dinner table is for eating food, not for playing with your food. If you’re not going to eat, you should get up and leave, Joanna, said Fabian in a sarcastic tone.

Joanna stuck her tongue out at her father very jokingly, and then brought her plate to the sink and gave it a rinse after she had disposed of her food in the proper waste container. She popped it in the dishwasher and walked away while typing rapidly on her cell phone, re-documenting an annotation that had to do with one of her school assignments she recorded earlier that she held in supreme seniority.

Thanks, she said as she was still making her way out of the kitchen. Love you, Dad!

I love you too, Joanna, said Fabian. He then took a big bite out of his chicken sandwich.

Suck up, muttered Andrew, as he gave his twin sister a slight death stare.

By this time, Joanna was already in the hallway leading to the stairs where her parents couldn’t see her. She flipped the middle finger to her brother and ran up the stairs, giggling.

You know, Dad, you should teach that girl some class. She’s cleverly taking advantage of you, Andrew continued.

Just be quiet and eat, said Fabian seriously.

Someone had a bad day at work.

Let’s just say the financial advisor for my company won’t be too excited to see me tomorrow afternoon.

Fabian is an averagely built man standing at six feet two, but when it comes to cracking down to business in regards to imperative matters, he can be quite intimidating.

Is everything all right, Fabian? asked Polly rather anxiously.

Yes, sweetheart, don’t worry. Just a matter of mixed numbers really, said Fabian as he smiled confidently at his wife.

Polly smiled back at her husband, but it was quickly interrupted.

Peppy, Armagnac, and Coffeeah—the three family poodles—started barking frantically while bolting to the front door, ignoring the scents of the carnivorous food resting on the mahogany kitchen table. The front door slowly opened, as Somzoas walked in with his blue gym bag in one hand and an extra pair of white running shoes in the other. Armagnac and Coffeeah swarmed around him as they wagged their puffy tails, jumping up and down to try and lick his face.

Look who it is, it’s the little meat twerps! Somzoas enthused.

He threw down his belongings in order to lie down on his back on the floor. Peppy was still backed a few feet away, being the only dog still barking. Armagnac jumped on her owner’s chest and perched down calmly on her stomach, licking and sniffing his face continuously. Coffeeah rolled over on her back and peed a little.

Welcome home, big brother, said Joanna from upstairs.

She played a welcoming riff with her acoustic classic-stringed guitar, as she overlooked from the railing that viewed the front door of the house.

Hello, Joanna, said Somzoas, gently. What news from the earth as we know it today?

A corporate thief that was recently employed at a distribution company was trialed today and found guilty of transferring money from the company’s emergency funds into his personal bank account. He had been operating vicariously under the alias of Derrick Durcell. When the judge gave him his sentence, he requested capital punishment instead.

Use this new knowledge as inspiration for your English essay, said Somzoas, candidly. There’s great potential from this story in comparison to the traitor in the novel your assignment applies to. Your teacher will appreciate the recency in your speculation.

Your wisdom on the matter will suffice, said Joanna, agreeably. How did you know about the traitor, you read the book?

I couldn’t help but dabble in your lonely book yesterday while everyone else was opening presents as it sat on your bed, Somzoas replied with a soft chuckle. Ogwood and I enjoyed it very much. Wasn’t too long of a read.

But that’s not the first time that you and the dragonfly who supposedly lives inside your brain have read a book in one day, Joanna chuckled back.

No, no, it wasn’t, said Somzoas, solemnly. With that book being completely read yesterday, the count is now one hundred and thirty-seven. Ogwood isn’t just an ordinary dragonfly, Joanna. He’s a detective. A rather good one in fact.

I don’t know how you do the things you do, Somzoas, but keep it up! Thank you for your input on my essay.

Joanna quickly disappeared into her bedroom. As Somzoas was putting away his shoes in the front closet, he’d come to realize he had spent Christmas reading a book from start to finish that he never even intended on reading instead of being with his family. This thought was disrupted once he heard his mother shout from the kitchen.

Somzoas, dinner is on the table!

Polly has always been strict with her children eating proper meals three times a day, especially if it was that of her own cooking. The three family poodles followed Somzoas from the front door to the kitchen; their agile little paws walking along the hardwood floor sounded like heavy raindrops crashing upon the roof of a car.

Where’s Samantha? asked Somzoas, as he sat down in his personal seat at the corner of the table, opposite his father.

She’s upstairs in her room, said Polly.

And what about Amanda? She’s usually home at this time.

You just missed her, she had to run by her office, Polly told Somzoas.

How was the gym? Fabian then asked his eldest son.

It was adequate, Somzoas told his father. Now the most appropriate course of action would be to nourish my overworked muscles with the nutrients that it requires, especially the protein.

Eat up, Somzoas, there’s plenty to go around. Your sister didn’t eat a damned thing. Polly insisted. I made gnocchi, chicken, coleslaw, beans, corn, and salad as well. I better see all of those in your plate.

Well, we’re all very glad for you, Polly, Somzoas replied nicely.

He then started to dig into his luscious first course, taking little breaks to wipe the dripping sauce off his chin. It was times like this where there was a buffet of fresh food to go around that Somzoas would think of all the third world countries around the globe and how he wished he could help them all one day.

This is excellent, said Somzoas, complimenting his mother’s pasta as he looked to her. I’ve noticed a modification in the technique you’ve used to prepare the meal. My guess is that it’s paprika.

It was my idea! Polly’s husband bragged, letting out a prestigious laugh. Your mother is a fine chef. I remember when I could eat like you, Somzoas. But I can’t do that anymore because it’ll just turn into fat. I have to limit myself.

It’s not fair. Have you seen Somzoas with no shirt on? said Andrew, joining in on the conversation. He has big muscles and everything is so defined, and he has a thin waist and abs. It’s like impossible for his body to gain any fat, and he eats like a horse. A couple of days ago I saw him demolish a whole mega sack of chips by himself.

Somzoas turned his head to his younger brother. He started mimicking how a horse chews its food using his dinner.

He wasn’t born that way, Andrew, he works out daily and keeps his body in shape, answered Fabian. If you were as motivated as him, your body would look the same.

That’s a joke right? said Andrew. I work out more than him and I eat healthier foods! I haven’t had pasta for weeks. All I’m having right now is chicken and vegetables. I’m dying for some fatty foods!

Andrew, don’t be jealous. It’s not good for you, all right? Fabian told his son very smoothly.

Andrew stared at his father, jocularly.

What? he then said as he burst of laughter. Are you kidding me right now? You have to be kidding me, Dad, c’mon!

What, what did I say? said Fabian, laughing along with his son.

Somzoas isn’t normal. We all know that. Andrew assured. His purple eyes and his unidentified genetics have to mean something. He defies the laws of nature. Not to mention that dragonfly of his.

Fabian and Polly looked at each other, and then they laughed out loud together uproariously.

Oh, Andrew, honey! said Polly, still laughing. Don’t be ridiculous!

Yeah, Andrew, you sound pretty loopy with what you just said, don’t you think? said Fabian with a hearty laugh.

No, I’m serious, there’s something else going on! Andrew defended. Logically, it doesn’t make sense. I mean think about it, really.

Andrew, there’s nothing to think about, said Fabian. It’s just a harmless genetic mutation. That dragonfly of his is his own thoughts making it happen.

Somzoas felt the urge to say something to his father about Ogwood, but he didn’t. Instead, he stared at him momentarily, and then he continued to eat his meal in peace.

No, it means more, said Andrew, still defending his opinion strongly. Look at the world we live in today. Things aren’t making sense anymore. The cost of living is rising exponentially, as jobs are shrinking with more natural and man-made disasters than ever. No country is safe with all of the HORUS executions and bombings going on overseas and south of the border in America, and they’ve even attacked Canada! We’re done man! The Earth is finished!

Listen, Andrew, you’re overreacting about everything, okay? Fabian told his son in a worried yet stern tone. Just calm down and eat.

Andrew listened to his father and continued eating. Somzoas scooped up the last piece of gnocchi with his spoon and put it in his mouth. Polly immediately took the bowl from his plate and brought it over to the granite kitchen counter to wash it by hand in the sink. Somzoas took a bit of everything from each vegetable dish on the table, respectfully.

Are your bags all packed for your flight tomorrow morning, Somzoas? asked Fabian, breaking the silence at the dinner table as he glared at how much food his firstborn son could consume in one sitting.

Well, you know how it is, Fabian, Somzoas gently replied. I had to make sure my clothes were just right, and then there was the toiletries.

Polly returned to the table and starting pinching Somzoas’s cheek.

My boys are so handsome! she exclaimed. And yet they’re both still single! Bring home a girlfriend from your trip!

After a few seconds, her eldest son’s cheek was as red as a garden tomato.

That won’t be necessary, Polly, Somzoas stated very clearly, hiding his feelings for Alexis from his mother. I’m travelling to Mexico to have a responsible time, and I don’t plan on complicating things.

You’re young, live your life, man! Polly pestered. You’re not going to look the way you look now when you’re older, believe me! And for heaven’s sake, Somzoas, could you please call me and your father mom and dad instead of our first names? We’re your parents!

Somzoas is one-quarter Italian and one-quarter Romanian from his father’s side, and, from his mother’s side, he’s one-quarter Spanish and one-quarter