The Book

Chapter 1

"This is Renictulum"
"What? Those little houses? It looks more like a village than a whole city"
"It's a map you stupid! It looks smaller than it actually is!"
"Still I think it at least needs some walls or a tower of some sort"
"It doesn't matter how it looks! It's just a simple sketch, I'm not a f**king cartographer!"
Suddenly a loud voice interrupted their conversation saying:
"Hey you two! Keep it down there in the back!"
I looked at my friend and after I rolled my eyes I said to him with a whispering voice:
"Look it's not about how it looks, but it's about the fact that I can remember this because of a dream..."
"Wait a minute, you actually dreamt this and can still remember a whole map?! Was it a lucid dream?"
"What did I just tell you?!", the teacher yelled, "I will not tolerate any more talking of you two, this is my last warning!" This sudden outburst would only ensure them to be quiet for about five minutes, the teacher thought, but he would at least have five minutes of silence to explain the example he had given after one of his lesser students had asked him to give some more explanation on the paragraph they were working on.
But I couldn't wait to tell my friend more about this epic dream I had last night, so after a minute or two I answered him: "Yes", I said loud enough to let him hear me, but not so loud that the teacher would irritate himself to them, "And a long one too."
"But uhm..." He said with a voice that was around the same level of loudness as mine, "Can you remember more than just this city and this little river?"
Earlier in the class I also drawed a thicker line on the piece of paper that would become the map, as far as I could remember it off course, and put the name 'Plenis' above it. The first reaction of my good old friend Alex was off course that if you would remove the 'l' you would get 'Penis' and this he thought was very funny. I could have expected that, but I didn't really think about it when I said and drawed it.
"Well, if I'm right there was some sort of forest north of Renictulum. On the map that I saw there were some drawed trees, so I geuss that indicates a forest." On the same time I put down some trees on the paper just above the city Renictulum. It kind of looked like the old map he saw.
"And did this forest have a name as well?" My friend asked, with some real interest now.
"Well no...Yes...Actually I don't know anymore.... But I do know there was a open circle in the middle of the forest, called 'Loco Sancto'."
I removed some of the fresh drawn trees and put the name in the empty spot.
"I also looked it up," I said, I could almost feel the eager of my friend to know more about it, "And it apparently is Latin for 'The holy place', so that sounds interesting"
"Maybe do the people of Renictulum believe in certain gods," Alex suggested, "and this 'Loco Sancto' is their sacrificial site or maybe they have a temple there" His voice slowly getting louder " or, or maybe the gods would speak to them from there! Because that would be..."
I will never know what it would be, because our teacher just gave us our second 'final' warning. So we had to be quiet for a little while again.
We carefully listened to what our teacher was saying to us. He was talking about Pyhtagaros and his famous equation. I personally find it one of the most easiest parts of mathematics, but some others didn't. So we still had to be quiet. Finally after ten minutes or so I had found the courage to speak again
"Look I know this all sounds somewhat exciting, but I still don't know what it means"
"Do you think that it really means something then? That it is a prediction or something like that? I don't believe in predictive dreams and I thought you didn't either"
I played a little with my pencil and the piece of paper before I answered him. He was right, I do not believe in predictive dreams and also not in astrology for that matter. But now that I had one myself I'm not so sure about it being a load of nonsense.
"Well actually no..., but I don't know man. It seemed so real to me and I really had a feeling that it would happen to me some time in the near future."
"But, but that doesn't make any sense! Why would someone show you a map with cities and a river that do not exist?" My friend asked a little to loud.
I could see the teacher moved again and he turned his head in our direction. We quickly pretended that we were working again. I looked down at my map (if you could call it that) and drew some more cities I could memorize. There was Monutes, laying south of Renictulum. There was Quies, a somewhat smaller one laying southeast of Renictulum and northeast of Monutes. I drew a dotted line from Renictulum to Monutes, this line represented the road between them. I also drew some more roads from Renictulum, in almost every direction. Unfortunately I could not remember where they were leading towards or if there were more cities or villages along them. I looked down at the map and somewhat proud of myself that I could actually remember this from having a dream.
When I looked up, I saw the teacher being occupied by his own thoughts, equations and rectangular triangles he had chalked on the board, trying to help one of my fellow students. This was one of the last classrooms that still had chalkboards on the wall instead of one of those Smartboards, I thought. In that aspect I really like my math teacher being a bit old-fashioned like that. And with that love with chalkboards he was really good with them, he could easily draw almost perfect circles or squares. Whereas some teachers couldn't even draw a straight line without some bumps here and there.
"Well that's a nice drawing you got there! What are you making?" The girl asked that was sitting in front of me. I woke up from my train of thoughts and wondered who had asked that question. I looked up and stared directly into the face of Gabrielle. I wasn't sure how to answer the question, but luckily Alex saved me, who secretly had a crush on Gabrielle, by saying: "Oh nothing of real interest, just a super secret map of the next cities the U.S. government is about to attack."
"Oh in that cause," She said imitating his tone of uninterest "I think my math homework is more interesting." And she turned around again before Alex could find a comeback.
"Oh yes, I did forget something" I said to him "She (Pointing at Gabrielle) was also in my dream and I think you and Liz were there too." Liz being my not so very secret crush, with regards to some jerks in my English class. I was just texting her, because she was ill, when they noticed there was little heart at the end of her name in my phone. And they off course did the honor to tell the whole school it, including Liz. Luckily she thought it was cute and now that everybody was about to forgot this awkward moment things were finally coming along.
"So to sum up," Alex said "You, Liz, Gabrielle and myself were in some sort of room with some old man who was showing us this map, you tried to redraw right here. And you don't have a single clue why he was showing us this?"
"Yeah, that's about right."
"And you sure you haven't been smoking before you went to bed?"
"Absolutely!"
"Then, my friend, I think it's time for you to stop using those pills the doctor gave you."
"Those are very normal allergy pills!" I tried to say, but before I could say two words, the bell ran. Within seconds Alex stood up and walked out of the classroom. Cleverly ignoring our math teacher who was still writing the homework for tomorrow, without him noticing.
Oh Alex, always the first one to leave and the last one to come, I thought and I also packed my books in my backpack and left the classroom. Not knowing it would be a long time, in his perspective, before he would enter it again.

Chapter 2

A few days after this conversation, I was cycling to school as always. When suddenly I saw something sparkle in the corner of my eye. I stopped, almost got run over by a trans passing motorcycle and glanced down.
It was a little ball of iron, something like the round bullets they used in the older weapons, except this ball was a bit smaller. And even though it was laying in the muddy grass it was reflecting the sunlight, like it was polished regularly. It also was very remarkable that it didn't have any dirt on it, it was very clean.
I picked up and the first thing that I noticed was the weight; it was way heavier than I thought it was. Probably around the two kilos. I examined my latest found very good, but on the look it was no more than just a ball of iron or some other kind of metal.
I put the little ball in my jeans pocket, not knowing why, because it looked pretty worthless. Something in me just said that I should keep it. So I did.
After a while I was noticing I was trying to touch the little ball the whole journey to school. My fingers were wrapped around it, touched every single centimeter of it, searching for something that wasn't there. I pulled my hand from my pocket and I grabbed my right handlebar again. Not that it was necessarily for me to have both hands on the handlebars, but you never know what can happen on the road. Still after a few minutes, while I tried to focus on the road, my right hand found its way back to my pocket and was searching the surface of the little ball again for little irregularities, but there weren't any. The little ball was perfectly round in its shape.
I arrived at school, parked my bike in my usual spot in the bike shed, locked it and went inside the school. When I got to my locker and grabbed my keys, the ball was literally attached to them. Which off course meant that this already remarkable ball was magnetic. And now that I could feel the coldness of my keys, I also felt the warmth the ball was outputting. It wasn't boiling hot, but neither was it just warmer because of me putting my hand around the whole time. The ball was even warmer than my hand itself.
I tried to pull the ball and the keys apart, but failed. The magnetism this ball has apparently was very strong. After a few tries and an incredible effort I finally managed to pull them apart.
I almost put the ball in my left pocket, where also my phone was located. But that didn't look to be a very smart idea. So I dropped it in my back pocket.
Finally I could open my locker now, but before I could get any of my needed books of the next two hours, I heard my ringtone go off. I dropped my bag on the ground and grabbed the now also vibrating phone. It probably was Alex, asking me if he had any lessons the first hour. Alex was living a two minute walk away from school and always ringed me to ask if we had lessons the first hour. It always was a fun little chat with him and a good alarm too when we started the second hour.
I took a look at the brightened screen and saw the face of a very drunk Alex, I always had to smile when I saw that face. Remembering the fun night we had the night that picture was made, not only fun for Alex who off course was drunk within half an hour when we entered the party. But that night was a sort of milestone for me, since it was the first night I kissed multiple girls on a party.
I pressed the button to answer the call and said: "Yo Alex, what's up?"
A voice,I identified as being Alex's, responded: "Yo man, do we have lessons now?"
"Off course we do," I said, "That guy from our English lesson is never sick."
"Well you never know, maybe he got aids or something"
This was the reason I like these morning calls with Alex, he always was so irrational and weird in the morning. I laughed to the phone and said: "Not today, maybe we should help him get it.."
"My god, off course!" Alex said with a lot of enthusiasm, "We should give all teachers like some sort of free pass to have sex with Denise!"
Denise being one of the few sluts we have on our school. She seems to be a really nice girl when you talk to her, but once she enters a party or club. She somehow wants to have kissed at least half of the guys that are there and more often than not it doesn't only stay by kissing, so the stories say. There are some really outstanding rumors going around about her and some of the guys she 'only kissed', like she wants to say it.
"Great idea!" I responded, "We should ask her if she willing to do that in our physics class."
"Or we don't ask anything."
"Also a possibility, but shouldn't you be going right now? 'Cause you only have like three minutes left before the first bell will ring."
"That's more than I need!" He said, "But yeah, I'm coming man"
"Mmmkay," I said with a somewhat weird voice.
"Mmmmmmmkay," Alex responded with the same voice.
I aborted the call and put the phone back in my pocket. Not knowing it would be the last time in a for me very long time I would use it again.....