Dan Torrance (dr_sleep) wrote in spinningcompass, @ 2018-07-25 00:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | !open, dan torrance, neville longbottom |
Who: Dan and open (or a narrative)
Where: A park bench in the park on Wheel 3
What: Reading and Dreaming
When: July 25th, Morning
Open: Yes!
Dan had taken his book - he didn't own it, Bobby's cousin Ashley did, but he was in it so it was his - up to the park to read. He'd followed the route he knew, so he wound up sitting on the bench where he'd met Ernest. There was nobody around looking to sit beside him, so he'd swung his legs up onto the bench and sat length-ways on it.
It was unsettling to read his past written out like a story. It was all his memories, his dad and his mom, his history, and it was all there for whoever wanted to pick the book up and read it. How his dad had broken his arm when he was three, how his mom had felt about Uncle Al and moving out to Colorado, even how he'd felt meeting Dick and going to see the doctor after all the wasps came back to life from the dead wasp's nest and attacked him. And, of course, all the drinking his dad had done, and how he white-knuckled his way through his sobriety leading up to the Overlook.
And then the hotel had started working on his dad, things Dan had always known must have happened but couldn't be certain of. The scrapbook, the thoughts that weren't Jack Torrance, all of it. He'd stopped after reading about how he'd gone into room 217 and met Mrs Massey. She was long gone, he'd made certain of that, but the book was relentlessly going through his memories of one of the worst times in his life and he needed the break. He'd set the book under his bent-up legs, and leaned his head forward so that his forehead was touching his knees, and he allowed himself to miss his parents. There had been good times too, even at the Overlook, so he concentrated on those for a while.
Dan was exhausted despite living on coffee for the past couple of days, and it didn't take long for him to fall asleep. Obviously the Overlook haunted his dreams. He roamed the corridors, avoiding the fire hose snakes, and eventually found himself back in room 217 again, a place he visited a lot in his dreams. He wasn't Dan Torrance, the 41-year-old orderly from Helen Rivington House. No, he was Danny, he was 5 and the dead lady in the tub had followed him to the door that wouldn't open and she'd grabbed him by the throat. She'd started to squeeze and then the dream shifted and he was 8 and she was back, sitting on the toilet and beckoning him forward even though he was in Florida now and the Overlook was long gone. The sound of dead fingers scrabbling at the door he'd slammed shut and the handle trying to turn followed him as the dream shifted again, and she was on the station, waiting in his room for when he came back down from the park so she could finish the job she'd started when he was 5
Dan woke with a start, cold sweat dripping down his spine, and twisted round on the bench so he could put his feet back on the ground. Why the fuck was he doing this to himself? Why hadn't he just stopped reading after confirming a couple of things at the start of the book? Grade-A asshole, Dan Torrance.
"Christ almighty, Dan," he muttered to himself, and pulled his clammy hands away from scrubbing at his face. His neck hurt from ghost-fingers he hadn't felt since he was 5, and his entire body was shaking. He hadn't been this fucked-up over a dream since the one he'd had the night before he'd asked Casey for help with his drinking. "Just a dream, just a dream," he murmured, and sat up straight.
He wasn't alone.
Some sort of creature like he'd never seen before, with too many limbs and teeth and a rabid look in its eyes, was barrelling right for him, screaming things Dan had no hope of ever understanding. It smashed into the bench and grabbed Dan by the throat
And he flailed himself awake as he fell off of the park bench. He managed to stop himself rolling down the slope towards the river, but only just. "Fuuuuck," he ground out, and pushed himself up so he was sitting on the grass.