Valley of Dreams

The valley was a microcosm of the American dream. With a population of just over 40,000 people, Larkspur Valley was home to both the foreign haves and homegrown have-nots. It was a community on the edge of peace, waiting for someone to give it a little push.

Kyle Matthews was born in the valley. Its rocky walls held all his memories. He was an athletic kid, with a passion for sports that ran in the family. His father, Greg Matthews, took the State team to Nationals and, everyone who watched Kyle’s Little League games saw a bright baseball career in his future.

In the summer before his Freshman year at Larkspur Valley High, Kyle was out on Lake Sable with a few friends. He and Riley Anderson, the outfielder on his Little League team, were on the final lap of the lake, holding onto the tandem tube that was gliding along the water surface behind the boat.

Charlie, Riley’s older brother, was driving their dad’s boat in between swigs of beer, and jerked the wheel too far on the last turn. The tube bounced off the wake before going airborne. Riley was launched into the air and hit the water head-first. A childhood on the lake had prepared him to recover quickly from the impact. Kyle was not so lucky.

Kyle was heavier than Riley and didn’t get much air. Instead, his body got flung across the water like a flat rock. His left leg slapped the hard surface of the lake and was pulled to the side at the knee before snapping back into place. Kyle felt the snap and knew immediately that something had gone very wrong.

An MRI revealed the damage - a complete tear of his anterior cruciate ligament.

“When can we get him into surgery?” Greg Matthews asked the doctor. “The school year is starting soon and Kyle needs to begin training for the season.”

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with you. Normally we’d get him scheduled in right away, however, Kyle also has a bruised medial collateral ligament.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, surgery is only recommended on the MCL for severe tears. Because Kyle only bruised it, the ligament will heal on its own. However, we have to wait for it to heal first before we can perform the surgery on the ACL.”

“Okay,” Greg said, confused. “How long will that be?”

It took four weeks for Kyle to be ready for surgery, which took him right into the start of his freshman year of high school. He spent the first few weeks out of school, recovering from the surgery, and then the next few weeks with a cast and crutches. The eighth-grade star athlete was a ninth-grade nobody.

Due to the wait from injury to surgery, Kyle lost muscle mass in his left leg. He didn’t make the team that year. Nor any year after. His baseball career was over before it began.

During his Sophomore year, while Riley was busy training, Kyle and Charlie became friends. Charlie wasn’t much of an academic either and was going to trade school to become an electrician.

“I just can’t sit there and have a bunch of useless crap shoveled down my throat,” Charlie would say. “Like why the fuck would I need the Pythagorean Theorem bullshit?”

Kyle spent a lot of time shooting hoops with Charlie, listening to his drunk ramblings. Every grand ambition, fragmented truth, and radical theory in Charlie’s head wormed into Kyle’s brain.

The Bs Kyle used to get on his report card became Cs, Ds, and senior year, even an F. The grades matched Kyle’s mental spiral.

By his Junior year, Kyle’s parents were so focused on the rising football star that their youngest son was becoming that they forgot about the firstborn.

During Thanksgiving that year, Charlie ran away from home after an exceptionally nasty argument with his parents. He messaged Kyle to meet him at the basketball courts and Kyle managed to sneak out without much trouble.

“I’m eighteen now. An adult.” He had said to Kyle. “I don’t have to listen to their lectures all day.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Get the hell out of this town. I stole some money from my dad’s stash and I’m gonna take the next bus to anywhere. Tonight.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“Make a name for myself. I was born a nobody but I won’t die that way. And neither should you, Kyle. You and me are the same. We have too much potential for this shitty little town.”

Those words were burned into Kyle’s mind, melting through the winter chill that had seeped into his bones that night.

The clock struck midnight as Kyle quietly put the mesh back onto his window. The house was quiet but his head was buzzing. He got no sleep that night. All he could think about was where Charlie was, how far he had made it - not knowing that no one from the valley would ever see him again.

A year later, Kyle’s next big influence came in the form of Billy Bradshaw, the super senior. His family had been among the first to settle in the valley and, in his mind, that pretty much made him royalty.

The first time Kyle met Billy was on the bus home from school. Billy’s hand-me-down Carolla was in the shop and he had to take the bus home. He sat in the back, playing with a tennis ball and getting mean glares from the bus driver.

Billy had a brother, Bernard, who was five years younger and was taking Special Education classes at Valley High. He liked to sit near the front of the bus, usually in the row behind the driver, and stare out the window, occasionally muttering to himself.

On that ride home, a few kids in the middle of the bus - unaware of Billy’s presence - threw wads of paper at Bernard while the bus driver wasn’t looking. Bonus points for anyone who managed to hit his head.

Billy dropped the tennis ball and stood up.

“No standing while the bus is moving,” yelled the bus driver.

Billy ignored her. He walked over to the paper throwers, pushed one of them down into his seat, and slapped him so hard that the kid immediately started crying.

Billy was suspended for two weeks, but he did end up finally graduating - it was his third go-around of twelfth grade.

Kyle and Billy got close during the summer after graduation. While most of the students had gotten into out-of-town colleges, the two of them were going to Valley Community College. Lovingly called VallCo.

Even though college was in the valley, Kyle and Billy moved out of their parents’ houses that Fall and into a two-bedroom apartment next to campus.

The newfound freedom of college life had a massive impact on Kyle. With no curfews to adhere to, the two of them were out late each night, bouncing from party to party, and went to class whenever they woke up.

A couple of weeks into the semester, Billy got Kyle a job at the pizzeria his uncle owned - minimum work for minimum wage.

One of the dishwashers, Paulie, was a Valley High alum and also happened to be the school’s biggest pot dealer. Billy would spend a fourth of his paycheck every week buying weed from Paulie. If Billy didn’t care for school before then he was downright against it after that. He stopped attending classes, choosing to spend time getting high and jamming out in his room instead.

Needless to say, the influence rubbed off on Kyle. He had smoked before but only a puff or two on occasion. Living with Billy, the smoke clouds never faded. The smell of burning marijuana was so strong, even from the hallway, that they would have gone to jail if not for the fact that the entire apartment building was filled with college students who were more jealous than upset.

The tipping point was in the last week of their senior year. Kyle was lying in bed after his penultimate final, an Advanced Algebra exam that he already knew he had failed, when Billy knocked on his door.

“Hey man,” Billy called out from the hall. “I have something to make you feel better.”

It seemed Paulie sold more than just pot and when Kyle opened his bedroom door, he saw Billy holding a baggie of white powder with a smile on his face.

That was two years ago. Kyle was now twenty-one, still working at the pizzeria and no longer going to school. His parents, having sent the youngest son to college, had attempted to reach out a few times but Kyle stopped answering their calls. Billy had overdosed twice on a cocktail of drugs and his parents had checked him into rehab.

Now, Kyle was truly alone, with no human relationships to ground him. He still bought drugs from Paulie, and on this particular night, he had bought a strong batch of psychedelic mushrooms.

The sky was cloudless as he got out of his car and he took in a deep breath before tossing a fistful of dried shrooms into his mouth. He let them soak on his tongue as he sat on top of Billy’s old car, looking up at the stars. Once the stars began to swim across his vision, he slid out of the hood and walked into Foxglove Woods.

He wandered the forest - all sense of fear was lost with the light - when he felt a sudden pressure on his mind. As if his brain was caught in a clamp. It pulled his gaze in the direction of a shape in the darkness ahead. He followed it absently until he found himself approaching an old wood cabin.

Weather-beaten logs held up a short roof. There were no windows, just a dark wooden door with a golden knob. It was ice-cold to the touch despite the late summer heat. Not that Kyle noticed as he twisted the handle and pushed the door open.

Through the darkness, two tiny orbs of light peered back at him - seemingly miles away yet still close enough to touch. Kyle stepped inside and didn’t notice the door quietly close behind him.

- - - -

Fred Mason came to the United States from South Africa with a hundred dollars to his name. He was twenty-two years old at the time. With hefty grants and tips from the local bar he worked part-time at, he was able to earn his Master’s in Computer Science and began network design at the company where he would later meet his wife.

Sandra worked in the customer service department but the two of them would run into each other every day in the cafeteria. Pleasantries turned into pleasant chats, which later blossomed into coffee runs and - once Fred made sure it was within the bounds of the HR handbook - dinner dates.

Two years after their first date, they got married, and two years after that they had Elijah. That was nearly eighteen years ago and the couple reminisced about their early dates over a few glasses of wine.

They had just shipped their only son off to college the week prior and though the empty nest felt cold without Elijah, they were enjoying focusing on each other.

On Monday, Fred brought home a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers for Sandra. On Thursday, they went out on their first movie date since Elijah was in fourth grade, which they had to leave halfway through when the babysitter called to tell them that their son wouldn’t stop throwing up.

Fred and Sandra were in bed, watching TV and talking about a meeting Fred was nervous about, when Spots nudged the bedroom door open.

“Looks like someone needs to go out again,” Sandra said.

With an exaggerated sigh, Fred rolled out of bed and slipped on his bathrobe. Spots was a thirteen-year-old Jack Russel Terrier who had been named by Elijah for the dotted pattern on his fur. He was an old man now and often required being let out two times a night to relieve himself.

The Mason house was at the edge of the development. At nearly five thousand square feet, it cost a pretty penny to build, but they liked the privacy. The backyard melted into the woods that covered much of the mountains around Larkspur Valley and, on nights like this, a cool breeze washed over the house.

Fred’s eyes got heavy as he felt the air on his skin and he leaned on the deck railing as he waited for the old dog to do his business.

There was a distant scream from somewhere deep within the forest and Fred recognized it as the screech of a mountain lion. He stared out at the treeline for any movement but everything was still. Even the breeze had died down.

Spots clambered his way up the stairs and Fred led him in. He slid the door shut behind him and returned to bed to find Sandra fast asleep.

He smiled to himself at her soft snore and tucked himself in beside her.

Fred was a good man. He followed the law, he volunteered at the YMCA every summer, and he always rounded his total up for charity. His one flaw was his absent-mindedness. He would be so distracted by one thing that he would forget to do another. The idea of dessert was so appetizing he would forget to look at the appetizers. He would be so focused on sealing the envelope, he’d forget to put the letter in first.

On Friday night, once he let Spots back in for the second time, with his half-awake mind nagging him about the project review on Monday, he went to bed without realizing that he had not locked the back door.

At a quarter past three in the morning, the door slid quietly open.

Kyle entered the Mason house.

And so began the American nightmare.