I met Akira in 2004.

I can say that because literally the first time I saw him, it was in a delirious dream in which we were having an emotionally charged conversation.

It was January, the end of the semester. I was a freshman in high school and had just managed to scrape past my finals in a lethargic blur. I was coming down with something. I remember having to lay my head down on my desk until my mom came to pick me up early. By the time she had me home, I spiked a 104 degree fever, and what a bizarre feeling that was... being so damn hot. It felt like someone could open up my stomach and cook a tray of cookies inside of me. Ironically, it was possibly snowing outside. I slept for the entire weekend and barely ate. On Sunday night, is when I ended up in this dream.

I've always had weird dreams, a lot of crazy magical stuff, but to be honest this one still stands out.

I'm still not happy with this painting, but whatever... here it is....

It was the urgency of it. It was very much an "SOS, I am not fucking around, I need to say x, y, and z to you before my carriage turns back into a pumpkin" type situation. He was tall, my type of attractive, didn't have eyes though???, but in very short time was way up in my face. Escalated from trying to reach out to me, to grabbing my shoulders and pulling me towards him, which made my young heart beat quite fast. lol He wasn't trying to seduce me, though - he was just anxious and desperate. Emotions bled freely from his face. He just was this extremely dramatic entity in every way, down to his vintage looking clothes, to his crashing brow. And his voice, it... it didn't come to me clearly, it was broken up and murmuring as if-- idk, the sound equipment of my dreams weren't all functioning that night. lol

So he tells me exactly what I need to know, because he doesn't have a lot of time, right?

"I'm t...he prince, fr...m the Cr...yst...al Pal...ace." So we have to talk about the palace for a second. The same one? The one I've been lingering on, in my little television screen right next to my bed, that I think is super cool and eerie? There was no prince in that game, though; only a king... and I killed him. He was getting impatient with me. "E...veryon...'s gone now... I'm the o...ly one le..ft."

Well fuck, did I do that?

He kept shaking my arms. "Pl...ease f...nd the p...lace! The palace is mi...ne now. Do..n't let anyo...ne stop you. If yo...u wish to vi..sit, you are welc...me here. Ple...se find the palace!"

"Uhh.. uhhhh... okay," I told him.

We had been standing under a spotlight in a dark box of a room, when he looked all around and decided he'd better dash. There was a dark green curtain in the corner that he pulled away, and which revealed a crack in the wall, where he jumped out. He never looked back. I don't remember if he said goodbye or anything. You'd think I'd maybe write the dream down word for word... maybe I did but I can't find it.

Art from 2007 of the dream and my own headcanon of what the crack in the wall might have looked like from the other side... Some sort of winter pergatory.

This is not the end of the dream. The dream lasted alllll night. From there, I dreamed that I woke up in bed. I had a lot of dreams, actually, when I was young, that I was waking up in bed, in my room, and then wandering away: out the front door, or up staircases that went out my window. And when I have studied astral projection people say that this is often a case of someone doing it without realizing. It's what Akira himself does in the story I'm writing, as an explanation for his ability to show up in dreams, and to have what he thinks at first are vivid dreams himself, in which he "wanders away from his own body."

Anyway, I remember looking up at the deflated Powerpuff Girls balloon I had on the ceiling and thinking to myself "I need to find this man. MY GOSH, DOES HE NEED HELP." So I got out of bed. Put on my socks. Stumbled down the hallway, sliding the tips of my fingers along the walls. Then I just walked out the front door into the still night, where I heard sounds coming from the side of the house.

My best friend Kate was there, dancing with these people, around a bonfire. As soon as I recognized her, I pulled her off to the side and told her that there was some weird Phantom of the Opera man. I didn't know what Phantom was at the time besides the tropes that children's shows used, to which I had been exposed. Shows like Spongebob Squarepants would reference it, like having him sitting at an organ in a suit all depressed. So that was my idea of what phantoms were. Fancy dudes who were super depressed and running around. This prince to the letter.

Kate was not even vaguely interested in looking for him with me, as apparently this bonfire had everything she needed, so I stuck my tongue out at her and left. As I started to cross the street towards my neighbor's house, I was suddenly walking into a poorly lit grocery store. It was as if someone had torn off an entire wall to the building and I was just suddenly wandering the produce section. Then I began to notice that a lot of people that I knew from school were standing around in crowds, and I ended up getting sucked into it, sort of shepherded into a path that they were all carving out for me towards some back doors.

"Have you guys seen that Phantom Prince guy? I've gotta find him."

These were my teachers and my classmates. Cheery little David with his flippy hair from Wellness. My science teacher Mr. Keikendall. They all knew who I was talking about and started talking over each other.

"His name is Akiraaaaa."
"Akira is the prince!"
"Akira is waiting for you!"
"This is the way to Akira."
"Akiraaaaa."

I mean, they were laying it on thick that this guy's name was Akira. It was just a drone of "Akiraaaaaa"'s, while trying to nudge me towards those doors, until I decided I had better hurry the hell up and see if he was back there.

Well, he wasn't. It was the same room I met him in, but in his place was a man-sized mirror, which I ran up against so I could pout and cry until I actually did wake up. And when I woke up, I was pretty sad too, but also super fascinated. And weak. And RAVISHED. I'm not sure why I went back to school so fast, but I know that I did go back literally the next day, and was just sort of like sleep-walking through the halls, and I found Kate and I was like "....ice prince... you missed all of it... you bitch..." 

Anyway, next time I will speak in a truly non-hyperbolic sense about how I was a changed girl from that day on.