“In Dreams” a Halloween Serialized story by nat weaver, Parts VII and VIII (includes ebook download)
Well, I didn’t get this sent out on Friday morning as planned. Last night the internet was being weird as I was finishing up and working on the ebook file, so I took that as a sign that since it was late and the internet was making it hard to work on the product page, that I needed to call it a night. But my day was full enough that I wasn’t able to get back to my computer until now. But alas, it’s here, the final installment and the ebook file of the compiled story — including my dedication to Tom Sears, a local St. Louis musician I met years ago through open mics. He passed away on October 8th during this serial.
I realized tonight that I forgot to keep updating the trigger warning/rating on the last two installments. Sorry about that. But below is a comprehensive list now that the story is complete.
Rated R: Creepy creature nightmare fuel, some graphic violence and gore, foul language, adult themes, low mood depressive character (she’s seen some sh*t), some snakes (but they aren’t villainous), use of prescription medicine and alcohol, a character is malnourished and not eating properly, and some manipulative behavior.
Below you can add the ebook (for free) to your cart and continue to download the full story as an ebook… or just keep scrolling and read the last installment. Be sure to sound off in the comments and leave a review here, if you will. I’ll be sounding off in the comments some, so please come join me.
Download the compiled story as a FREE ebook
Circe has been haunted by a recurring nightmare for as long as she can remember. In the nightmare, she and another woman are being chased by a creature called the Leviathan. Fatigued from a lack of sleep, starving and desperate from being overworked and underpaid at Zeus Tech, she is desperate for a reprieve. Then, one night, she sees the woman from her dream in the waking world.
How is this possible? Is she real? Had she seen her before and just didn’t remember?
With the help of Circe’s former colleague, Markus, she seeks answers and a good night’s rest.
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Rated R: Creepy creature nightmare fuel, some graphic violence and gore, foul language, adult themes, low mood depressive character (she’s seen some sh*t), some snakes (but they aren’t villainous), use of prescription medicine and alcohol, a character is malnourished and not eating properly, and some manipulative behavior.
What you get: An epub file that is DRM free and should work on most PCs, eReaders, and mobile devices.
After you've finished reading, please come back and leave a review below.
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Copyright © 2026 by Nat Weaver.
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, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or used in the training of AI, for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. For permission requests, write to the author, with subject “In Dreams” at the following email address: nat@weaver.wtf.
In Dreams
a short story by nat weaver
VII. Love Wins
It was a three-story, Victorian-era house in the middle of a desert. The siding was brown and tattered, the window frames were a deep green and dangling onto the windows for dear life. Two large windows on the front of it gave the impression of two long eyes staring down at them, judging all who dared enter. A long and winding porch wrapped around the front and sides of the house like diverging paths. Wind cut through Circe and Kassandra, hot and dry. Circe held her arm up to block sand from getting in her eyes.
“This is it,” Circe shouted over the wind. “This is the place!”
They walked side-by-side up the front porch, wind gusts of sand making a howling sound. Circe took ahold of the door handle which had a copperhead’s neck and head at the top, it’s mouth slightly agape and forever bronzed in hiss. Circe had a whirlwind of emotions and her mind flashed images, memories. Just little shards, none of which was making a lot of sense. Snakes of varying kinds, a sense of power or energy, glimpses of the interior of the house, and lastly the taste of Kassandra’s lips.
“I remember this place,” Circe said.
Kassandra gave her an excited look.
Circe pushed through the door which crackled and popped, sending echoes throughout the entry way and up the spiraling stairs. Kassandra closed the door behind them and the howling of the wind took on a more muffled and ghostly sound. The house smelled musty, the air was warm and attached itself like a jacket to the skin. Circe saw flashes of the stairs as she climbed them, snakes slithering about her feet as she ascended. She had a memory of a red door with a stained glass window in the center with a depiction of a man being eaten whole by an enormous green tree python. The python was constricting the man, consuming him from the top and was half down the man’s torso. The python's fangs were dripping with blood and multiple streams ran down the man’s body, one all the way to his left foot. The man’s body was heavily tattooed with Norse mythology symbols and a large lightning bolt in the center of it all.
A snake eating Zeus, maybe?
“I think we need to go upstairs,” Circe started up the spiral.
Kassandra followed close behind and took out her spear, but kept it retracted for the moment. She didn’t appear to trust the house.
“That won’t be necessary in here,” Circe said.
“How can you be sure?” Kassandra asked.
God, I don’t know.
“A feeling,” she said. She laid a hand on the stair railing and it felt as if it touched her back.
How can a house touch me? That’s ridiculous. Keep it together.
At the top of the spiraling staircase, Circe looked down at the entry and there was a mural on the floor. A bending, twisting, spherical mural of snakes and vines, where at the center was a naked woman with an obscured face as a python passed in front of it. The woman who had long, red hair did not appear to be in any danger. There seemed to be a mutual respect between the snakes and the woman.
I’ve seen this before. I know I’ve been here. But what the hell does this all mean?
The top of the stairs deposited them into a long and claustrophobic corridor with bedroom doors on either side. The walls were a deep green velvet and towering above them were wooden arches. The real point of interest for her though was at the end of the hall where the red door stared back at her. It was just as she had recalled it a few moments before. She advanced through the hall with Kassandra nervously behind. Standing before the half-swallowed Zeus in the glass, she felt a sense of warmth and purpose. And familiarity. The door handle was a bronzed rattler’s tail that rattled and slithered inside the door when she touched it. The door slowly opened and out came a gust of wind and dank air. Both Kassandra and Circe coughed and planted their noses into their sleeves for relief.
“Shit,” Kassandra said, “that’s nasty.”
How long has it been since I was here last?
Circe crossed the threshold to a whooshing sound that lit up candles all about the room. She looked back to Kassandra who had a knowing grin.
“This looks like your handy work,” Kassandra said to her.
The room was circular and empty except for small tables scattered around the walls with candles and an elaborate fireplace at the other end. Two statuesque cobras bookended the mantel, their heads in profile above it with fangs sharpened and tongues outstretched. Circe approached the unlit fireplace where there was space for a hand in the center of the mantel. She saw an glimpse of her hand resting in the space and the fireplace quaking behind her touch.
Back to the present, she turned back to Kassandra who was still near the door.
“This is all you,” Kassandra said.
What the hell am I even doing? How do I know any of this? I’ve never been here, but I know it, somehow. As if I have been here, but how can you know a place without having any solid memory of it? Fuck me…
She outstretched her hand to the mantel and placed her fingers in the mold, followed by her palm. The fireplace rattled, a flame shot up from inside and lit the entire room in orange. She felt a surge of energy from the fireplace traveling into her. It entered at her finger tips, traveled through her palm, over her wrist, wrapped her forearm and biceps like a snake.
Kassandra rushed to her, but she held up her other hand to stop her.
I need this.
The energy traveled over her shoulder, it poured down her spine like lava and entered the tailbone. She felt the energy change course and flap up her spine like a bat out of hell. Her body shook violently with the shock, but then the energy wrapped her neck. It slowly blanketed her chest and she felt it enter her heart. Her eyes lit up like flames and she saw. She saw everything.
Everything she had forgotten, everything she had done. She saw exactly who she was and what she was capable of becoming. And she remembered. She remembered who she was, who she wasn’t, and who she could become. She remembered the breach of the Seether, Zeus riding in with bolts of lightning, killing thousands in an attempt to overthrow their world. She remembered that Leviathan was his creation, his right arm, and how he had trained the creature to seek her out. Zeus couldn’t defeat Athena and the Seether on his own, she remembered. He needed Circe and an artifact that he only saw as a weapon, but she knew different. She remembered that now. She remembered that in desperation, she cast herself to the desert space and the old house. She recalled hiding the artifact inside the house and then wiping her memory at the same she cast herself into Zeus’s world. She remembered how she chose to plant herself in plain sight of Zeus, but without the knowledge he needed to conquer the Seether. She was his captive but incapable of giving him what he needed. He had kept her close, under his thumb, an employee in his company. Ever under his watchful eye, hoping that one day she’d slip up and give him the information he needed that would lead him to the artifact.
Her body lurched back, her spine bending in ways it probably shouldn’t have.
“Circe!” Kassandra shouted to her. She rushed to her, but Circe held out her hand, causing Kassandra to freeze in her tracks.
The fuck did I just do?
She felt some of the energy shoot up into her head, it attached to her hair roots, and her hair grew out into long and lush lochs. Her hair defied gravity and floated as if underwater. The energy gave out one last burst and her hand released from the mantel. She fell backwards, but her body contorted like a cat before she could crash to the floor and she landed on all fours. She looked up to Kassandra, staring at her through strands of hair in her face.
Circe? No… that’s not my name.
“Who am I?”
Kassandra smiled. “You’re real name isn’t Circe.”
“Yeah, I know, but who am I? Say my name.”
Kassandra had a look of warmth, as if seeing an old friend after a long absence, and she grinned ear-to-ear. “You’re fucking Medusa, the most powerful woman in the Seether.” She came to Medusa and took her by the arm to help her off the floor.
When Medusa felt Kassandra’s hand touch her, she felt a rush of energy that engulfed her entire body, she froze and her eyes rolled back into her head. She suddenly remembered a lifetime of memories all at once, memories she had spent with Kassandra. She saw them meeting for the first time, she could feel the butterflies in her stomach again, and noticed once more the way Kassandra played with her earlobe when she was nervous talking to her. She saw their first kiss, the first time they made love. Centuries passed in a matter of moments, as the two of them loved and lived, shared their highs and lows, their triumphs and the pain, too.
Oh god, I have caused so much pain.
She came to the present.
“Kassandra, honey,” Medusa started, “I’ve caused you so much pain.”
Tears started to well up in Kassandra’s eyes, a mixture of pain and relief that her Medusa was back. She shook her head, “No, it’s ok.”
“No, it’s not,” Medusa cut in. “So many times, there were so many times that I ran and left you behind to face Leviathan alone. I fucked up so bad.”
“You weren’t yourself,” Kassandra said. “Quite literally. Though, I’m not gonna lie, it hurt. And it was hard.”
“I have a lot to make up for,” Medusa said as she stood up with Kassandra’s help.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Can I kiss you?” Medusa asked. “I haven’t tasted love in a long, long time.”
They kissed briefly.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Kassandra joked.
They laughed and held each other.
“I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE!” The voice of Leviathan pierced the walls of the house, causing their ears to ring.
“How did he find us?” Kassandra broke away from the embrace and readied her spear.
“I lead him here,” Medusa said with a mischievous grin. “This is what I wanted.” She extended a hand in the direction of an unassuming candle and it slowly glided through the hair to her. When she took it in her hand, the flame went out and the wax fell off to reveal it was a wand — the artifact Zeus was after. It was made of wrinkled, old black walnut. It looked weathered and old, ordinary.
“I’M GOING TO GET YOU!”
“Come on.” Medusa headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
Medusa looked back with a smirk. “I got an ass to kick.”
After sending Kassandra out the backdoor of the house and instructing her to keep her distance, Medusa headed out the front to face Leviathan. As she walked down the stairs to the sand, she could see an imprint of a smile on the faceless mass of a man.
“I’VE LOOKED FORWARD TO THIS DAY.”
“Where’s your boss, Leviathan?” She called out to him.
“I DON’T NEED HELP,” he leaned over, a towering presence to her starved frame, and he spoke direct to her face. “YOU ARE WEAK. SO WEAK.”
She shook her head. “You may be strong, but you’re weak where it counts.” She tapped her a finger to her temple. “I have brought you here, because I have cast a spell that prevents Zeus from entering this space. And without him, there is no way in hell you can defeat me.” She took a bow. “Welcome to my world, you bastard.”
He roared long and hard, and her hair flapped behind her head from his breath. He stood up tall and took a swipe to grab her, but with a flick of her wrist and the wand, she shot a strand of green energy from the tip and it wrapped around his arm. She yanked him sideways with another flick of her wrist and he tumbled over on his back with a grunt. Sand splashed up about them like a reverse thunderstorm, and in the confusion and sand, she retreated to he edge of the steps to her Victorian house. She stood with her back to it, planting her feet firmly in the sand, outstretching her hands from her sides. She slowly raised her arms and the Victorian house began to quake behind her. Leviathan spun around on all fours and watched in horror as the house rose from the sand, its eyes blinking awake, the side porches stretching out into arms that helped claw its bricked legs from the sand below. It stood behind her, larger than Leviathan in every imaginable way.
Leviathan looked up at the house, “I CAN KILL IT. IT IS WEAK. IT IS ONLY A HOUSE. YOU WILL SEE.”
He charged into a gallop at one of the legs of the house, but Medusa flicked her wand causing the house to slide its leg away from the Leviathan's advance. He sputtered to a stop, spun around and growled just as the house punched Leviathan with its porched-hand so hard he sank into the sand under the weight.
Pinned by the porch, Leviathan began to thrash about in an attempt to get free. “YOU CANNOT HOLD ME. I AM STRONG. YOU ARE WEAK. SO WEAK.”
Medusa stood beside the Leviathan. “You’re going to cease to exist today.”
“NO.”
“Yes, you are,” Medusa leaned down to his head. “Say my name.”
“FUCK YOU. THY NAME IS BITCH!”
She frowned, peered down his body, and with a flick of her wand his penis engulfed in flames. Leviathan wailed in pain. “Say my name,” she said once more.
“MEDUUUUUUUUUSSSSAAAAA!”
VIII. Epilogue
Medusa and Kassandra shook the rain from their coats on the doormat in Tom’s Diner. Tom glanced up from drying a glass behind the counter. He greeted them with that broken smile he’d been wearing for some time, and nodded gently. The diner had a spattering of depressed looking individuals, none of which were talking to each other, and most were glued to their phone screens. The mood was dark and low. Medusa crossed to the jukebox in the corner, dropped a few quarters inside, and selected a song by Savage Garden. The two of them pushed tables and chairs out of the way, creating a dance floor.
“Um, what the heck are you doing?” Tom piped up.
“Trust me, Tom,” Medusa said to him. She clapped her hands and the customers all looked to her, puzzled. “Alright, listen up, ya’ll need to put your phones down and get on this dance floor. Because in a few minutes your life is going to change for the better.” She pointed and winked at Tom, “You too, Tom.”
Kassandra ran around the room, pulling people from their seats and onto the makeshift dance floor. They were reluctant but smiling. Even Tom smirked and exited the counter and joined Medusa.
“What are you up to?” He asked her.
“You’ll see, Tom.”
After a moment of group dancing, the door flung open and Markus entered with a handful of uniformed cops. He pointed to Kassandra, “That’s her.”
The dancers stopped, but the music played on.
Two cops started to move towards Kassandra who took a step back, she was engulfed by the dancers who blocked the cops. The cops threatened them with nightsticks.
Tom stepped between the customers and the cops, “I own this establishment. What’s the problem?”
“It’s none of your business,” Markus said.
“Bullshit,” Tom spewed at Markus.
Medusa stepped up and pulled Tom back behind her. Savage Garden stopped. “Markus, what are you doing?”
“I’m here to help you,” he said warmly. “Clearly this woman is one of the people who has been stalking you, and you need my help. We’re here to arrest her and take you for psychic evaluation.”
“I’m not crazy, Markus,” Medusa said.
“Perfect,” he started, “then this should be painless.”
Medusa looked back to Tom. “When was the last time you saw the sunlight?”
Tom’s face contorted in confusion. “That’s absurd, clearly…” his thought never finished as his brain realized he couldn’t remember the last time he saw the sun. “What the hell?”
Medusa glared at Markus. “How about a little illumination?” She took the wand from her coat sleeve, and with the twitch of her wrist, she sent a ball of green energy from its tip. The ball of energy passed Markus and his cops, pierced the window, shattering glass, and then promptly darted directly upward into the storm clouds above the city. The sky burst with green and golden bolts of electricity, as her energy met with the energy of Zeus. The rain slowed to a stop and the clouds parted, sun rays cut through the sky like a knife and the sky lit up a baby blue. The sunlight poured into the diner through the shattered glass and made its way to Tom whose jaw dropped when the warmth of the sunlight found his body. He hadn’t felt the sun in so long that he didn’t even remember what it felt like.
Outside walkers by stopped and stared at the sunlit sky, cars halted and the drivers exited to lift their faces up with closed eyes to feel the warmth.
“What is happening?” Tom asked Medusa.
“Care to explain, Markus?” Medusa said to Markus, but he just twitched his nose. His face was beaming red. “Ok, then I’ll try.” She turned to the dancers and Tom. “This world you live in, it’s controlled by Zeus and his goons, people like my friend Markus here. They keep you imprisoned to their system, barely keeping your heads above water. But I’m here to tell you there’s another place and another way. You don’t have to keep living the life Zeus has prepared for you.” She turned back to face Markus. “We give so much. And for what? You take and you take. You take so much from us. I lost so much to your world. My time. My identity. My worth. Well, today, I’m taking it all back. And not just for me — for everyone. Everything you have robbed from us will be returned with fucking interest.”
Markus made a mischievous grin and his eyes turned black. She had never seen this side of him before and she didn’t like it. She had hoped that perhaps he was her friend, that he too had been duped. He cut eyes at Kassandra, and then looked back to Medusa. “Really? With just you and your bitch girlfriend. You really think the two of you can topple Zeus? Please, don’t insult me.”
He has been playing me all this time. God, I hate that I couldn’t see who he was.
“I think that the people of your world are tired of your bullshit,” she said to him. “And I think that they will rise up now that they have seen the sunlight again.”
The tension of the room was rising, nobody dared flinch for fear the cops would open fire. Outside there was laughter and people shouting for joy, but inside Tom’s Diner the crowded space was on the verge of a massacre. After what seemed like an eternity, Medusa broke the silence.
“Do you want my wand?” She asked him. “That’s why you came here, no? Go ahead, take it.” She slowly raised the wand and held it sideways in her palm, her hand outstretched towards Markus. “Go on. It’s yours.”
Markus’s eyes glazed over with covetousness. Staring at the wand, the thing Zeus had tasked him with finding and stealing for their own gain. It had the power to destroy or control not just their world, but all of the worlds that existed. With the wand, Zeus could become all-powerful, a supreme leader of every existing place. Finally, all could be under his control. Markus stepped forward and slowly removed the wand from Medusa’s hand. He stepped back and held it in both of his hands, eyeing it from tip to grip. He felt nothing. No power, no energy. It felt like a lifeless stick, like corporate plastic.
“This can’t be the artifact,” he said. “There’s no power in this wood.” He gave her a look of immense hate. “Did you really think you could fool me?”
“No fooling,” Medusa said. “That’s what you were looking for. Zeus and you were both convinced that this wand held immense power. There’s the foolishness. Your own misogyny couldn’t allow you to believe that maybe, just maybe, the power wasn’t in the wand but inside me.” She put her hand to her chest. “The power you wanted all this time was inside here. It’s my energy, it’s me. But you couldn’t conceive the idea that such power could exist inside a woman.” She shook her head. “Women are so much more powerful than you realize. We have to be. After centuries of abuse, control, sexism, and witch hunts, we had to evolve as a gender. We have been passing down this energy and strength through our DNA for generations. This power lives inside us, while you convince yourselves that we are the weaker sex.” She tilted her head. “Please, don’t insult me. I carved the wand from a dead tree a long time ago simply to have something to help me focus my energy, that’s it. It has no power, no energy. It isn’t some magical artifact that grants its user immense power. It’s deadwood.”
Markus’s nose twitched. His rage was building up like a volcano inside him. All the time he had spent with her, trying to manipulate her into revealing the whereabouts of the wand. It was all frivolous because the power they wanted was right in front of them all along, living dormant inside her body. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. She had masked it so well. The only thing that made him angrier than being fooled was knowing he had been duped by a woman. He didn’t care anymore about the mission, she had embarrassed him, so she had to die.
“Kill them all,” he instructed the cops.
The cops reached for their holsters, but Medusa quickly shoved both her palms outward and a gust of wind came from them and knocked the cops violently to the ground. The dancers rushed the cops in the commotion and subdued them. Markus looked terrified of Medusa and the power she possessed.
“Say my name,” she told him.
“Fuck you, cunt,” he said and spit at her feet.
“You should have twitched your nose.” She clapped her hands together and his body collapsed inward against itself, ribs breaking and poking into his organs, his limbs tore through his flesh. He screamed in pain. When she released her palms from their clap, his body pulled outward and he tore in half. She rested her hands at her side and a pile of bone and internal organs fell to the tile — it was all that was left of Markus.
Kassandra retrieved the wand from Markus’s intestines and handed it to Medusa.
***
Zeus stood before a large mirror surrounded by a golden frame. He had just finished trimming his ivory beard and ran some water through it to knock loose shavings from it into the marbled sink below his nose. The hot water made quick of the trimmed hairs, steaming up the mirror before his old yet smooth face. Atop his head was a thick head of pale hair that extended to the base of his neck. He stared at himself for a moment with blue eyes. He was sure Markus would be returning to him at any moment with the artifact in hand. He would finally, after all these years, have what was rightfully his own — the power to rule the entirety of existence with a fist and bolt of lightning. For too long Athena and her kindred had stood in his way, a blight on what he considered a near perfectly controlled universe. It was only a matter of time now.
He dabbed his beard dry with a white towel that had diamonds woven into it. He squinted at himself in the mirror, “It’s about damn time.”
A thunderous sound slapped his ears from outside his tower, the vibrations of which knocked him against the sink. He caught himself with the edge of the counter. He stepped into his office and was immediately met with an offensive sight from his window that overlooked the city below — sunlight.
The golden doors to his office slowly pushed open and a myriad of armed and muscular guards rushed through them, two guards slowly pushed the heavy doors back in place with a thud and locking sound.
“Where the hell are my clouds?” Zeus barked.
A commanding officer stepped to the edge of Zeus’s desk. “Sir, it’s Medusa, she’s using the power of the artifact.”
Zeus looked at the officer with a bored expression. “So take it from her, that’s the whole mission, you fuckups.”
“About that,” the officer looked to his second in command with a worried look, “Markus is dead. Medusa—”
A bolt of lightning extending from Zeus’s fingertips ripped a hole in the commanding officer’s chest, vaporizing his heart and cauterizing the wound at the same time. The officer slumped over to the marbled floor, he didn’t lose an ounce of blood.
The second in command stepped over the body. “Medusa is progressing up the streets with hundreds of rioters, heading directly to us. We should evacuate you to safety, your highness.”
Zeus’s eyes clouded and his eyebrows straightened. “I’m not afraid of a little girl.”
“Holy shit…” the new commanding officer said, his attention now on the window.
Zeus turned and saw a giant cobra rising from the streets below, it ascended to his height. The snake’s eyes were angry slits and it hissed at him. That’s when he spotted Medusa standing atop the head of the giant snake. She pointed her finger at Zeus and the last words he heard before the cobra crashed its head through the glass were Medusa shouting, “I’M GOING TO GET YOU!”
***
Medusa and Kassandra took Tom to the Seether. Outside his new diner, he was greeted with hugs from his parents, wife Rebekah, and little Chelsea. He pulled them into his body for a bear hug and he didn’t let go for a long time, tears streaming down his face.
Later on, still reeling from the reunion with his family, Tom sat in a booth with Medusa. He watched with glistened eyes and a huge grin as his family and the patrons all danced around his diner to a Cranberries song on the jukebox.
He remarked to Medusa, “This is impossible.”
“Don’t say that,” she told him, “so much is possible if we just shut the fuck up and do it.”
From then on, Medusa got her coffee and Diet Coke for free.
