Excerpt: SunEnder

The dream was getting the better of her again. Sometimes days would pass where she wouldn’t dream about anything at all. No thoughts to speak of, neither good nor bad, disturbed her sleep. Her mind was blank. That was the way she liked it. But those days never lasted very long. Sooner or later the dream would return. It could never go away for good. Its flames always crept back up to wake her in the middle of the night, to leave her sweating, angry, and frustrated.
There didn't seem to be anything in particular that triggered it. She had tried to discern some sort of pattern in its occurrence. If she knew what caused it maybe she could avoid having it, head it off at the pass. But it didn't only happen when she was stressed, or overly tired, or overworked. It happened any time it wanted to and there wasn't anything she could do about it.
She'd had the dream for the last three nights in a row and twice the week before, and here she was again; awake and sweating in her dark room. It was too much. Every time it happened she woke up brimming with anger and aggravation. It was nameless aggression. There was no direction for it, nothing to vent it on. It swelled and distorted her. The more she had the dream the more distended she became. She needed a release. She needed to go to the canyon.
It had become a ritual for her, the only thing that helped when the dream got this bad. She had driven the road out to her favorite spot in the canyon so many times she could probably do it blindfolded. The moon overhead was nearly full she noted as she hopped out of her beat up old truck and slammed the door. That was good. She liked a full moon. She hurried along the sandy path down the slope and stopped at a wide, flat ledge along the canyon wall. The path continued on down to the canyon bottom where the distant river sparkled a couple hundred feet below, but she didn’t go any further. She liked this spot. It was a clearing about twenty feet wide on the rust orange canyon wall, shadowy and secluded, but with a good view of the moon on most nights. A large tree, she didn't know what kind, grew out of the slope of the canyon. Its trunk crossed the ledge and swung out over the drop-off, casting a twisted shadow along the angle of the ledge in the moonlight. Next to the tree a large outcropping of mottled granite protruded from the cliff face.
She put a hand on the rough bark for balance, ducked beneath the tree trunk, and walked over to lean her back against the granite rock. She stared up at the bright moon for a few minutes before closing her eyes. She squeezed them shut tight, clenched her fists, drawing the full intensity of her dream back to the surface. When she was sure she had it she opened her eyes. Her palms were sweating and she could feel the heat flush her skin. She sneered at the moon, still there in the sky, serene and pacifying.
On each arm she wore a two-inch wide black leather bracelet shaped like a long triangle that wrapped twice around her wrist and fastened with a silver buckle. Her friends had teased her about the bracelets, insisted that she had a secret, dark Wonder Woman fantasy. But that wasn't why she wore them. Aside from the fact that she just liked the way they looked, she needed them for nights like this. She turned her gaze away from the moon and unfastened both bracelets. The last time she had come to this place she had used her left hand so tonight it would have to be the right, which would make fastening the buckles a little more difficult, but she wasn't too worried about that. She had done this before after all. She gripped the warm leather bands in her left hand and turned around to face the smooth stone waiting behind her.
She brought her fists up to cover her eyes, just for a moment, and pictured the fierce flames of the dream behind her closed eyelids. Then she pulled her right arm back. With all the force she could manage, she slammed her fist hard into the solid surface in front of her.
Several small bones in her fingers and hand broke, and the heat of the impact raced up her arm as something in her wrist snapped. Her eyes open now, she pulled her arm back again, across her body this time, and back-handed the rock as hard as she could. A dull, defeated thud reverberated across the granite as her ulna snapped and her battered hand ricocheted off the surface. She smiled and let her body droop into the rusty dirt at her feet. She lay on her back, right arm cradled against her chest, and for a few fleeting moments the brilliant, blissful ache washed over her, welling up from the pulsing pain in her arm, catching in her chest, and almost, almost, spilling from her eyes. A couple of drops, not quite tears, managed to moisten her eyelashes. It was good enough. It was as good as it ever got. She sighed and stared up at the moon above her head.

Some time later she pulled herself up to sitting. The bones in her forearm would take a while to knit back together. She pulled the leather straps tight around her broken right arm and fastened them one at a time. That would keep things still enough for the drive home. She stood up, dusted off her dirty jeans, and started back up the path out of the canyon feeling better than she had in days.