Secret Wishes And Wants
by Sam The Ham

    
   "Go to bed!"

"I'm going!" Anthony whined. "Just let me save the game." 

Despite what he’d told his mom, Anthony killed a few more raters in Fallout 4 before doing the quick save. He lingered a few more minutes as the system shut down and he raced up the stairs.

The ten-year-old had been ready for bed for about an hour but his preparations were only a scheme so his parents would allow him more time to play his favorite Christmas present. At ten, Anthony didn't think he needed a bedtime but his parents were of a distinctly different mindset.

Unlike a lot of his friends, Anthony didn't have a TV or even his phone's charger in his room. There was nothing there to distract him. Anyway, his mom was going to check on him in a few minutes and he didn’t want to get in trouble. So he simply climbed into bed and crawled under the blankets. If someone ever asked him, he would deny it, but he was tired and sleep claimed him rapidly.

Shortly after that, Anthony opened his eyes like it had only been a few seconds since he closed them. There was a bright light in his room. He rolled over to see if he had forgotten to turn something off. His vision was blurry for a second and he forced his pupils to focus. What he saw froze his blood.

The desk light was on. On top of his desk sat a boy. He had no idea who the boy was. The intruder had pale skin with scarlet red hair and wore a strange costume; a green shirt and green shorts that extended to his knees. The fabric looked different and he couldn't think of a name for it. On top of his head, the boy wore a hat that he couldn’t place either. As the boy moved one of his feet, he saw he had on some strange shoes that were green as well. Then something clicked. He had seen the boy in a commercial somewhere for something he couldn't remember.

The boy was intently reading something, flipping pages back and forth, when he suddenly looked over. "Oh, sorry. I'm just trying to make sense of the script. I need to delight."

Strangely, Anthony felt no fear but more a sense of curiosity as he sat up. "What are you doing in my room?" he asked, thinking that perhaps he should have been afraid. But it seemed so weird that his feelings had surpassed fear and had settled on fascination.

"I'm reading." The boy answered, glancing back at the page. "Oh, I see it's one of those. This is going to be fun." The boy looked up and then hopped down from the desk. "Well, are you ready?"

"Ready for what?" Anthony asked.

The boy laughed as if remembering Anthony had no idea what was going on. "To dream."

"I'm not dreaming?" Anthony said realizing that's what he had been thinking all along.

"Not yet, well not really." The boy said tossing the papers behind himself. They vanished in midair without making a sound. "I guess I should explain. Right now you're sort of in between dreaming and sleeping." The boy made a face like he just realized how little sense that statement made. "Let me start again. You see I'm a dream fairy. I help you to create your dreams."

Anthony frowned and slowly pushed the covers off before standing up. "Dreaming is the mind's way of working through things. We learned that at school."

The boy nodded. "Well, that's true. At least for some dreams. I don't shop for those dreams just the good ones, the important ones, the ones you remember. I'm not here every night. I mean there are other people in the world beside you."

Anthony nodded wondering if he screamed his parents would rush in and see this obviously crazy boy. "So you're saying every time somebody has an important dream it's because of you?"

The boy started at him for a moment and then laughed. "No, no. I only service 273 people at the moment. Sometimes I get called in when a dream is particularly tricky."

"273," Anthony repeated wondering why the boy hadn't picked a nice round number. "So if you show up when I have important dream, why didn’t I see you before?"

The boy shrugged. "You got me there. Usually if we run into the people before the dream starts that means they can do lucid dreaming. So you might want to look into that later. Now, shall we start?"

Anthony slowly inched towards the door. "Yeah, lemme just go to the bathroom first."

The boy smiled discerning it was a clever ruse to get away. "There’s no time for that!" he said, snapping his fingers.

Quicker than a blink of the eye Anthony found himself standing in the locker room at the YMCA. This was strange on three levels. First he was positive he was just in his room a moment ago. Second he knew the locker room was currently undergoing remodeling and third he had only ever been in the locker room once before. 

"Hey, Anthony."

Anthony turned to his right where his best friend Charles was undressing. "Charles?" Anthony questioned.

Charles removed his shirt and tossed it into his locker. "Are you nervous about the game tomorrow? If we win, we will be undefeated."

"What?" Anthony asked. He wasn't on any team.

Before Charles could say anything an adult voice called out of nowhere. "All right boys, I have an announcement. It turns out the showers are broken so instead of sending you all sweaty in your clothes, you will do practice naked today."

There was a cacophony of acknowledgments and one loud "What!" from Anthony.

A hand landed on his left shoulder and Anthony around spun to see who it was.

"This is the dream Anthony. Just go with it."

It was the boy from earlier, now minus his clothing. Somehow Anthony’s mind produced a name – Peter - although he wasn't sure where he got it from. "What the hell?"

"We’re having basketball practice. You're the star player by the way. Nice touch that." Peter said with a smile. "Now hurry up and take your clothes off."

Anthony looked down at himself. Instead of his pajamas, he was dressed in his ordinary clothes. Either this was a very weird dream or he was crazy. He thought about that for a second before realizing that in a Venn diagram, of those two options there would be overlap. Oh great now he was thinking about what they had learned at school today. 

"You're holding everybody up." Peter said. "Take off your clothes!"

Anthony ignored the boy and scanned around. He had only ever been in the locker room once before and he remembered vague impressions of rows and rows of lockers with long benches. When he looked at something he couldn't remember very well it didn't seem as real as everything else, like the poster on the far wall. It was blurry like when he went to the eye doctor and they would put all those lenses in front of him. "Why would I dream this?"

"It's from your subconscious." Peter said. "It's providing me all the information. I just have to fill in a few blanks here and there."

Anthony spun to face the boy. "Why would my subconscious want this?"

Peter let out a sigh. He was no longer wearing his hat or the shirt and Anthony found his eyes reluctantly sliding towards his chest. "Because it does. If it didn't, do you think I could've taken off your clothes without you knowing it?" Peter said raising his hands showing the shirt Anthony had been wearing along with his pants.

Anthony looked down to see he was butt naked. He looked back up at Peter to demand his clothing back. It had disappeared and Peter said. "Come on, let's go."

Peter spun him around and started pushing him towards the door. Anthony first tried to fight, but then he noticed everyone else. Like him they were all naked and none of them seemed to care. He stared at them in shock. He recognized a few of his friends and there were a few boys from his school a grade above him. He didn't know their names but he remembered seeing them around. He thought it was strange that there were also a few other unrelated boys, maybe three or four. One he thought he recognized from a clothing advertisement. Another was an actor whose name escaped him at the moment. A third, while he wasn't sure where he had seen him, seemed familiar. The boy turned and smiled.

"Come on Anthony."

Anthony followed the other boys as they walked out onto a basketball court. That didn't make much sense to him. As the boys started to grab basketballs and dribble them, he walked up to Charles. He didn't feel as embarrassed being seen naked as he thought he would. "Uh Charles, doesn't this seem weird to you?"

Charles looked at him his head cocked slightly to the side. "What's so weird about it?"

"Oh, I don't know," Anthony said throwing his arms out. "Maybe because the last time I tried to shoot a basket, it bounced back and hit me in the face? I'm not good at it!"

Charles smiled and passed him a ball which he caught effortlessly. "You seem good enough to me."

Before Anthony could say anything else he felt arms wrapped around him. He froze instead of pushing them away.

"Anthony, this is a dream. It's one of your good dreams. Only things you want to happen will happen." Peter whispered, giving him a kiss on the cheek.
Belatedly Anthony pushed away letting the ball drop. "What?"

Peter was standing there completely naked like everyone else. This time, Anthony's eyes drifted down his chest towards his private parts. They looked a bit like his, just bigger. Anthony felt a little thrill go through him like he always did when he managed to spot someone's privates. Before, he had always associated the feeling with getting away with something, because most of the time people tried to hide them. Peter wasn't.  Anthony looked around and no one else was. It was a belated realization.

Then, an idea struck him and he turned to look at Charles again. He had seen Charles's privates that day when they were at the urinal at school. They had been talking and Charles had shifted. His shirt lifted up, his jeans opened onto white undies pressed against his balls. It had been an accident. His friend had been reaching for his phone and Anthony had only seen it from the corner of his eyes. Now though, he was looking at it straight on and Charles didn't seem to care.

"Everyone line up." A disembodied voice said.

Everyone did as they were told forming a line on the gym floor. A man came out. He was wearing clothing like a gym teacher would. Whenever Anthony tried to look at him he couldn't see his face. "Anthony, can you come here for a second?" the man said.

More relaxed now Anthony walked up to him and turned around eyeing the rest of this team. One part of his mind thought there might be too many boys here for a basketball team, but he really didn't know. The coach started saying how great Anthony was at the last game and how they should all try to be more like him. The praise was so heavy that his ears would have burned if this wasn't a dream. Even with all the praise being heaped on him, he sort of tuned it out. Instead he just stared at all the other boys.

There was Max; he had only transferred to his school this year. He was black and tall and his genitals were sort of fuzzy. Anthony hadn't seen them yet. Wonder why his mind had not added that last part yet. Before he could follow that thought up with another, his eyes drifted towards RJ and started laughing. The last time he had seen RJ's private area was when they had been six. RJ had let him sleep over for the first time and had wet the bed. Anthony remembered walking in on him in the bathroom trying to clean up with his mom there. He had been sworn to secrecy with all the seriousness that a six-year-old could produce. His genitals still looked small against his rather large body.

Anthony felt a funny feeling. He looked down at himself to see his own privates growing or at least one part of it. He was becoming hard. He could remember that happening before when he was little. Back then it had been a matter of annoyance, but it felt different now. When he turned his attention back to the line he saw a lot of the other boys were in a similar state.

Then practice started, sort of.  Anthony didn't know much about basketball practice other than shooting baskets and passing to each other. Some of the drill seemed right but there was definitely one that probably had never been an actual drill. He bounced the ball when one boy tried to steal it from in front of him. He backed up into another teammate whose erection pushed against his butt and the two of them squeezed him between their naked bodies. The ball went off somewhere while Anthony was left to feel an erection against his butt and one against his own. It seemed just about everyone on the team did that.

When practice ended, the coach called them altogether in a circle. Anthony recognized this from his baseball days or at least he thought he did. Instead of all of them putting their hands, the coach told Anthony to get in the center and all the boys laid hands on him. They touched and rubbed and somehow as he turned around letting them feel over his body his eyes settled on Peter. Peter's hand landed on his stomach rubbing around in a circle and then slowly working its way down to his erection.

When Peter's hand wrapped around his hard-on, Anthony gasped. He felt the hand squeezing and moving as everyone was touching him all over. Then he felt a funny feeling, a strange feeling that started somewhere in his midsection and expanded. For a second he felt like he was coming close to something and then - Boom! - some strange feeling wracked his entire body.

Anthony's eyes shot open. He was back in his room staring at the wall. His crotch area still throbbed with residual pressure. Slowly he unwrapped himself from his blankets and picked his pajamas up. He was still a bit hard but as he watched his penis, it went soft. He let the waistband of undies slap back against him and stared up at the ceiling. Images from his dream were still easy to recall and now that he wasn't in a dream they felt weirder than in the dream. Still there was something to them.

He looked over at the clock and realized he only had a few more minutes before it would go off. He could still remember the dream vividly, but some of the dialogue was slipping away. The term lucid dreaming came back to him and he remembered hearing that on a TV show from somewhere. It was one he wasn't supposed to watch, but now he would surely look it up.