The Wrong Person's Dream
419 Words
Lâl thought she had not dreamed that night.
When she woke up, there was no image in the room; no sound, no face, no familiar place. There was only a heavy feeling. A weight in the middle of her chest that did not disperse until morning.
Not remembering a dream was not unusual. But waking up without a dream... That was rare. For Lâl, dreams were as regular as charts. Sometimes even more honest.
She sat on the edge of the bed and stayed in the darkness for a while. She did not look at the time. Time did not belong to her these days.
While drinking water in the kitchen, the client from the day came to her mind. She tried to remember the name. She struggled. Yet she could have drawn the chart from memory.
The emptiness in the eighth house appeared before her eyes.
At that moment, the weight in her chest shifted.
Lâl leaned against the sink. A sentence dropped into her mind on its own:
That dream does not belong to me.
The moment she thought the sentence, an image flashed.
A narrow corridor.
Walls damp, light dim. There were no numbers above the doors. Only one door was half open.
Behind the door, someone was not crying.
There was silence.
This was the most wrong detail in the dream.
Lâl recognized that silence. From moments after sessions when people fell silent, but screamed inside.
Suddenly she realized: she was not in the dream.
The image flowed from someone else’s eyes.
She put the glass in her hand into the sink. Her fingers were not trembling, but they were cold. She opened the window. The morning air filled the room, but the weight did not leave.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said to herself.
This could be a trick of the mind. Transference. Excessive empathy. Occupational distortion.
Still, she opened her notebook.
She wrote one word:
Dream.
She wrote the date under it.
When the client came to the session that afternoon, Lâl made a mistake for the first time.
“Did you see a narrow corridor last night?” she asked.
The question left her mouth before her intention.
The client froze.
The expression on her face did not change, but her pupils widened.
“Yes,” she said. “But I did not tell you that.”
At that moment, the air in the room changed.
Lâl looked at her watch.
For the first time, she realized that time was moving.
- Writer
