Chapter Two: Miles Away
1137 Words
Chapter Two: Miles Apart
The dreams started three months ago.
At first, Miles didn’t think much of them. A woman he didn’t recognize, showing up in his sleep like a recurring extra in the background of a movie. She never said much, just looked at him like he was supposed to understand something.
It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth dream that her face stayed with him when he woke up. Soft brown eyes. A small scar on her left eyebrow, like a faded childhood injury. She had a way of looking at him that made him feel like he’d forgotten something important.
He would open his eyes in the middle of the night, heart racing like he’d just run a mile, and reach for his phone out of habit. No missed calls. No messages. Just the heavy silence of his bedroom and the lingering presence of her face in his mind.
She felt… real.
Too real.
The first time he saw her in a dream, she was sitting across from him in a quiet cafe. The details of the place were sharp—the smell of cinnamon, the chipped paint on the table, the hum of conversation behind them. But all he could focus on was her. She was staring out the window, quiet, like she didn’t notice him.
When she finally turned, there was this flicker in her eyes, something between recognition and disbelief. She didn’t speak. She just smiled—tired, sad, and familiar.
And then he woke up.
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Miles wasn’t someone who put much stock in dreams. He liked facts, logic, data—the things you could measure. He worked in systems engineering, spent most of his time staring at code, fixing things that broke quietly behind digital curtains. He was the guy who people didn’t notice until something went wrong.
But this was different. There was no way to fix or define it.
He started writing them down in a plain spiral notebook. Not just the images but the feelings. The conversations. The silence. It felt strange at first, childish almost, like keeping a diary. But the dreams were too vivid to ignore. Sometimes they picked up where the last one left off, like he was watching a series with gaps in the middle. Other times, they jumped in time or place—still her, always her, but different settings, different moods.
She cried once. In a dream where they stood at a train station platform in the rain. She gripped his arm and said, “Don’t go. Not again.”
He didn’t know what she meant.
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“I think I’m going crazy,” he told Ben, his roommate, one evening.
Ben didn’t look up from his game controller. “Aren’t we all?”
“I keep dreaming about this woman. Same one. All the time. It’s like my brain’s obsessed.”
“Is she hot?”
Miles gave him a look. “That’s not the point.”
Ben smirked. “Maybe not to you.”
“I remember her name. I know her name. But she’s never said it. I just… know it.”
Ben paused the game. “Okay, that’s a little weird.”
“Her name is Lena.”
Ben blinked. “Do you know a Lena?”
“No. Not in real life. Not even on my socials. I checked.”
He wasn’t sure why he was telling Ben this. They’d lived together for a year, and most of their conversations didn’t go deeper than rent, groceries, or whose turn it was to take out the trash.
Ben shrugged. “Well, maybe you met her once and forgot. And now your brain’s building a whole fantasy around it.”
“It’s not a fantasy,” Miles said, sharper than he meant to. “It feels like a memory.”
Ben raised an eyebrow. “Alright, man. Just… don’t fall in love with a dream girl. That never ends well.”
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That night, Miles dreamt of a lake.
The water was still, the sky grey. He stood at the edge, hands in his coat pockets, waiting.
She came toward him, walking barefoot on the damp grass. She looked tired, but when their eyes met, her face softened. Like relief.
“Have you found it?” she asked.
He didn’t know what she meant, but he said yes.
She nodded, and then the dream ended.
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The next morning, Miles sat with his notebook and flipped back through pages. There were too many coincidences now. Too many shared locations. He had never seen the cafe from that dream before, but last week, he passed it on his way home from work. It looked exactly like in the dream—same green tiles, same worn sign.
He stopped and stared at it for a long time, unsure whether to go in. He didn’t.
Now he wished he had.
He looked up “dream theory” online. Articles popped up—everything from psychological explanations to spiritual nonsense. Lucid dreaming. Collective unconscious. Echoes of past lives.
He hated how easily those words stuck in his head: past lives.
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The turning point came on a Thursday evening.
He was walking down Market Street, cold air biting through his jacket, when a flicker of motion caught his attention. A girl was stepping out of a bookstore across the street—her hair tucked into a scarf, a worn satchel on her shoulder.
He stopped walking.
It was her.
He couldn’t breathe.
She turned slightly, and for a second, he thought their eyes met. But she looked away, kept walking.
By the time he crossed the street, she was gone.
He stood in front of the bookstore, heart racing.
Inside, the place looked familiar. Too familiar. The wood shelves. The hanging lights. The creaky floorboards. He’d been here before—not in real life, but in dreams. They’d talked in the back corner near the philosophy section. She’d read from a book without a cover.
The shop was nearly empty. The clerk didn’t look up as he wandered inside.
He moved slowly, eyes scanning titles he didn’t care about, hands trailing along the shelves until he reached the back.
Nothing. Just dust and old paper.
And then, resting on a small table, he saw a black notebook.
His fingers hovered above it.
He picked it up and opened it to the middle.
His name was there. Miles Obiora. Written in slanted handwriting.
On the same page: Lena Adewale.
No address. No phone number. Just two names, side by side, with the date: Two days ago.
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He didn’t take the notebook. He left it where it was.
But that night, he didn’t dream.
And for the first time in months, he didn’t feel alone.
He felt watched.
Or maybe… remembered.
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- Writer
