Reborn in 1994: Internet Empire

55 Nightmares

       Jasper had been dreaming about the same dream every night for the past week. He had no idea what brought about this set of nightmares nor where they came from. At this point, he was incredibly irritable due to the lack of sleep that he had been getting. He hobbled to the table, not bothering to put on a shirt while Emily prepared their food. He no longer cared about the fact that she was not wearing any clothes, as his head was too dazed from multiple nights of not being able to sleep. He moved his plate aside, and rested his face onto the smooth, cool, glass table, hoping to catch even a moment’s rest.

       Emily caught onto this and decided to ask about it.

       “So… Didn’t get any sleep last night?” Emily asked, leaning against the kitchen counter as she eyed her sleepy partner.

       “Nah…”

       “Why?”

       “Heh, wouldn’t you like to know?” Jasper said in a scoffing manner.

       “Well… Humor me. We’ve had to lay low for a while after the whole Lina incident. So I could use a story.”

       He grumbled to himself for a moment but eventually yielded to her request.

       “I’ve been having the same set of nightmares every night. Been waking up in cold sweats. After that, I can never get back to sleep,” he said as he sat up straight.

       Emily raised an eyebrow.

       “The same one, you say?”

       “Yeah. The exact same one.”

       “What happens in your nightmares?” she asked, no longer joking around and this time genuinely curious.

       He looked at her as if he were about to reprimand her, but realized that she was taking this seriously. With a sigh, Jasper decided to return her serious demeanor and gave her a serious answer.

       “I honestly don’t remember much,” he began. “I woke up in a house. It’s like a very cozy house. It’s more like a cabin actually. When I looked outside the window, everything was covered in deep snow. But even with the snow, the inside was very… warm.”

       Emily’s eyes widened a little bit.

       “What was this house like?” she asked.

       “It was your basic log cabin house. But as for the furniture, there was this old looking mint green couch. There was a small square table made of wood, I think. And it was covered with a tablecloth made from the cloth as the couch I would say. And there was this guitar in the back corner of the room. It was a sunburst acoustic steel string,” he said, kind of surprised he was able to remember that much.

       When he looked back at her, clearly she was distraught by something that he had said. But even then, she had urged him to continue. With a suspicious look, he eventually came back to how his dream ended.

       “Right. So that warm feeling that I have feels… almost heavy. Like it’s an actual weight. When I turn, I see the top of a head leaning on my shoulder. And wavy, messy, black hair. It’s then that I’m teleported into an alleyway. It’s not warm anymore. If anything, it’s the coldest place that I’ve ever been subject to in my life. I’m lying on the floor for some reason. The snowflakes were floating down from the sky. I was being held by someone,” he said.

       He paused for a moment. Emily looked on at him, waiting for the next thing that he was about to say. He looked back at her, as if he found the words that he wanted to say.

       “Yeah… I was being held up by someone. It was that same wavy black hair that was leaning on my shoulder. I don’t know. I couldn’t see her face. But I remember after seeing her, I would look over down to my torso. It was covered in blood.”

       Emily raised her hand to her mouth to prevent a gasp as he continued to talk.

     “When I tried to look back at her, I’d always black out. But she was always screaming. Maybe she had a thing for me,” he said trying to lighten the mood. “But she’d never call me by my real name.”

       Emily looked at him, trying to suppress the shocking discovery that was being made at this moment.

       “What did Zha- err, what did this ‘wavy black haired’ woman call you?” she asked, with anxiety building up in her body.

       He looked at her with the most pure feeling of confusion in his life.

       “She called me ‘Daniil’,” he said as he proceeded to shake his head in confusion.

       Emily immediately lost feeling in her legs and immediately collapsed to the floor. Jasper shot up out of his chair in confusion, and immediately carried her to her bedroom. She couldn’t hear anything that he was saying. But the shock of hearing that name was enough to bring her to her knees. That name. It was once the honey that would drip into her ear whenever she would catch someone saying it. That name was once the reason that she would get out of bed, and wake up early to work. That name was once the reason that she was freed from a gruesome life. The name was once something that she could have died for. In fact, it was something that she indeed died for. For that was the name of the lover she had built a potential forever with in a past life.

Within moments, she was laid on her bed surprisingly gently by Jasper, who was confused as to why she collapsed in the first place.

“I guess I gotta be more careful when telling you about my dreams huh?” he said in a joking manner.

She was not used to him being kind to her. And was especially surprised at why he even carried her all the way to her bedroom. He sat at the foot of her bed, just to make sure that she was ok.

“No! No. Not at all. I just felt a little faint I think. I probably forgot to take some of my medication,” she said with a nervous laugh.

Jasper chuckled as well. Another surprise. It seemed that the world was about to come to an end because Jasper was for once not making an ass of himself, she thought. She suddenly became more solemn. Finally, she made the decision in her head. She would stick her neck out, just this once. Maybe showing him some vulnerability would make something happen. Maybe it was ok to hope again.

“I promise I won’t faint again… But can I ask you to promise me something too?” she asked him, with pleading eyes.

This was an expression that was utterly new to Jasper. He didn’t know how to respond to those eyes that looked so vulnerable, but at the same time, could capture the hearts of weak men in an instant. If that instance was any indication, then Jasper thought of himself as a weak man for a split second. But in any case, he nodded at his immobile partner.

“You gotta promise me that you’ll tell me if more happens in this dream of yours. Is that ok?”

He raised an eyebrow and sighed.

“It’s just some random nightmare, Emily. Why would you even want to know?”

She smiled at him, with no malice behind it for the first time. Yet another expression that Jasper didn’t know what to do with. He didn’t know how to describe her smile. Even under the cover of dark in her room, it could still light everything up. It was solemn, but somehow also electrifying. He shook his head so that he could focus on the words that she would say next.

“Well, it’s the same as when you watch a show. Maybe… I got a little invested,” she said following it up with a somewhat embarrassed smile.

There it was. It was that smile again. It was immediately after that that Jasper conceded to her request.

“Fine. If anything happens to me- to Daniil. I’ll let you know,” he said. “Now, rest. If you get hurt, we don’t make our score.”

Her smile faded but she nodded her head. Just as he was about to leave the room, she stopped him for a final time.

“Tell me, Jasper. Why are you being so nice to me?”

He looked back at her confused.

“You don’t like it? I could be mean,” he said in a joking manner.

“I know. You could. And I was awful to you most times. But why are you being nice to me now?”

Jasper looked away for a moment, as if looking for the words to say.

“Well, you could say that I’ve gotten used to you. And I think that the first part of that dream. The one in the cabin… I don’t know. Maybe it got to me,” he said before leaving the room with a nod.

Emily’s smile returned to her face, as she looked up at her ceiling. Maybe it was ok for her to hope again. Maybe it was coming after years of having given up. Maybe she could find that person that she thought she lost. Daniil.