DREAM ME

Dream Me: Chapter 7- Becoming One

Sleep, wake, dream, these words had lost their meaning. I no longer knew which side of the seam I stood on. The city flickered between skyscrapers and forests, between asphalt and rivers of starlight. People spoke words that dissolved into birdsong. My phone displayed messages I couldn’t remember sending, some signed not with my name, but hers.

I was unraveling. Or maybe I was being remade.

Dream Me was everywhere now, reflections, shadows, even in the voice that sometimes slipped out of my mouth instead of my own. She was growing stronger, while I felt thin, stretched, fragile as paper left in rain.

It all came to a head one night when I found myself standing in a place that wasn’t mine, yet was.

A hall of mirrors.

Endless, spiraling, every reflection catching a different version of me, child me, laughing me, weeping me, angry me, dreamer me. Some versions I remembered. Others I had forgotten. Some looked at me with pity, others with accusation.

At the center of it all, she waited.

Dream Me.

She wore no smile tonight. She was radiant, terrible, beautiful, an eclipse made flesh. Her eyes burned like they carried all the stars I’d once wished on.

“It’s time,” she said simply.

I swallowed hard. “Time for what?”

“To choose.”

The mirrors trembled, images rippling like water. I saw myself working at my desk, hollow-eyed. I saw myself painting under a sky of colors too bright to name. I saw myself fading into gray, I saw myself blazing alive.

“You can’t have both,” she continued, stepping closer. “You’ve carried me in silence for too long. Either you let me take your place, or you end me. Or…” she paused, her voice softening, “you accept me. And we become one.”

My chest tightened. “And if I kill you?”

Her gaze didn’t waver. “Then you kill the part of you that still dreams. You’ll survive, but you will never truly live.”

“And if I let you take over?”

Her smile returned, faint and sharp. “Then you will never suffer again. But you will also never wake again. You’ll be mine. Forever.”

The hall shivered with the weight of the choice.

I fell to my knees, clutching my head. My reflections screamed silently in the mirrors, each of them begging me for something different. Freedom. Safety. Oblivion.

Dream Me knelt too, her face inches from mine. “Stop running. Decide.”

Tears blurred my vision. “I don’t know how.”

She reached out, her hand warm on my cheek. “Yes, you do. You always have.”

I closed my eyes. And in the darkness, I saw it, not her, not me, but us. Not survival alone. Not surrender alone. But a weaving, a merging. Strength without denial, freedom without escape.

My hands trembled, but I lifted them to her face. She smiled, luminous, as if she had been waiting centuries for this moment.

“Yes,” I whispered. “Not you. Not me. Us.”

The mirrors exploded in light. Every reflection shattered, shards flying, dissolving into stars that sank into my skin. I felt her rush into me, not invading, not conquering, but filling the hollow places I had abandoned.

Her laughter became mine. Her courage became mine. Her dreams, mine.

For the first time in my life, I wasn’t divided. I wasn’t a ghost of myself. I was whole.

When I opened my eyes, the hall of mirrors was gone. I stood in my apartment, ordinary and real, yet not. The air hummed with something alive inside me.

I caught my reflection in the window. She was there, but not separate. Not watching. Not haunting. She smiled when I did.

And I understood.

Dream Me wasn’t gone. She was me. At last.