Dream Me: Chapter 3- Cracks in Reality
416 Words
I was walking to the bus stop, phone in hand, scrolling without seeing, when a man in a red cap brushed past me. He dropped his coffee, cursed under his breath, and I reached out instinctively to steady him, only I had seen it already.
Not yesterday, not last week, last night, In my dream.
In the dream, he spilled his coffee, and I laughed at the shape the stain made on the pavement, it looked like a lopsided heart. And now here it was, in front of me, down to the little jagged c***k running through the concrete.
I froze, my breath caught in my throat.
When I got home, Dream Me was waiting, sitting cross-legged on the counter as though gravity didn’t apply to her.
“You saw it, didn’t you?” she asked without looking up.
I slammed my keys down harder than I meant to. “What the hell is happening to me?”
Her lips curved. “Not to you. With you. The seam is loosening.”
“What seam?”
“The one between your world and mine.” She tilted her head, studying me. “It’s been weakening for a long time. That’s why you dream of me so often. Why you can’t escape me now.”
I backed away, pressing myself against the wall like she might pounce. “This isn’t normal. This isn’t, this is insane.”
“Insane?” She laughed, soft and unsettling, like glass cracking under pressure. “You spend your days suffocating under a life you barely want, and you call this insane? Maybe it’s the only sane thing left.”
Her words clung to me, sticky, unwanted.
That night, I tried to prove her wrong. I stayed awake until dawn, guzzling coffee, forcing my eyes open with screens and music. But exhaustion is a thief; eventually it stole me anyway.
And when I slipped under, she was there.
We were standing in my childhood garden, barefoot on the damp earth. Fireflies hovered like lanterns. She reached out her hand, palm up.
“See how much lighter it feels here?” she asked. “See how free?”
And the awful truth was yes, I felt alive in ways waking life had denied me. The air was sweeter, my heart less heavy, my body not a cage but a vessel.
When I woke, my bedsheets smelled faintly of cut grass and soil.
And I knew the seam wasn’t just loosening. It was tearing.
- Writer
