This is gonna sound weird, but there’s a nonzero chance I’ve been in your dreams. Not, like, in a skeevy pickup-line kind of way, but actually there with metaphysical boots on the ground of your subconscious. It’s not intentional. I’m not over here willing myself to see you making out with Ryan Reynolds in a kiddie pool full of cake frosting (that said, you go get it boy). It just…happens.
If it helps, I usually can’t tell who the person is. Sometimes I get context clues or basic information like a first name or gender, but that’s it. Half the time I’m inhabiting a body I know nothing about.
I honestly couldn’t tell you why or how it started. At first, I chalked it up to my brain doing weird brain shit. The people and places in my dreams weren’t familiar. Even the tone didn’t feel right, if you can imagine that. It was like someone else waltzed into my head at night, slapped my hands off the levers, and took control for a while. Of course, after a while I cottoned onto what was happening – it was me doing the waltzing in, but instead of the slapping part I just kinda hung out and watched. Just like you did in your dream the other day, Erica.
Once I got used to it, the whole thing was actually kinda fun. Seeing how the other half lives and all that. Nightmares always suck, but I’d have to be a real sick fuck to find joy in others’ suffering. Call me a sap but I prefer the good dreams. Y’know, hanging out by the lake with a golden retriever I’ve never seen before, some old coot reliving his first kiss with his wife, that kinda thing. Hell, Ryan Reynolds ain’t my type but that frosting party was a fun diversion.
For quite a few years I actually kinda liked going to bed every night.
A few months back, though, shit got real. I saw myself in someone’’s dream. Watched through their eyes as they bought me a drink at some dive bar I’ve never been to. Shit was unsettling, even though nothing really weird had happened. Their dream ended when I went out to have a smoke and that was that.
But it keeps fucking happening, and things are progressing in a way that has me more than a little rattled. The bar scene was followed up by a couple variations on the theme where they’d go outside and I’d be gone. After that…well, after that I saw some shit. For whatever reason, it almost always started at that skank-ass dive bar, but the endings were no longer happy. I’d leave for a smoke and they’d follow me outside but I’d be gone. Sometimes they’d follow me into a dark alley by the bar and the dream would cut out. Sometimes they’d creep behind me for what felt like miles before I disappeared. Then they started killing me. In the alley, in a park, in the middle of a fucking convenience store. You ever watch yourself get suffocated with an empty Doritos bag? Shit’s wild.
This went on for weeks, almost every night. I tried, y’know, not sleeping. But it turns out to be a lot harder now than it was in my 20s. I tried getting absolutely blitzed before bed hoping the liquor would somehow short-circuit whatever was happening. This kind of worked, insofar as I woke up after two hours and spent the rest of the night huddled on the bathroom floor. I gave up on that plan and started trying to sleep just enough that I’d be functional the next day, hoping it’d be one of those nights I’d be spared.
Eventually I just kinda gave into it. I wasn’t sure what this person had against me, but from what I could remember of their dreams there wasn’t anything to indicate they actually knew who I was. They never said my name. None of the places they killed me were immediately familiar. For all I knew, it wasn’t even the city I live in.
Maybe they just saw me on the street somewhere and I reminded them of an ex they hated or something and I became their nightly rage dumpster. So that’s how it went for a while – I even started having a mild fascination with the creative ways they’d off me. Don’t get me wrong, it was still fucked up, but I’d stopped feeling like I was actually in any kind of danger.
Until last night.
Last night I saw my house in their dream.
Whoever this person is, they know where I live.