The Other One Forgets

Every morning, David Jackson woke up wondering which parts of his life were real. The bed was always the same — creased grey sheets, the faint hum of a dying refrigerator beyond his cracked bedroom door, the smell of damp wood and expired milk. But sometimes, he would wake up in a desert. Or a glass house. Or once, underwater, breathing fine as if he'd grown gills.

At first, he thought it was just vivid dreaming. He kept a journal beside his bed, a blue Moleskine he filled with shaky handwriting before the images faded. Then came the bleed-throughs- remembering things that never happened, reacting to strangers as if they were old friends, flashes of emotions that made no sense — grief for people who didn’t exist.

His therapist called it a sleep disorder and prescribed pills. The pills made the dreams worse.

One morning, David woke to find a white feather in his mouth. Not on the pillow. Not near the bed. In his mouth.

He sat up choking, spitting it out, heart pounding. It was long and downy, like a swan's. He hadn't dreamed of birds. He had dreamed of falling — off a cathedral, into clouds thick as smoke. A woman had reached for him, calling his name like a hymn- “David. David, wake up.”

He didn’t know her.

He put the feather in a sandwich bag and taped it to the fridge. He stared at it every time he poured his coffee. He wasn’t scared, not really. Just... off-kilter. Like he was watching his life from a step to the left.

His job didn’t help. Data entry for a government agency that didn’t seem to do anything. Numbers in, numbers out. Hours passed without context. Sometimes he felt like he had been doing the same task for days, weeks, lives.

One afternoon, he glanced away from his monitor and saw the office engulfed in fire. No flames, no smoke — just heat, the walls warping and curling. His coworker Nicole kept typing as her keyboard melted under her fingers.

He stood up, shouting.

“Nicole!”

She blinked at him. The fire was gone.

“You good?” she asked. “You look like hell.”

He left early and didn’t come back for three days. When he returned, no one mentioned it. As if he’d never been gone. As if no time had passed.

David's dreams started repeating. Always the same city- black spires, flickering neon, sky like an open wound. The woman was always there. Dark hair. Grey eyes. A scar over her collarbone shaped like a crescent moon. She never gave a name, but she spoke to him like they’d known each other for years.

“You’re slipping,” she told him one night as they sat on the edge of a train platform. “The veil’s thinning.”

“What veil?”

“Between places. Between you and the rest of you.”

He didn’t understand. He just nodded, because when she looked at him, his panic quieted. When he touched her hand, it felt solid. Warmer than anything in his waking life.

His apartment began to change. The mold in the corner of the ceiling started to look like letters. On the mirror, condensation spelled out words he hadn’t written.

Remember.

Choose.

He stopped sleeping with the lights off. He began writing notes to himself and taping them to the walls.

You are David Jackson. You live at 112 Verity Street. You are real.

Every time he woke up, he checked the notes. He checked the feather. He checked the locks.

Then came the night he didn’t wake up.

Or maybe the morning he didn’t fall asleep.

The dream bled in fully. No transition, no fog. He was just walking down the street — his street — but the sky above was purple and cracked like broken glass. The buildings had no windows. The people had no eyes.

And yet it all felt... normal.

He saw the woman again. She stood under a flickering streetlight, wearing the same grey coat she always wore. Her smile was sad.

“You stayed too long,” she said.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“You always say that.”

He frowned. “How many times have we had this conversation?”

“Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Depends on how far back you want to count.” She reached out and touched his temple. “You’ve fractured, David. You’re in pieces. One here. One there. One dreaming the other. You need to choose.”

“Choose what?”

“Which world you want to live in.”

He stared at her. “But if I choose... the other one dies?”

“No. The other one forgets.”

He tried waking himself up. Jumping off buildings. Drowning. Screaming. Nothing worked. The city wouldn’t let him go. It just reshaped itself, dream logic tightening like a noose.

One night, he ran through alleyways trying to find something — anything — he could recognize from his life. A diner. A mailbox. His name on a door. But everything was wrong. The air smelled like copper. The sky pulsed.

He collapsed behind a stairwell, shaking. A child walked past him and whispered, “Don’t you remember being a god here?”

He didn’t. He didn’t want to.

Days passed. Or nights. Or whatever passed for time.

Eventually, the woman stopped visiting. Her name came to him in a dream within a dream- Barbara.

He screamed it into mirrors, hoping she’d appear.

She didn’t.

Then came the morning he woke up. Sheets. Refrigerator hum. Grey light. The feather on the fridge.

But everything felt off. His apartment was identical — but colder. His hands didn’t feel like his own. When he tried calling a friend, the line rang but no one picked up. He looked through his phone and realized he didn’t recognize a single contact. Not one.

He walked to work, past shops with blank signs, people with blurred faces. At the office, Nicole wasn’t there. No one was. The lights were on. Computers hummed. But he was alone.

He went home and found a note taped to the bathroom mirror, written in a hand that was almost his-

You made your choice. Live with it.

He screamed until his voice broke. Tore down the notes. Broke the mirror. Smashed the fridge.

The feather was gone.

That night, he dreamed of the real world. Coffee shops with shitty jazz. His mother’s voice on voicemail- "Hi, sweetheart. Just checking in. No rush to call back, I know you get busy. I just wanted to hear your voice." The way Barbara looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching — like she already missed him, even when he was right there.

He woke sobbing. Not because it was gone, but because he knew — he had picked the wrong world. And he would never get back.

He tried to play the voicemail again. The file was there. But when he pressed play, only static came through.

So now he walks through days that don’t feel like days. He waits for the dreams, not to escape but to remember. Sometimes, Barbara returns. She doesn’t speak. She just holds his hand.

He knows, deep down, he’s not David Jackson anymore.

He’s just the echo of a man who couldn’t choose.

Or chose too late.