The moon, pills and other wrong things

There’s nothing much like being woken up in a body that is most definitely not your own. 

The familiar feeling of bedding you’ve never touched. A dress a might bit overfitted for sleeping.

The swift timbre of a voice you only remember from your dreams.

The blur of eyes that are not your own.

It might’ve been a blessing to be nearly blind, if Lily hadn’t wanted to understand.

It was still nothing to let go, when her body pulled her back.

Whoever she was when she dreamed at night, was beautiful.

But Lily knew full well what dreams were made of. Lies and memories.

Lily Prince was halfway up from her own bed, when she wrote it down, the nothing in a stranger’s head she’d experienced halfway lucid in a dream all her own.

So excited she was, from her dream, she’d forgotten to look at the clock.

2:15? When she finally looked over, the flurry and excitement of her journaling had waned into a wakeful calm. She decided to cut her losses and call it an early day.

Making coffee, starting her car, going to work, going home.

The little things that made a quiet life, flew by in the form of a robotic compliance to custom. There was little thought in her world, and while for others it felt mindless, her days weren’t often worth even that.

But then there were the pills.

And sleep.

And really, it was the only reason she worked at this point. Selling her hours for her dreams. In a literal way that most would be at least a little apprehensive about.

Especially considering the side effects.

Lily didn’t live in luxury, but this did nothing to distance her from the indulgence. Slipping one by with whatever she was drinking, it’d been a split second when she’d forgotten what night felt like, and lucid dreams held favor in her mind.

Her stomach lurched, as she saw what she’d hit.

Please don’t let it be a person. But it was.

“It’s alright sweetheart, she’ll wake up later.” went a soft voice beside her, from a side glance, Lily saw a bespeckled face. 

She didn’t even feel sick. As her body pulled her back.

Lily was very sure of where she’d been when she fell into it. When her car hit something. 

But there she was, in her bed.

Had Lily forgotten every last step between the road from work to her house? Was she really that far gone? Had her mind traumatized her just to force her back into her body?

She walked outside to look at the sky. What had she expected to see?

The world realigned, and she hid her pills. She didn’t need to get lost again. And soon she was better, her experimentation with them had ended.

It wasn’t like she didn’t know where they were. If she wanted them.

Weeks went by, and the fog that she so enjoyed from the pills had left her. She’d expected a brighter world to reveal itself, for that fog to be a consequence of her less than healthy habit.

But as her body kept functioning, moving away from that of a body under the influence of strange substances, she started to recognize the vacant nature of her life.

Lily had taken to the notion that she’d always known this, having been aware for much longer than she'd been willing to admit.

One would think it sensible to obtain a hobby, or some other such nonsense, but so little of her life could be hers along with her other expenses.

It didn't take long to find her answer. To find her pills.

She dreamed as she wished that night, with little regard for her journal, or her work, they hadn't seen a difference. With the fog.

Beauty had a name in the body she'd woken up in, scratched out in her mind though it was.

She managed to find her glasses, something she knew the body needed.

And she saw it. 

The other woman in the car.

Lily hadn't known the face before, but she knew she'd been in here before.

In the body of the woman in the mirror.

If she'd known that all it would take to learn was a little time off her pills she would have - she didn't know what she would've done.

She wouldn’t have wasted the effort, she would’ve gotten impatient.

It was better that she tried to get away.

She felt the woman fall as her body pulled at her, Lily was back in her bed. Lily wanted to hold onto her dream, but it was a little much to write down with a late start.

She went to work as always. It was early, and the fog of her drive was taking over.

Lily saw a flash, in the blatant gray of morning, inch for inch, a repetition.

But she was awake this time.

“Don’t you remember? She’ll wake up later!” Pamela said to her, Lily knew her name without even looking fully.

Pamela.

Pamela was almost biblical with age, as a name at least, being invented in the 16th century by an over-posh Courtier. Though even as it became dated, it never quite lost its youthful associations.

The bespeckled woman. In an overfitted dress. With an umbrella.

She wanted to cuss, she wanted to scream, how could her mind do this to her again, “I just ran somebody-”

“Kani Pascal.” Pamela interrupted.

“What?”

“Kani Pascal.” she repeated. As if to clarify.

“-Kani Pascal?” Lily questioned back, the discussion going nowhere. “I recognize the last name, but not.”

“Pass over rabbit?” Pamela said, leading.

“No.” 

“Yes.” 

“The easter bunny?” her eyes glazed over, realizing belatedly that her subconscious wasn’t worth looking at. Lily got out of her car to assess the damages, though being in her head, in her dream, precluded the action from being relevant. 

“Aren’t you gonna look up?”

“why?”

“Don’t you wanna see the sky of your dreams?

She turned her head to see the starry sky, she was farther out than was altogether expected. “Well, I’ll be. It’s just the moons, Pam.”