The Deal I Can Never Take Back

I snap awake, claustrophobia choking the air from my lungs. The blackness fades from my eyes, and I see the outline of my room. Cold, damp, but comfortable. I’m home, I’m not trapped in a coffin, six feet under, like in my last dream. I’m safe. 

The dreams have been getting much stranger lately. Visions of death and pain rattle my mind through every sleeping second. The meditation my therapist offered isn’t doing anything for the bags under my eyes or the feeling in my chest that I may die at any second. I feel like I’m falling. Falling through a deep hole and into the pit consuming my dreams.

Maybe it would help if I didn’t live alone. I tried living with my family, but the screaming in the night drove them away. I don’t blame them, I can’t bear to hear the recordings they took to show the doctors. 

I throw the blanket off my legs, drenched in sweat. The room is freezing, but my shirt sticks to my slick back and chest like a life preserver. I keep the temperature at fifty degrees during the night because of this, but I wake up drenched in sweat without fail. 

A sound from outside my bedroom window swivels my head. My heart is already beating from the leftover fear of the dream, but my mind can’t help but jump to the worst possible scenarios. 

There’s a murderer out there, knife poised, ready to strike me the second I open the window to investigate. Or maybe a rabid wolf; they’re common in this part of the woods, but I’ve gotten good at avoiding them. What if it’s--

Another noise breaks the painful silence. I need to calm down. It’s probably just a deer or something small, shifting rocks as it runs through my garden. 

But the noise is very distinctly footsteps on gravel. 

I can’t move. My knees are glued to the corner of my creaky mattress, and my feet are hovering over the floor. Just jump down. Jump down. I will them to move, for my heart to stop threatening to beat out of my chest, but nothing. No movement, no sound, no rest. 

I can’t remember the last time my heart calmed for more than a few minutes. 

Something carries me off the bed, and I land hard on my knees. A shooting pain rushes through my legs. I convince myself for a moment that I can’t stand. That this is the definite end for me, but something more powerful takes over, and I find myself across the room, reaching for the baseball bat I keep by my door. 

I creep towards the front door, the breeze blowing trepidation further through my soul. I can’t breathe, but my hand is reaching for the doorknob. I want to close my eyes, but I can’t. Surely, there will be another person there, a devilish grin twisted upwards as I prepare for death. 

But there’s no one on my front step. 

My legs carry me out the door and to the yard, the window by my room, and to the wood shelter. Nothing. No one. Did I imagine the noise? I must have. I feel as if I’ve been doing that more and more nowadays. 

I breathe a sigh of relief and lower the bat, I’m just about to turn around when a hand lowers on my shoulder and I swing the bat blindly, feeling a resounding crack as I make contact with something hard. I hear a cry, but my eyes are still shut tight, swinging and swinging for my life. 

“Give me that!” A familiar voice snatches the bat from my hands and throws it across the yard. I can hear it slip into the pile of wood I had been chopping last week. 

I spin and open my eyes, terrified to see the one person I prayed I would never see again. 

He is tall and lanky, but carries the strut of a much stronger man. He has a gold pocket-chain curling at his side and shoes that look perfectly shined, despite the deep forest you need to travel through to get to my sanctuary. 

But he is no ordinary traveler, because I had seen him many times throughout my life. Sometimes as a friend, and sometimes as an enemy. 

“What a fantastic greeting that was,” The man says, touching his nose lightly. It appears crooked and red, already starting to swell. He touches it once more before snapping his fingers. It snaps back into place instantly, never a hint of any trouble. 

“Oh, it’s you.” I grumble quietly. I’m angry to see him, and he knows it. But it means that everything around me isn’t safe anymore, and my anger is just a mask for a deeper one. 

“Isn’t it always?” He gives me a strange look and a little chuckle before looking around the small cove in the forest that houses my small cottage. “A bit different than the last one, isn’t it?” 

“It’s impossible to know what’s real.” I snap at him. “If you had the ability to change your house on a whim, I’m sure you would take it.” He looks at me with happiness in his eyes, as if he’s a proud teacher and I’m his protege. 

“Why are you here?” I sigh and slump against a jagged stump. 

“That’s not a very kind greeting for one of your oldest friends.” The man’s smile grows as he takes a seat on a stump opposite mine. 

“I wouldn’t call us friends.” I glare at him. “I wouldn’t even say we’re associates.” A flash of anger strips the kindness from the man’s eyes for just a second. He clears his throat and laughs loudly, the sudden sound sending birds screaming from the trees around us. 

“Even after all this time, you don’t trust me? I’m hurt.” He fakes a pained expression and places a hand over his chest dramatically. My heart burns with anger and fear, but I choke it down and mutter, “I don’t know what’s going on anymore. I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not!” 

“But seeing me here reminds you of the freedom I’ve given you,” The man says. 

“Ha! Freedom! Is that what you’re calling it?” I stand from the stump and stare down at him. It’s nice to be on a level playing field for once; usually he is much taller than me. 

“I would say giving you ultimate control of your dream world isn’t a bad thing.” The man sniffs. 

“You thought that I wouldn’t make it exactly like the waking world?” I cry, throwing my hands haphazardly into the empty space around me. “I can’t tell what’s real and what’s a dream anymore!” 

“That is your fault.” 

“You didn’t see this? I thought you were all knowing.” 

“I thought you knew what you were getting yourself into.” The man grins evilly at me, before the world spins around me. I’m thrown off balance, my back landing hard against the ground where the stump had just been. 

When I stand up again, the ground underneath my feet has changed from mossy and woodland to stiff, cold stone. The man is still in front of me, unchanged. 

“Where are we now?” I grumble, staring around the large stone room. A banquet hall? A castle?

“I guess you’ll find out soon!” The man chuckles. I fall backwards, my eyes shutting and sending me into darkness. 

I snap awake, claustrophobia choking the air from my lungs. My room is dark, and the sounds of the city, awake at dawn, bustle around my small apartment. 

My dreams are getting weirder and weirder these days. My psychologist says it’s related to some sort of trauma or PTSD, but I’m not sure. It links with my insomnia, sometimes. But I just want them to go away. 

I hear a knock on my front door, and my eyes snap to the clock. 12 PM already? I was supposed to meet Nancy for brunch an hour ago. It must be her at my door, checking in and making sure that everything is okay. 

I sigh and stumble through the darkness to the door. I open it, expecting to see Nancy’s angry grin and arms cross tightly over her chest like a straightjacket. Instead, a tall, lanky man leers down at me. 

“Are you serious?!” I cry angrily, stepping back into the house to allow him entry. “I’m still in the dream world?” 

“Of course.” The man’s smile grows bigger. I scoff at him, offering him the cup of tea that appeared on my counter. I take a sip from the one next to it. 

“How much longer do I need to go through this?” I ask quietly. He sips his tea loudly, attempting to make me angry and succeeding. 

“How powerful are you?” He asks finally. 

“How… what?” I’m taken aback. Of all the questions he could have asked, that was not one that I expected. 

“How powerful are you?” His tone has changed now, and he’s looking at me with a different pair of eyes. He’s more inquisitive than I’ve ever seen him before. He looks intently at me, his shoulders square and gaze set on my soul. 

“I… I don’t know?” I say nervously. The way he’s looking at me is uncomfortable, like I’m a prize he’s waiting to capture on his shelf. 

“I need to know. Because the stronger you are, the easier it will be for you to get back to reality.” 

“Then I’m strong.” I promise. But inside, I know I’m not. I don’t have faith in myself, and if I was put to a test, of any variety, I would fail. 

“Hm.” Is all he says. I can’t tell if it’s disapproving or not. I open my mouth to speak, but the room starts to spin again and everything dissolves into darkness.

I snap awake, claustrophobia choking the air from my lungs. Oh, thank God. This room is the most familiar of them all. I’m finally, finally awake. These dreams are really getting out of hand. Maybe I should talk to the HR rep at work about the therapist she’s always raving about. I sigh, smack my screaming alarm clock, and prepare for another day of high school. 

I’m slightly shaky, just as I always am after these sorts of dreams. They always feel so real and strange, so upsetting. I can never remember them fully, but when they appear to me, I recognize them immediately. The man, whose face remains a mystery to me while I’m awake, only does his dirty work while I’m asleep. 

“Are you okay?” My friends chorus throughout the day. I probably look pale and drained, just like I always do after the dreams. I respond with as peppy an answer as I can muster, because as long as I’m not dreaming, I’m fine. I’m safe. 

After a long day of zoning out and recounting the dream with an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach, I finally hit eighth period. The class laughs and talks loudly and drowns out the substitute teacher’s attempts to wrangle thirty teenagers. 

Finally, people start to quiet down and I look up from my sketchbook to see the substitute teacher. 

Tall. Lanky. I know him. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yell, standing up from my desk. The teacher looks back at me with amusement in his eyes. 

“Are you strong enough?” He asks, before I tear from the room. 

I snap awake, claustrophobia choking the air from my lungs. I’m now a lawyer. Then a doctor. Then a deep sea diver. Then a small child. Then a million other things, in a million other lives. Each one feels more real than the last, more blurred in every way a dream can be. 

I begin my next dream on a train. I can feel the nauseating pain of being torn apart, atom by atom, singing through my body. I’ve never felt this way after a dream. But this time, I can feel it in the back of my mind. The sound of a tiny bird, whispering to me. Reminding me that everything that I’m seeing isn’t really there, it’s just my imagination ruining me. 

I see the man, a fellow passenger on the train. He smiles and waves cordially, pointing to his watch and daring me with his eyes. What he’s asking, I have no idea. But it ignites something inside me. This is going to be the final dream. I am strong enough. 

But how do I show that I’m powerful?

As if on cue, a scream comes from the front of the train. A man sprints into our car, smoke following him closely after. He coughs and sputters, his eyes finding each face in the car and resting on mine. 

“A fire,” he coughs, “in the locomotive, up front. The other conductor didn’t get out in time.” 

A sickened feeling rushed through my body like a flood. I hate fire, I always have. This must be the test to see if I’m powerful enough. 

Without a second thought, I sprint past the choking conductor and through the smoke. At first, I don’t feel anything. I hope maybe that comes with being powerful. But after a few seconds, my eyes start to bleed tears and my lungs collapse with smoke. I remember what they told us back in elementary school, and fall to the ground. I even pull my shirt up over my mouth and nose for good measure. 

I can hear the faint coughing of a man in the back of the locomotive, and wriggle across the hot floor to find him. I feel around, calling out timidly for the man, but hearing only coughing in reply. I find him hunched over in his seat, his hand resting against the emergency brake. At least the train was going to be stopping in a timely matter. 

I try to lift the man from the chair, but he’s heavier than I anticipated. I pull and pull, finally getting him to the ground. There’s no way I’ll be able to stay on the floor and push him forward. I’ll have to stand in the middle of the smoke and tug him to safety. 

I do just that, straining each muscle until I can hear the screams in my head. Everything hurts, and my lungs twist on themselves, threatening to collapse if the pain grows any more. I can see the light of flashlights, people attempting to clear the smoke and find us. 

I try to call out, but my throat is swollen shut. I can’t breathe, can’t see. My eyes are watering so much that my tears could single handedly put out the fire. I try to fight the rising panic of death in my chest, fight the feeling of breathlessness and numb limbs. 

The light is so close. I can hear the voices as if they were right next to me. I drag the conductor’s limp body just a few more feet and finally my lungs find fresh air. I collapse against the ground, the cool metal soothing my cheek. I breathe in as deeply as I can, coughing as the air fills my lungs too fast. The man crouches in front of my slowly receding vision, nodding and smiling as I drift into the blackness. 

I snap awake, claustrophobia choking the air from my lungs.