She is Mine

I watched, and I waited. For years I haunted the halls, waiting for the right one. Sometimes, I would think I was close, but inevitable disappointment followed, each and every time. But nobody mourns for a ghost. 

People came, and people went, but something was always missing. 

Until I saw her.

Oh, how she moved! Grace, elegance, poise. She didn’t know how beautiful she was. 

The first time she crossed my path, she was late. Rushing through these hallowed halls, books falling from her hands, dark hair tumbling around her shoulders. I couldn’t touch her, then. But he could. He reached out, took the books from her slender fingers and I wanted to hurt him. Hurt him. But I wasn’t as strong, then, and all I could do was watch. 

She didn’t notice the way he looked at her, but I did. He would have devoured her, left nothing but an empty shell of the girl she once was. But I wouldn’t let that happen, for she was mine. 

I followed her to class. She sat at the back, but even the lecturer noticed her. She made his pulse quicken, I could hear it. He cleared his throat and looked away, but I saw the impure thoughts cross his mind, his wife and mistress forgotten. No. He couldn’t have her. 

And so I practiced, with a renewed vigour I hadn’t felt in a century. Not since… No. I would not think of her.

I re-learned some of my lost skills; how to move things, nudge them, how to make mortals aware I was near, and, most importantly, I remembered how to infiltrate their dreams. But I held myself back, admiring my own resolve. I wouldn’t go into her dreams until I was ready. I could not afford to make a mistake, or make a move too soon. I would not risk losing her. 

And so I was patient. For months, I watched her. But what is months to someone like me? A mere snapshot of time. And how I relished her!

There were times, over this period, when she seemed to be getting close to other people. Other men. But once I had remembered how to plant little suggestions whilst they slept, they soon turned from her. She was lonely, of course, but she wouldn’t always be. One day we would be together and she would forget about her silly, petty, mortal life. 

I worked hard over those few months, pushing myself to a limit I had almost forgotten. It wasn’t easy. Influencing someone through their dreams may seem like something inconsequential, but it was draining. There were times I found myself fading to nothing, often for days at a time, but then I would reappear, not knowing where I had been, remembering only that it was dark, and cold, which was an odd feeling after not experiencing much in the way of sensation for the past four hundred years. But during this time, always, there was her; a shining beacon in the darkness. I couldn’t have altered my path even if I had wanted to. 

The night I slipped into her dreams for the first time was intoxicating. I slid inside like I was entering a warm bath, her thoughts and feelings washing over me like the tide. Oh, how I knew her! There was nothing, now, that she could do and I praised my cleverness that I had practiced first; she couldn’t reject me. She didn’t even know it was happening. 

I found her in a dream. For a while, I just watched her, feigning indifference as I leaned in a doorway. The way she moved, laughed, flicked her long, dark hair. When she saw me, she smiled. I had dressed for the occasion, and I looked good. 

“Hey…” She said, coyly. I looked around her dream. We were in a house, on a cliff, overlooking the sea. I wondered if this was somewhere she knew, a memory.

“Hey yourself,” I smiled, for I had listened, over the years. I knew how to talk in these newer days. She wouldn’t know I was from a different time, it wouldn’t cross her mind. 

She looked me up and down, more bold in her dreams than she was in her reality. I praised myself on my choice of clothing; a white linen shirt, open almost to the waist, jeans that hugged my legs. I’d styled my hair so that it looked like the boys she took the most notice of; it was longer than my preferred choice, but I was fashioning myself to be exactly the sort of man she would want. 

“I’m Chloe,” a half-smile, coy.

“I know.”

She blushed, prettily, and I yearned to reach out and touch her, but it was too soon. “You do?”

“I’ve been waiting. For you.”

She looked around. “Here?” She frowned. “Why would you be here?”

“Because you are here.” I crossed the floor and took her hand, raising it to my lips. I stroked the inside of her wrist, making her shiver. “And I want to be where you are.” 

She blushed again. How easy this was! I wish I had known these tricks when I had been alive. I would have been more noticed, I would have had a sweetheart, maybe even… No. I would not think of her!

“What’s your name, handsome stranger?” 

Again, so bold! I liked this version of her, she was sweet, yet alluring and it only hardened my convictions that she was meant entirely for me. 

“This is your dream,” I said as I released her hand. “My name can be anything you want to to be.”

“Hmm...” She thought, playfully. This side of her was also new. “It has to be something… traditional. You are a gentleman, after all.”

I smiled, knowingly, and bowed my head. Poor Chloe… there was nothing gentlemanly about me at all. 

“Albert?”

I wrinkled my nose and she laughed. 

“No, then. Theodore? Jasper?”

I took a step backwards and almost gave the game away. How had she guessed my true name?

But she hadn’t noticed my fumble. “Jasper, then. I like it, it suits you.” 

Oh, her smile could light a thousand rooms! I recovered myself quickly, without her realising something was amiss. I stepped closer, under the guise of introducing myself and offered my hand to her. “Pleased to meet you, Chloe. I’m Jasper.”

She laughed at the formality, yet grasped my hand, but then her dreamworld began to shimmer and lose its’ shape. She was waking up. 

She locked eyes with mine. “Tomorrow?” She asked, as she slipped from my grasp. 

“A hundred tomorrows,” I said as I smiled into her eyes. Got her. 

The next night, I found her in a park, with autumn leaves in reds and brown on the cold ground. She was wearing a hat and a scarf and I quickly changed my appearance to match. 

“Hi, Chloe.”

She looked up, surprised, but happy. “You again? I’ve dreamed you up twice?”

I smiled. “Lucky you.”

“Yes, I think I am lucky.” Again, she took in my appearance.

Who was this brave creature? I wanted more. “Would you like to walk with me?” I asked, taking on the persona of the gentleman she had met the night before. I offered her my arm and she took it, and we walked on in companionable silence. 

“Chloe?” 

“Mmm?”

I stopped and turned to look at her, not able to wait a moment longer. “Would it be incredibly forward of me to ask if I could kiss you?”

I was rewarded once again with a smile and a blush. “I guess, so… it’s only a dream, after all.”

Oh, I had planned this moment for so long! And here she was, face tilted upwards towards me, willing and eager. 

I placed my finger under her chin and paused, looking deep into her eyes. “Will you be mine, Chloe?”

“Yes, oh yes.” 

I let my hand slide along her cheek and into the hair on the back of her neck. I pulled her in towards me and I felt her yield, her lips soft on mine, and as I grazed her lip with the tip of my tongue, she moaned in pleasure. I praised myself for knowing what to do; in preparation for this very moment, I had watched a thousand, no, a million kisses. 

Too soon, her dream world shimmered and shattered and I was once again thrust out into the cold, harsh reality of the morning. But it did not matter, for she was mine and I could wait.

Every night, I visited, and every night she yielded, and our relationship grew, mentally, emotionally and physically. When morning came, she did not want to leave me, and so I planted the suggestion that she went to visit the medic, describe that she couldn’t sleep so that he would provide her with the necessary medications to keep her asleep for longer and longer. 

This part of my plan was easy. I had perfected it, over the years. The last time… No! I will not dwell on it!

Chloe began taking one pill, then another, then another, extending our together time by minutes and then hours. Eventually, she faded from the real world, rarely leaving her room and her bed. This was all exactly as I had planned, and as her friends forgot about her, and her lecturers presumed she had left the university, my hold on her grew firmer and firmer. When the day came that she had taken too many of the doctor’s sleeping pills that she took her final breath, I was there, waiting for her to cross. 

Mine.