It was all just a dream.

Content Warning / Disclaimer:

This story contains references to emotional and physical abuse, trauma, and psychological manipulation. Reader discretion is advised.

It Was All Just a Dream

It was all just a dream.

That is what she tells the detective, the social worker, the news anchor with the sympathetic smile. She says it aloud because if it was not a dream, if it was real, then she has to remember every breath, every bruise, every moment she smiled at the monster and called him safe.

They told her the countryside would be good for her. Soft. Healing. A place where trauma thins in bright air. The foster car rumbled down a lane lined with birches and late‑blooming lupine, past a lake that shone like hammered silver. The house appeared next, three stories of sagging charm with windows flung open like invitations. Anna waited on the porch, palms dusted with soil. Mikael stood barefoot in the meadow behind the house, arms lifted as if he could net the sun. Honey‑bright hair, a smile warm enough to fold summer into the shape of a man.

“You must be Leni,” he called, his voice low and golden. “Welcome home.”

The word home landed in her chest like a bird with nowhere else to perch. She did not know yet that monsters wear halos in daylight.

Inside, the hallway smelled of rosemary and rising dough. No locks on the doors. No shouting. No footsteps to flinch from. Her attic room was a nest of beams and sunlight, jars of drying herbs lined like stained‑glass soldiers along the sill. That first night she lay awake cataloging sounds. The lake lapped the dock. Wind combed the eaves. Mikael’s laugh drifted up the stairwell. No one yelled her name. No belt snapped through air. She counted her breaths anyway. One. Two. Three. Survive.

Morning brought bread. Mikael kneaded dough at the kitchen table, forearms dusted with flour. “Hungry?” he asked, tearing off a piece still warm, steam coiling like ghosts. “Everyone has darkness,” he said while she chewed, “but yours does not make you unlovable.” The words struck like flint; she had never heard unlovable and not in the same sentence before. He asked about her poetry. She showed him a page, a single stanza about a girl made of smoke. He read it twice, lips moving, then tapped the margin. “You have the soul of a prophet,” he said, and she did not know what to do with the way that made her feel.

Anna was quieter. She spent hours stooped among rows of calendula and foxglove, humming songs Leni did not recognize. Sometimes she beckoned the girl to help, pressing packets of seeds into her palm, marigold, chamomile, yarrow. “Plants listen,” Anna whispered, as if sharing a secret. “They remember kindness.” Her hands were strong, nails caked with earth, wrists mottled with old bruises Leni pretended not to see.

The lake shimmered like a mirror too bright to touch. Mikael taught her to swim, cupping water in his palms to splash her gently, laughing when she sputtered. She had not laughed in months, but here it slipped out, light as a skipped stone. Afterward they sprawled on the dock, drying in the sun while dragonflies stitched blue thread through the air. Mikael told her stories, Norse myths, Celtic legends, tales of thin places where the living brush shoulders with the dead. “Midsummer is coming,” he murmured one evening. “The veil thins. Old things stir.” She shivered though the night was warm. Anna, on the porch, watched the lake with eyes that never quite met Mikael’s.

Midsummer Eve smelled of cut grass and woodsmoke. Mikael led Leni through seven fields, moonlight silvering the meadow grass. “Pick one flower from each field,” he instructed. “But do not speak until we are done.” They drifted in silence, gathering blue cornflower, white yarrow, red clover, golden buttercup, purple vetch, pink campion, and a single wild rose bruised by dew. He bound the stems with a ribbon the color of twilight. “Slip them under your pillow,” he said. “Your dream will show your true love.” Leni laughed. “And if I do not believe?” Mikael’s smile tilted. “Then it will not matter, will it?”

That night she dreamed of light. A field of white flowers, endless and trembling beneath a sun that never seemed to set. A hand reaching for hers, warm and sure. A voice like wind through reeds, whispering, You are safe. You are loved. She woke smiling. Mikael stood in the doorway, two mugs of tea steaming between his palms. “I saw you in my dream too,” he said. The tea tasted of chamomile and something sharper. She drank anyway.

Time loosened. Days slipped by, bright and indistinct. They baked bread, swam, read poetry aloud on the dock. Mikael called her prophet again, and the word settled deeper, like a seed. She began to believe she could stay, that her past was a coat she could shrug off and leave soaking on the shore.

Rain trapped them indoors one afternoon. Leni wandered the attic, fingers skimming dusty trunks, until a leather album fell open in her lap. A photograph. A girl, pale and smiling too wide, standing in this very room, seven wildflowers woven into a crown on her head. Anna appeared in the doorway, breath hitching. “That was before,” she whispered. “Before you.” She tried to take the album, but Leni held it tight. Anna’s hands trembled, her eyes darting to the stairs as if someone might be listening. That night, the dream changed.

Water everywhere. She floated beneath a sky of black glass, lungs burning, wrists bound by something that bit. No voice this time, only the slow tightening of a ribbon around her skin. She woke gasping. Bruises bloomed like ink bracelets on her wrist. Mikael stroked her back. “You must have slept wrong.” He made tea. He said she was safe. Yet her skin crawled beneath his touch. She began to count her breaths again. One. Two. Three. Survive.

Morning fog hung low over the lake. Anna cornered Leni by the herb shed, voice a brittle whisper. “Do not drink what he gives you,” she said. “Not after dark.” Her eyes flicked toward the house, toward Mikael’s silhouette framed in the kitchen window. “Promise me.” Leni nodded, but her heart thundered. She wondered what promises Anna once made and broke.

Midsummer Day arrived swaddled in endless sunlight. Villagers gathered on the lakeshore, weaving flower crowns, piling plates with fresh strawberries, and raising a maypole striped in red and white. Mikael’s hands lingered on Leni’s shoulders as he guided her through the dance. Music whirled; the world tilted. She felt light, almost dizzy, as if her feet barely touched the grass. At dusk, bonfires roared, sparks climbing the sky like fireflies. Mikael pressed a cup into her hand, sweet wine laced with herbs. Anna’s warning echoed, but the cup was warm, and Mikael’s eyes shone like molten gold. She drank.

Fire and water collided in her next dream. She stood on the lake, flames licking the surface without consuming it. The girl from the photograph floated beneath the ice, mouth open in a silent scream, crown of wildflowers drifting away. A hand broke the water, seizing Leni’s ankle, dragging her down. She clawed at the surface, but the lake sealed above her like glass. She woke choking, the taste of smoke in her throat. Mikael sat beside her, stroking her hair. “Bad dreams,” he murmured. “They are only dreams.” His fingers lingered too long. She pulled away.

Night fell again. She packed a small bag: notebook, toothbrush, the photograph. Downstairs, the clock chimed three. She edged past the kitchen. The kettle sat cold, but the air smelled of mint and something metallic. Front door, hand on the knob, click. Locked. Behind her, floorboards creaked.

“You do not understand,” Mikael said, voice soft as snowfall. “This is love. It is supposed to feel big. You came here broken. I am helping you heal.” He stepped closer. She bolted for the back door. It slammed before she reached it. The attic door yawned open like a mouth. He herded her up the stairs, gentle hands guiding until the latch snapped shut. Downstairs, a kettle began to whistle, soft music drifting upward as if nothing had shattered above.

No dream came in the dark that followed, only the weight of the house pressing into her lungs. She curled on the floor, counting breaths. Through the keyhole she heard Anna’s voice, low and urgent, then Mikael’s, calm and persuasive. A thud. Silence. Hours, or days, passed. She wrote on the floorboards with a splinter of wood. HELP. The word looked small, even to her.

Sirens sliced the dawn. Boots thundered on the stairs. The door burst open, and light flooded the room like water breaking a dam. Hands lifted her, wrapped her in blankets. Someone asked her name. She could not remember it. Mikael was nowhere. Anna lay on a stretcher, eyes open, lips cracked, whispering a lullaby to no one.

In the hospital, reporters swarmed. “Mikael?” they said. “No. He is a good man.” He smiled in photographs. He taught children. He baked bread. He said, Live now, you have much time to be dead. They printed his picture beside hers. They called her troubled, fragile, unreliable. They called him beloved teacher, local hero. She stared at her wrist, seven bruises blooming like flowers. And still, part of her missed him. That was the worst part.

She lives elsewhere now, in a town where no one knows her name. A studio apartment above a bakery; the smell of bread still makes her stomach twist. She does not write about dreams. She works mornings at the library, shelving books about plants and myths. She drinks black coffee and avoids mirrors. Yet sometimes, in the dark, she hears a voice. You are safe now. She cannot tell if it is kindness or memory. Or both.

Tonight she sits at a borrowed desk, notebook open, pen poised like a needle. She writes the sentence that has followed her from meadow to attic to hospital bed. It was all just a dream. She writes it again, slower, feeling each letter carve space in the page. Then she writes:

But what is the difference between dreams and reality

when both can drown you?

She closes the notebook. Outside, a single firefly blinks against the window, light in the dark, brief and stubborn. She watches until it disappears, then turns off the lamp. The room settles. Somewhere inside her, a door clicks open. She counts her breaths. One. Two. Three. And for the first time in months, she sleeps without dreaming.