Where the Dream Ends

I. Ink and Echoes

Mira woke to the feeling of ink drying on her fingers. The sensation lingered, sticky and oddly warm, as though she'd dipped her hand in the memory of a thought not yet formed. She sat up slowly, brushing sleep from her eyes, and glanced down. Black stains spidered across her palm, fading into the creases like a whispered secret. Her fingers trembled. She hadn't written anything, had she? No journal entry, no note, no sketch. The notebook beside her bed lay closed, the pen still capped. A dream, she thought. Just a dream. But then she saw the torn page on her nightstand. It was yellowed and soft around the edges, as though aged by decades of use. A corner was missing. The words--written in her own handwriting--read: "He is waiting in the greenhouse. Don't forget again." Mira didn't own a greenhouse. Or know a "he." Her breath caught in her chest. She closed the notebook, tucked the page inside, and forced herself to stand. Just a dream. Probably a prank she'd played on herself. Sleepwalking, maybe. Or late-night journaling she'd forgotten. She went about her morning. Coffee. Toast. The silence of a small apartment with no clocks ticking. But every time she looked at her hand, the faint trace of ink was still there. And in her mind, the greenhouse waited.

II. The Café That Never Happened

Three days later, her coworker mentioned their conversation at the café. "Thanks for the advice," Josh said, stirring cream into his coffee. "It really helped." Mira blinked. "What advice?" Josh laughed. "At Bean & Vine? Monday? You told me not to call her until I'd figured out what I really wanted." She stared at him. "Josh, I haven't seen you outside of work in over a week." His smile faltered. "You were wearing that green coat. The one with the patches. We talked for almost an hour. You even drew something in my notebook--one of your weird little symbols." Mira swallowed hard. The dream. She remembered the coat, the symbol, the café. But none of it had happened. Not really. Not while she was awake. That night, she opened the notebook and began writing down everything she could remember from her dreams. Symbols. Names. Locations. Half-formed feelings that clung like mist. In one dream, she stood at the entrance to a crumbling greenhouse. In another, someone was knocking from inside her mirror. She wrote until her hand cramped, and still she couldn't tell what was real.

III. Testing Reality

She began testing reality. Each morning, Mira checked the ink on her fingers. She placed objects in odd places before bed--a spoon in the freezer, a book in the bathroom cabinet--just to see if her dream-self would notice or move them. Sometimes they were untouched. Other times, rearranged. She started recording videos of herself sleeping. The footage showed nothing unusual--tossing, turning, mumbling--but once, just once, she sat up, eyes wide open, and whispered: "Not yet." The next day, she couldn't remember what "yet" was meant to be. She avoided mirrors. Her reflection seemed... delayed. Like it hesitated, just for a blink, before catching up. At work, she felt dissociated, like she was puppeteering her own body from far away. Josh stopped asking questions. Her supervisor recommended vacation time. Mira nodded but never filed the paperwork. That night, she stood in the hallway of her apartment staring at her front door, convinced it would open. That someone would walk through who shouldn't exist. She stood there until sunrise. --- IV. The Greenhouse Within She made an appointment with a therapist. Dr. Rhodes was gentle, clinical, and curious. "You're describing dream intrusions," he said. "It's not unheard of. The brain can blur lines when under stress or trauma. Do you have any history of dissociation? Sleep disorders?" "I don't know," Mira said. "I think... maybe something happened. Something I forgot." He asked about her childhood. Her parents. Her memory of specific places. When she mentioned the greenhouse, his eyebrows lifted. "You've been there before?" "I don't think so. But it's always in my dreams. It's falling apart. Overgrown. There's something inside I'm supposed to find. But I never get through the door." Dr. Rhodes leaned forward. "What do you think is inside?" Mira's eyes filled with tears. "Me." He scribbled something down. She watched the pen, wondering if it would leak ink into his hand, too.

V. The Man at the Door

That night, Mira dreamed of the greenhouse again--but this time, she wasn't standing outside it. She was inside, barefoot, her toes sinking into soft, damp moss. The air shimmered with the scent of lilies and mildew, a sweetness wrapped in decay. Light filtered through the broken glass above, illuminating dust motes that moved like thought. In the center of the space stood a mirror, fogged over, tall and freestanding. Her own face blinked back at her--or so she thought--until it tilted its head the wrong way. Mira gasped, stumbling backward, tripping over a root. She woke on her bedroom floor, her feet wet, soil under her nails. The rug was damp. Her feet were dirty. And she could still smell the lilies. The spiral had begun. Three nights later, she woke not in her bed but in the hallway. The door was open. Outside, on the welcome mat, stood a man. He looked exactly like the man in her dreams. Tall, with a coat the color of ash and a face that seemed constantly shifting at the edges, like her brain refused to hold it in place. He said nothing. "Who are you?" she whispered. "You know me," he replied. Her hands trembled. "You're not real." He stepped forward. The door shut behind him without a sound. "And yet, here I am." Mira backed away, heart hammering, until her shoulder hit the mirror hanging in the hallway. She glanced at it--her reflection was gone. The man reached into his coat and pulled out the torn page--the same one from her nightstand. "You were supposed to remember," he said. "We were supposed to meet." "Why? What is this? What do you want from me?" He offered her the page, and she saw new words scribbled beneath her old message: "It's time to open the door." A flash of memory struck her like lightning--a child, standing in the ruins of a greenhouse, watching as the glass shattered and vines swallowed a broken shape on the ground. Her mother's voice calling her name. A scream she had forgotten how to make. Mira fell to her knees. The man knelt beside her. His face solidified--familiar now. Her father. "You locked it all away to survive," he said gently. "But the dreams were never dreams. They were the way back." She looked up at him, tears streaking her face. And behind her, the hallway was gone. The greenhouse surrounded them.

VI. Beginning Again

Mira stood slowly, her legs shaky beneath her. The moss clung to her toes like memory, soft and reluctant to let go. The glass walls shimmered in and out of focus, as though the place itself questioned its existence. Her father--no longer blurred at the edges--watched her silently. Not judging. Not pushing. Just waiting. She stepped forward and reached out to the mirror. Her fingers left no smudge, no warmth. But she could see her reflection again--this time, whole. A child and an adult coexisting, one behind the eyes of the other. "You can't change what happened," he said. "I know," she whispered. "But I can stop pretending it didn't." The greenhouse trembled. The vines writhed, curling back from the broken glass, revealing sunlight. Real light. A door opened behind her--not a dream-door, but solid, wooden, weathered by time. She turned toward it. "Will I wake up?" she asked. "You're already awake." Her breath caught--soft, steady, certain. She walked through the door. --- Mira came to in her bed. It was morning. No ink. No dirt. No torn page. The notebook sat where she'd left it. The pen was uncapped. She flipped through the pages. Everything she had written was still there--symbols, fragments, notes--but they no longer frightened her. They were echoes, not prophecies. She stood, opened the window, and let the air in. For the first time in weeks, the world didn't tilt or bend. Her reflection met her gaze evenly. The silence of the apartment was no longer ominous--it was hers. She still dreamed. She still wandered the greenhouse sometimes, walked among ghosts and memories. But she always found her way back. Because now, Mira knew where the dream ended. And where she began.