Don’t Wake the Dreamer
by KM Dailey
He wasn’t even speaking real words.
It struck Monica far too late into the lecture. Her professor—why couldn’t she remember his name?—wasn’t speaking English.
It sounded like English. But it sounded the way English might sound to someone who didn’t speak the language. Vowels and consonants in an American accent that simply didn’t fit together into intelligible words. She squinted at the blackboard. It was covered with squiggles and markings that weren’t words, weren’t even letters.
She twisted in her seat, glancing around the dim sepia lecture hall. A girl with shadows under her eyes in the seat beside Monica scribbled frantic notes on a yellow pad; a frizzy-haired boy in the front row sat on the edge of his chair; a bulky boy across the room slumped with his arm across the folding desktop. All kept their eyes on the professor, taking in every nonword he spoke.
Monica squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. She needed to cut back on the . . . she blinked. What had she been doing before she came to class? Or the night before? Or for the rest of her life?
Realization swept over her like a cold ocean wave. This was a dream. It had to be. She dug her fingernails hard into her wrist.
She bit her tongue to keep from crying aloud. It couldn’t be a dream if she could feel pain, could it?
The door to the lecture hall slammed open, and a midheight boy with sandy tousled hair and intensity in his bright hazel eyes raced into the room, dropping a trail of notebooks and pencils behind him as he went. It wasn’t until he looked down and froze in place that Monica realized he was wearing no pants, only purple-spotted boxers.
“How nice of you to join us, Quin.” The professor nodded to the scarlet-faced boy.
The classroom erupted into laughter, but Monica couldn’t even bring herself to smile as Quin passed by her row and took the seat behind her. Those were the professor’s first real words today, and he had only spoken them when Quin had entered the room.
Quin ran late for a class that didn’t seem to quite function until he arrived. Quin had forgotten his pants for no reason and had failed to notice until everyone else did. It was all too familiar. And then there was Monica, unable to remember anything, unsure whether she had even existed before this moment in time.
Her eyes slowly scanned the room one last time, a full 360 sweep. The farther she looked from Quin, the blurrier the room was. She looked down at herself, her gray shirt and blue jeans—out of focus like the rest of the room. Back at Quin—crystal clear.
She buried her head in her notebook, gripping her pencil until her knuckles were white. It made no sense, but still there was no mistaking it.
This was a dream, but Monica wasn’t the dreamer.
* * *
The remainder of the lecture made much more sense than the first half, the professor droning on about international politics and exam dates, not that she was paying attention. Monica’s brain was fully awake and alert, but it spun out of control.
She’d never met Quin before in real life, if she even had a real life. Maybe she was a copy of a classmate he had once seen in a lecture hall, or maybe she was a friend of his. Just as likely, she wasn’t someone he knew, just a consequence of the neuronal firings of REM sleep.
But if that was all she was, how could she be aware, conscious? Or was this all an illusion? No—that didn’t make sense. If she wasn’t aware, she couldn’t be experiencing the illusion.
A harsh ringing pierced the air. Monica jumped. The hall filled with the sounds of papers shuffling and zippers buzzing, and students filed toward the door of the classroom, their eyes at half-mast, some idly chattering among themselves. Monica couldn’t prove she wasn’t the only character in this dream who was alive, but it seemed hard to believe any of them were.
At the back of the clamor of students stood Quin. She was happy to see that the dream, in its mysterious ambivalence, had provided him with pants. Perhaps his nightmare was drawing to a close.
If she was in a dream that was not her own, and the dreamer woke up, what would happen to her?
She shot up out of her chair and raced toward the door, following Quin at a distance of a few feet.
* * *
Monica shifted her weight from one foot to the other as Quin turned the combination dial on his bike lock.
The blue of the sky was darkening rapidly, and the stars gave off too much light, twinkling and glowing, growing and shrinking, some round and as large as the moon, others flat and five-pointed. A little less than half of the glowing orb of the sun had disappeared behind the trees on the mountains in the distance. The surreal beauty snatched her breath away even as she shifted from one foot to the other, sneaking as many glances at Quin as she could without drawing suspicion.
What was he doing? He had turned that combination lock at least five times. It was as if he had forgotten his combination . . .
Oh, right. Dream.
He would notice, any minute now. He would notice the lock was acting strange, notice that the world was off, that the stars were too bright and the sky too dark for the time of day, that he was dreaming, and he would start to slip out of sleep as smoothly as he had slipped into it. The dream would end, and Monica . . .
She couldn’t let it happen. Wincing, she took a step closer to him, then another. She cleared her throat. “Um, Quin?”
He jumped up, and Monica’s heart skipped. Note to self—don’t startle the dreamer.
“I, um, I was wondering if you needed help.”
He blinked a couple of times and squinted at her. “Do I know you?”
She swallowed hard. “Ah, no, I—I’m Monica. I’m in your international studies class.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Her mind raced. “I was just, um, noticing you’re having a hard time with the lock.”
“Yeah.” He stood up and rubbed the back of his neck, his gaze aimed down at the lock. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with it. It’s almost as if . . .” His eyes lifted to the skies, and he stared.
Monica grabbed his arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Maybe I can help you.”
She knelt down beside the bike rack, feeling his eyes on the back of her head, and picked up the cold metal lock. She pulled on both sides, and to her surprise, it split in half lengthwise in her hands, each half of the bolt sporting a little metal hook.
She stood up and held it out to him. “Well, I got it.”
“What did you do to my lock?” He snatched half of the lock from her hands. “Get lost!” He swung his leg over his bike and rode away.
* * *
Monica stared for a long time at the broken lock in her hands. She didn’t have the power to control the happenings of this world, not even close. But it seemed she had the ability to manipulate some things. She’d been able to keep Quin in the dream for this long.
She couldn’t keep this up. He was bound to notice the strangeness of this world soon enough, bound to succumb to its unpredictable and impossible dangers sooner or later. But if her life depended on it, how could she do anything but try?
She had blown her chance, let him ride away. She tore her eyes away from the broken lock to look in the direction he had gone. He hadn’t ridden far. His bike swerved and tilted, stopping abruptly every few seconds, hitting sidewalks and narrowly missing cars and other riders.
There was still time. She shoved the broken lock into her pocket and ran down the sidewalk, feet slapping against the concrete, arms and legs pumping, keeping pace behind Quin. It wasn’t as difficult as it might have been, considering his lack of control over the bike. The cold air stung her lungs, and wind rushed past her ears.
Traffic was clearing, all of the other bikes and cars rushing by, many honking as they passed Quin. The road curved ahead. For a moment, Monica thought she had lost track of him. She stopped and stood on her tiptoes, biting her lip. At last she spotted him as he pulled himself up from the ground, and she sprinted to catch up to him.
His zigzagging path grew wilder as the road grew narrower. Monica’s sprint slowed to a light jog, then a walk, until she finally came to a stop and watched Quin struggle. She dared to take her eyes off him for a moment, glancing around herself. The road had descended into a mountain path, the sidewalk making way for a dirt path. Beside her, a steep cliffside stretched down a hundred, two hundred feet, the ground below barely visible.
Ignoring the twinge in her stomach, she glanced back up at Quin, whose bike was now traveling in short spurts in random directions. At this rate, he was going to send himself flying off the edge of the mountain.
Falling from a high place. Oh, no.
So that was how it was going to be.
She raced to meet Quin just in time to watch his bike go over the edge.
“Quin!” She knelt down and leaned out over the cliffside. The bike fell, growing smaller and smaller until it was only a tiny dot in the distance.
“M—Monica? Is that you?” Quin clung to a tree root with both hands, his legs dangling over the ravine. “I can’t—”
“Hang on!” Her arms and legs trembled as she lowered herself onto her stomach and slid up to the edge of the cliff, her arms reaching out toward Quin. She was still far from being able to reach him, but her muscles froze. She couldn’t bring herself any closer. Couldn’t risk her life to save someone she’d just met.
One of his hands slipped from the root.
Monica clenched her teeth and scooted closer, stretching her arms as far she could, most of her torso now hovering in the air. She wasn’t risking anything, not really. If he died, she would as well.
He grimaced and swung his arm up toward her hand, just grasping on before his other hand slipped from the tree root.
She felt herself start to slip, and a scream escaped her lips.
“No, no!” Quin pushed her back up, and the slipping stopped. She dared to open one eye—he had managed to lift up a foot and drive it into the dirt above the tree branch, and he was now climbing his way back onto the ledge.
She scooted backward and used one hand to grip onto the ledge, the other to help Quin lift himself up, until they both lay on the dirt, side by side, panting. Tears stung her eyes, but she could feel something else rising from within her, a bubble of sweet warmth. It erupted into hearty laughter, which Quin joined.
“Wow,” he said, pulling himself to a sitting position. “I don’t know what happened there—”
Monica stared up at him, lying on her back, her stomach heaving with laughter. “What is up with your bike?”
“I don’t want to know. Good riddance!” he called down the cliff. Dimples deepened in his cheeks, and he held out a hand, helping Monica to sit up and then to stand. “Monica, right?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“How can I thank you?”
Her words tripped over themselves. It must have seemed strange to him, a stranger risking her life to save his. Not strange enough to alert him to the dream, but enough to make her uncomfortable. She settled for a shy smile.
“Hey, I know this doesn’t come close to paying you back, you saved my life and everything, but . . . can I buy you a coffee?”
She couldn’t remember any times she had specifically accepted or turned down coffee, but she could imagine the taste of a mocha, and it tasted right. “Yeah,” she said. “Coffee sounds great.”
* * *
The stars shone like sparkling spotlights over the little outdoor table beside the coffee shop. Monica sipped mocha from a paper cup as Quin set down his chai tea on the table.
“So what are you studying?” Quin asked.
“Psychology. I’m hoping to become an occupational therapist, eventually.”
Quin blinked in surprise that mirrored Monica’s. The words had slipped out before she could think about them, as if she had known it, even if she couldn’t remember choosing that major. “Wow,” Quin said.
“Yeah.” Monica looked away and sipped her mocha.
“You’re brave, and you’re smart, and you care about other people. Is there anything you can’t do?”
Exist.
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