Dream Journal

Cam silenced the alarm before it woke his wife and unlocked his phone.

New Note:

Dream Journal January 12

I flew again last night. Second time it’s ever happened. It felt so natural. Arms outstretched, I glided in parabolic waves down a forest path, brushing branches and narrowly missing roots. At the end of the path was a golden door, which I sailed through and it turned into a college dorm hallway, bright and sterile—

He frowned, trying to remember. The building was one of those new construction, must-justify-rising-tuition-costs dorms, but that probably wasn’t worth noting. For those trying to lucid dream, it’s more important to recall the events than the details.

I couldn’t fly in the dorm, so I walked down the hall which spilled into a multi-story atrium teeming with students. I didn’t have a room yet but needed to find one so I went upstairs where I knew my friends were waiting for me. Jen was there. I told them all about flying and tried to explain how it worked. No one seemed interested except Jen. At one point we made eye contact and all of a sudden everything faded away and we stood suspended in blackness, as though the universe had emptied of everything except for us. I said, hi, I haven’t seen you in while. She said, yeah, it’s been too long. I was really excited to see her even though I’m married now.

Annika shifted in the bed behind him and his shoulders clenched instinctively. Though the dream came unbidden, he couldn’t ignore the relish with which he recorded the experience from mere moments ago, nor the blood between his inner thighs, though he felt that most mornings.

…I said, “How are you doing?” She said “The same,” and all of a sudden we were back in the dorm room again. She turned away and I woke up.

The paragraph glowed inches from his face. Incriminating? He locked the phone and stared at the ceiling, rolling his eyes at himself. It’s normal to dream about an ex, though he could barely call her that. And it’s normal to be attracted to people, especially when you’re married. He rolled over and planted a penitent kiss on Annika’s forehead. She hummed in sleepy reply.

Dream Journal January 16

It was something like Thanksgiving and the old house on Spring Street was full of family friends and people from childhood. Also Jen was there again. She grabbed my hand and I felt in her touch that she wanted to be close to me. I tried to ignore that because we both had partners. I turned and she disappeared into the party. My friends and I got rowdy and squeezed into the upstairs bathroom. We were all taking a bath together, but we weren’t naked. Someone from high school pulled out a yearbook containing every moment from our theater days. He said, “Let’s look at Cam’s!” And I freaked out and grabbed the book and threw it. I can’t imagine what was in there that would bother me, but I didn’t want to find out. They kept teasing me, warmly, but I couldn’t take it. I pulled the drain stopper from the tub and ran from the bathroom. I ran out of the house and into the soft twilight of my old suburb. I started walking up the hill like I used to. There, I encountered a family of massive, snow-white tabby cats, four to five feet tall, with piercing blue eyes. I wanted to adopt them but they held themselves with such poise I knew they didn’t need me. My sister was there. She was mad at me for freaking out in the bathtub but now we were still, and we held these cats’ gaze as they walked steadily into the darkness.

He reread the dream after typing it out. A thread of shame, something about family, and… Jen again. She wasn’t the only recurring character in his dreams. He often ran into friends and family. But twice in a week? After not seeing her for six years? That’s a lot for a ghost from the past. He rubbed his eyes, casting about his subconscious.

His relationship was fine, it was good. Annika’s been getting home late, sure, spending long nights at the lab working on her dissertation. And he had to get up early for work. They were missing each other a lot these days. It was no one’s fault. He looked at her across the pillow. If he were good, he’d dream about the time they will spend together on Sunday, or a few months from now, when she finally finishes this PhD.

He swung his legs off the bed. “Hey…” Annika mumbled, lifting her head ever so slightly, lips pursed.

He kissed her obligingly. “Good morning, Anni.”

“Have a good day at work, baby,” she said, eyes still shut.

That night, he stayed up a little later than usual to read. He’d bought Freud’s The Interpretations of Dreams when he first got obsessed with dreaming a few weeks ago. He’d heard someone say, “Isn’t it crazy that we spend a third of our lives having insane hallucinations and then we all get up and pretend like it never happened?” He couldn’t stop thinking about it, and the dream journals began. That said, he wasn’t an avid reader, and the book mostly served as a glorified coaster for his phone.

Freud seemed to think that dreams were repressed wishes. Maybe. Cam’s eyes started slipping and he tucked himself into bed.

He was leaning over the guardrail of a scenic overlook. His sister and his parents were bickering about who was driving. Cam stared into the valley, where a river twinkled in sunlight. Enormous serpents, each as thick as a streetcar, swam languidly through the clear water. Monstrous, yet mellow, they dipped in and out of sight. They could probably swim through earth, if they wished to, and may yet burst through the asphalt behind them.

Someone—no one in particular—tugged on his arm and said, “Hey man, come on, there are too many snakes.” Cam followed him onto the cobblestone street and into the basement of a shop. Employees milled about, rearranging antiques into displays, like something between a dollhouse and a 19th-century IKEA. Someone had left the sheets messy on one of the four poster beds, so he went over to make it. He was fluffing the pillows when someone closed a door that wasn’t there before, and suddenly it was just the two of them.

“It’s sweet of you to make the bed for me,” she said. And he knew that voice without turning, as her hands reached around and slid up his beating chest.

“That’s funny,” he said, feeling dazed.

“What’s funny?” Jen said, and she was lying on the bed with him, fingers in his hair.

“I just didn’t expect to run into you at IKEA today,” Cam said, hoping he didn’t sound rude. Privately, he thought, I never thought I’d see you again, and definitely not here. Not like this.

Her face was big as a room, no, she was just very close to him. He was talking too much, so he closed his mouth. And her lips closed over his, and they whirled into the kiss they’d never had a chance to have. Mouths slid over mouths and he forgot he had a body until she whispered, “Please?” into his ear, and then it was all happening. And it was good, too good. He twitched and felt the sheets brush against his knees, but that sheet wasn’t in IKEA. It was another bed. His real bed.

And he realized—Wait, aw man.

“No!” Jen sounded upset. “Don’t go yet.” He didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t react, it was too late. “I wanted to fly with you,” he heard her say before consciousness pulled him inexorably back to reality.

He woke up, not daring to move a muscle, as though not participating in wakefulness would prolong the fantasy, now evaporating like mist under sunlight. When he was undeniably corporeal again, he rolled over to get his phone from the bedside table.

New Note:

Dream Journal January 17

…

The cursor blinked at him while he hesitated. Should he just say “sex dream?” Or should he recount how she’d cornered him, and he’d forgotten about his commitments and temperance, and how easily he’d surrendered to desire?

Big snakes in a river. When I turned around, I was in some Old World town. I went into the basement of a store, and found myself in some kind of bedroom…

Should he say that he liked it, had perhaps hoped for it?

An old crush came out of nowhere. Suddenly she was on top of me and we hooked up.

Was it cheating?

Then I woke up.

He reread the entry. It was short, but did he have to write everything? He closed the note. The apps on his home screen glowed invitingly. Without really thinking about it, he opened social media and pulled up Jen’s profile. They still followed each other after all these years. There she was, looking adorable with her adorable boyfriend. Was that an engagement ring? Doesn’t matter, he told himself. None of his business. He breathed in the reality check and got up to start his day.

The next few nights proceeded without incident. He’d gone out with Annika and a few friends over the weekend and hadn’t slept that well. He kept waking with memories that were little more than abstractions of places and feelings. Like how dreams normally are, he told himself.

Annika came home one night while he was propped up on a pillow reading Freud.

“How are your psychonautics coming along?” she asked, laughing.

“I actually had a pretty good run of remembering stuff last week,” he said, watching her take off her work clothes. “Did I tell you I flew?”

“Oh my god, no? How was it?”

“It was amazing.”

“Can you do it whenever you want now?”

“No, I didn’t even realize I was doing it when it was happening. Everything still just like, happens to me. But maybe I’ll get there.”

“What would you do in your dreams, if you could do anything?”

“Anything?” Cam held out a hand to her. She took it, laughing as she allowed him to pull her onto the bed with him. “I have some ideas…”

They made out for a minute, Annika propping herself up on an arm, leaning over him, hip sinking into the edge of the bed, one foot—he sensed—still on the floor. She pulled away.

“I’m sorry, Cam,” she said, looking genuinely so. “I’m so fried, I don’t think I can right now. But soon.”

“No worries, Anni,” he said, squeezing her hand. She gave him one more kiss before heading into the shower.

Cam put the book back on the bedside table and set his alarm for the morning. He tuned into the white noise of running water in the bathroom and drifted into sleep.

He was in an ascending elevator. He watched the city shrink as he went up, up, up to the top floor of the apartment building. With a ding, the elevator revealed a penthouse stretching before him with white floors and walls of glass. Across the room, the terrace doors were flung wide. There were no railings out there. White paving stones led to the edge and dropped off into open sky.

He stepped out, wary of the precipice.

She was waiting for him, sipping champagne on a daybed. She looked up as he approached.

“I got us an upgrade,” Jen said. “What do you think?”

Cam didn’t immediately reply. Something felt different. He looked back to the elevator, to the sky, to Jen. The moment stretched on. He looked at his hands. And back at Jen. She was smiling at him.

“Oh, you’re lucid. Welcome!” She spread her arms theatrically.

“What’s happening right now?” Cam asked. He was afraid to move for fear that he would break the spell.

“We’re hanging out,” Jen said. She too was holding still now, watching him. “It’s ok.”

“I’m not... sure it is,” Cam said slowly.

She patted the seat next to her and Cam took a step closer. And another. And he sat.

“I’ve never done this before,” he said, gesturing at the ground, still almost disbelieving. “I think I’m dreaming.”

“No,” she leaned towards him conspiratorially. “We’re dreaming.”

“What?”

“Yes. And we can do whatever we want here.” She put a hand on his thigh.

“Wait,” Cam got up and backed away. “No, we can’t.”

“Cam, yes, we can. This isn’t real!” She put down her glass and propelled herself into the air with a pirouette. “See?”

Cam watched her hover jealously, “Maybe you can do that, but I think I’m me right now.”

She lowered herself down, letting her hands fall on his shoulders and her toes gently atop his.

“And I love that you’re you,” she said, when he didn’t step away.

He savored the moment for a second, then shook his head. “No, I mean like, I’m married.” He took another step back.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “You don’t have to be married here! Remember how much fun we had?”

“What?”

“We could do that all the time.”

“Jen… this is weird.”

“You’re ruining it!” Jen looked put out. Then shrugged. “Come back when you’re done being a pussy.” And she shoved him, hard. Blue and grey lines streaked past him as he plummeted towards concrete that looked all too real. He needed to wake up—

And his eyes snapped open.

“What the fuck?”

He shook himself gently to release the tension from every muscle he’d braced for impact. He picked up his phone to check the time— 4:30 AM.

Since he was up, he may as well recount the nightmare.

He opened the Notes app and his phone vibrated with a text message from a familiar number:

“You were in my dream last night :)”