"Some dreams don't belong to you. They're places that remember you, even after you wake."
⸻
There was a time when I used to wake up dry-eyed and indifferent, the remnants of my dreams slipping through me like silk through water. Fleeting. Vague. They'd vanish in the span of a blink—like ghosts that had the courtesy to leave quietly.
But lately… the dreams do not fade.
They linger.
They stay in my lungs like secondhand smoke.
They wake me before dawn, gasping, clutching sheets twisted around my legs as if I had wrestled something in the dark that did not want to be found.
And worst of all—these dreams remember me.
⸻
It always begins the same way.
Rain, reversed.
The sky is a bruised color—deep, purplish, torn at the seams—and from the cracked earth, the rain rises. Drop by drop. Not falling, but ascending. As if gravity has surrendered. Or perhaps memory has demanded a refund on reality.
I'm standing barefoot in a field where time is not kept, but mourned.
The grass is waist-high and silver, not with frost, but with age. It shimmers like threads torn from a dying god's cloak. All around me are clocks. Hundreds—maybe thousands. Shattered. Melted. Bent into unnatural shapes. Not a single one moves. They don't tick. They don't count.
They remember.
Ahead, in the midst of this silver wilderness, is a house.
Plain. Unpainted. A structure made more of silence than wood. It has no windows. Just a door that recognizes me. One that never asks for permission, because it already knows what I've come to bury.
Every night, I enter.
And every night, she's there.
Elara.
Sitting at a wooden table beneath a bulb that does not flicker. Her hands are folded neatly in front of her. She does not move. She doesn't look at me.
She stares at the wall with the kind of patience only the forgotten possess.
And every night, she speaks the same sentence.
"You forgot how to hurt the right way."
Then—light. White. Immense. The kind that scrapes everything raw.
And I wake up—drenched, trembling, weeping like something inside me has died again for the first time.
⸻
But it's not the dream that destroys me.
It's the aftermath.
The weight it leaves behind. Like grief that didn't get a funeral.
I began drawing it. At first, intentionally. Trying to tether it to the physical world. The field. The clocks. The doorway. Her figure.
But then I started waking up to sketches I didn't remember drawing. Whole pages of charcoal and ink taped to the wall above my bed. Smudged lines like they'd been drawn with urgency. With desperation. By someone who didn't want to forget—but knew they would.
Once, I woke to find a detail I had never seen before.
In the corner of the field—a boy. Me.
Standing just outside the house.
And in his hand—a matchbook.
Not any matchbook.
The one from that diner we used to sneak into when we were seventeen. The one with sticky floors and cracked red vinyl seats. The one that burned down a year later on a night I can't remember and a date no one wants to.
⸻
I went back.
Not to the past. To the place.
The diner is gone now. What's left is just a scar on the city. Concrete paved over the ghost of a building. A parking lot with no lines, weeds threading through cracks like veins through broken skin.
But I remembered the layout.
I walked to where the kitchen would have been.
Then to the booth at the back—our booth. The one that buzzed with faulty wiring and always smelled faintly of cinnamon and something burnt.
And there, buried beneath a skin of ash and rust—
A matchbook.
Charred. Damp. Bent from time.
I picked it up like a piece of someone else's memory.
And when I opened it, smeared in ink I didn't recognize:
"Stop waking up before the truth."
⸻
That night, I took sleeping pills.
Not to forget. Not to die. But to stay.
Stay long enough.
Long enough to reach her again before the dream shattered.
⸻
The field was waiting.
Same silence. But this time, it leaned closer. Like it knew I wasn't there just to wander. Like I was finally asking the right questions.
The clocks seemed more broken than usual.
Some were split down the center.
Others had melted into the grass like they were trying to hide.
The house opened.
And Elara—Elara turned.
For the first time in all the dreams, she looked at me.
Really looked.
Her eyes weren't angry. They weren't afraid. They were full of something heavier than either.
History.
"You remember now," she said.
"I'm trying," I replied.
She stood.
Walked to a drawer I hadn't seen before. Pulled out a photograph.
It was old. Faded. Singed at the edges.
Two children.
Me. And her.
Standing in front of a gravestone.
The name had been scratched out. Torn so violently it was impossible to read.
I stared at it.
"This isn't possible," I said, my voice barely breath.
"You said we met at seventeen," I added. "You said the raincoat, the bus stop—"
She shook her head. Soft. Heavy.
"That was just the last time."
And then—everything cracked.
Like light hitting a mirror that had been holding itself together too long.
Sound broke. Time folded. And the dream collapsed like a star.
⸻
I woke screaming.
Hand to my chest.
The bed soaked with sweat. My throat raw.
And my palm—burning.
I looked down and saw blood. A thin, clean cut across my skin.
The photograph was gone.
Only the wound remained.
And the smell.
Ash.
⸻
I booked the earliest appointment with Dr. Felton.
I told him everything. The dream. The matchbook. The grave. The photograph.
He listened with his usual silence, but this time, it wasn't neutral. It was mourning something.
When I was done, he didn't ask questions.
Just leaned back and said, almost carefully:
"Aiden… what if Elara isn't a person?"
I didn't answer.
"She's not a delusion," he continued. "But what if she's a construct? A part of your mind that you gave shape to because it was the only way you knew how to carry it."
"You mean I made her up?"
He hesitated.
"No. You gave her a name. A face. A raincoat. Because you needed the ache to have a voice."
I looked away. My body felt small. Like I was shrinking inside myself.
"Then what is she?" I whispered.
He exhaled. "She's you. Or rather… she's the part of you that remembers. The part that didn't survive the forgetting."
⸻
I didn't cry.
Not there.
But I knew.
Even before he said it.
Elara had always been the part of me that felt too much.
The part I abandoned when the pain got too loud.
The part that grieved honestly. Who didn't flinch from memory.
The part that loved even when love meant bleeding.
I had needed her to be someone else.
Because calling her me would've meant admitting what I lost.
And worse—what I chose to lose.
⸻
That night, I opened my sketchbook.
A new page waited.
I hadn't drawn it.
I was certain of that.
It showed me asleep.
Peaceful.
And Elara, standing at the edge of the bed.
Her fingers pressed softly to my chest.
Placing something beneath my skin.
A key.
Beneath it, in clean, handwritten ink:
"You already unlocked it.
That's why it hurts again."
And this time…
I didn't close the book.
I let it stay open beside me.
Like a door I was finally willing to walk through.
Chapter 6: Dreams That Remember Me
"Some dreams don't belong to you. They're places that remember you, even after you wake."
⸻
There was a time when I used to wake up dry-eyed and indifferent, the remnants of my dreams slipping through me like silk through water. Fleeting. Vague. They'd vanish in the span of a blink—like ghosts that had the courtesy to leave quietly.
But lately… the dreams do not fade.
They linger.
They stay in my lungs like secondhand smoke.
They wake me before dawn, gasping, clutching sheets twisted around my legs as if I had wrestled something in the dark that did not want to be found.
And worst of all—these dreams remember me.
⸻
It always begins the same way.
Rain, reversed.
The sky is a bruised color—deep, purplish, torn at the seams—and from the cracked earth, the rain rises. Drop by drop. Not falling, but ascending. As if gravity has surrendered. Or perhaps memory has demanded a refund on reality.
I'm standing barefoot in a field where time is not kept, but mourned.
The grass is waist-high and silver, not with frost, but with age. It shimmers like threads torn from a dying god's cloak. All around me are clocks. Hundreds—maybe thousands. Shattered. Melted. Bent into unnatural shapes. Not a single one moves. They don't tick. They don't count.
They remember.
Ahead, in the midst of this silver wilderness, is a house.
Plain. Unpainted. A structure made more of silence than wood. It has no windows. Just a door that recognizes me. One that never asks for permission, because it already knows what I've come to bury.
Every night, I enter.
And every night, she's there.
Elara.
Sitting at a wooden table beneath a bulb that does not flicker. Her hands are folded neatly in front of her. She does not move. She doesn't look at me.
She stares at the wall with the kind of patience only the forgotten possess.
And every night, she speaks the same sentence.
"You forgot how to hurt the right way."
Then—light. White. Immense. The kind that scrapes everything raw.
And I wake up—drenched, trembling, weeping like something inside me has died again for the first time.
⸻
But it's not the dream that destroys me.
It's the aftermath.
The weight it leaves behind. Like grief that didn't get a funeral.
I began drawing it. At first, intentionally. Trying to tether it to the physical world. The field. The clocks. The doorway. Her figure.
But then I started waking up to sketches I didn't remember drawing. Whole pages of charcoal and ink taped to the wall above my bed. Smudged lines like they'd been drawn with urgency. With desperation. By someone who didn't want to forget—but knew they would.
Once, I woke to find a detail I had never seen before.
In the corner of the field—a boy. Me.
Standing just outside the house.
And in his hand—a matchbook.
Not any matchbook.
The one from that diner we used to sneak into when we were seventeen. The one with sticky floors and cracked red vinyl seats. The one that burned down a year later on a night I can't remember and a date no one wants to.
⸻
I went back.
Not to the past. To the place.
The diner is gone now. What's left is just a scar on the city. Concrete paved over the ghost of a building. A parking lot with no lines, weeds threading through cracks like veins through broken skin.
But I remembered the layout.
I walked to where the kitchen would have been.
Then to the booth at the back—our booth. The one that buzzed with faulty wiring and always smelled faintly of cinnamon and something burnt.
And there, buried beneath a skin of ash and rust—
A matchbook.
Charred. Damp. Bent from time.
I picked it up like a piece of someone else's memory.
And when I opened it, smeared in ink I didn't recognize:
"Stop waking up before the truth."
⸻
That night, I took sleeping pills.
Not to forget. Not to die. But to stay.
Stay long enough.
Long enough to reach her again before the dream shattered.
⸻
The field was waiting.
Same silence. But this time, it leaned closer. Like it knew I wasn't there just to wander. Like I was finally asking the right questions.
The clocks seemed more broken than usual.
Some were split down the center.
Others had melted into the grass like they were trying to hide.
The house opened.
And Elara—Elara turned.
For the first time in all the dreams, she looked at me.
Really looked.
Her eyes weren't angry. They weren't afraid. They were full of something heavier than either.
History.
"You remember now," she said.
"I'm trying," I replied.
She stood.
Walked to a drawer I hadn't seen before. Pulled out a photograph.
It was old. Faded. Singed at the edges.
Two children.
Me. And her.
Standing in front of a gravestone.
The name had been scratched out. Torn so violently it was impossible to read.
I stared at it.
"This isn't possible," I said, my voice barely breath.
"You said we met at seventeen," I added. "You said the raincoat, the bus stop—"
She shook her head. Soft. Heavy.
"That was just the last time."
And then—everything cracked.
Like light hitting a mirror that had been holding itself together too long.
Sound broke. Time folded. And the dream collapsed like a star.
⸻
I woke screaming.
Hand to my chest.
The bed soaked with sweat. My throat raw.
And my palm—burning.
I looked down and saw blood. A thin, clean cut across my skin.
The photograph was gone.
Only the wound remained.
And the smell.
Ash.
⸻
I booked the earliest appointment with Dr. Felton.
I told him everything. The dream. The matchbook. The grave. The photograph.
He listened with his usual silence, but this time, it wasn't neutral. It was mourning something.
When I was done, he didn't ask questions.
Just leaned back and said, almost carefully:
"Aiden… what if Elara isn't a person?"
I didn't answer.
"She's not a delusion," he continued. "But what if she's a construct? A part of your mind that you gave shape to because it was the only way you knew how to carry it."
"You mean I made her up?"
He hesitated.
"No. You gave her a name. A face. A raincoat. Because you needed the ache to have a voice."
I looked away. My body felt small. Like I was shrinking inside myself.
"Then what is she?" I whispered.
He exhaled. "She's you. Or rather… she's the part of you that remembers. The part that didn't survive the forgetting."
⸻
I didn't cry.
Not there.
But I knew.
Even before he said it.
Elara had always been the part of me that felt too much.
The part I abandoned when the pain got too loud.
The part that grieved honestly. Who didn't flinch from memory.
The part that loved even when love meant bleeding.
I had needed her to be someone else.
Because calling her me would've meant admitting what I lost.
And worse—what I chose to lose.
⸻
That night, I opened my sketchbook.
A new page waited.
I hadn't drawn it.
I was certain of that.
It showed me asleep.
Peaceful.
And Elara, standing at the edge of the bed.
Her fingers pressed softly to my chest.
Placing something beneath my skin.
A key.
Beneath it, in clean, handwritten ink:
"You already unlocked it.
That's why it hurts again."
And this time…
I didn't close the book.
I let it stay open beside me.
Like a door I was finally willing to walk through.