Dream King by Elise Knight

22

The day went by in a haze of dreams, and so did many, many more days. Happy faces, happy memories, and, thankfully, nothing like the dream I’d first witnessed with Dream. “This is the second most common dream I see,” Dream commented as a naked man stood in the middle of a supermarket and looked down. I giggled as shock spread over the poor man’s face. One by one, the people surrounding him in the supermarket began to point and laugh. Their laughter only intensified mine, sending me into a fit of giggles as the poor man tried valiantly to cover his cock with a Pringles tube.

“People dream of putting Pringles tubes on their cocks?” I guffawed, trying to breathe between wracking sobs of mirth.

“Public nudity,” Dream replied, his teeth gritted, although I thought I saw a slight upturn at the corner of his mouth.

The guy dropped his tube, and I swear I couldn’t take it anymore. Tears streamed down my face.

“Come on. Let’s get you out of here. I think you’ve seen enough.”

He caught my arm and half guided, half dragged me from the supermarket dream back into the forest.

“Sorry,” I guffawed. How can you not find it funny?”

“Nothing is funny when you’ve seen it a hundred thousand times. A million times even. The scene you saw plays out hundreds of thousands of times a night. Most people have had that dream at some point in their lives. Young, old, male, female. Sometimes it’s in a supermarket, sometimes a place of work. I once had someone dream they were naked on television. It grates after a while.

Only Dream could see something so hilarious and not crack a smile. He had a humor chip missing somewhere.

“What was the first?” I asked as the door slid away from us and another appeared in its place.

“First what?”

You said nudity in public was the second most common dream. What is the first?”

“People’s teeth falling out,” he answered as he opened another door.

I crumpled up my nose. “Yuck.”

“I never said it was a nice dream. Are you coming?”

I followed him inside. Like every other dream I’d seen, this one started off dark. To my utter delight, a library formed around us. Libraries were my one saving grace back in Vancouver. Without any money for books, I spent what little spare time I had reading books from the local library. While this library didn’t have the sheer size or style of the huge modern curved library in downtown Vancouver, it more than made up for it in coziness. And though it seemed smaller than the massive building, the rows of books shelves went on and on into the distance, giving me the thrill of my life.

“Oh, this is awesome!” I let out a squeal of delight and ran to the nearest bookshelf. On it were biographies of famous people, mostly from the seventies, though there were some more modern ones I knew. I looked for the occupant of the room. If someone was dreaming this, they had to be here somewhere.

“Jason!”

An old woman’s voice rang out from behind me. She ran right past me and enveloped Dream in a hug as I watched on.

She kissed his cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick there. She grabbed a tissue from her pocket, licked it then dabbed it on the mark on his cheek in a caring manner.

“My, you’ve grown. I swear, you grow an inch taller every time I see you.”

Her voice had a Scottish burr to it.

“Have you been eating properly?”

“Yes, mom.”

My mouth dropped open in shock, and I did nothing to hide it. This was Dream’s mom? This tiny old lady? She was human. In all my imaginings of Dream’s origins, never once could I have come up with this particular scenario.

Him being spawned by the devil and born into hellfire, maybe, but this? Color me baffled as fuck.

“Let me find a good book for you. I know how lonely it can be all alone in the forest...” Her eyes turned to me. “Although you aren’t alone, are you? Got yourself a girlfriend? I must say it’s about time, Jason. You’ve been alone a long time.”

“You can see me?” I blustered, not understanding a jot of what was going on. In all the doors I’d been through, not once had a person been able to see either Dream or I. And Jason? Dream’s name was Jason?”

What. The. Actual. Fuck?

She beamed at me through wrinkled eyes. “Of course, I can, child. Why ever would I not be able to see you?” She turned back to Dream. “She’s a beautiful wee thing.”

Dream nodded and grinned. Grinned. Like turned his mouth up at the edges and showed his teeth in a way that wasn’t threatening. That was it. I was losing it.

“Oh, the book!” She held her hands up as though she’d just remembered. “I don’t know if you’ll need a book since now you’ve got a girl to keep you company at night, but I have so many. I’ll be right back.” My cheeks colored at the implication as she bustled off down one of the aisles.

“She saw you!” I whispered quickly, ignoring the fact she thought I was sleeping with...er...Jason, her son. Fuck me!

Dream murmured a light yes, though seemingly unperturbed by the insanity that was going on around us.

“But no one sees you.” We’d been in enough people’s dreams and fantasies now. I’d have noticed if they’d seen us.

He shrugged. “Some do.”

He was so difficult to keep up with, with his two-word answers. I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Of course, he didn’t.

“Why do some people see you and others don’t?”

“I don’t always want to be seen,” he replied simply, annoying the hell out of me as was his way.

“So why her? Why an old lady in a library? She’s not seriously your mother, right? I mean, you cannot have come from someone as...nice as her.”

He laughed. “I like the way her mind works. I like that her dreams are familiar and organized. Most people’s are chaotic. and no, she is not my mother.”

I tried wrapping my head around it all. “So why did she call you Jason?”

He certainly didn’t look like a Jason. Jax maybe or something more exotic. Lucien or Castiel sprang to mind.

“Jason was her son. He died a few years ago of cancer. Since then, she’s been dreaming of him.”

“So she thinks you are her dead son?” She didn’t look the type to have a son that wouldn’t be out of place in a BDSM catalog.

“I appear to her as her heart’s desire. Those that do see me, don’t really. They see what they want to see. In this particular case, she sees her son.”

Two conflicting feelings washed around in my gut. The first being that maybe I didn’t see him as he was. No wonder everything about him had me in a puddle of lust if I’d conjured his appearance out of my own imagination. The thought made me feel ridiculous and shallow. I wondered if I’d have felt better if my brain had made him into someone more familiar, someone like an old boyfriend, someone comfortable like a favorite pair of old jeans. I pushed worry about my own psyche away and concentrated on the other feeling fighting for dominance. The way he’d been with the old woman. How patient he’d been with her showed a softer side to him. One I wasn’t sure had existed until now. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

“Here it is,” she said, pushing a book into Dream’s hands. The cover of the book was a faded yellow without words or pictures on it.

“Thank you, Mom. I’ll read it tonight.

“Mind you do. Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “I forgot a book for your lovely wee lassie here. Jason, could you be a love and go find one for her. She looks like a wolf shifter type of girl.”

“You got me!” I said, holding my hands up. The last book I’d read was indeed a paranormal romance about a wolf shifter running amok in New York before finding his mate. The rest I barely remembered because I’d masturbated to all the sex scenes of which there were many. Not that I was going to admit to it in front of these two.

“Go on then,” she said, shooing Dream off down an aisle.

When he was out of earshot, she turned back to me.

“So Dream has a girlfriend. Do you know what you’re getting yourself into there, Lassie?”

My eyes widened. “You called him Dream?”

“That’s what he is. Och, I know it’s not my Jason. I’ve known for a long, long time. I may be advanced in age, but I’m not senile yet. I know my Jason is long gone; God rest his soul. Dream is a dear and pretends to be him for me, and I pretend to think he’s my son, and the pair of us are a little less lonely for it.”

Well, hot damn. There was something that lifted my heart the way she spoke about him. She wasn’t his mother, but perhaps she was the closest thing to one he’d had in a long time.

“He’s a deep one, though, to be sure. Now don’t get me wrong. I love that man as though he were my own flesh and blood, but I’m not sure he’s boyfriend material. He’s had a life of troubles, and things like that can make a man hard, and not in the good way if you know what I mean.” She elbowed me playfully and grinned up at me.

“How long have you known him?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

Her face softened. “Since he was a wee boy, although I couldn’t really speak to him until my Jason died. It was like a silkscreen came down between us. That night I wept in his arms, and he stayed with me for hours. The doctors told me I’d slept for so long because of the sedatives I’d been given, but I knew better.” Her voice was wistful. “I see him often now. Once or twice a month at least. I’ve never seen him with a lassie, though, nor anyone else for that matter. He’s a lone wolf; pardon the pun.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

She narrowed her eyes like she was inspecting me. “I dare say you’ll be good for him, though. The boy needs a little light in his life. And it’s undeniable, the attraction between the two of you.”

I gulped. “There is?” This was news to me. We’d gone from pure hate to begrudging respect, but nothing more. The moment by the lake was long since past.

“Oh, yes, lassie. As I said earlier, I might be old, but my eyes work perfectly. The way he looks at you. It’s just like the way my dear Fred used to look at me when we were courting.”

I had no time to ponder this over because Dream was back, book in hand. It had a wolf and a title on the cover, but it was one I didn’t recognize. When he passed the book over to me, I became all too aware of him. The old woman had tripped a switch in my mind, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to turn it off.

His fingertips brushed my fingers as I took the book, and his eyes rested on mine questioningly. He wanted to know if I liked the book he’d chosen. What did that mean?

The old lady was lovely, but little did she know she’d sent me into over-analysis hell. I was useless at this stuff. Flirting. It wasn’t my thing. I had to have someone outright say they liked me or to literally throw me on their bed and rip my clothes off before I knew for sure. I was going to have analysis paralysis for weeks after this one, and it was something I sure as fuck didn’t need.

Dream kissed the woman on her cheek and said his goodbye. The library was already starting to go fuzzy at the edges.

“You take care of each other and Lassie, come see me whenever you like. It will be nice to have some female company for a change.”

We made it out of the door just before the woman disappeared entirely in a puff of darkness. The door moved down one place, almost the second Dream closed it behind him. A flutter of pink in the tree above us reflected my happy mood.

“That was Gladys.”

I nodded, unsure what to say next. There were so many things swirling around in my brain, not the least of which was the part about Dream actually liking me. I decided to push that part down and start with another question. One that an answer to wouldn’t completely fuck up my head.

“Why did she see you?”

He shrugged. “Everyone can see me in their dreams if I want them to. Very few see me when I don’t want to be seen.”

I strode around the door hoping Dream would follow me back to the camp. He did.

“And you wanted to be seen by Gladys?”

Dream laughed. It was a rare sight. It was nice to see him this way. Gladys must really have been something special to him. “Gladys has a force of will like no one else. She saw me on my very first night doing this job. I usually do not let anyone see me, even though I can. I’m not here to talk to people. That is not my job.”

I crossed my legs and picked up a packet of chips we’d left behind. “Gladys told me that you see her quite often but how? There are nine billion people on the planet. It must take centuries to get through them all. How do people dream every night if you take ten minutes with each one?”

I’d not thought about it before, but the logistics of it were a nightmare.

“Time is not the same here as it is in your world. I see everybody’s dreams every night. One night in your world is the same as centuries here.”

I tried doing the math. It still didn’t add up.

“But even if getting through nine billion people a night did take centuries, surely, even after all the time you have been doing this, you still wouldn’t have made it through one night? Gladys says she sees you often.

“That is because of you.”

Ok, now my mind really was fucked.“You see Gladys regularly because of me?

“No. I’ve slowed down because of you. Usually, I work so fast that the doors would appear to be nothing but a blur to you. I cannot speed up or slow down time anywhere other than between the two rows of doors. Where we are here, the doors are still. They only move when I am between the rows. The speed at which they go is up to me. Just like time in your world and mine are different, time between the doors moves differently too.

“I’ve been here weeks now.”

Dream shook his head. “To you, it seems like weeks have passed. If you stepped out of the red door, not a second of time will have elapsed in your world since you came through it.

“Show me. Show me how you make a full night go by in a second.”

He smirked. “I cannot. Your body would not cope with the speed. Your frailness as a human would have you reduced to pulp barely seconds after we started.

“So let me sit here and watch you from the outside.”

He mulled it over. “If I let a full night pass in your world, won’t people worry about you going missing?”

I thought of all the people in my life. It was a depressingly short list. Only Chris would notice if I went missing for any amount of time, but one night. I could risk that.

“Not for one night.”

What about your boyfriend?

Surprise flooded me. “David was my boyfriend. He left me for another woman. Did you not get that from my disaster wedding dreams?”

Urgh. Did I dream about David that often? I couldn’t remember dreaming about him at all since coming here. In fact, my dreams had become increasingly taken up by Dream himself. Now that was a thread I didn’t want to pick right now.

“I cannot see your dreams while you are in my world.”

Thank fuck for that.

“And it is not mine to question what your dreams mean. I don’t see nightmares, only dreams, so part of them must have been happy.”

In no world was my dream about getting stood up at the altar happy. It had started that way before descending into misery. Maybe it wasn’t misery after all and David showing up with Sophie was my brain’s way of telling me to get over him. Maybe.

“Well, that dream you saw of mine meant that my scumbag ex dumped me and stole all my money.”

“Why?” He seemed genuinely confused. A small part of me gleaned some satisfaction from that.

“She had money, and he’s a whore,” I replied, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of my voice.

I expected some kind of reaction to a statement like that, but he sat impassively as he usually did.

“Come with me.” He stood up and held his hand out to me. A shiver of something ran through me as I reached out and took it. I’d held his hand before when we were running through the woods, but this time, it was different. There was no reason for us to be holding hands. We just were.

I followed him without question as he led me to the red door. My heart began to hammer as we walked right up to it and the thought that he was going to send me home filled my thoughts. But he veered slightly to the right and walked right past it.

I’d never gone beyond the red door. The movement of the doors implied that the dreams had already passed, that the people having them had already woken up.

The forest here was exactly the same as it was in front of the red door, but being behind it gave me the chills. The place felt forbidden somehow. Colder. The parallel rows of doors disappeared into the darkness, just as the ones in front of the red door did.

“Stand really still.” Dream instructed, positioning me at equal distance between the two rows of doors.

The fear I’d felt at him making me go home was taken over by anticipation. He wrapped me up in his arms, pulling me close to him. One hand lay on the middle of my back, the other pulling my head down to his shoulder so that I was completely wrapped in him. I was so close to him that I could feel his heart beating beneath his chest, a percussion mixing with mine. There was something safe about his arms around me, as though he was about to protect me from something, but it was far from safe. Being this close to him was like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and it was beginning to burn. A warm flush spread out through my body. If I’d have inclined my head slightly, I’d have been able to kiss him. As it was, my head was clamped to him, and I couldn’t move, could barely breathe.

What the fuck was happening?

And just as a burn of heat threatened to take over my body completely, a ferocious gust of wind whistled past us, extinguishing the flames and nearly sending me into a catatonic state of fright. The wind was strong enough to tear down houses, and yet I was unmoving because of Dream. He withstood it with barely any movement at all. I tried to make sense of what I was seeing through my hair whipping around my eyes, but everything was a blur of speed. The roar was deafening, and it was all I could do to cling to him in the hope that he could withstand it because if he couldn’t, the both of us would be dead.

It became painfully clear why Dream was holding me so tightly. If he let go, I’d fly away. If I held my arm out from the protection of his body, I was sure it would snap like a twig. And then it stopped, and the roaring quietened to the usual silence of the forest. My hair fell back down around my shoulders, and everything was back to normal. Dream loosened his grip on me, and with some reluctance, I pulled away from his embrace.

I looked around us. Nothing had changed. Everything was as it had been before the surge of wind just minutes before.

“What the fuck just happened,” I murmured, breaking any kind of spell that had me thinking there’d been a moment between us. I was good at shit like that. Misreading signs and generally always second-guessing myself when it came to intimacy of any kind. Or mistaking almost dying in a weird as fuck windstorm as intimacy. Yep, I was really good at that.

He opened the nearest door and gestured for me to go inside. This was my first time in one of the doors that had gone past the red door, and the fact that he wanted me to go through first raised goosebumps on my flesh.

“What’s in there?” I asked because I couldn’t do anything without questioning it first.

He just smiled and nodded toward it again as he held open the door for me.

Inside it was black, exactly as I expected it to be.

“I thought that the people belonging to these dreams woke up after they went past the red door.”

“They do,” he confirmed. “Call this a playback.”

Huh.“Why are we watching a dream you’ve already seen?”

“You’ll see, look.”

The darkness started to clear and a picture formed around me. This was not a dream I’d seen. We were standing in an apartment. A really nice apartment. Whoever lived here had money. The view from the window let me know I was looking at somewhere in Vancouver.

A door opened, and a woman in a smart dress appeared. Immediately my stomach lurched. I'd recognize that scraggly hair and bitch-face anywhere. It was Sophie. Why the fuck had Dream brought me to Sophie’s apartment? What was he playing at? Less than a second later, David followed the woman, and my nightmare was complete. She was talking to him. It looked like she was giving him instructions as she was crossing items off a list. I studied David's face. He was not happy. He never did like being told what to do. I held my breath as their voices became loud enough for me to hear.

“I'm going to need you to pick up the flowers,” Sophie ordered, “and I've got Mother coming round later to make sure that your outfit for the wedding is perfect. I don't trust you to get it right.”

David nodded his head slowly, misery filling his features. “Okay.”

Sophie checked it off her list. “Oh, and the caterers want to come and have us taste some samples later. I'll need you here at 7:00 p.m.”

“I'm going out tonight. I've got a game with the lads.”

Sophie turned on her heel and glared at him. “No.” That was it. Just one word. No discussion. She walked to another door and opened it. “I'll see you here at 7:00 p.m. Have a nice day, sweetheart.”

She kissed the air between them.

“Have a nice day, sweetheart.” David echoed back, but I could tell from his voice that he didn't mean it. He'd given up. I could see it in his face. There was no sense of happiness at all in him. He flopped down on the sofa and brought out his phone. It was one I hadn't seen before. The most recent iPhone. A definite upgrade from the crappy phone he had when he was with me. He used his thumb to turn it on and pressed the gallery button. The first picture was of a wedding cake, obviously part of the wedding plans. He quickly scrolled back. Going so quickly that every picture was a blur. I gasped when I saw where the pictures had come to a rest. It was the last picture he and I had taken together. A selfie near the waterfront less than two days before he left me. I remembered the day well. I'd felt hope then. The sun had been shining, and even though we couldn't afford it, we'd gone out for dinner. If this was a new phone, he’d purposely brought these photos across from his old phone. He used two of his fingers and pushed them away from each other, enlarging the picture so that it rested on my face. And then he stared. My heart went to my throat as I saw tears trickling down his face. David never cried. Not once in the three years that we had been together had I ever seen this kind of emotion on his face. I stood stock-still as he carried on scrolling through the pictures stopping at each one of us together. My heart almost stopped. The pain I felt was indescribable. He’d let me go, giving me up like an old shoe, and yet, he was no happier in his new life surrounded by fancy furniture and expensive gadgets.

“He misses me,” I whispered.

The dream began to darken, telling me that it was almost over. Dream took my hand, but this time I didn't follow. I couldn't. I wanted to see more of what David was doing. I wanted to know that I had meant something to him.

Dream pulled gently on my hand. “We can't stay here. The dream is ended. It's over.” He virtually had to drag me back out into the forest

“Why did you do that?” I screamed at him, my heart shattering into a thousand pieces. “Why did you bring me here?”

Dream took a step back. “I wanted to show you how much of an idiot David was. How wrong he got it. I wanted you to know that you are worth something.”

That was fine for him to say. I'd never felt more worthless in my whole life. My breath was squeezed from me. I doubled over, not wanting to show so much emotion. Not wanting Dream to see how much that had affected me. Pain mixed with loathing took over my body as I descended into sobs. Fucking fuck! I hated crying. I was doing it again, letting the memory of the man I once loved take over. And that was the thing. I did love him once. But that was a long time ago. Things had changed. I had changed. This pain wasn’t because I wanted David back. It was because he’d made a decision that had set us both on a course of misery. Christ, it pissed me off! I felt Dreams hand on my shoulder and looked up this time. When he embraced me, it had nothing to do with the moving doors. There was no roaring wind. Dream had brought me to the one dream he knew I needed to see. His fingers stroked through my hair as my body shook against his. I didn't even know why I was crying anymore. Angry as fuck tears, probably. It might have been David that started the tears. But I was crying for a past me. It was the realization that David was completely in my past. That had set me off. And the pain I was feeling, while intense, was a lot duller than it had been weeks before. Dream was soothing it away. I raised my head, and his eyes met mine.

“I don't love the cheating scumball anymore,” I whispered.

It was almost as much of a shock to me to hear it said out loud as it was to him. He wiped my tears away with his thumb. My eyes focused on his lips, so close to mine. It was all I could do to breathe. And yet, I knew that if I didn't kiss him right there right then. I would regret it.

Because the grief I was feeling was not over David at all. It was the thought that I didn't belong here, that I had never belonged here. And that one day, I would have to go back through the red door. I'd have to go through it alone. There was no David on the other side for me even if I did want him, which I didn’t. And there wasn’t anyone on this side for me... except... Dream’s hands were on each side of my face now. His lips so close to mine. Inches away. My body swirled in emotion. Not that long ago, I had wanted to kill him. Today I couldn't imagine a life without him. I leaned into it. Needed it, even though I knew I shouldn't. We were enemies, but I'd never wanted anybody so badly. Dream’s hands moved down, and he pulled me toward him, and in that quick movement, his lips met mine. The doors once again roared past us, and my hair flew about us, but all I could feel was him holding me to him, taking over my senses as our lips crushed together. It was ferocious and fierce and wholly the best damn kiss I’ve ever experienced. If Dream hadn’t kissed anyone before me, I couldn’t tell. There was nothing measured or precise in his movements, but that was what made it all the more exciting. I didn’t care about the wind whipping around my face, nor the dreams of a hundred thousand people literally flying past us with us caught up in the middle, a port in the storm. He was both the port and the storm and everything else, and I was windswept and horny and caught up in it all.

Just like that, the doors stopped. The forest was empty and silent, and everything was how it was before. And the moment was over before it had really begun. He pulled back, a manic look in his eyes. This was not the look of a man who had just had his first kiss. It was the face of a man who had leapt into danger and fallen into the abyss. He turned and stormed off past the red door and back to the clearing, leaving me completely alone, confused and with tingling lips and the memory of the hottest kiss of my life.