Part 1

William gets some time to confess to the girl of his dreams, but it doesn't go quite as expected.

I use to practice lucid dreaming. If you don't know what that is, it's the ability of being able to be aware while you're dreaming. With lucid dreaming your body is asleep but your mind is awake and you can even manipulate the dreams while you're in them. To me it was an intoxicating idea, something that almost sounded godly or something belonging only to movies like The Matrix or Inception. With lucid dreaming I could be the normal man that I was with his boring job by day, but during the night I could wield the power to change worlds and create life forms spawned purely from creative thought. My friends could even join me in the adventures of my mind if I so wished. They wouldn't know it in the waking world, but with a lucid dreaming all I had to do was will it to be and they would be by my side. 

I took to practicing in hopes of being to achieve this ability. I started a dream journal, did reality checks, and all the other tips that lucid dreamers give on the internet about how they do it. I did this for months and was only ever successful once and got so excited I woke myself up. Eventually work got busy and my mind got occupied on tragic events happening in my life. I put my attempts to lucid dream aside, but the practices I had done helped my dreams become more frequent and more vivid. I didn't have control, but I remembered my dreams as if they were actual events that occurred. There were reoccurring places and reoccurring dream characters. It hadn't really hit me, that I had created a world subconsciously until I met Nichole, or Nicci as I've come to call her. 

Nicci is the girl of my dreams - literally. I met her during a dream I had on a Wednesday last September. She has flowing locks of reddish-golden hair, loving turquoise eyes, and a soft gentle voice that sounds passive but yet somehow it is always powerful in its affect on me. Nicci had shown me such a wonderful time at the arcade on the pier, one of places I frequent while I sleep. As of now I anxiously wait until my body calls me to another night's sleep. I can see her again. I can spend time with her. She always waits for me too, and I tell her my problems. She listens and she cares. It's something I don't really have in the world outside of my dreams. The only thing I know people care about when it comes to me is at the office when my boss is waiting for me to file in the next report on my quarterly sales numbers.

I glance at my clock - 11:30 pm. Time for bed. A wide grin swipes across my face, ear to ear. I make a little bit of tea and take my e-reader with me to bed and sip at the orange cinnamon tea for nearly half an hour until my eyes could no longer go from word to word. I switched off the light, set my alarm for the following morning and slid into my covers. 

"On my way," I whispered before closing my eyes. It was pitch black for a moment, a fraction of time I couldn't remember between my eyes closing and deep sleep. Suddenly I was at the park three streets down from my apartment. It was a windy, overcast day - the kind of day I actually much prefer to sunny ones. Others always cry foul about this city for raining too much, but I liked it. It didn't make me depressed to see a cloudy sky and I wasn't sure why that affect came onto others. 

"You lost?" said a quiet voice. Nicci's face lowered down just inches away from mine. I realized I was sitting at the bench, my e-reader and a cup of tea in hand - residuals from before I went to sleep. This happens at times, things will carry over into my dreams. Sometimes I intentionally do so. Once Nicci had wanted to hear a song, strangely enough it was a song I didn't much like - but I downloaded the song to my computer and put my headphones on as I slept. The song played through into the dream and made her quite happy. 

"Nicci! Hey. How have you been?" I asked her with a dopey smile. I swear I had been smiling just thinking about her since I had gotten home from work. I was supposed to have worked on a report for my boss, but decided I would finish it out in the morning when I came in. 

"Oh you know - just sitting around in the darkness waiting for somebody to turn the lights on. It gets quite boring in here when you're at work. All there are is numbers, boredom, and depression," she joked. She was often quite honest with me. It was something I needed. Perhaps I needed anything more than what I currently had in the real world. My mom had died a little more than a year ago in a tragic accident and my sister had moved to Dubai with her husband just a few months before that. I'm still struggling to get over the loss. I wasn't ready to lose her, perhaps I never would've been. My sister had been there for the funeral but she couldn't stay long afterwards as she has an important job that could result in all kinds of political turmoil if she puts it off for too long. I understand she has to do what she had to do. I don't like it, but I understand.  

My friends (the little of them that I had) scattered to the different corners of the world after college. We keep in touch on facebook, but the office is the only true place where I get face-to-face interaction between other people. Even my co-workers I don't know very well...outside of a brief and intense conversation with one of them during the aftermath of a Christmas party. 

"What about when I was daydreaming? Did you have any fun with those?" I questioned Nicci. Her angelic face expressed something too divine to call simply a playful smile. 

"Well the one where you imagined your boss's head blowing up like a balloon was funny. The one about pushing the guy from accounting down the stairs was a little morbid," she said with a laugh. I laughed with her. Phil was the drunkard accountant who managed my checks and he had miscounted the overtime hours again and stated that he would have to delay it until possibly Saturday. 

"I can only assume he's using my check as hostage to hang out this weekend - I guess he'd like for the both of us to spend some after-work hours together. Probably hang out at some bar. He's just trying to get to know me since I'm a pariah at the office," I told her. I sighed in frustration as I thought about it more. Thankfully while I was around her, Nicci and I agreed she wouldn't poke through my thoughts. Our conversations would grow very quiet if she read through my thoughts like she did during my waking hours. 

"Well come on now - that's doesn't sound so bad. Why not go hang out with him?" she asked. I shook my head. 

"He's the other office pariah. He wants friends and I'm probably the only one left that might talk to him outside of the office. Ever since he tried to...do what he tried to do to Mandy from IT - well he had to do that sexual harassment seminar thing and since then no one's wanted to talk to him. Mandy forgave him, downplayed the incident to 'he had tried to feel her up', and even decided to drop the charges. Still don't know what drove her to forgive him so easily. She's a nice girl, very forgiving...perhaps too forgiving," I said, briefly thinking about her. 

"Wow, she just forgave the guy? I didn't know people still did that. She should've had you come back and kick his a*s instead of just talking it out with you," Nicci said. Sometimes she would talk vindictively as she was. I think it's from talking to me for as long as we have been. We would spend all hours of my sleep, talking every night. 

"I know, right? I was surprised she just let the whole thing go. Sure Phil was drunk, but he went way over the line at the Christmas party. Now he wants us to go out and basically...I'd rather push him down the stairs," I said with a light chuckle. I watched a breeze gently pushed through Nicci's reddish golden hair and softly ruffle through her clothes. She was like an angel; she was a being that could only exist here - in the land of dreams. Someone like her couldn't exist in the real world. 

"I'm glad I'm alive...to talk to you...to see all of this," she said and glanced out over to the lake just a few yards ahead. There were trees all around, placed perfectly to provide shade on a sunny day. The sun was not out in today's dream, but it didn't make our surroundings any less beautiful. The silver sky reflected clearly off the lake, a flawless mirror of mixed shades of platinum until Nicci ran a finger through it. She made peaceful, soundless waves to and fro. The entirety of the park was expertly manicured, just as perfectly as Nicci herself. 

"Me too...I don't know how you came to be, but I'm glad to have you here with me. Without you...I'd have almost nobody. My sister doesn't have time to talk to me very much. I don't even like thinking of how my mom is gone...how it happened. My dad left long ago when I was young. My friends are all on other ends of the world. All I have is my job and I hate going there," I whined. I didn't think I was depressed, but perhaps I was. When I spoke about my life out loud it certainly sounded like it. Nicci would usually hear me out, but in our last few conversations she had been a great deal more pragmatic than supportive. 

"So make a change in your life. Go back to school. Get a different job. Meet new people - do something to break the monotony," she suggested. She slowly strolled over to me and took a seat at the bench. Her hand gently slid onto mine, her soft touch brought tingles to my head. The cherry-blonde haired angel looked into my eyes with such great concern. I could only feel guilt in return. 

"I have you. You're my break in the monotony. I like talking to you. I like getting to know you. I like getting to spend time with you. I...love you," I said. My heart fluttering, I tried to manage myself - if I wasn't careful I'd wake up. I couldn't directly speak to her while I was awake. I could only see, feel, hear, and speak to her in my dreams. My words, declaring my love, seemed to bring a tooth-filled smile. It was largest I've seen her smile and it only made my heart all the more gelatinous. 

"I love you too. I'm so...I'm so happy. I know there are some difficulties to our relationship - but I don't care. I'm happy," she said sincerely. My brow rose. 

"Difficulties?" I said softly. She nodded, her expression now markedly less joyous. 

"Yes. You know these things...you just don't want to see it or think about it. For one, I'm not...I'm not real, Will," she said softly at first, but unexpected sharp at second. My breath left quickly. This thought was always floating in my mind like a sharp stick constantly being stuck in my side as I thought about her. 

"No. You are real, Nicci. You continue to persist. You have feelings and desires. You've told me stories about yourself. You have memories of our past. I've seen you again and again and you remember. You comment on things I've thought about during the day. You are real Nichole. You are real," I assured her desperately. For a brief moment I wondered who I was trying to convince. 

"Think about it though William. I'm just a reoccurring dream character. I remember the times we've had because you do. I tell you the things you need to hear because you already know these things. You know you need to change your life - you're just struggling with yourself to get it done," she said rather harshly. 

"But...I love you," I said weakly. 

"I do too...but how do I know I wasn't created specifically so you could have someone to love who would love you back?" she challenged me. I had very swiftly gone from feeling weightless to plunging down to reality with a lead weight chained to my foot. 

"If this is all true, why would I have you do this? Why would I make you as a person to challenge all these things I'm manifesting here for myself? Why would I let you say these things to me? Why would I string myself along for as long as we've been talking, just so you could question your own existence when I announce my love for you?" I asked her desperately. She paused in silence for a number of moments. 

"I'm sorry Will...I...I don't know what to think. Maybe you're right - maybe you're still wrong. I just don't know. Even if you were right and I was my own person, what about having a family? How could we do that? I live inside your head. Your children, if we had them, would live inside your head. If you were to die we would all go with you. We can't live any kind of life except the one you set for us. If you had a daughter she could never go on to marry and have children of her own that are not also your creations," she told me. I sighed. Her realities were breaking the dream around us. The trees began to wilt, the water in the lake became filthy, and moss began to overtake the sidewalk. 

"So what? Should I stop meeting with you? Just forget about you and change my life? What am I going to do? I'll go back to school and still not know what I want to do with my life. I'll go to another job and eventually find myself back in the same rut. It'd be the same tedium I currently struggle with, just with different faces. And to meet a special someone, how could I find someone to compare to you?" I questioned her. 

"You have to figure that out William, I can help but I can't solve it for you. I still want to keep seeing you and I still love you, but with that I want to see you be cheerful. You spend less than half your day here where I live, so I want you to be excited to be awake...not excited to get away from it all by sleeping. I want you to truly live the rest of your life when I'm not there. I don't want you to center your life on when you can go to bed and see me. We can still have fun, we can still love each other, but I want to be looking into happy thoughts when I do see them throughout the day. I don't feel good when I see your thoughts and see how much you hate being awake," she told me. 

"Nichole, listen I just want to be with you. I want to learn more about you. I 'm willing to do the -" I began to say until I heard what sounded like a siren.

My eyes shot open - the alarm clock. I hit the damn thing so hard I thought for a moment that I had broken it. I sat up, clearly distressed. That meeting had gone a lot differently than I had thought. She loved me too, but then she reigned down some really hard questions - questions that shattered what existed between us. The girl of my dreams cared about me enough that she wanted to see me change my waking life. 

I was now left with a feeling of doubt in the pit of my stomach. Was she real at all? She was a character made from my mind, but I didn't know everything about her. She often surprised me with her actions and reactions. It was like she merely lived in a different world, a world that I could phase to at night. She didn't feel like a simple character of some collection of half-remembered dreams. Nicci was a real person to me. I couldn't really tell anyone about her, though. People would think I was crazy. I didn't know what to properly think. Maybe she was telling the truth. Maybe she really did exist as my subconscious's way of telling myself what I needed to hear. 

I reluctantly slunk my feet over the side of my bed. My mood was a little shot now, to say the least. It had started pleasant but the dream quickly devolved into something less than happy. I knew the truth. Nicci only existed in my head. She was right. How could I fall in love with what was essentially an imaginary girlfriend? We hadn't even made it that far...and even my imaginary girlfriend was telling me to get my s**t together. I felt pathetic now. I was alone and I was being too cynical and too cowardly to get myself to meet other people. It was so difficult to meet truly likeable people. I wanted to do it though. I wanted to make friends and make my life a little less than a cycle of the same boring things. Days, even months were blending together. I had to make a change. Imaginary or not, I'd do it for her.

On the way to work I was left sitting in traffic, my feelings in a strange cocktail of frustration and motivation. Eventually I made it to J.L. Nicks, a company that's been on the up-and-coming list for nearly a decade straight. We basically make cheaper alternatives of Apple and Google products. J.L. Nicks also likes to boast about customer service, our charity work, and so on. I'm a sales guy. Sometimes I talk to clients over a phone, though nowadays they prefer messages over the various apps, text messaging, and so on. Speaking out loud salesperson-to-customer is a dying tradition. 

I had charged through and finished my work for the day two hours early. I had tried my best to stay awake, but they had made sure our computers could only access important work-related websites - the rest were blocked. That left me and the old school of old school office computer games: solitaire. I tried my best to power through, but before long I found myself napping at my desk.  

 

I was in a train this time. It lightly rocked as it took its route up a mountain lit by moonlight. It was just me on the train, that is, until Nicci entered from another car into mine. 

"Hey Nichole," I said wearily. Our last conversation hadn't left things for this one to not start awkwardly. 

"Hi William," she said meekly. She took a seat just near to me and for a few silent moments we watched out the window from across our seats, out to the night sky filled with stars of varying sizes and colors. The stars here weren't quite like how the stars looked in reality, here they appeared almost as if they were painted into the sky with a fine-tip brush. 

"Listen -" we both said at the same time. 

"Sorry," Nichole apologized. 

"No, no you go ahead," I said to her with a nod. Once again her hand softly caressed over mine and glided past it to my thigh, gently resting there. My attention was swimming intensely into her aquamarine eyes as she gazed up at me. 

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I don't know what got over me. I didn't mean to challenge what I've - what we've got here. I guess I was feeling a strange mixture of excitement and frustration at the same time. I was excited that you...said...that you feel...that you said you love me too. It felt so amazing...I just wanted to grow wings and fly in the sky with you. I was frustrated too though, because all I wanted to do is to become something real for you and I still do. I want to be there for you in the real world. I don't want to just be in here where you have to wait until you go to sleep to see me," she said to me lovingly. Her words lifted some weight off of my heart. All I could wish for was for a way for me to uphold her previous words of bettering myself and, if I could, find a way to fulfill her desires to become real. 

"There's no need to be sorry Nicci. I - the things you said were true. I need to get my life back on track. I want to do it...not just for me, but for you too. It'll be a better place for us both in my head if I'm happier," I said to her. Something in my heart told me something subconsciously. For some reason I refused to acknowledge it. 

"Wake up," she told me with a slight frown on her face. 

"Why?" I asked her. As the train continued I could see day break through the night sky, corrupting its dark violet with a weak blue and orange. 

"Somebody's coming," Nicci warned. As she said this I realized a very faint tapping sound grow louder and louder. Its sound eventually got loud enough that it sounded as if someone was smashing a metal bat against the side of the train car. It wasn't very long until my eyes ripped open.

"I'm sorry did I -" said an apologetic voice. It was Mandy. Why was she here? 

"No, no. I just finished early today and thought I'd take a catnap. Hi Mandy - did you need something?" I asked politely. She never really talked to me before this; most people in office hadn't made more than small talk with me on a day-to-day basis. As I saw her now I noticed how pleasant of a woman Mandy was. Something about her aura just seemed...innocent. She too had a "girl-next-door" look about her which only helped the feeling. Today she was wearing a mauve colored sweater over a light blue blouse. Her smile too was slightly nervous. I wondered why she would be afraid of me. 

"Works out in fifteen and it's going to be the weekend now. TGIF, right?" she said, maintaining her slight smile. It was just now that I noticed her glasses weren't on. 

"Yep. Glad to have some time to myself," I said with a light laugh. It was an absolutely fake laugh too. The last thing I needed was time to myself. What I actually ended up doing on weekends ever since I met Nichole was sleeping for a ridiculous amount of hours. I'm not sure how I managed it but I got into eighteen hour sleep cycles on the weekend. Nicci was glad we could have so much time on those days and we put the time to good use, visiting wherever my dreams would allow. Still though, I never have obtained the ability of controlling them despite how vivid they now were. It was somewhat frustrating that all this time and I still I had yet to learn the skill of lucid dreaming. 

"Oh yeah definitely...me too. So I was wondering - what're you doing tomorrow?" she asked. My heart skipped a beat or two. Was Mandy interested in me? Why? We've never spent very long together. The most I've - oh right...I remembered talking to her the night Phil got inappropriate with her. I had just thought I was being nice in providing her some comfort and some assurance that Phil was drunk and wasn't a complete monster. I also explained that Phil was by no means innocent and that people should face the consequences of their decisions. Even if alcohol skews one's decision making, one has to make the decision to get drunk in the first place. Vodka, tequila, and whatever else be it beer, cocktails, or Mike's Hard Lemonade - it doesn't absolve someone of responsibility. 

"Probably going to go out and - nothing...who am I kidding?" I said with a friendly laugh. She laughed too, a little overzealously, but appreciatively. She played around a little with her dark, jet black hair before speaking up again. 

"Did...did you want to go somewhere? It'd be a shame for both of us to do nothing on a Saturday. Got to cherish those days away from J.L. Nicks, right?" Mandy suggested her relaxed tone sounding very forced. I was thrown for a loop. I couldn't deny this girl by explaining that I already was seeing one that only existed in my head. Nicci did feel real to me though...our conversations felt just as real as the one Mandy and I were currently having. 

"Sure! Any place you had in mind?" I said a little more eagerly than I had planned. Something about this felt right though. I wanted to get to know Mandy better. I knew she was a good person from when I talked to her at the Christmas party. She had remained quiet and almost avoidant of me since then and thus I had figured she didn't want much to do with me. The sudden turnaround from that excited me. 

"I - oh, well...I thought maybe we could go to dinner and a movie. I mean, unless that's stupid and cliché - we can do something else," she said shyly. I needed to break the tension. Somehow I wanted to let her know she could be comfortable with me. 

"I just realized, you don't have your glasses on," I said. 

"Oh yeah...I'm wearing contacts today," she responded and scratched the back of her neck. It was pretty clear she was lying, especially considering I could see the frame of her glasses poking out of her right pocket. 

"Your eyes are really pretty," I said and then I felt nervous myself. Did I come on too strong with that statement or was that okay? 

"Thank you," she said in a more calm tone. 

"No need," I replied, trying to play it smooth. There was an awkward air of silence before Mandy spoke up again. 

"Sorry we haven't talked since the Christmas party. You were really nice to me and I wanted to talk more...but I heard what happened to your mom - I'm...so sorry. You were there for me at the Christmas party I should've -," Mandy apologized. 

"Don't worry about it Mandy - I could've talked to you as well. I was in a bad space. It was hard for me to talk to anybody. Still having a hard time with it actually - don't know if you noticed but I'm not exactly one of popular kids around the office," I replied with a weak smile. Yet again there was a pervading quietness, this one felt like eternity. 

"How about a lighter topic. What movie did you want to see?" I questioned her. Mandy's smile returned, glad to have moved on from the previous topic. I was glad too. I was still having a hard time getting over my mom's death. I felt like I was disappointing her too with this s****y job and my s****y apartment. I should've gone to college and got that computer degree she kept suggesting for me. 

"Oh, well I don't know if you're into superhero movies, but there's a new Batman movie out and I think that one looks pretty awesome," she suggested. Mandy was already getting some points with her movie suggestion. I had initially expected some chick-flick, but I could definitely get with seeing the new Batman movie. 

"That's sounds pretty awesome to me," I said with a nod and a smile. 

"Alright it's a date...oh well I mean. I guess not yet, where'd you want to go to eat? You like a certain type of food?" she questioned. Mandy was starting to reveal herself as kind of a goofy person. It was pretty early but I was already starting to like her. In the glass behind her though I swore that I briefly saw an image of Nichole's face and I nearly jolted out of my chair. 

"How about California Pizza Kitchen?" I replied and stood out of my seat, playing off the fact I had jumped from surprise. 

"That sounds great! I love that place. What time you want to do all this?" Mandy asked next. I thought it over. 

"I'll check the show times for the movie and I'll let you know. Can I have your number?" I requested, retrieving my phone. She hesitated for a moment and then smiled. 

"Sure," she said. Mandy took my phone from me and added her number into my contacts list. 

"Miranda," she said to me. 

"You don't like Mandy?" I said with a slight smirk. Everyone in the office called her that and she was telling me to call her something else. 

"It's not that I don't like it - it just reminds me of being a teenager and I'm an adult now. I think I've grown past 'Mandy'," Miranda said very authoritatively. Something about how she said it sounded powerful and assertive despite her voice sounding very polite and even somewhat meek. 

"Alright Miranda, I'll call and let you know the time. Drive home safe," I said to her.  

"I'm looking forward to it, William," she teased. She nodded with a smile and strolled off, throwing on her coat on the way to the door out. I glanced outside to the window behind me and saw it was raining again today. I stared out the window, enjoying the peaceful pitter-patter of the raindrops against the glass until my line of sight was interrupted by a pig-faced man in a tan suit. 

"Hey Will, zoning out huh? Me too, man. Glad it's Friday though and it's just about quitting time. Looks like Mandy took off a little early," Phil said. His tone and demeanor displayed a very strong effort on his part to be friendly. It was clear he was in an uncomfortable position being basically exiled from the rest of the employees of J.L. Nicks. I wasn't talked to because people were too scared to, what with my mother having died the way she did not so long ago. Miranda even admitted to it herself. 

Phil on the other hand was ostracized because of his previously boisterous behavior that came to a head at the Christmas party. He had been known before to be a little bit of a loud mouth and to use somewhat non-professional language, but people didn't care before. Some even thought he was a pretty funny and likable guy. Then the story got out - they were all rumors to most people, but I knew which ones were true. This man before me, drunk or not, made awful decisions...the kind that deserve equal consequences. 

"Unless someone desperately needed her to install an update to the company's version of AVG in the last fifteen minutes of a Friday - I think it's safe to assume she won't get any flak for it," I told him.  

"AV - what now? Heh, maybe you should be in IT instead of sales, huh Valdez?" Phil said with a joke I'm sure he didn't mean to sound condescending - but did. Perhaps I was angry at Phil because he didn't face serious reprimands for his actions. Perhaps it's because people like Phil, the kind that can get drunk and ruin a person's night, perhaps even a person's life and act like nothing's wrong. It may very well be my bias against those who drink heavily that made me apprehensive to him to start with. That and listening to Mandy tell me directly about what happened between the two of them. No one else would talk to him so I was the last person he had left to try, just another point for me to resent him for. 

"And maybe you should be in sales instead of accounting since you keep f*****g up the numbers. Where's my goddamn check Phil?" I said coldly. I also didn't like how he would call me by my last name. If he wanted to be formal he would put a "mister" before Valdez when he addressed me. If he was trying to be friends like he desperately was trying for, my first name was appropriate. We weren't in the military and his size coupled with his consistent habit of getting drunk only accentuated that fact.  

"Zing! Right back into my court - sorry about that man. Listen, how about we catch a beer and we can get it all ironed out," he said with a nervous laugh. 

"Phil quit this s**t. I'm not joking around. I need to pay my rent and my bills. You withholding my check in order for us to 'catch a beer' is illegal and I should've reported you by now and I haven't. Where's my check, Phil? Where's is it?" I asked, this time much more aggressively. His passive face suddenly shifted as if I offended him thoroughly. 

"Hey man, that's harsh. Look I'm not withholding it just so we can hang out. There were some errors in the books and I've talked to corporate about it. I can get it sorted out, no problem. I just wanted to know if you wanted to hang out and get it solved even quicker between the two of us. I can do it myself if you'd rather...I just thought..." he said quickly descending into what was almost a pathetic tone. I was already at an impasse with Miranda and Nichole. Nichole was from a dream...but it was still weighing heavy. She was real to me. I had been spending night after night with her. I wanted to do right by her. I hadn't lied. I loved her...but perhaps what she had said earlier was right. Perhaps I had invented her simply to cope with my life. Maybe going out with Miranda would change things, get it started on the right path. 

"I'll give it some thought Phil. I'll send you an email if I'm feeling up for it. Otherwise, just please get my check through. I need the money and you see it obviously makes me anxious," I said. I didn't want to apologize to him, I didn't feel he deserved it - but what I said should've been close enough to avoid further escalation.  

"Got it. Sorry Valdez, wasn't trying to be a problem. I'll get it fixed," he assured me. I nodded, sitting up from my desk. 

"I'm going to head home. Later, Phil," I said to him and threw on my coat. I headed out of J.L. Nicks and once I got out the front entrance looked to the sky, the rain dripping onto my face. The brisk droplets of water were quite refreshing as I thought of Nicci in the clouds.

I parked my car into the driveway and finally I was home after the hour I spent in traffic. I trumped into my house through the garage door and plopped myself onto the sofa. Another week in the books...I was hungry, but I didn't quite feel up to cooking or preparing anything. I glanced at my phone. Perhaps I could order out? I gave some thought to this and adjusted myself on my couch, the back of my head at the arm rest. For a few moments I stared into the ceiling. Usually the weekend meant gratuitous amounts of slumber, but I didn't really feel the desire for it today. Tomorrow I was to go out with Miranda too, so I couldn't just sleep through that. 

The thought reminded me to check the movie listings. I pulled the tablet off the coffee table of my living room and tapped away until I was at the listings for the appropriate movie theater closest by. It was the latest Batman movie we decided on; this adaptation revisited Christopher Nolan's universe of Batman films and followed the new John "Robin" Blake Batman rather than Bruce Wayne. As I read through the listings I could quickly feel my eyes growing heavy.  

 

It seemed despite my efforts I slipped into sleep. I was driving this time, although I seemed to have subconsciously been driving for however long. As I got situated into the dream I surveyed my surroundings. The vehicle I was in was quite fancy, a racing vehicle of some sort. It was red too, the stereotypical kind of red racing car - it looked like it might've been a Ferrari... maybe a Testarossa, but I wasn't certain. 

I glanced to my side and saw Nichole happily gazing out her passenger window. We were zooming down a curving roadway through the valley of two mountains, jaded and rocky. The sun set on the horizon and tinged the sky to a mixture of pink, purple, and orange. 

"Hey Nicci," I said nervously. She had to have seen my thoughts when Miranda was talking to me. 

"Hi Will. How was your day?" Nicci asked politely. There was nothing in her demeanor yet that I could detect to be irritability. I wondered if perhaps she had not looked into my thoughts today - though that'd be quite convenient. 

"It was pretty uneventful. I talked to Phil and he wanted to see about hanging out again," I told her. She nodded and sat quiet for a moment. 

"I want to apologize again Will. I really am sorry. I didn't mean to be like that that when...what you were saying made me feel so happy. I want to be there for you and I do love you. I just want what's best for you because of that," she said to me. My heart skipped as I gazed over to her eyes. Her eyes had that effect.

For a brief moment I woke up. Damn it. I couldn't deny that she made my heart race. It took a lot of effort to be excited but to maintain it to a level that my heart didn't interrupt our time together. I took the tablet that was lying on my chest and gently put it back onto the coffee table and readjusted myself so I was lying more comfortably on couch. I closed my eyes. It took a few minutes but eventually I slipped back to sleep.

"Sorry about that," I said almost as soon as I was wherever it was my dreams decided to take me. My heart almost skipped again as I noticed we were in my living room, exactly as I was just moments ago when I was trying to sleep again. 

"No problem Will. I know the reason why you woke up. It's quite...cute," she said with a slight blush on her face. She was in my house now. We weren't in reality, but dream or not this was for sure how my house looked. 

"So this is where you live when you're awake," she said softly. Nicci seemed taken by her curiosity. The woman of my dreams sifted around through my belongings...or the representation of them anyways. She stopped herself just before a bookcase to the left of the TV in the living room and retrieved a book. As she glanced at I was brought to think about books in dreams. I had heard that it was impossible or near impossible to have static, unchanging text in dreams. Same went for clocks, those apparently never stayed the same either. 

"This is..." Nicci said with a somewhat grim tone. My heart dropped again as I saw the book she had chosen. The text wasn't on the book, but the picture was there as well as the same wear and tear that was on the book's cover and spine in the real world. It was my mother's book, a little red colored book she had given to me when I was a little boy. It was a book of fables. I had thought it was a brilliant book when I was little although it had a sad ending. To be honest it was my favorite book of all and I always wanted her to read it to me. I brought it to school for show-and-tell expecting to have friends who also liked the book. It turned out that the book didn't exist anywhere but in my own house...my mother was a failed children's book author. She had written the book for me before I was born. The book never took off and the copy that she had given to me was the only copy in existence. 

"It's..." I began to say, but tears beat me to the message. I had no reason to hide my feelings here, with Nicci and within a dream. A look of pity formed on Nicci's face that only came when I had spoke to her of my mother. She jogged over and threw her arms around me lovingly.  

"You'll never be alone. I'll always be here," she told me. I knew it to be true. She really would always be there. She actually couldn't leave. I didn't sense in her a desire to leave either. I could feel that she wanted to be here for me, in actuality. I wanted to be there for her to, but there was a bridge between us, one I was sure I could never get her to cross. I could cross the bridge and enter the world where she existed, but she could not cross the bridge into mine. How could she leave this place in my dreams and become as real as Miranda? 

"Thank you Nicci...I love you," I said with sincerity, hugging her back tightly. 

"I love you too, Will," she replied tenderly. 

"He never figured it out..." I said somberly, remembering a part of the book involving two characters that persisted across all the fables. Nicci let go of our hug and gazed deeply into my eyes. 

"Never figured what out?" Nichole inquired concernedly. 

"They traveled worlds. They loved one another, but together they never figured out how to save his -" I began to tell her. Suddenly I heard the sound that was like a thousand bells being rung at once.

Author's Note

Grammar/spelling errors? Please let me know!