Dreamer Dreamed - Part Three - Windows

Tyr opened his blue eye slowly. A white ceiling with white halogen lights in it stared down at him. The only other thing he could see was a lock of his dark hair that had fallen before him.

The he started screaming.

At the top of his lungs, his throat burned but he refused to stop. A nurse was at his side, like she had been there already, just waiting for him to wake up. With both hands she put her small pressure onto his chest to try and calm him. She was also saying something, Tyr could see her lips move but her words were blocked by his outburst. After what was probably seconds, but could have been days, he realized that he couldn't breathe. It may have been the nurse's hands. No, she wasn't pushing on him. Finally he had to stop screaming to catch his breath and in doing so realized that he had been shrieking in a single continuous cry.

His throat was knives. His body tried to cough up the pain, but the paper cup of water that his nurse held was a better solution. She poured it down for him because his wrists were bound to the hospital bed rails. Only at that moment did he notice.

"Why am I tied up?" he tried to yell but it came out as just a scratch. It stung him to speak but he didn't care now. When the nurse remained silent he started wrestling with the straps and found that he was tied at the ankles as well.

"Let me out of this!" it was as much a yell as he could muster, "Why am I tied up?"

Suddenly there was a voice at the foot of the bed, "Because you've been trying to hurt yourself." A woman's voice, older than Valkerie and himself.

Valkerie! that whore, that backstabbing untrustable little whore. She was nothing, less than nothing, she was negative space. A mistake in the universe that needed to be undone. It was her fault he was here, tied to a bed screaming at nothing. She had sold her soul. She was his only friend, the only person he could trust, his only reason for living, the one he loved.

Trying to hurt myself? I wasn't trying to hurt myself. I was trying to kill myself. But I couldn't find anything toxic or sharp.

That voice he knew that voice. He had heard it in a dream, but it was different now. Everything was. The world was real. The ceiling was real. The nurse was real. That's why he had been screaming.

"What's going on?" Tyr asked to anyone who could answer.

"Do you feel different?" That voice again, it was Terpsichore.

Tyr couldn't think of anything else to say, "What's going on?" he repeated.

Terpsichore softly crept to the side of the bed so that he could see her. "I think I know what's wrong." she said, "I've given you some medication to clear away the delusion, but it's only a temporary fix. What id did do was answer the question of what is wrong."

"What delusion?" his face was contorted into a grotesque expression of disgust in the fact that she could think, that she could even suggest that he had delusions. But then he remembered Valkerie. She of course showed them all the letter. He envisioned her running around all over town posting copies of it in store windows and laughing at him with her friends and family. And her dad. Oh he hated her dad. He was the exact opposite of Tyr's mom, loving, caring, protective. The old jerk had never trusted Tyr.

"Whore!" this time it was a successful yell.

But Terpsichore seemed to take no offence. She was buried inside his chart, lost under the wait of his case. "There may be something-" she spoke under her breath and then left.

Her steps echoed through his door from farther and farther down the hall until finally he heard the door close and then the only sound left was his breathing and the nurse doing whatever it was that nurses did.

It was too much to take. The reality of it all. Even the sunlight that lit up the room through barred windows. Before everything had been so plastic and fake. Now even the pain in his wrists from his shackles was different, it was beautiful, in a way, even precious.

No! This was the delusion. Nothing was real. Plastic! He shut his eyes, he shut out the world, but even his lungs betrayed him. The air they breathed was so real, so healing. So wonderful. But he just wanted it to end. You can't just flip a man's world upside down and then walk away without explaining something, anything.

Terpsichore, the same as his mother. She didn't care for him at all. He was her patient, it was her job to care. But she didn't, just like his mother. And so she deserved nothing less.

A noise. The door from down the hall. There were two sets of footsteps, two voices. Terpsichore was coming back, but who was with her? A younger woman, that voice was so familiar. He had loved that voice, a life ago. He had lived to hear it. He would have died for it. Valkerie was coming to visit him. The Betrayer was coming down the hall at that very moment. Every step burned a hole in his gut. Every sound loosed from her lips fought to sew it shut. A part of him could still love her.

Dreamer Dreamed - Part Two - The Letter

Valkerie reached down into her bottomless leather purse. She fished around for just a moment, she knew where it was. She had held onto it for hours after he gave it to her, it was only just before she confronted him that she was able to let it go. Would giving this to Terpsichore be another form of betrayal? Would he hate her like he hates his mother? No, this is why she was here. This is why he was here.

"He didn't exactly say anything." Valkerie passed off the letter with quivering hands, "He just gave me this."

Terpsichore held the paper with great care. She could already see how much it meant to Valkerie and would not jeopardize it's condition. But upon close inspection it was already in a poor state. "What are these marks?" asked the doctor.

Without hesitation Valkerie said, "Tears," She paused lost in the memory of when she had picked it out of a pile of mail, "and blood."

As strange as it was, Terpsichore showed no surprise, not even by a raised eyebrow. "That would explain the cuts on his hand." she said.

Valkerie had no explanation.

So Terpsichore read:

To my Bunny

"Bunny?"

Blushing a little Valkerie answered, "That's what he calls me."

"But he never said he loved you before?" Asked Terpsichore, this time she was surprised. "and he calles you bunny?"

But Valkerie just shook her head and Terpsichore read on:

To my Bunny

I've been aware of this for such a long time and dreading this moment. I've always been different, we both know it. For whatever reason you don't seem to care. I am thankful. My blindfold was removed when I was very young, soon after I met you, and not long before she died. I've kept it a secret, I'm not stupid, I know that they'd all think I was crazy. But you I can trust. If not you than there is no one.

Have you ever woken up, brushed your teeth, ate your breakfast, whatever, and you're on your way to school or work or something and it suddenly occurs to you to ask yourself the question "am I dreaming?" I'm guessing that you have. And I'm also guessing that you came to the same conclusion that I did. Of course I'm not. This is my life, I'm alive, I'm awake.

But I could only come to that conclusion for so long. See it's been like this almost my whole life. Every single day. I can't explain it, it all just feels like a dream. But it can't be, because dreams aren't real, dreams you can wake up from, dreams only happen when asleep.

But it is. It is real. There's another solution. Simply that the reason I can't wake up is because it's not my dream. It's someone else's. It's not mine!

I "wake up" everyday and live my life, but it's not my life. It's someone's imagination. Here's the question. What happens when that person wakes up? Think about it. Now here's the answer. We all die.

Valkerie please don't think I'm crazy. In fact you're the only thing that keeps me sane. Bunny if you don't believe me then I don't know what I'll do. I won't have a reason to live anymore. Please, come over tonight and talk to me. Tell me that you believe me, tell me that you feel it too. Tell me you're as terrified as I am. Please don't hate me. I love you. I always have. If you think I'm crazy then I don't want to live this lie anymore anyway. Please come over tell me you love me before the Dreamer wakes up.

Dreamer Dreamed - Part One - Betrayal

"He said he loved me." she said.

Terpsichore, his assigned head doctor, clasped her pail fingers over his file. "I see." she replied.

"No." Valkerie looked up at her through a filter, "no you don't see." She was trying to break passed Terpsichore's detached demeanor by baring a small piece of her soul in her eyes.

But she clung too tightly to it. Her own sanity required that she not venture too close to her patients because most of them would never recover. Most of them would live out their lives trapped inside their delusions, never knowing reality.

"You don't understand at all," Valkerie continued, "he's never said 'I love you' before - to anyone - ever."

Caught off guard, Terpsichore leaned back in her tall chair. "Not once?" she asked, "Never to a girlfriend, he must have to his family, his mother?"

Valkerie remained still, though her eyes betrayed more of her soul than she had intended.

"His mother." said Terpsichore, "He loved his mother."

His best friend since preschool, Valkerie had known him longer than anyone. He had never been right with himself, always tetoring on the edge of sanity. She was the only one ever able to get close to him. And her belief of his love for her was satisfied only a few days prior to his commitment into the Scarlet Glide Mental Hospital.

"I swore an oath to him," said Valkerie, "never to tell about his mother."

"Please." pleading was unlike the detached doctor, but this was important, "This could be a piece of the puzzle. It could really help him. This is why I have these consultations."

But Valkerie had her own rules of engagement. Never betray a friend. She had broken that once already. She tried to tell herself that it was for his own good, but was having trouble convincing her conscience of it. Until she was decided there would be no more betrayals from her.

"This much I can tell you," she said, but only because he had never been shy about revealing it, "Tyr did not love his mother, nor did he ever tell her that he did. He hated her, hates her, with every thought. Every breath that he takes is in spite of her."

There was a long pause before either of them said anything.

Finally Terpsichore broke through the emptiness, "Maybe we can get back to that another time. Why don't you tell me what he said to you that day besides, 'I love you.' What does he mean by 'living inside of a dream'?"