Page 18 of In Somnis

Knowing gives me no control as awareness slides in alongside the paralysis. I can think and observe. I can even brace, but my body belongs to the dream now, not to me, and the dream has already decided how it will end.

The road curves through darkness I don’t recognize, but that doesn’t matter. The dream doesn’t need landmarks. It only needs momentum, and I’m driving too fast.

I know this without checking the speedometer. I never check it. Some part of me understands that if I do, if I acknowledge the number, then the next part will come faster, so I keep my eyes forward as the rain thickens.

There are things you learn about a recurring dream after five years. You learn its textures, the weight of the steering wheel in this dream versus waking life. How the rain sounds slightly wrong, too loud, like the memory of rain rather than the thing itself. You learn the exact moment the calm turns.

There is always a moment. A beat where the wipers keep their rhythm, and my hands stay steady, and I think, perhaps tonight will be different.

It never is.

The headlights catch a pale shape at the side of the road right before she steps into the beam. I don’t know what she looks like. There’s no face, no hair, only the certainty. Bone-deep, absolute, and devastating certainty.

It’s her.

My foot slams on the brake, but it’s too late.

It’s always too late, and the sound… God, the sound is so wrong. It’s not the crunch you’d expect or something cinematic. Just a dull, conclusive impact that travels straight up my arms and into my spine.

The car stops, the rain keeps falling, and I can’t breathe.

I know without seeing her, without opening the door, without checking the mirror, that she’s dead.

I killed her.

The love of my life, my soulmate. The only person I was ever meant to love, and I ran her down in the dark.

My hands shake as I reach for the door handle, but the moment my foot touches the asphalt⁠—

I’m ripped out of the dream.

I slam back into my body with violent awareness, my heart hammering so hard it physically hurts, each beat erratic and wrong, nothing like the careful rhythms I force on myself when I’m awake.

I’m on my back.

I can’t move.

My arms are dead weight at my sides, my legs locked into the mattress like they’ve been welded there. I try to take deeper breaths, but my chest feels restricted, as if a heavy weight is pressing me down, pinning me in place.

Sleep paralysis.

My consciousness comes back online, but my body stays offline, leaving me stranded in between. I can think, and I can feel, but I cannot move, no matter what happens to her or me.

The panic of what I’ve done in my dream surfaces again, but burns away just as fast, because I shut it down how I’ve trained myself to.

You are awake. You are safe. It will pass.

I fold the words into my breathing until they become instructions instead of panic, and until I can force my eyes open.

I won’t beg or bargain. I will outlast it.

The ceiling above me is exactly the same as it always is—white and brightly lit. I’ve stared at it often enough to know every faint shadow, every place the light shifts depending on the time of day. I keep the lights on for a reason. Darkness has no rules in the dreaming world. Except it isn’t the ceiling that has my attention, it’s the eyes staring back at me from it.

Light blue.

Beautiful, yes, and unbearable, because they feel like mine to protect and mine to ruin in the same breath.

They hover impossibly close, filling my vision without belonging to anything at all. No face, no body, just those eyes, wide, glassy, and terrified. They don’t blink, fixed on me with a fear so raw it seeps straight into me.