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KAYLA
The forest was thick — impossibly thick — to the point where walking wasn’t even an option. Even if I could move, I had no place to go. No direction to even speak of, or destination in mind.
I was lost.
More than lost.
I was completely and utterly confused and lost, and now immobilized by thick undergrowth and impenetrable trees.
“Fuck.”
The word sounded funny, uttered flatly in the middle of the forest. I thought about the joke associated with the tree falling and no one else to hear it, and it made me laugh.
“This isn’t funny, though.”
For lack of anything better to do I lifted one leg, then stopped with my foot hovering over the forest floor. There was no where to set it down. I couldn’t even step back into my former spot, because the ferns and brambles had grown overthattoo.
“Just great, Kayla,” I snarled venomously. I was cold. Wet. Tired. I wanted to go home. “That’s just fucking grea—”
Mid-sentence, something hit me. I bolted upright, slammed my foot down, and looked around.
“None of this is here,” I told myself. “This isn’t real.”
An epiphany came to me. One where I knew something in no uncertain terms, yet knowing that something was fragile and precarious:
I’m dreaming.
The realization came with a flood of relief, but also excitement. It meant I wasn’t really lost. I wasn’t really cold. It also meant I could just wake u—
NO.
Something stopped me, and the haze surrounding everything just dropped away. It was like the entire dream had been out of focus the whole time, and someone adjusted a knob. Everything sharpened. My entire surroundings jumped immediately to life.
I’m not dreaming. I’m LUCID dreaming.
Holy shit! I’d wanted this ever since I’d been a child! I’d read books on it, taken supplements. I’d kept dream journals and done mental exercises at bedtime, just so I could have the possibility of realizing I was dreaming while within a dream. And now…
I raised my arms to the sky and leapt, and suddenly I was flying! Higher and higher I went, spinning without getting dizzy. I felt amazing! Like my body could do anything. Like my lungs were full of pure oxygen, and my mind was sharp and clear and—
Whoa.
I looked down and saw the blinking light at the beginning of town. I was flying over North Glade! I embraced the idea, swooping low over my own hotel. I zipped through the nighttime streets, hovering just inches over the powerlines and traffic signals and—
Something loomed up ahead, big and white. It looked almost eerie in the darkness. Like a giant tooth…
For some reason I was drawn towards it, without even meaning to be. I sped faster, stretching my body as I sailed through the clouds. The tooth got bigger, broader. The shape of it, somehow more familiar.
And then…
OH.
I knew what it was, even before I was landing in front of it. Floating down through the sky and then slowing to make the most perfect, effortless touchdown… just thirty or forty yards away.
The tooth wasn’t a tooth at all — it was a screen. The giant, broken-down movie screen of the old drive-in theater.
Silence descended, and even the wind was gone. For a moment I stood confused, unsure of why I was here. I could see the marquee, down by the entrance. The raised rows of asphalt parking spots, cracked by time, with grass growing through them so tall they came up to my waist.
This is MY dream, I told myself quietly.I’m the one in control.
