The Man of My Dreams (Fiction)

 

There’s a stranger in my bed.

He’s a really handsome, hunky stranger, but a stranger, no less.

It’s not what you think. One night stands are totally not my thing.

But then again, screaming my tonsils off so early in the morning are not usually my thing, too, and yet, here we are.

“Clarissa! Calm down! I can explain!” he cries as he clamps his hand over my mouth.

I jerk backwards, jump off the bed, and grab the first weapon I can find on my side table – a fork.

“Why do you know my name? Who are you?” I demand in a shrill voice as I point the fork menacingly at him. (Note to self – I need to arm myself better in the future. Maybe a butcher knife? A can of mace? That is, provided I manage to get out of this ordeal alive.)

“I’m Reeve,” he replies. “I am the man of your dreams.”

Wow, this guy is certainly full of himself. Okay, sure, he does look exactly like the kind of man I had always dreamed of dancing off into the sunset with – tall, broad-shouldered, fair-haired, and green eyed – but that did not give him the right to be so cocky about it.

“Excuse me?” I gasp.

“I came from your dreams,” he explains. “From that,” he points at my bed’s headboard, where a dreamcatcher hangs.

I had bought that dreamcatcher yesterday. My best friend Tara and I had found ourselves browsing the wares of a yard sale a few blocks away from the flat we shared. We had laughed as we tried on crazy hats and old cardigans and stared at an assortment of cutesy baubles.

I was holding the colorful dreamcatcher in my hand when the yard sale owner’s voice broke into my thoughts. “That’s a dreamcatcher,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “It is hung above the bed, used as a charm to protect sleeping people. The Native Americans believe that a dreamcatcher changes a person’s dreams. Only good dreams would be allowed to filter through. Bad dreams would stay in the net, disappearing with the light of day.”

Recently, I had been having a spate of bad dreams that involved my teeth crumbling or me hurtling to the ground, with me I waking up in cold sweat just before I hit pavement. This dreamcatcher was definitely something I needed, so I left the yard sale with it and a few other items. Last night was the first night I used it.

“What do you mean you came from that?” I ask Reeve back in my bedroom.

“Don’t I look familiar to you?” he responds with an unconnected question of his own. Now that he mentions it, he does look familiar. Why is that?

OMG, was this guy actually my one night stand? Did I somehow get drunk and bring him home last night? But I wasn’t even drinking! Tara and I had just ordered fast food and ate it in front of the television as we binge watched… okay, TMI. No need for you to know about and judge our pathetic single girl hobbies.

“Yes, you do,” I reply hesitantly. “Why is that?”

“Because I am from your dreams,” he replies. “We went on several dream dates, even travelled to Europe and all those other places in your dream board,” he nods his head towards a cork board on my desk. “Don’t you remember we even – ”

“Stop! Don’t say it! I remember!” I shriek, as a steamy image flashes in my mind. My face feels so hot. I must be beet red by now.

I compose myself. “If you’re from my dreams, then what are you doing here in the real world?” I ask. “Or is this a dream? Should I pinch myself to wake up?”

I try to remember everything I had seen on the movie Inception. “Omigosh do I need to kill myself?” I stare in horror at the fork in my hand. Death by fork sounds horrible.

“No, no, please don’t do anything drastic,” he protests. “This is real life. I’m the one who got brought from dream land to your world.”

“How?” I demand, perplexed.

“The dreamcatcher,” he replies, taking the thing in his hand. “It caught me.”

To be continued. Perhaps. 

This post is part of the photo prompts series that Tyne and I are doing every second Monday of the month. If you want to join us, feel free to use the photo and write a post on whatever it prompts you to think about, whether fiction or not, and share your link in the comments! 🙂