(NOTE: The following short story is the result of many sleepless nights and is almost autobiographical. True to its tag, it is “slightly embellished.”)

“I’ve said it to you before, I’m not the jealous type, and for Christ’s sake I mean that…”

As these words passed by his numb lips, the sapidity of each alcohol-laced syllable precluded the air.

“…It’s just –”

He paused.

That evening had brought much revelry, and for small clusters of time, the thoughts that had punished him throughout the day were pushed far enough to the periphery to not cause a stir. Yet with each imbibed drink, the memory inched one step closer to tangibility, until finally, the unbearable weight of his own monstrous thoughts could be held at bay no more. Perhaps that last rum and coke was the culprit, but it did not explain the sudden lucidity of thought amidst a sea of spins and shakes.

Hesitant to be more vulnerable than he had already made himself, he prepared to let her in on his secret. At his current trajectory, she would mean more to him soon than any animate creature he’d ever known. That scared him more than falling asleep ever did.

“– it’s just that, I wake up after these dreams, and even though it’s done, the residual thoughts and feelings are so goddamn vivid it’s overwhelming. I’ve lost the ability to differentiate between the emotions my mind artificially creates while asleep and the ones I actually feel in real life.”

He could tell she understood, but he also knew that no one could really know what he meant.

—-

Two nights prior, in a playful way, each of them had joked about random people hitting on them during the course of their day.

“At a bar earlier,” he said, “some sexjob – antiquated and alcoholic – attempted quite unsuccessfully to court me with slurred speech and promises of experienced pleasure. I wanted none of that.”

She laughed, and brought up seeing an old friend at work. She was glad to see him, but had secretly hoped he would flirt with her. He didn’t, but the want was there.

Certainly this was nothing he should be bothered by, as he knew it to be selfish of him to expect her to not want to be hit on by others. What person fully stops noticing the opposite sex once committed anyway? It’s the acting on it that counts, he reminded himself. The remainder of his day came to a rational close even after their discussion. Unbeknownst to him, however, his brain eschewed this rationale and deposited her words silently into a deep recess of his brain, only to be recovered when he was most vulnerable.

As the two later settled to bed beneath the covers in a post-coitus embrace, he was lulled to sleep by the rhythmic calm of her gentle heart pitter-pattering beneath her silk nightwear. As usual, his last thoughts before sleep were unencumbered strings of consciousness – “her-hair-smells-edible-and-her-thighs-feel-smooth-and-my-fingers-delight-in-touching-her-
shoulder-and-her-cheek-is-rosywarm-and-soft-on-my-face-and-she’s-clutching-my-fingers-
to-pull-my-arm-over-her-and-I-hope-no-one-breaks-into-my-car-and-” asleep.

—-

“So what can I do to help you stop having these dreams?”

“Really, there’s not much either of us can do,” he replied.

He knew, however, that there were salves, but they required impossible coordination and trust between both parties to ensure their fidelity was indestructible. His past experiences with trying to make these efforts happen resulted in inevitable exhaustive failure – though never on his part – and so the net result was a lingering jealous unconscious he never met face to face.

The discussion had gone as far as he was willing to take it, without remedy, but she knew he remained troubled, even betrayed by his own thoughts. He didn’t know she knew this.

They both sat down to unwind from the evening. His mind searched incessantly for something – ANYTHING – to put him at ease. After all, he thought, it will be bedtime soon, and who the fuck knows what shit this mind will conjure up tonight.

His mind must always have designs to fuck him up. He believed this sincerely, as no other entity went out of their way so much as his own thoughts to severely cripple his ability to differentiate between waking life and slumber. It was as though his mind searched for his weaknesses and exploited them to derive some sadistic, self-inflicting satisfaction. Would his nightmares tonight consist of her fucking other men and loving it? Would she be meeting with ex-boyfriends behind his back, only to be discovered by him in compromising sexual situations? Would she secretly be lusting after someone faceless, but whose simply being there jeopardized his perception of her in the morning? Or maybe she wouldn’t be in the dream at all, but rather he’d find himself in a house inhabited by faceless ghosts, only one of which ever comes to fruition before him – that of the zombie-woman whose mere presence inspires dread and hyperventilation even after awakening? It didn’t matter; with sleep eminent, all he could do was kiss her goodnight, close his eyes, and prepare for the unknown.

—-

The dream started off normally:

He was in familiar surroundings, and there was no indication of there being anything to be frightened of yet. The city before him stretched endlessly and aimlessly, and though he stayed in one place he could trace the city with his mind, looping between buildings and looking into the windows of high rises.

He had dreamt this two nights before.

Once settled in, he quickly noticed her to his left, radiant and full of life as always. The shrill noise of the monorail coming to a halt above him drew his gaze to the terminal. She looked up too, and the elevated railcar emptied its contents onto the platform. From out of the caboose came a handsome young man, completely unrecognizable to him, but to her it must have been like seeing a ghost. How he knew this gentleman was from a city she had talked fondly of in the past, and how he somehow knew she still loved him, he did not know. Whether it was a former crush or a past lover was irrelevant, what he noticed in her was a longing he had never seen applied to him. His heart raced as he thought of what to do next. If there was a way to avert her eyes from this stranger, he did not have the capability to do it. She was fixed, and slowly moved forward towards the man. Helplessly he watched as she made her decision without a sound. It was clear she was gravitating towards this stranger, and that in her wake she left all the love he had given her. The stranger descended a staircase towards them, and she continued at a faster pace, as though to say, I’ve missed you and now I’m yours once more. After a long embrace, which he forcibly witnessed through transparent eyelids, she turned to him and smiled a wicked smile – the kind of smile that spites you and stabs your heart all at once; lifts you up to face it then spits and punches you to the dirt.

His brain fervently released the overwhelming feeling of jealousy. It was her smile; that whorish gesture forever matted onto his eyes that awoke him suddenly.

—-

Sweat dripped from his brow to his thighs, each drop hopefully evacuating the thoughts. Jealousy pumped through his body, and he looked down to notice her peacefully sleeping beside him – as though she didn’t know what she had done!

Slowly, she awoke and turned to him to notice the distress in his face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked beneath sleepy wisped breath.

He could only draw shallow gasps. His emotions were running too high, and hyperventilation made no room for words.

“Oh, baby,” she said gently. It was the kind of intonation that lighthoused those lost at sea. Only she had that power to bring him back to harbor.

She sat up to hold him, placing her lips on his shoulder for added comfort. The furrow that spanned his brow from left to right and back again slowly unfurled once he finally realized where he was.

“Shhh, shhh, it was just a dream.” Her hand pushed past the layer of sweat mounting on the small of his back.

“You know what you can do?” he panted amidst his own dripping vestiges.

She stared back, longingly, hoping he had found some answer to the question she asked earlier in whatever the hell place he had just come back from.

“Tell me I’m done dreaming.”