“Hey!” a man’s voice says.
That’s odd. I’ve had this dream many times before but no one has ever come.
“Hey!” he says again. “I know what you did!”
I feel myself separate from Vic and I see Noah—no, wait, Carl?—standing before me.
Vic stands up and walks down the alleyway without me, whistling a happy tune.
“I saw you, you filthy gifted scum,” Carl/Noah says.
I straighten up and shake my head. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Hurt her? You killed her! I’m gonna make sure you can’t hurt anyone again.”
“Just let me—”
Suddenly, a firm pressure on my neck cuts off my words. I struggle to breathe. I look around but no one is near me. No one is holding me. There’s just Carl/Noah, standing in the distance with a nasty look on his face.
The pressure gets stronger, crushing my windpipe. Now, I can’t breathe at all.
I grasp at my neck, making choking noises, trying to get whatever this is on my neck off of me, but I can only feel my own neck.
I’m scared. I’m going to die.
Help me! Someone help me, please!
“Chrys,” I hear a whisper from somewhere. “Are you okay?”
I fall to the ground, next to the girl, and thrash around, fighting the invisible force. I’m so lightheaded and my vision has gone spotty.
Something shakes my shoulders vigorously.
“Chrys!” the voice says again, this time a little louder.
Hunter? Is that Hunter’s voice?
Wait. I’m dreaming. I can wake up.
Wake up.
I open my eyes and bolt upright in bed, holding my throat and taking in deep, hungry breaths. When my breath starts to calm, I look to the side. It’s still pretty dark but in the moonlight, I can just make out Hunter’s face there somehow—perhaps standing on my desk chair.
“You were panicking,” he whispers. “Were you dreaming about… Iris?”
I shake my head and take in another deep breath. “No, it was Carl, I think. He was trying to kill me. He was choking me.” My whole body feels agitated and I’m shaking. “I don’t think I can go back to sleep tonight.”
“Come down, then. We can go for a walk.”
“It’s fine. You go back to sleep. I’ll figure something out.”
“I won’t be able to go back to sleep either, with you feeling like that, so let’s just go outside together.”
“Just focus on someone else, someone peaceful and sleepy.”
“No.”
I roll my eyes, not sure if he can really see it though. “Fine, I’m coming down.”
I feel my way for the ladder and climb down. Turns out Hunter was standing on my desk chair because he climbs down from that too.
We go outside and out back behind the cabin, into the thick darkness of the forest. It’s a cool summer night. Crickets chirp from all around us.
After a little bit of stumbling over tree roots and nearly colliding with trees, we stop and sit down at the base of one of them.
“You don’t make any sense, you know,” I say, hugging my knees to my chest.
Hunter, sitting to the side of me around the tree trunk, has his legs out straight and his hands on his lap. “How so?”
“You know now that focusing on one person helps reduce the noise, so logically, you should be focusing on someone who’ll make you feel the best.”
“But that’s what I’m doing.”
I sigh. “No. You’re just torturing yourself. Focus on a happy person, or at least a mildly content person.”
“No thanks.”
“Oh I see what you’re doing.” I stretch out my legs. “You’re keeping such a close eye on me so you can figure out when I fall in love with you and make your move.”
“‘When?’ Are you saying it’s inevitable?”
“Ugh, I meant ‘when’ in an ‘if’ sense.”
He pokes my arm with a finger. “Then you should have just said ‘if.’”
“Whatever. You’re just trying to avoid answering me. That’s the reason why you’re focusing on me, isn’t it?”
“I never thought about it like that, Chrys. I just thought it’d be important to keep monitoring you given all the emotional craziness that just happened to you. Dreams tend to bring subconscious stuff to the surface. I was worried you’d have a dream that would send you spiraling.”
“So you’ve been monitoring me all night? Haven’t you slept?”
“I was sleeping but I was also still focusing on you. It’s hard to explain. It’s like a part of my brain is always on, using my gift. Even when I’m sleeping, I’m aware of it. In fact, I think because of it, I never dream.”
“Well they say that everyone has dreams but people who think they don’t dream just don’t remember them.”
“I don’t think that’s it. I guess I do dream, in a sense, but instead of seeing stories and characters, it’s just feelings—the emotions I’m sensing. So when you started freaking out, my dream became like the energy of panic, I guess? It worried me so I woke myself up.”
“I don’t get it at all.”
He chuckles. “I don’t really know how else to explain it.”
“It’s fine. Sounds like a ‘you had to be there’ kind of thing.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“So if you don’t dream in the traditional sense, that would make you immune to Carl, right?”
He shrugs. “Maybe.”
I lean away from the tree, so I can see Hunter’s face. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep ever again, knowing that Carl is out there trying to kill me in my dreams. Do you think that if you used your gift on me—”
He waves me away. “No. Absolutely not. I’m never going to manipulate your emotions again. That turned out horribly last time.”
“But maybe I won’t be able to dream while you do it. Or maybe I can dream, but like with Elise, he can’t break through the blanket.”
He closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I can’t do that to you.”
“So you’d rather I just never sleep again?”
He lets go of his nose and looks at me with a sigh.
