Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Ridge
Why is it so fucking dark?
I blink, or at least I think I do, because it makes zero difference, it’s just black. There’s no sound, scent, or temperature… nothing. For half a second, I wonder if I’m dead.
I’ve had worse weeks.
But then a spotlight snaps on, slicing through the dark, making me squint into it. And…
Seriously?
Is that the blonde from my door?
She’s kneeling on the ground, sobbing like the world just ended.
Same messy hair, same rumpled clothes she had in the hallway, a sickeningly cute white dress with lemons on it, and a cream cardigan, both crumpled as if she slept in them.
Her face is blotchy, and her mascara is smudged.
She appears rattled, like she ran out of fight hours ago and kept going anyway.
Her cries echo weirdly, bouncing back in a space that shouldn’t echo at all.
What the fuck?
I scan my surroundings again—no edges, no walls, no sense of space—and finally glance down at my hands for a reality check. Six fingers.
Right.
This is a dream…
… I’m dreaming.
The second I lock onto that fact, I breathe out, and the space shifts. A soft breeze stirs the void, and a wall forms behind me because I want it there. I lean against it, arms crossed, one ankle hooked over the other.
Better.
Where are the damn trees?
Did my subconscious finally get sick of recycling its favorite torture chamber?
Blondie is still crying in her little spotlight, shoulders shaking, apparently seconds from shattering.
Great. Is that my new curse? Strange crying women?
But still, this is delightfully different from the last hundred nights. No forest swallowing the light or branches clawing at my arms. No feeling of being funneled somewhere I don’t want to go. I don’t feel trapped or powerless.
Holding up my palm, I will a sour lollipop into existence. It pops into my hand instantly.
Holy shit. I laugh under my breath.
I’m not blocked anymore, for real?
“Damn,” I mutter. “Maybe my subconscious finally got over itself.”
I unwrap the yellow thing and stick it between my lips. The hit of sour is brutal, and my whole face twitches as a shudder runs down my spine.
“Fuck you, Miller,” I mutter around the candy, grin curling. “Fuck you and your deadline, I’m back bitches.”
The blonde stills her sobbing on the floor as if she somehow heard me.
This is weird, even by my standards. Not the kind I’m interested in right now, though. I need to get to work. So, I flick my focus toward her, pushing at the edges of the dream, willing her to dissolve, fade, vanish—whatever. My control slams into resistance instead, like static biting back.
Oh?
I try again, harder, but she doesn’t budge.
“Well, shit,” I breathe out, the realization sliding into place.
This isn’t my dream.
No wonder the cold edge of fear that usually coils in my gut is missing. But now that I pay attention, her fear practically hums in the air, vibrating under my skin in a way that makes everything feel too close, too loud, too raw.
Fuck me sideways. I never managed to share a dream without intending to do it.
Hell, I haven’t even tried in months. It takes enough effort to keep my own head from spiraling every night without voluntarily stepping into someone else’s.
But here I am, and there she is, and this whole setup is so obviously not my dream it’s almost insulting.
If it were mine, there’d be teeth somewhere, blood, or something interesting.
My gaze scans the black void and fog again.
I’d never conjure up anything this boring.
I think back to earlier, to me lying in bed and trying to ease myself into a lucid state with slow breaths and the intention to dream, the usual routine, except the universe apparently hates me, because right when I was finally slipping under, some lunatic—cough, Blondie, cough—decided pounding on my door at eleven at night was a great idea.
By the time I slammed the door shut and made it back to bed, I was wired, irritated, wide-awake, and, for reasons I refuse to examine too closely, unable to shake the image of her kneeling in the hallway, staring at me as though I’d personally stomped on her last good nerve.
Which, for the record, I didn’t.
She was the one being rude.
So I gave up on lucid dreaming entirely, resigned myself to normal unconsciousness, or as normal as it ever gets for me, and wanted to sleep, but apparently that’s all it takes now.
One stray thought about a crying blonde, and my treacherous brain decides, “Hey, why not hijack her REM cycle? Let’s take a field trip. ”
Another spotlight snaps on overhead, and I glance up the same moment she does. This time, an older version of her stands in the beam, with a soft smile and tired eyes, her mother, maybe?
“Mom!” the blonde chokes out, stumbling to her feet and sprinting toward the light. Just as she reaches it—poof. Gone.
“Jesus, that’s depressing,” I mutter before my brain can slap a filter on my mouth.
Blondie whips her head toward me, her blotchy and tear-streaked blue eyes wide, and I shut my mouth fast, making some of the shadowy fog that seems to fill this space appear in front of me to hide myself.
I should leave, but the fact that I’m somehow dream sharing with a total-fucking-stranger? Yeah, that’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to me in months. Maybe years. Certainly more exciting than Miller leaving me increasingly deranged voicemails about my missed deadline.
The issue is, if she figures out I’m actually here, and her subconscious clocks me as an intruder, this whole thing goes nuclear, because she is definitely not lucid right now. There’s no awareness here, only raw emotion and whatever her brain decides to torment her with.
Another spotlight flickers on, this one off to the right, and an older man with a round belly appears beneath it.
“Dad!” she sobs, running toward him with everything she has left. And, again—
snuffed out.
Yeah, she’s so not lucid. Nobody with functioning self-preservation would dream this shit on purpose.
Lucid dreaming is control. Usually, anyway. That’s the whole appeal. Once you know you’re dreaming, you get to grab the wheel. Change the weather, tilt gravity sideways, rewrite the rules, erase the monsters… or, if you’re me, make a few new ones to see how they move.
This, though? This is your standard nightmare.
There are categories to dreams, not official ones, just how I sort them. Normal dreams fade the second you wake up. Memory dreams loop the shit you don’t deal with. Lucid dreams, you steer. The funhouse twins—nightmares and night terrors—only pretend you’re in the driver’s seat.
And she’s definitely riding shotgun to one of them right now.
Another spotlight slices through the black, and two tall women appear in it. They’re laughing, pointing down at her while she curls in on herself, crying harder.
“Why? Why are you like this?” she sobs. “I thought we were friends!”
They keep laughing, and I bite down on the lollipop, the crack of the candy almost making me flinch.
A flicker of protectiveness sparks low in my gut, and before I can even think about it, I flick my wrist. Silver duct tape snaps into existence and slaps over both their mouths so hard the sound cuts off mid-breath.
The women shimmer, their edges warping as the dream-fabric ripples outward, the spotlight dying as we plunge back into darkness.
Good riddance.
Blondie gasps as another light flares to life a few feet away. She spins toward it like she’s been yanked by a string, and my gaze follows just as quickly. It’s a younger man this time.
“What’s next?” I groan, dragging the lollipop from my mouth with a wet pop. “The full family tree? Should I grab popcorn? Maybe summon a chair?”
Yeah, let’s not do that.
I should leave or prompt myself to wake up.
If I manage to hit lucidity again later, I could actually create something useful.
Set the scene, write a monster, fly, fall, hell, I could just fuck a dream version of someone hot, literally anything except babysit whatever emotional dumpster fire she’s got going on here, but I don’t, because, for some reason, I want to see what happens next.
And let’s be real, I’d end up in that fucking forest again anyway.
“Cherub,” the tall guy says with a sad smile.
I scoff loudly because, of course, he calls her something stupid.
The guy’s head snaps toward me instantly.
Whoops.
I jam the lollipop back between my teeth and drag another curtain of darkness around myself, willing the shadows to swallow me whole.
If one of her dream projections—pieces of her consciousness—clocks me as an intruder, it’s game over.
She might not be aware I’m here, but her subconscious will be, and once it notices someone like me roaming around, it will throw the whole damn dream at me to kick me out, even if it has to tear itself apart to do it.
And I’m not quite done with feeling like myself again.
The guy’s gaze drifts back to her, and the blonde slowly pushes herself to her feet. I brace for the usual routine, but she doesn’t run this time. She turns around, arms crossed, chin lifted as if she’s finally done being everyone’s crash-test dummy.
I study the guy again, taking my time, and there’s nothing remarkable about him.
Average face and build, early forties maybe.
Taller than her by a mile, but not nearly attractive enough to justify the emotional theatrics her dream is throwing at him.
Still… something about him is wrong. Not visually or physically, just off.
Like the dream built him from bad memories and a sour aftertaste.
That’s the thing about non-lucid dreams. They run on emotion. Every sound, every shadow, every face in here is sculpted from whatever the dreamer is too tired or scared to process, and right now, the only thing radiating off her is hurt.