The Man of her Dreams: A Paranormal Romance

by Stratton, Nathan

  In the bathroom, she stared at her face in the mirror. Her lips looked… fuller, somehow. And bright red? What was this? She could have sworn that they looked as though they’d been wildly kissed. She touched them with her fingertips, feeling the power of the dream that was still unraveling inside her head, the memory of it fading little by little as she woke up more fully to greet the day.

  But the memory of Philip himself remained sharp and clear in her head. It was as though her dream was just a vehicle that brought him to her, and that he was so real he stood out in sharp relief from all the other things in her head.

  But he wasn’t truly “real” – was he?

  Alexis grabbed her temples. Her head was swimming, and suddenly she was gripped by a wave of terror. She was having trouble differentiating the dream world from waking life, as if she couldn’t tell what was real. It was a disturbing, disorienting feeling. The two worlds were intersecting in so many new and confusing ways. Right now all she wanted to do was dive back into the dream and find Philip, so she could enjoy his company without distraction.

  But he was in the dream-world, and she was here on the other side, and there was no way he could join her. No matter how she felt about him – and she really wasn’t at all sure how she felt, just now – it didn’t even matter, because they existed in completely different worlds. She didn’t see how they could ever bridge that gap.

  Still, despite all the craziness and the sheer impossibility of it, she couldn’t get the man out of her head. The power of their connection had felt stronger than anything else she’d experienced. She felt he knew her, completely, beyond a shadow of a doubt. When she pictured him in her mind’s eye, she felt strangely at peace. Even amid the swirling chaos of her dreams, she knew he’d always be there for her.

  “No,” Alexis said out loud at the thought. She stared at herself in the mirror for another long moment. “No,” she said again, shaking her head and looking into her own eyes. “You will absolutely not fall in love with a man in your dreams. That’s just not possible. It’s not sane. It’s not… it’s just not happening. No.”

  But as she climbed into the shower and the finer details of the dream fell away, one thing remained: she remembered everything about Philip, and she wanted to see him again. The more she learned about him, the more she wanted to learn. She loved that he seemed both strong and vulnerable at the same time; she loved the way he’d grabbed her, so naturally, and so kind. She found herself wondering more and more about the reasons he was locked in that unique hell, and what he’d be like if he ever broke free of it.

  The questions about Philip were so strong that she thought of little else during the morning. She drove to work in a fog, said hello to her coworkers without really noticing them, and sat down at her desk with her mind somewhere else entirely. She looked down at the paperwork waiting for her attention, but she couldn’t focus at all. This was the second day she’d been distracted, and today it was even worse than before. The words on the page seemed to elude her, almost as though it was written in a foreign language. She sighed heavily.

  How important could this paperwork possibly be, when her inner world had been turned upside-down so completely?

  By the time noon rolled around, she was starting to think she must be crazy. She’d accomplished almost nothing, having spent the morning in a dull kind of trance, staring off into space. She shut down her computer and pushed her chair away from her desk. She would go to lunch, she decided, and then she would call her boss and say that something came up – an emergency, quite urgent, and that she needed the afternoon off. She wasn’t normally the type to duck out of work like this, but then again, she wasn’t the type to develop strong feelings for a man she could only see when she was asleep.

  The mere thought of it made her laugh out loud. She cackled, and the looks her coworkers gave her made her feel even crazier. She gave a cheery wave and headed out the door, acting as though she had just seen something funny on her computer, and there wasn’t anything in the world wrong with her.

  But when she got to her car, she let out a long sigh of relief.

  “I’m going crazy,” she said to the windshield. “That’s what this is. The whole situation is crazy. The dreams are crazy. I’m crazy.”

  But it’s real, a little voice in her head whispered, and she knew somehow that it was true. It was impossible to feel this way about something – about someone – who wasn’t real.

  Alexis sat in the car and stared at the dashboard. She remembered describing cars to Philip, then airplanes, then so many other things that she took for granted. She turned on the air conditioning and realized that she hadn’t told him about A/C. How could she have forgotten that? She looked out at the asphalt around her car and realized that he probably didn’t know about parking lots filled with asphalt or concrete, either. There were so many things that he didn’t know, and would never know, if he never found a woman who truly loved him.

  Alexis shook off the idea of love. The more she thought about Philip, the more that unwanted thought came up. That was the last thing she needed. It was true that she’d been increasingly lonely these days, and that she longed for a man to call her own. But it was insane to fall in love with someone who was only in her dreams. She needed a man who could actually share her life with her, not someone who could very easily be characterized as a figment of her imagination.

  “Today is nothing but crazy,” she said to herself, even as she looked at the little clock on her dashboard. It was now only six hours or so until she could go to sleep and find him again…

  At that thought, Alexis decided it was time to confide in someone. And she had a very good idea of who she might be able to talk to – someone who wouldn’t call the loony bin as soon as she opened her mouth.

  “If you think you’re going crazy,” she muttered to herself, “then you’ve got to try something crazy to fight it.”

  She turned onto Main Street and drove a few miles, then slowed down, looking at the storefronts. There was a place she had seen before, one she had been curious about, but never curious enough to go in. But today, she definitely had good reason to visit. She didn’t see it at first, and briefly panicked, thinking it might have gone out of business – but then she saw it, tucked away between two larger buildings, a small neon OPEN sign beckoning her inside despite its dark interior and drawn shutters. She’d found it.

  She let out a squeal of victory and pulled neatly into the empty parking space right in front. She stepped out of the car and up at the sign:

  Madame Valentine: Psychic Readings and Fortune-Telling. Your Inner Secrets Revealed. Specialist in the Supernatural Arts.

  Alexis had never done anything like this before, but today it was exactly what she needed. She’d seen Madame Valentine’s commercials on TV from time to time – everyone had. But she’d never gone in, not even just for kicks like so many of her friends had. Going to a psychic was one of those things you did on spring break or something, on a lark. Not something you took seriously. It was just for fun, something that everyone knew was fake.

  Right?

  The truth was, Alexis had been tempted once or twice, mostly because she wanted to hear someone tell her it would be okay. Fake or not, it would be nice to have someone who claimed to see the future smile at her and say, with all certainty, that her life would turn out all right: that she would find love, and success, and all the other things that would make her happy, until she died at a ripe old age, having lived a life that was full and complete.

  But what always stopped Alexis was that little nagging worry that the psychic would say there would be hardship and troubles, and the crystal ball wouldn’t show something good. Even if she didn’t believe that the psychic could see anything, it couldn’t be a good omen to have someone predicting doom and misfortune in your future. So the truth was that the whole idea of a psychic held more power over Alexis than she would have liked to admit.

  Sometimes, not knowing was the better option.
r />   But today, she had to know. She simply had to.

  The psychic storefront was actually a house, an older home that had seen larger buildings grow up around it in recent years. It was set back a bit from the street, and that gave it an even deeper air of mystery and darkness, as though it really didn’t belong here among the more modern buildings. Next to the door, a small sign asked you to take your shoes off when you entered. Alexis stared at the sign as she walked up the old cracked sidewalk and approached the door.

  Should she knock? She raised her hand to do so and then stopped, thinking. The other buildings around here were businesses, and she would walk right into those, so should she do the same here? She stood uncertainly for a moment, then simply tried the doorknob. It was unlocked.

  As she stepped into the front room, her heart began to pound. It looked like any ordinary house that had been turned into a business, with a small desk to one side and comfortable chairs and couches all around. It looked like any waiting area, only perhaps more comfortable and homey, but that wasn’t what made her pulse race. It was the fact that she was about to take the plunge and tell someone else about Philip that set her heart to pounding.

  “Welcome, come in, come in!” The voice was feminine yet strong, calling to her from a room to the right. The beads over the door chimed and shimmied as a woman stuck her head out through them. She must have been at least sixty, with sparkling eyes and a smile so radiant that Alexis couldn’t help but smile back.

  The woman smiled at her for a moment, then said, “You’re troubled. I can see it in you.”

  All the conventional, cynical wisdom about psychics reared up, and Alexis bit her lip so that she wouldn’t utter what she was thinking: Gee, you think?

  “Come on back, child,” said the woman, and then she was gone in a flurry of beads.

  Alexis closed the door behind her. She took two steps before she remembered that she should remove her shoes. Leaving her heels by the door, she moved on bare feet toward the place where the woman had vanished. She looked into the room, expecting to see candles lit everywhere and perhaps a crystal ball, but there was only the woman, sitting on a comfortable couch. She patted the spot next to her. “Do come in!”

  Alexis walked through the beads. They made a charming tinkling sound behind her as she stepped into the room. The floor here was carpeted, and she dug her toes into the plush fabric for a moment before approaching the couch. The woman simply waited for her, entirely serene and patient.

  “You’re afraid I won’t believe you,” she said abruptly, and Alexis felt a shiver go up the back of her spine.

  “Yes,” she said simply, and then bit her tongue. Okay, that could have been a wild guess, too. She was sure her face was easy enough to read. But even still, she didn’t want to give too much information. She wanted to see what the psychic would come up with on her own. The woman looked at Alexis strangely, and then broke into a wide grin.

  “You don’t believe in the things I do,” she said. “You’re just here to check it out for yourself. You’ve been driven here by something that you don’t understand.” The woman nodded. “That’s alright. That’s how it usually works.”

  “Does it?”

  “This place,” the woman said, gesturing with a hand covered in rings. “This place is usually considered a last resort, though of course I believe it should be the first. There are many things in life we don’t understand, and much of it can be explained by the things we cannot see.” The woman leaned forward, her smile still in place.

  “You aren’t sleeping well, dear.”

  Alexis cleared her throat. Did she really look that bad? “No…no, I’m not…”

  “Bad dreams?” asked the woman, then quickly caught herself. “No, no… they’re not bad dreams exactly, are they?”

  Alexis slowly nodded. “Well, dreams, anyway.”

  The woman closed her eyes and nodded, taking a moment before speaking. “Sometimes,” she began, “our dreams tell us where we should be going or what we should be doing – but we don’t listen. Sometimes all the answers are already there, but we don’t want to see them, for whatever reason.” Her eyes sprang open, and Alexis noticed their violet color for the first time. “But the universe always finds a way to get the point across.”

  The woman sighed. “The world would be so much easier if everyone listened to their dreams – but then again, that’d mean I’d be out of a job, wouldn’t it now?”

  “What do you know about lucid dreaming?” Alexis asked.

  The woman’s face lit up. “Lucidity! My dear, can you do this?”

  Alexis was feeling crazier by the minute. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” she said, preparing to stand to go.

  “Child.” The woman put her hand on Alexis’ knee as she spoke, and the moment she did, Alexis felt the strangest thing. A relaxation, a sense of fairness and belonging and certainty, all coursed through her. She found herself speaking instead of running.

  “I have been having lucid dreams,” she said, and then she began at the beginning, explaining the vision of a man who she thought was her high school crush, who turned out to be someone imprisoned in dreams for all eternity, or until he found a woman who would fall in love with him. The psychic stared right into her eyes as she talked, and when she was finished, a hush fell over the room. The silence was so complete that Alexis could hear the traffic outside. She could hear a couple – a man and a woman, their voices soft – walking down the street outside the little shop. That shiver was there again, lighting up her skin and sending goosebumps all over her body.

  “And now you think you’re crazy,” the woman concluded for her, and Alexis blushed hard.

  “I just need to know…” she trailed off. The woman waited, still staring into her eyes.

  Alexis tried to get the words out. Amazingly, she felt the sting of tears in her eyes. “Is he real?” she whispered.

  The woman squeezed her knee. She leaned forward and that smile appeared again, the radiant smile that made Alexis feel as though everything would be alright, after all.

  “Child, he’s as real as real can be,” the woman declared.

  “But…”

  “But what? It’s crazy? It’s insane? It’s not what you expected? Of course it’s not. But the things we don’t expect, darlin’ – those are the sweetest things in life – and in love! You know he’s real because you are opening your heart to him already, and no one can tell you that what you feel is wrong. It’s certainly not unreal.”

  She leaned in closer. “And it is not just your imagination.”

  Alexis suddenly wanted to cry. The woman reached for the table beside the couch and plucked a box of tissues from it, holding them out to Alexis with a look that said embarrassment was not necessary here. She took a tissue and dabbed her eyes.

  “Following your heart is the toughest thing to do, isn’t it?” the woman mused. “Following what you feel can seem to go against everything you are told you should want. But Alexis, this is your life. It’s your heart, your future and your choice. Just like choosing what you put in your dream, you can also choose what part of your dreams you bring back with you.”

  In some convoluted way, it made perfect sense.

  But there was one more thing troubling Alexis, something that didn’t add up despite everything else. She shook her head twice before speaking, and her voice trembled a bit as the words came out.

  “…How did you know my name?”

  The woman just laughed. “Follow your heart, child,” she said, patting Alexis on the knee. “Don’t pay attention to anything else. Your heart always knows exactly what is right, and if you listen to it, you will always do the right thing. Always!”

  Alexis felt that she could hug her.

  “Now, get on out of here!” cried the woman, with a sudden, friendly ferocity that made her smile. “First visit’s free, darlin’. See you next time. Follow your heart, and good luck.”

  Chapter 5: Possessed by Passion

 
Alexis drove home slowly, wrapped up in a most curious feeling. It was hard to describe: she was absolutely exhilarated, but a part of her was also terrified. None of this was making any sense, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was falling in love – albeit with a man who was only available to her in her dreams. She knew that Philip could never share her life with her in the fullest sense. If she wanted to be with him, she would have to settle for the dream-world… and that was a place where she simply couldn’t stay, no matter how much she might want to.

  But she was so happy to finally know that she wasn’t crazy – to finally know that it really did all makes sense to her, and that’s what mattered – that for the moment, she let the thrill of falling in love eclipse all those questions in her mind. As she drove away from the psychic’s humble little shop, she was determined that she would get all the happiness out of this that she could.

  When she got home, she looked at the clock and cursed. The sun was setting and it was getting close to bedtime, but she knew that her insomnia would keep her awake. She was afraid she would spend hours lying in bed, doing nothing but worrying. Philip would be waiting on the other side, but her body would cruelly prevent her from the sleep she craved.