Wake to Dream(7)

"There's nothing wrong with my memory." Spoken on a frustrated sigh, she couldn't hide the resentment in her words. "I remember every little sordid detail..."

"Of a dream?"

"Several," she quipped. A chill ran along her spine, exhaustion gripping at her heart and thoughts, every bone in her body sore for some unknown reason. Stress was the most likely culprit. No matter how hard she concentrated, she couldn't pinpoint any one certain trigger, it all blended together into a shapeless, filthy mass of memories and pain.

He studied her, his eyes taking in every detail, his mind recording every minuscule symptom in her behavior. "Have you had any restful sleep?"

Chortling at the ridiculous question, she gave him an answer that meant nothing. "Yes. No. Maybe a little. I don't know." Her eyes clenched shut, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "I'm not sure it even really matters. I'll just wake up and discover that nothing has changed. She's still lost."

"And may always be." It was a quiet reminder.

As an afterthought, and perhaps to soften the blow, he added, "but I hope that isn't the case."

The tip of his pen tapped against his notepad. "You've studied neurology. You should know how important sleep is for the brain."

"I know..." Her mind went blank before she could finish the sentence. What, exactly, did she know? When it came to this? To the dreams? To the past and present that seemed to endlessly slide together into a mush of chaos and jumbled images?

There wasn't much she knew beyond the fact that reality was no longer a definite and tangible thing.

"Sleep is something I'm afraid of. It's something that is intended to refresh, but instead leaves me screaming in my head."

A single tap of his pen. "We should discuss something else. Your waking life, for instance. You told me you went home after your sister disappeared. What do you remember of that?"

Shaking the terror from her thoughts, she bunched up in her seat, her bent legs pulled tightly to her chest, caged by arms that were trembling. "Not much. I can't seem to settle my thoughts on anything, any one event. It's as if the memories have been shaken up and scattered, bits and pieces that come through the haze to slowly reveal themselves."

"Give me one. I don't need specifics such as date or time. Maybe if we record them all, we can put them in some proper order."

Thinking back, she pushed through the horrifying myriad of emotions and images, tugging at strands that led to specific thoughts until one in particular came to mind.

"The media is a bastard. Do you realize that? They glutton themselves on the cruelty of monsters; feed on the same fear and pain as the ones who directly cause it." She laughed, the sound more cynical than humorous. "And nine times out of ten, they're wrong."

Anger escaping her on a staggered breath, she lowered her forehead to her knees.

...drip...

"Tell me what you remember."

"I was forced to watch the news broadcasts about the abduction -"

"Forced?"

Looking at him, her eyes traced the worried line of his brow. "It's everywhere, you know? On every station. You can flip through the channels and get a different set of facts - all of them theories - none of them correct. Not really."

Ignoring the misdirection of her rambling, he led her back to the topic he wanted to discuss. "Who forced you?"

Swallowing past the knot of fear that clogged her throat proved difficult. For all the attempts, she gained nothing but aching fire in the sensitive, parched flesh. There was nothing left to do but give up and let the knot choke her, give up like she’d done so many times already in her life.

"Who, Alice?"

Their eyes met when she glanced at him from behind a tangled curtain of unwashed hair.

"Everybody."





"Would you like something to drink?"

Calm, collected, even kind, the voice broke through the sticky film of darkness across Alice's senses.

A dream. It was just a dream.

She wanted to refuse, but her throat was as gritty as coarse sandpaper. "Depends on what you're offering."

Her candor took the stranger by surprise, if his silence was any true indication of his reaction.

"Water," he answered after a span of silent seconds. There was no inflection in his voice, no anger or loss of control in response to Alice's behavior.

Nodding her head in acceptance of the water proved difficult. Alice was sluggish and uncoordinated. But the jostled movement had been enough.

Chair legs scraped against the floor, the rhythmic thud of shoes against the ground announcing the man's approach. The joints in his knees clicked when he knelt down in front of her, betraying either his age or the length of time he'd been sitting motionless in the chair.

With a face masked in shadow thick enough to conceal his features, he held a plastic bottle of water between them.

Alice's efforts of accepting the bottle were thwarted by a weakness in her arms, a remnant of whatever drug she'd been given.

"I would have sworn it would only take a few hours for you to recover." His head angled to the side, the length of his dark hair brushing his shoulder. "Apparently not."

"Max," she muttered.

His face was still concealed behind shadow, but she recognized the hair. She'd admired it when they met, but lost track until now.