Page 201 of In Somnis

“Fuck!” I gasp, then scream again because screaming is the only thing that feels as if it might help, even though I know it won’t do shit. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

I’m lucid, which means I should be able to do something about this. Fix the crane, summon help, or dissolve the log into mist, but when I reach for that control, it’s like grabbing at smoke. The dream won’t respond. It just sits there, pinning me down and making me feel every ounce of pain I felt eight years ago. Like the last hundred days of blockage of either dreamless sleep or being funneled into this—this memory, this trap—I’m unable to change a goddamn thing.

“Great,” I pant out, biting back tears of pain and frustration. “Another night in the torture chamber of my subconscious. Fantastic.”

I try to think of anything else that distracts me from the pain flaring in my back, but of course, my mind spirals backward, dragging me through the aftermath of the worst day of my life, which I’ve relived a thousand times by now.

The hospital. Fluorescent lights burning into my skull while doctors used words like compression fracture or incomplete spinal cord injury. Surgeries. So many fucking surgeries. Metal rods and screws holding my spine together like some kind of nightmare IKEA project. Physical therapy, years of it.

And Paul.

Nope, not thinking about him now. Even if he’s the only person who could ever talk me down from this spiral. Even if he was the one who saved me when this nightmare plagued me night after night for the first two years after—this exact dreamscape, this exact moment, replaying on loop until I thought I’d lose my mind.

He showed me how to turn lucid, stand up to it, take control, and rewrite the script.

But now I can’t seem to do that anymore, not since Miller got that contract, and I wanted to tell Paul about it and This Man…

Fuck.

Miller.

The other nightmare. The one I can’t wake up from. I need to give him something soon, produce anything, or my publisher will lose patience, my savings account will bleed out, and my entire identity as a writer will crumble because I can’t do the one thing that makes me worth anything.

Tears spike hot behind my eyes, and I take a deep breath, holding it until my lungs burn.

It’ll work out. I have her now. She’ll let me work in her mind.

Lennon will let me…

A gasp cuts through the pain, and then she’s here, dropping to her knees in front of me, blonde hair falling around her face, blue eyes wide with horror.

“Ridge!”

I stare at her, my brain struggling to process. I check my hand again, still three fingers. Did thinking about her conjure a projection?

Is my subconscious really that desperate?

I look back at her and try to push, willing her to dissolve, morph, or do literally anything that proves she’s not real, just part of this nightmare, but she stays solid.

“You’re here?” My voice comes out wrecked, barely more than a whisper.

She reaches for the log, trying to lift it with her bare hands, and I hiss as the movement sends fresh agony tearing through me.

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, her voice breaking as she pulls at it again. “I’m sorry.”

“Sweetheart,” I grit out through clenched teeth. “This is a dream. Stop trying to be a hero and just think it away.”

She freezes, then moves to kneel next to my head again. I look up to find her eyes squeezed shut, and I feel the shift in the air, that texture of dream fabric bending to will.

The log vanishes.

Fucking finally.

The pressure releases all at once, and I roll onto my back, sucking in air that doesn’t have to fight past several thousand pounds of Douglas fir.

“Goddammit,” I pant out, staring at the canopy of trees that shouldn’t exist. “This shit is getting old.”

“Are you okay?” Lennon leans over me, and her hands come up to cradle my face.