Lena had always been a vivid dreamer. It had been a part of her for as long as she could remember. Some nights, she would drift into the most beautiful, fantastical worlds—forests filled with talking animals, stars that whispered secrets, and laughter that seemed to ripple through the air like a song. It was in these moments she felt free, unburdened by the mundane realities of life.
But not every dream was a peaceful escape.
There were others—nightmares—that clawed at her chest with their horrific images. Figures with twisted faces that grinned with malice, dark places where she was trapped with no way out. There was always a sense of impending doom, a feeling that she was being hunted, a constant chase through hallways that stretched endlessly, or a never-ending fall through pitch-black voids. Some nights, she woke up trembling, gasping for air, unable to shake the sense of dread.
Still, she had learned to live with it. The dreams were just dreams, right? No matter how real they felt, no matter how the emotions lingered after waking.
And then… one night, things changed.
Lena's world was turned upside down on a crisp, autumn evening when she received a phone call that would shatter her reality: her partner, Sam, had died in a car accident. The words didn't make sense to her at first. They felt like they belonged to someone else’s story, not hers. Sam was supposed to be here. They were supposed to have years, decades, of shared memories, laughter, and love.
The funeral was an aching blur—days and nights blending into one as she struggled to breathe without Sam beside her. The sorrow weighed heavily, a dark cloud that followed her every step. But as the days passed, something strange began to happen.
Lena dreamed of Sam again.
It wasn’t the kind of dream she'd expected—the kind of dream where you saw your lost loved one, and everything felt… wrong. No. This was Sam, real and vibrant as she remembered, holding her hand, whispering to her in that warm, familiar voice.
"Come back to me," Sam said in the dream, their words a plea.
Lena woke up the next morning with tears in her eyes, but there was something else too—a flicker of hope. Sam was gone, yes, but somehow, not gone. The dreams started to come more frequently, each one just as vivid as the last. Sam would appear, pulling Lena into their arms, their voice grounding her.
It felt so real. The weight of Sam's embrace. The sound of their heartbeat.
But as the days passed, Lena became obsessed with the dreams. Every time she woke up, she would search the room, half-expecting to find Sam sitting on the edge of the bed, smiling that crooked smile, like nothing had changed. But Sam was always gone—just the empty air beside her.
And the nightmares... the ones that had once haunted her, were back, only now, they were different.
In the waking world, Lena began to notice things out of place. People she had never seen before, walking by her window, staring with vacant eyes. Dark figures standing at the edges of her vision, only to vanish when she turned her head. Her own reflection seemed unfamiliar, like someone else’s eyes looked back at her.
The people from her dreams—the ones who had once tormented her in the darkest corners of her mind—began to appear in the real world. Not all at once, but enough to make her question her sanity. The figure who had haunted her dreams for months, a tall man with hollow eyes and sharp teeth, appeared on the street corner as she walked home from work. He just stood there, watching her. When she blinked, he was gone.
Her nights became frantic. She would lie in bed, eyes wide open, waiting for sleep to come, desperate to see Sam again. It was the only time she felt alive, as if their love could stretch between the spaces of the living and the dead. But every morning, she would wake to the crushing emptiness of the world without Sam. The gap between the dreams and reality grew wider, more distorted.
One night, Sam appeared in her dream again, but this time they were different. Their form was more ethereal, glowing with a soft light, as though they were fading.
"I’m running out of time, Lena," Sam said, their voice strained. "You have to let me go."
“No,” Lena pleaded, reaching out to hold them. “I can’t. I can’t live without you.”
"You don’t have to live without me," Sam whispered. "But you can’t keep searching for me in the wrong place."
Lena’s heart pounded in her chest as she woke up. The dream had been so vivid, so real—Sam’s words echoing in her mind like a warning, a plea. But the waking world didn’t make sense. Every corner of her life felt like a shadow, as if it were being pulled into some otherworldly dimension.
Lena’s frantic search for Sam began to bleed into her every waking moment. She couldn’t concentrate. She couldn’t think. Everywhere she went, she looked for them—at the grocery store, in the park, at work—searching the faces of strangers, hoping, praying, that Sam would appear, just like they had in her dreams. She walked the streets for hours, calling their name, feeling their absence as a hollow space that she couldn’t fill.
And then, one evening, in the darkest hours before dawn, Lena wandered down an alley she’d never seen before. The air was thick, charged with something that made her skin prickle. She could hear footsteps behind her, slow and deliberate. Her heart skipped a beat.
She turned.
There, standing in front of her, was Sam.
But this Sam was different—withered, pale, the faint glow in their eyes dimming. Their form was translucent, barely there at all, as if they were nothing more than a dream fading with the morning light.
"I’m here," Sam said softly, their voice a whisper. "But you have to stop looking for me in the waking world. You can’t find me here anymore."
Lena reached for them, her hands trembling. "No… please, Sam. I can’t live without you. I can’t—"
"You don’t have to live without me," Sam said, a soft smile on their lips, even as they began to fade. "But you can’t keep holding on. You have to let go."
And just like that, Sam was gone—fading into the shadows, leaving only the echo of their voice behind.
Lena stood alone in the dark alley, tears streaming down her face. The nightmare had become her reality, and no matter how much she searched, no matter how far she ran, she couldn’t escape it. She was caught between the waking world and the dreams, neither alive nor dead, her heart torn between a love she couldn’t hold onto and a life she couldn’t move on from.
As the moonlight washed over her, Lena understood. Sam was gone, but they weren’t truly lost. They had never left her—they were just waiting in the spaces between waking and dreaming.
And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.
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