'It was weird last night' began Keri as she, Frankie and Hayley sat on the big leather couches next to the pool table in the only bar the former two of the trio could get away with drinking in being three years underage. Hayley always brought the drinks and Keri and Frankie always behaved like twenty one year olds too as well as looking older than they were. They never roused suspicion from the bar staff. The Lounge was their place.
'Come on then, tell us all' said Frankie, lighting a cigarette as she passed out two more, generous as ever with her smokes.
'We met and hugged each other as usual, kissed too. And then he asked why I was invading every dream he was having! And then these weird veiled figures dragged us away from each other and the one who had me took me into this little room that looked tobacco smoke stained, and then it pointed at the ceiling and the wallpaper began to peel off and spell out 'Find him in the lounge' in capital letters, then it flew out from underneath it's veil and screamed at me. I woke up then' said Keri, still baffled as hell over it. Her friends had the good grace not to try and cover up the fact they were completely speechless.
'Erm, weird. Very, very weird!' said Frankie, running a hand through her hair and scratching the back of her head.
'So you're having mutual dream with this guy then, that or as you're getting more into the lucid dreaming you're controlling what he says to you in some kind of subliminal way, because if it was that scenario then he's still something your own imagination has created. You know what I mean?' said Hayley, looking between two confused looking young women.
'My head hurts' said Keri, reaching for her tequila and bitter lemon and taking a good few gulps before reclining back in the couch and taking a deep breath which she whistled out. It really was making her brain hurt with how much she thought over and over about it.
'I don't wanna talk about it anymore, he's just some guy in a dream, just someone I see in sleep is all' she said, trying to brush it off and move the conversation on. They sat and talked about the big party Frankie's grandparents had invited them all to for their 50th wedding anniversary, and how Frankie would feel at seeing her parents again since they were no longer on speaking terms. After finding out their second eldest daughter was a lesbian they had completely turned their back on her, kicking her out of the house in disgust and refusing to pay her University fees until she got over the 'silly and sick phase you're going through' as they called it.
Tobias and Henrietta Scarvo were both born again Christians and naturally frowned upon homosexuality with their new found beliefs and 'wisdom', something that had disgusted Henrietta's atheist parents greatly. They were only just about on speaking terms again after the huge rift that had pulled the family apart a year ago when Frankie at last revealed her sexual preference not to be men. She had been so fortunate to have her grandparents stand firmly in her corner, both professing not to give a damn about which gender she preferred to date as long as she was happy and also stumping up the money for her to continue at university and make sure she had enough money to eat and pay her half of the bills and rent at the apartment she shared with Hayley, who they absolutely adored.
'Oh you wanna see the dress grandma brought, she looks gorgeous in it! It's a black wrap around one with a big thick belt and all these purple flowers on it, it's blatantly designed for a woman in her thirties but grandma pulls it off in style! I hope I'm still that beautiful when I reach seventy five' said Frankie as they talked about what they would be wearing. She had already found her outfit before her shopping trip with her grandmother, a gorgeous grey silk halter neck dress with a black lace trim that just touched her knee, and was borrowing a pair of Keri's high heels since she had nothing to match and had tried on eight different pairs that just didn't look right at all.
'I think I'm just going to wear that bright blue one again that I wore at Aaron's birthday last year, and don't even start me off on what shoes to wear with it or I'll...............................' Keri began, before the television in the corner just above where Hayley was sat at the end of the couch caught her attention.
'And you were saying something about shoes before two big fella's pretending to beat the crap outta each other came onto the screen. I didn't know you were a wrestling fan!' said Frankie, looking up to see an old repeat of a WWE match on the screen above. She looked back at Keri, waiting for an answer which didn't come. Her friend just sat there looking as white as a sheet, completely silent and still as a statue.
'Keri? What's wrong? Speak to us!' said Hayley with an amused laugh, waving a hand in front of their friend's glazed vision.
'I-I-I-I-I-I-Its, its-its-its h-h-h-h-him! H-h-h-holy f-f-fuck he's real' she said eventually through her stammers, pointing up at the screen.
'What?' they both said, confused as they turned to the screen.
'The one with the tattoo's and the blonde hair, that's the guy in my dreams! It's him! Wha-what the fuck is happening to me?' she said, completely freaked out.
'See now we can answer a few questions for you now we know he's an actual person and someone whose picture you must have seen at some point or another and he's stuck in your memory and....' was all Hayley could say before she was interrupted.
'But I don't watch wrestling! And believe me I'd recognise a man as hot as that if I'd seen him before! And in my dream he told me it was his dreams I was in! That I wasn't real? What the fuck is going on?' Keri cried, before grabbing her bag and running out of the bar. She couldn't sit there and look at him anymore, it was scaring her too much.
'I'll go' said Frankie, grabbing her jacket and kissing Hayley quickly before vaulting the couch in front of them Keri had just flown off and heading for the exit.
'Keri! Kezza! Dude wait up!' she shouted as Keri heard her and stopped her run, turning and walking back to Frankie with tears in her eyes.
'Awwww baby come here, its okay. They're only dreams' she then said, pulling her obviously distressed friend into a hug.
'But are they? I mean what the fuck?! I don't understand, it's, it's just too much and my heads spinning, I can't, I just, I don't believe, but it has to be.................Oh I don't even know what to think!' Keri said, everything feeling like it was spinning at a thousand miles an hour in her head.
'Wait here, I'll go and get Hayley and we'll take you home to ours. Then I can pump you full of that single malt JD grandpa brought Hayley for her 21st and we can either talk about it, or we can take your mind off it. Up to you honey, but I wanna get you somewhere away from here' said Frankie, pulling her cigarettes from her pocket and lighting one for Keri before running back to The Lounge to get her girlfriend. And as Keri looked back at the bar another realization hit her. 'Find him in the lounge' was what she had seen, and that's just where she had been when she'd discovered the identity of the man quite literally of her dreams.
On the short bus journey back to the apartment Hayley and Frankie left Keri to sit quietly with her thoughts, not daring to ask what she was thinking about as they didn't want to freak her out any more in case she was trying to forget about the man they had seen on the TV screen, who Hayley recognised as Shannon Moore since she had a younger brother obsessed with the WWE. Although when they got back, they found that after a couple of shots of the expensive special blend bourbon Keri wanted to find out all she could about Shannon, so with her friends sat either side of her she Googled him and read and read until her eyes hurt, then looked at the many pictures of him returned in an image search.
'I still maintain that somewhere, somehow you've seen him before and it's your subconscious kicking his image into your dreams somehow, for whatever reason it might be' as they looked at a picture of him cuddling a black and white pitbull puppy to his chest and giving 'the horns' with his left hand.
'Maybe, this is all so weird I think you must be right. I mean c'mon! How ludicrous does it sound? Sharing each other's dreams! But then again I can't deny when I do dream of him, it just seems so.....................real' said Keri, taking another sip of her whisky before Hayley topped up her glass with another splash.
'Well, maybe when you go to sleep tonight you should try and ask him things, practise your lucid dreaming techniques and try to find out if you are having those mutual dream thingies Hayles told you about. Try and ask him something that you can look up after, something that could tell you if he's really there or if it's all in your own head' said Frankie softly, seeing how much it was really beginning to mess with her friends head.
'I'm too damn afraid to go to sleep!' Keri replied, making Frankie and Hayley both hug her jointly. It must have been a very scary and strange situation to be in; they knew that much for sure. And so for the rest of the evening they fed her with enough whisky to make her not so much steaming drunk, but relaxed enough to fall into a deep sleep on their pull out couch.
'Let's hope she finds some kind of answers one way or another' said Frankie, stroking Keri's head as Hayley threw the spare duvet over her after they had undressed her of her jeans and top so she'd be comfortable while she slept. And when the dream she had kicked in, she'd find them.
'I want this dream to last; I want this dream to last. I do not want to wake up; I do not want to wake up. I want to ask him questions, I want to ask him questions' she repeated to herself as she stood in the middle of a huge corn field, looking around and seeing nothing across the horizon for miles in each direction before suddenly, up he popped.
'I've been too scared to fall asleep, the last dream I had with you in it freaked me the fuck out. You're real aren't you Keri?' he asked, as usual wrapping her in his arms, this time kissing her head as she leant into his chest.
'Yes I am, and so are you aren't you Shannon?' she replied, looking up and watching him nod.
'This is fucking unreal! I don't even know what to think! How to know if you're really real or not' she said, feeling so confused as she felt him hold her a little tighter. In past dreams she had found the ability to be able to smell and feel things, but never this vividly.
'It's the same for me too, is my head making you up, or are you here? And why are we drawn to each other like this?' he asked, keeping hold of himself and trying not to let the dream pull him in different directions.
'Did that thing covered in all the black lace show you anything weird? The one that got me pulled me into this little blue tinted room and the wallpaper started peeling off the last bit of your MySpace page address, as soon as I woke up I went and looked it up and there you were' he then said, making her heart thunder in her chest and a new wave of disbelief start to grip her, shaking her so much everything started to slip.
'I, I just, what, what's happening to us!' she exclaimed in a panic.
'Keri calm down or you'll wake up' he said urgently, yet it was no use as she felt herself beginning to slip from his arms, some invisible force pulling her away. 'Keep thinking 'I don't wanna wake up! Don't let yourself wake up!' he said, running after her as she was pulled through the corn field.
'Wake yourself up and send me a message, do it now, I'll wait at the computer' was all she could desperately shout before her eyes snapped open and she flew up into a sitting position with her heart hammering in her chest at the exact same time he did. Reaching for her cigarettes through the darkness she grabbed the pack and lit up fast, pulling the duvet off herself and walking over to the black Dell PC in the corner and switching it on, sitting in the chair and waiting for it to load with her heart still going ten to the dozen, her palms sweating and her mouth feeling dry. She decided to cure that by making herself a drink while everything loaded up, and meanwhile down in North Carolina.................
'Okay what the fuck do I say to her? What if it's all in my head and this chick doesn't have a clue about any of it? Jesus, why me?' he thought, looking at the blank message he was about to send to Keri, whose status had just changed to online. He saw that as a good sign, so just typed 'Hi Keri' to play it safe and pressed send, his heart doing somersaults in his chest as he breathed rapidly through his nose.............
Refreshing the page over and over Keri was prepared to call it a night and give up before on the last refresh she almost screamed at seeing 'New Message!' in red over her inbox. When she clicked on it and saw a message from Shannon, she almost had a heart attack. Her hand reached for the bottle of single malt where Hayley had left it to the side of the computer desk and she knocked back a gulp, feeling the whisky burn her throat as she opened the message and saw 'Hi Keri'.
'Oh my god, it's real! He's real, what the FUCK! Oh my god I can't believe this!' she thought, then realized she didn't have to feel freaked out by herself anymore, because he was there and probably feeling just as freaked out as her. And so she hit reply and typed back to him.
'Hey. So tell me on a scale of 1 to 10 how confused are you by all this? Have you ever heard of or had something like this happen to you before?' she asked, pressing send and only having to wait for a few minutes before he replied.
'About 1,000!!! No, never had anything like this happen before, it's really freaking me out but knowing you are a real person kinda makes it less scary. But when I think about it it's scarier because I've never seen you before in my life and now I keep having these intense dreams with you in them. I don't know what the hell to think anymore' it read. And so she replied.
'Neither do I, it's just.............................too weird!! My friend lent me books about dreams and things, said that what we are having is something called a mutual dream but that it's very rare to have them if you aren't close to the person who's in them with you. I just wish I knew why! Or why in every single dream I have I end up kissing you! I feel embarrassed now lol!' she sent back, again only having to wait a few minutes for a message. Except this time he'd used the IM function and a little box had popped up.
'At first I had no control over kissing you, I still kinda don't know. But I know that I want to, you're beautiful' he typed, making her blush and giggle a little.
'You ain't so bad yourself you know' she said, clicking on his profile and looking through his pictures to the side of the IM box, hardly able to believe what was happening still.
'Thanks ' he typed back, followed by 'Are you that much of a good kisser in real life? '
'I don't know, you'd be better off asking someone I've kissed really hahaha' she typed.
'Hah, point taken I guess. So what's vis-com then? I just read your profile and it said you're a vis-com student at Alaska Pacific University' he typed.
'Visual communications, basically its photography and film I'm studying. I wanna be a photographer when I grow up hahaha. I'm still a baby' she typed.
'Eighteen ain't a baby, but you make me feel fucking old! I'm 28' he typed back.
'28 isn't old, you don't look it either' she typed.
'How old do I look?' he replied.
'24, if that' she typed.
'Flattery with get you everywhere ' he typed back, making her laugh quietly. And so, for the first time in real life and the first time ever, they spend the early hours of that morning just taking to each other, finding out everything they had wanted to know about one another yet struggled with asking when they met up in sleep.