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MY DREAMS

I don’t want to speak of them—to speak of them, to relate the details, in some way makes them more real I have decided to tell the truth here, as far as I can But even as I determine to tell every detail, those details slip away, just out of rasp The dreams are like wraiths, like smoke, all incorporeal, all of it elusive as dreams so often are

But as dreams will, they left behind a pall, a sense that in my sleep I had been victimized, my mind taken over by dark beasts that reveled infrom raw emotions

I rolled out of the bed, exa around me as I did Was this my bed? I had slept in it, but was it mine? Was this my room?

I touched the pillow thoughtfully It was slowly recovering froht of my head upon it Was that fabric familiar to me? And this quilt Was it mine?

The rooray walls and a warm hardwood floor Ashade allowed only the dies A table lahtstand illuminated the contours of a desk and chair

Slippers awaited h my last memory was of a heedless surrender to exhaustion I wore soft, baggy shorts and a T-shirt I pushed les I wiped at my sleep-crusted eyes with the back of my hand

There was a cork bulletin board over the desk A blue ribbon hung there I thought of lookingwhether it would tellof the reality or falseness of this place This was notsince abandoned any faint hope that all of this was a dream The dreams of my sleep were dreams, but what had happened with Liam and Emma, with the Game Master, with Samantha Early, Oriax, and Daniel, all of that I now accepted as real

Messenger was real, that taciturn but not completely emotionless creature whose careless touch had set off a cascade of horror but as, for all of that, not truly wicked Or so I reassured myself

It was Messenger who had sent er who must have seen that I had reached my physical and mental limit Maybe I should have blushed at the idea that he had undressed me and then dressed me as I noas, but I disers on any part of , no matter how deep the sleep

There were three doors One was almost certainly a closet Another, I fervently hoped, was a bathrooest door, the one , was surely the exit I was nervous to check it, for fear that I would try the handle only to find that I was a prisoner

I nervedwas hung and shelved on the left side There was an overhead light activated when I tugged on the string

I sighed in disappointirl like Kayla would wear Too fashionable, too adult for what I iined my own tastes to be I could not call uppreferences, but I had convinced htforward person than that But when I pulled a top froer, the immediate impression was that it was likely to fit me

I gathered a few things and went to the bathrooreat relief, a very normal bathroom There was a toilet, quite welcome at that moment And there was a shohich was my next stop