Nocturn Core (Abridged)

I struggled to get back to sleep after writing my other dreams down, so I wasn’t surprised when I heard my alarm go off. I got out of bed with no further dream recall, wandered into the bathroom, and saw Nicole’s dad staring at the shower curtain. For some reason, I thought I had time to shower before heading back to my dorm. I understood that there was a leak in the shower faucet recently.

“Is it working?” I asked Phil. He nodded.

“What, are you planning on taking a shower?” He said something else, but I didn’t quite catch it. I unclothed myself in a few seconds. Immediately, I remembered the door was still open. Was he coming back? I grabbed a towel off the wall to cover myself just in case. What was I going to wear? There were pants in the bathroom, but I quickly realized they were Nicole’s… They didn’t look like any she owned, but they were the right size. I didn’t have anything to wear except the clothes on my back. I supposed I could just wear those back to Nicole’s room and change after the shower. I closed the door. As I looked up at the mirror, I scrunched my eyebrows. There was a bed in the mirror. The door was still closed, so I knew I wasn’t seeing another room. I looked behind me in disbelief and found nothing but a white wall. The bed was still in the mirror when I looked back. I laughed as I realized what this meant. I looked at my right hand. Even though the hand was perfectly normal, I knew I was dreaming.

I walked out of the bathroom (still naked, but now unashamed of my nudity) and made my way into Nicole’s room. Maybe if she was dreaming, I could contact her and have a shared dream! A lucid shared dream would be a great start to my week. I stood at the end of her bed, observing that she was sleeping in the dream, too. I tried speaking to her telepathically. She didn’t seem to hear. Hm… I figured I would try communicating the “normal” way.

“Hey!” I shouted – except not really. My voice came out as a hoarse whisper. For fairies’ sake, not this garbage, I thought. I rubbed my hands together, swallowed, and tried again. “Hey, Nicole!” It didn’t help my voice much (just made the phlegm in there drain), but the dream was less unstable. I decided to confidently continue shouting until the dream gave in and let me project my voice. I didn’t want to let a little loss of dream control hamper my experience. Nicole rolled over in bed as I continued shouting at her. She murmured something in her sleep – how cute. “Nicole, wake up! This is a dream!” I laughed at the irony of telling her to wake up when I wanted her to partake in the dream with me… “Get out of bed!”

At this point, I thought about how well the dream was holding up despite being so late in the morning. Usually, by the sixth hour or so of sleep, my dreams are kind of unstable – much like those early in the night. Thinking about it was a mistake; the dream began rapidly fading, and although I rubbed my hands together to try to stabilize it, there was little I could do. When it collapsed, I waited a few moments for another dream to begin, but I realized I couldn’t have much time before I was supposed to wake up anyway, so I decided to get up.

I was chasing Austin around our parents’ old house in North Carolina. I lost sight of him upstairs, so I started checking hiding places – our bedrooms, closets, under beds and desks… I saw that it was oppressively dark in the hallway bathroom. Where else could he be but in there? I approached the shower curtain to draw it back. I knew what would probably happen, though… I would find some kind of shadow creature instead of Austin because this was a dream. My mind enjoys those kinds of cheap thrills, I thought to myself. I braced myself for the shock and pulled aside the curtain. I heard Austin’s laugh echo all around me. I couldn’t see anything in the shower except a twirling puff of smoke. Right… I walked out of the room.