From My Dreams

Chapter 2

'Cause baby, there ain't no mountain high enough

Ain't no valley low enough
Ain't no river wide enough
To keep me from getting to you, baby
Remember the day I set you free
I told you, you could always count on me, darling....

The alarm clock broke the nightly silence of the room.

Hayley woke up hurriedly, her eyes fogging her vision. She hadn't realised that she was smiling until the previous night's dream caught up to her in one full flow. It hit her like brain freeze would normally hit people, but she had never experienced it before. She had someone to blame for burning her tongue over an order of hot chocolate instead of milkshake that was given to her.

That afternoon, her hands worked on sketching the ballroom in her drawing book. Hayley still remembered the man in her dreams' sandalwood aura and the smell of dew in the air that accompanied them in the garden. It was as if the clouds were threatening to let the rain lose but petrichor was already all around them. She drew two people dancing with each other. The masks were quite easy to draw, and when it came to shade his eyes, she had no problem at all. She used a dark shade of the pencil and used it to colour his wavy hair.

"That looks absolutely gorgeous, mademoiselle!" The voice of the intern, Aaliyah Kanumba, broke Hayley's concentration. "I wonder if you are planning to open a gallery for all your paintings."

Hayley blushed. She still wasn't used to people complimenting her realism paintings. She waved her hand down in modesty. "They're not as good as I want them to be. They look much better inside my head. Besides," She stood up as a new customer walked inside. "If I show them in a gallery, the walls here will be empty."

Every dream that she had about the stranger was different. The way it came could never be predicted. She had lived many lives in these dreams as if they had actually happened. She remembered several details about it after waking up, which shouldn't have been possible. Nobody would remember their character's past in their dreams. She had researched several books on this topic and had even consulted it with her therapist, whom she had been seeing for a while now. 

Each dream she had was different, but it was a good difference as long as she knew that he was there with her to get her through it. He was her saviour in figment after all.

But every time she tried to sketch his face, her mind would become foggy. It was like having the name of the actor from a movie that you haven't watched in several years at the tip of your tongue but not being able to get it out. She remembered little details like his fading freckles and black freckle on his right cheek right below his right eye. But she could never bring him to life through her painting.

"You have a good hand." The new customer, a woman in her late forties, praised Hayley as she was shown the leather jackets on sale that day. "All these must represent the same people, right?"

Hayley tried to hide her shock that someone had been able to recognise it. She nodded. "Yes! I have a predetermined idea of how I want people in my sketches to look like. I do try to make some changes along the way but they always end up looking alike." 

It was a lie that she had told many times before.

"Oh that's perfectly normal!" The woman said. "What do you suppose is your inspiration for them? After all, you do seem to be fixated on the two characters. I'm sure there is a theme for it."

Yeah, my dreams, Hayley thought and was eager to tell someone about it. "It's mostly out of the top of my head." 

There was no lie there though.

After the customer left, Hayley wondered if she really was fixated on these paintings. On him. As Aaliyah had pointed out, should she really present them in a gallery under a theme name or sell them off? She would only be obsessing over her dreams if she kept looking at them but deep down, that's what she wanted. It's what she needed because she had no explanation for what was happening to her.

She wondered how long these dreams would go for. She was scared to find out the true meaning of these meanings, but she was more scared that they would stop suddenly one day and leave her with endless questions.

And maybe the day for answers wasn't that far away.