Daydream (ONC 2024)

Chapter 1: Awakening into the Dream

Wind brushed my neck like gentle fingers, and a sensation of awakening came over me even though I stood firmly on both feet. The hands of the wall clock hovered close to twelve like claws reaching to pull the numbers down, and each tick of the second hand reinforced my daze like a metronome. Gong gong, it chimed, as it did every hour on the hour. The elderly folks who frequented the bakery loved it. Such antiquated devices had faded with the times, and the nostalgia soothed their old souls as they shared the stories of their lives with the wait staff.

The minute hand jerked forward like a hand waving to break my trance, and the time dawned on me. Midnight. The bakery should have closed two hours ago.

Coffee filled the cup in my hand and tapered to drips as I finished making a customer's latte. Beth manned the register at my side but, the stout old woman's presence was an anomaly. Beth worked mornings, and outside the wall of windows ahead, it was black. Not dim under the street lights or dark from the night sky, more like someone had taped craft paper over the glass.

Beth typed an order at the bakery counter as she chatted about the weather and asked if the customer wanted their usual. Except no one was there. The dining room tables in the sunroom stood empty by the faux fireplace, the booths' obnoxious, red vinyl remained vacant, and the air in front of the register certainly wasn't thirsty.

I hoped.

Customers weren't the only thing missing either. All that remained on the bread shelves behind Beth were crumbs, and I touched the bare steel just to prove it was real. My finger drew a line in the dust, pushing aside remnants of everything bagels and clumps of dry cinnamon, as well as wiping away the illusion.

The water-seal finish morphed into scathing flecks of rust under my fingertips, and I yanked my hand away to avoid bumping the jagged edges of the corroded metal. The shelf dipped with a groan of willful retirement, and screws shot out like bullets that had me jerking to the side. They clinked and skittered along broken mahogany tile to nestle into a heap of moss that covered where the floor drain used to be.

I lifted my gaze from that small screw to a world of horrors that had not been there the moment before. The once neatly lined up tables lay cracked and toppled next to overturned chairs with rotting cushions. Garbage piled the cans in receptacles that leaned perilously close to spilling their congealing filth onto the floor, debris littered a floor of broken and upturned tiles, and the worst of it was right in my face.

Beth poked at the broken glass of the register's touch screen, oblivious even as shards cut into her fingers, and her torn work apron hung from one shoulder like a dead snake skin. What had been the smell of fresh coffee under my nose turned into the tang of decay, and I dropped the cup in my hand. Bugs crawled out of the disturbed nest, beetles buzzing and taking flight, silverfish sliding away, and centipedes wriggling out last to chase me as I fled to the back of house.

I stopped in the back hall with my breath whistling through my constricting windpipes. Pain spiked in my chest, and I clutched it with my free hand. I was no stranger to panic attacks, and right now seemed an okay time to lose my marbles if any. With a slow count to ten, deep breaths, and a soft rubbing at the juncture of my collarbone, I steeled myself to face the nightmare.

That's what this had to be right?

No matter how I told myself to wake up, it didn't happen though, and I settled for taking one step in front of the other. I found my manager, Todd, in the cramped doorless back office, sitting at his desk and tacking away on a keyboard with half its keys. His hand dragged a mouse with frayed wires that I hoped connected to nothing electric, and the computer was as dead as my grip on reality.