Dream Eater (m|m)

Chapter 1

A door slams, and I hear footsteps running after me down the sidewalk.

"Alex—Alex, wait! It didn't mean anything, okay? Wait!"

Max catches up with me and grabs my arm. I shake him off and keep going.

Up and down the busy, shop-lined street, people stop and stare, like spectators at the theater, enjoying the free show.

Max begins to lose his patience.

"Alex, seriously! You're being a bitch; it's not like you never slept with anyone else!"

My boyfriend—scratch that—my ex-boyfriend is making a scene because I just broke up with him over a dream.

I know that sounds stupid, but let me explain.

I'm a dream-eater: a kind of low-level incubus, only instead of sexual energy, I feed off the energy of people's dreams.

We're the poor cousins of the demon world.

I'm doubly cursed. Not only am I a lowly dream-eater, but my affinity is for nightmares.

You see, dream-eaters experience a person's dream as we consume its energy. Which means I have to live out other people's nightmares just to eat.

Max's most recent nightmare was about me finding out he's been sleeping with some other dude named Carl.

Now, sometimes dreams are just dreams, right? But when he woke up and I asked him who Carl was, I knew that in this case, it was more.

To make matters worse, he then decided to pull out the whole "you sleep with other people, too," argument.

And now, when I don't respond to his charming entreaties, he brings it up again as he trails behind me past a crowded café, drawing the interested attention of a group of octogenarians dining on the patio outside.

"You know what? Fine. You can sleep around with other people, but I can't. I get it. Because for you it's business, isn't it? Well you know what that makes you, Alex? A whore."

He spreads his arms wide and addresses the impromptu audience of his self-made soap opera.

"You hear that, fuckers?" he yells. "Alex Shade is a whore!"

I turn around and punch him in the face. Then I keep walking.

~xxx~

First of all, it isn't true.

I mean, yes—I sleep with people. And it is for business. But that business isn't sex. It's dreams.

More specifically, it's nightmares.

The more powerful, the more unpleasant the dream, the more energy it gives me. So in that way, it's worthwhile to seek out the worst of the worst: the minds so tortured they'll pay anything to be rid of the nightmares making life unlivable and turning sleep into hell.

The downside is—as I said—I have to live the nightmare to absorb its power. Which is why I figure it's fair that people pay me to rid them of their awful dreams.

It's a living.

Except for the last few months I'd given that up, and been perfectly happy to do so.

I'd met Max at a club, and we'd connected instantly. He told me about his nightmares, and I listened with understanding and sympathy. Later, I ate his dreams, and he felt better. Somewhere along the way, I guess I mistook our mutual co-dependence for something more, and when I'd seen that latest dream, it had hurt a lot more than I'd expected.