Dreamer

“I’m having a lot of trouble sleeping since my father died, I haven’t been able to sleep very well or have been having weird dreams.” Jackie describes to Evelyn, his therapist as she writes notes down and asks him to continue to describe his sleeping experience: sleep routine when sleeping and any dreams he may have experienced. Before Jackie leaves Evelyn offers the idea of trying sleeping pills or calming himself before bed. Jackie, Evelyn and Jackie’s mom reunite and Evelyn gives Jackie a new prescription sleeping pill. Jackie’s mom asks her son questions about the therapy session only to get short and quick responses, understanding, she lets it go and respects his privacy. Preparing to go to sleep, Jackie takes a sleeping pill his therapist prescribed, jumps in bed, and closes his eyes.
Jackie quickly wakes up, but not in his room. He’s surrounded by ice cream trucks? Jackie loves sweets so he isn’t disturbed by this experience but is unfamiliar with where he’s at. He can taste and smell the ice cream. It all feels real. His alarm Evelyn gave him throws him out of his dream within what felt like minutes. Tired, Jackie gets up and prepares for high school. Throughout the day he’s stuck thinking about how real his dream felt throughout school, while having ice cream with his mom up until the end of the day. The day went by as quickly as it started and it was time for bed again, he took his sleeping pill and drifted away. This time he woke up in a deserted cabin, cold in front of a fireplace, the fireplace was left on as he unintentionally began leaving the cabin. The fire managed to escape the fireplace and burned the cabin down as Jackie turned around in disbelief to what he’s seeing, minutes later his alarm woke him up again. His mother is reading a newspaper during breakfast and Jackie glances over while eating the same breakfast he always shares with his mother to see a burning cabin on the front cover of the newspaper. He asks his mother when that newspaper is from and she informs him it was published this morning. “That’s odd” Jackie mumbles before preparing for his scheduled therapist appointment.
Since going to his therapist and listening to her advice of sleeping through his dream Jackie has been able to remember, write down and share the dreams he’s been having to Evelyn. Evelyn listens intrigued to the dreams Jackie has been experiencing and Jackie explains “They feel too real, I don’t know how to explain the feeling but I can explain the dreams themselves.” Evelyn however assures him it’s just a dream and to continue writing his dreams down and taking his sleeping pill before heading to bed. As Jackie and his mom were heading out, they stop for Jackie’s mom to ask Evelyn about the sleeping pill she prescribed to Jackie because it’s the one thing that was finally able to help him sleep and she tells her it consists mostly of melatonin. Jackie’s mom nods and walks away, slightly confused because melatonin hadn’t previously worked for Jackie to help him sleep.
Back home and time to sleep, Jackie drifts away and is once again stuck in his dream, his eyes are directed onto a lake as he watches a little girl run into the lake in front of him. The little girl starts splashing in panic unable to fully come back to the surface and Jackie, alarmed, tries to go after the girl and save her but he’s stuck, he can’t move. Jackie then gets up and slowly moves toward the lake to watch the girl slowly drown unable to help her. Jackie starts to feel water drops on his face as if the water the little girl splash delayed in reaching Jackie. As the water drips on his face he wakes up the same time his alarm goes off. As he goes through the day, once again he can think of nothing besides his dream and why they feel so real. Jackie survives the day and very quietly hears the radio of a man who drowned his child, he’s shocked from the news but doesn’t connect it back to his dream. The following night he tries taking two sleeping pills hoping it’ll knock him out so he can sleep through the night without dreaming. He instead wakes up holding a loaded gun. He points it up at people he thought he recognized, people that felt like his friends calling out a name to him he hadn’t recognized. Jackie at this time realizes he’s not in control of his dream again and listens to the words of the group of teenagers in front of him in his dream shouting “put down the gun” “please, please don’t do this” “we’re your friends.” Jackie closes his ears, aims and shoots the group, two boys and three girls in front of him, they lay there and Jackie throws the gun on top of them staring at what he’d just done. As Jackie starts to walk closer to the bodies his alarm interrupts and he wakes up, leaving his room to grab breakfast with his mother. Frightened from his dream, Jackie gets up in a hurry to get to the family computer downstairs and searches up the dream he just had to find any news of a shooting. He doesn’t find anything, sighs in relief, closes the computer and prepares for school. Jackie’s mom quickly follows his steps to the computer curiously and finds what he searched up but the search history was deleted, she tried asking him what it was about but he tells her it was “for school”. At school, he sees the group of teenagers he saw in his dream, he smiles realizing it really was just a terrible dream.
*pow pow pow pow pow* Jackie hears five gunshots during math class, the school goes into lockdown but the shooting stops immediately after. That evening when they’re released from school on the TV there’s a reported gun shooting of five classmates from Jackie’s school, the same five he saw in the hall, the save five he saw in his dream. Completely in shock and freaked out he goes to his therapist where he explains everything. Evelyn gets closer to Jackie and says “I’m so sorry, now I know this may be hard to believe but it’s just a coincidence, you know that doesn’t and can’t really happen.” Jackie explains the way he’s feeling, that he feels that he’s the cause of these deaths because they all happen after he dreams of it. The therapist reassures him not to worry but to be safe they’ll run a few brain scans. Jackie’s mom and the therapist step outside and discuss further planning and she agrees that a brain scan will be beneficial, when the results come back Evelyn and Jackie’s mom notice nothing wrong with the scan. Evelyn reminds Jackie to continue with his routine when getting ready for bed.
Jackie is getting very suspicious and has an uneasy feeling about his dreams becoming a reality so the following night he skips taking his sleeping pill thinking maybe the pill is helping him sleep but also causing his dreams. He struggles to go to sleep but manages to fall asleep after over an hour, Jackie wakes up in an unknown forest where he is hiding behind a rock holding a hunting gun, he is shooting an illegal animal to shoot in the forest he’s in, a bear. He shoots the bear but instead of killing it, the gunshot angers the bear and the bear snarls. Unfortunately, there was a couple walking in the wrong place at the wrong time and they became the targets to the bear’s anger. The bear then notices Jackie and right as the bear targets it’s attention on Jackie, he shoots the bear and the shot of the gun synchronizes with the sound of his alarm clock waking him up. Jackie now knows there’s something wrong because avoiding his sleeping pill didn’t affect him having a nightmare. Jackie plans on completely avoiding interactions with his therapist suspecting she might know and be causing the nightmares because they started when Jackie began going to Evelyn. Finally, Jackie tells his mom everything, all his dreams and the clues he’s pieced together to make him believe Evelyn is causing his nightmares and that he’s done seeing her. Jackie’s mom at this point, says she needs to confront Evelyn, with no time to think she drags Jackie into the car and they make their way to Evelyn’s office.
Jackie’s mother rushes to Evelyn’s office and when the three are together the two women look at Jackie then look at each other in an uncanny way. They ask for Jackie to explain how he feels, confused he looks at his mother who looks at Evelyn. Jackie starts to turn around after feeling very uncomfortable, right Jackie’s mother grabs him while Evelyn sedates him. He wakes up in a chair, strapped, with devices all around him including a TV which displays the news of a terrible accident of a couple being mauled by a bear. Jackie tries shouting for help only to hear the sound of his mothers voice telling him not to worry, he’s helping science.
Jackie sits in this chair getting injected every so often with unknown substances. Machines beeping beside him connected to wires and pads stuck all over him. Jackie is beyond confused as Evelyn walks in and begins to explain everything Jackie was wondering. “Your mother came to me months ago asking me if there was anything I could do to quote what your mother said ‘give his life purpose’ and I figured I could help you both by making you an addition to a great research project.” Jackie starts to piece more together and starts to understand the minor things his mother did like making his breakfast for Jackie, since she’d never used to do that. Evelyn interrupts his thoughts and answers that Jackie’s mother had helped with the research by making sure he took the substances everyday, we’re injecting into you every so often. “My breakfast! She was giving me drugs in my food!?” Jackie shouted. As Evelyn begins to explain how her secret research of traveling between real worlds and dreams, Jackie didn’t want to hear any of it. The last thing Evelyn told him before weeks of silent study was, “since you were in a bad place after your father passed away, emotionally you were a perfect subject because your dreams could be easily tampered with and affected by what someone tells you or what you think of, I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
Countless weeks pass and nothing seems to change for Jackie, test after test, nightmare after nightmare. Jakie wakes up each morning to see the news on and see his dream turn into a reality. One thing continues to circle around in his mind. He doesn’t know how and can’t control his dreams but remembers the last thing Evelyn told him. Another few days pass by, mentally and physically Jackie can’t manage the pain of watching and knowing he’s causing death among many others because of his dreams. There one way he knows will put a stop to it because nothing else will work. With the power of his thoughts he influences his dreams: the nightmares stop and Jackie fades into a forever dream.