Dreams – Paperback

Open mouths, empty heads, big bytes.

Three months of almost-peace. Then my right foot is over the line before the rest of me has voted on it.

Under the cathedral there’s a corridor of amber that gives you back what you lost, and it’s showing me my mother at the washing line, turning toward me. Her face is still a hole. That’s the only reason I stop.

The Archive has woken up. It’s every dream SKELM ever took, filed and cross-referenced, and it wants its property back. It has started filing paperwork. It has a deadline. It addresses me, specifically, as the owner of something I don’t remember stealing. Why, it would like to know, do I have the thief’s name?

A dead friend has left me notebooks, each to be read only on the date written at the top. The first one says COME IN, DARBY. IT’S ONLY PAPER.

The one for the worst day says TALK. BUT BRING GLOVES.

It turns out you can’t take a dream back. You can only give it.