The High Price of Dreams

They’re more expensive than I thought. I mean, it’s only three tiny orange pills, combined, they are still smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. I wasn’t prepared to pay so much for so little. Three hundred dollars. A hundred bucks for one little dream. Insurance doesn’t cover these, they’re still too new, too experimental.

I know they’ll be worth it.

Any dream about David would be worth it.

But these pills guarantee perfect dreams. All I have to do is take a pill and then focus. The doctor that wrote the prescription suggested writing about the dream I want to have. At least a page, but three is best. So many threes. Her warning had a three, too. No more than three pills. More than three is dangerous. That’s why the come pre-packaged as a blister pack trio.

It’s fine. I’ll only need one pill anyway. I just want one dream of David. One dream where we are together. I know we’ll be great together. We’re together every day, anyway, why not make it more permanent, more personal? We should be couple-together, not just co-worker together. If I have my dream, I’ll be able to visualize it when I see him in real life. I’ll be able to translate the dream into reality. I just need to see it clearly first.

Thus the pills.

I swallow the first pill, chase it with a glass of sweet tea. I wonder if David likes sweet tea? I write the question on the top of the first page of the sparkly green notebook I bought at the drugstore along with my pills just for this. My dream journal. It’s smaller than a regular spiral notebook. Does that mean I need to write more than three pages? I add the question below the sweet tea.

I close my eyes and try to imagine what I want my dream to be. It’s hard for me. I just can’t see any of it clearly. The only word that comes to mind is together. I want us together.

I write the word and then my hand starts doodling. Do pictures count as part of the page? I sketch out two stick figures and give one of them David’s dark curly hair. The other gets my long straight hair and a tiny skirt I’m not brave enough to wear in real life. I’m not even brave enough to buy a skirt like that, or even touch one in the store. I add hands to the figures and link them together.

What else?

I close my eyes and shift back against the pillows, trying hard to see David and me together. It’s so comfy and warm and it’s been a really long day with appointments and errands. I feel myself drifting and try to open my eyes to write more words, but it’s too late.

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I wake up screaming in the sunlight, kicking hard against the covers that have bound my legs together, holding me captive in my bed.

I’m shaking everywhere, but most of all, my hand. I want to shake it right off my body, shake the lingering feel of the flesh that had been holding it too tight.

I don’t like thinking that about David’s hand. David’s hand is lovely: strong lean fingers sprinkled with feathery, light hairs. The hand that had been holding mine in my dream was far too muscular, the skin rough. Scaly. It was a claw more than a hand. But in my dream, it belonged to David.

The pill worked. I dreamt about David and I together. In my dream, I was wearing a blue jean skirt that skimmed the tops of my thighs. My hair was long enough that it brushed the waist of the tiny piece of denim. David’s hair was curly dark brown, just like in real life. He walked beside through the halls of our office, headed from the elevator to the cafeteria. As we walked, his hand brushed the back of mine, then shifted and circled so that we were holding hands.

The trouble was my picture, my words, what I imagined. I wasn’t clear enough about David’s hand. So what clutched me in my dream was the guess of the dark recesses of my brain, I guess. It created a claw thing for David, instead of the human hand he really has.

Once I settle from the dream, I get ready and head into work. It’s a long, boring morning. But I have lunch to look forward to. Maybe today I can walk with David. Maybe today he’ll reach out for my hand like he did last night.

When lunch rolls around though, he’s nowhere in sight. I head to the cafeteria alone.

I don’t see David all day.

But I think about him a lot. I think about what I want to dream next. I need to be more specific this time. I need to imagine every detail.

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I pull out the notebook as soon as I get home. I need to give myself more time to write, more time to imagine what I want to see.

Will it work if I write before I take the pill, though? To be safe, I dig out some loose-leaf paper. I’m going to write a rough draft first. Then I can copy it into my dream book after I take the pill at bed time.

I snuggle into the couch with old episodes of Grey’s Anatomy playing on TV. Mostly it’s just on to keep me company. But there’s also McDreamy and McSteamy. They both remind me of David.

Before I know it, it’s eleven o’clock and I haven’t written a single word. I got too distracted by the boys that aren’t quite my David. Shit.

I pop the second orange pill out of the blister pack and chug down a glass of water as I turn to a fresh page in my dream journal.

I can’t get the episodes I just watched out of my head. Seattle Grace fills my head, with David sometimes flitting through the halls, his white coat flapping as he rushes to save a patient. He doesn’t get center stage, which is weird. Maybe because I didn’t see him today. The McDoctors are fresher in my mind’s picture.

I scribble some words down. It might be part of the script from one of the episodes I saw tonight. It’s a conversation in the hospital cafeteria, though, so it seems safe enough. David and I could have a conversation in our own hospital cafeteria any day I’m working.

I manage to write two pages of stolen dialogue before I forget what happened next. I stare at the page for five minutes before I decide it’s good enough and crawl into bed.

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For the second morning in a row, I wake up before my alarm, a scream exploding out of my chest.

Again, what should have been a lovely dream about spending time with David turned into a nightmare. It was mostly based on what I wrote. David and I were in the cafeteria at work, chatting while he worked on a cup of coffee and I speared lettuce with a fork. But then another David walked up and pulled out a chair. At first, it was just confusing. Why were there two Davids? But then they started getting nasty. They were arguing, fighting. They both wanted my attention, but I think they wanted to kill each other even more.

I started screaming when the first version of David pulled a knife longer than my arm and the second version of David pulled out a gun that looked like it had four barrels. I jumped between the Davids, hoping to stop the fighting, but they both kept advancing. I think it was the big boom of the gun that woke me up, thankfully before any bullets ripped into my flesh.

I take a long, flaming hot shower. I can’t stop shaking. I was scared for my Davids in dream. I’m still scared, but I can’t tell if my fear is for David or myself.

This time, I kind of don’t want to see David at lunchtime. I’m not sure that I could sit across from him at a table and not expect another version to walk up.

Lucky for me, there is no sign of David at work. Again. I hope he’s okay. Maybe that’s what I’ll try to dream about tonight. Making sure David is alive and well.

But it’s my last pill. I have to make sure this dream is perfect.

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This time, I’m smart enough not to get distracted by Grey’s Anatomy. I don’t turn on the TV at all. I turn on music instead, avoiding anything with words. I find a nice, soothing cello playlist. It’s mournful and dreamy, but there’s nothing there for my brain to hold onto, nothing to bleed into what I write on the page.

I can’t shake the thought of something being wrong with my real David. There have been some days I haven’t seen him at work, but I can’t remember it ever happening two days in a row. What if he’s really sick? He could be lying at home, on the verge of death, with no one there to take care of him. He might need me. I don’t know where he lives. But I can imagine it, right? If I imagine the apartment he calls home, I’ll be able to see him there when I close my eyes. I’ll be able to find out what’s wrong, why I haven’t seen him.

I pop the last orange pill from its plastic shell and begin to write.

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I can’t breath. I managed to drag myself out of the worst nightmare I’ve ever had, but the weight of it still sits on my chest, crushing me, keeping me from pulling in any air. I flail myself free of the covers that have me trapped and flop onto the floor. The impact is enough to jar my system, shove out the stale, oxygen-less air. I am finally able to pull in a fresh breath.

I found David. In my dream. He was in his apartment. Well, the apartment I imagined for him. He didn’t answer the door when I knocked the first time. So I knocked harder. The door wasn’t quite closed all the way, so my second round of knocking made the door swing open.

I called out to him, and heard a faint whisper of an answer from down the hall. I followed the feeble sound and found him. He was in bed, pale, with dark circles under his eyes. He looked just as gorgeous as always.

I rushed to his side and settled onto the edge of his bed. His forehead was fire-hot under my fingers as I pushed the hair back from his forehead.

“Sonya,” he whispered. My name was a caress from his lips. It made my breath catch, my skin warm with a sudden rush of blood.

I wanted to listen to him say my name over and over again, but instead I shushed him. He needed to save his energy to get better. I laid one finger across his lips to keep him from talking. He stretched out an arm and pulled me down, nestling me into the space next to him. I settled my head on his shoulder, my hand on his heart.

That’s when he burst into flames and I woke up, suffocating from the sudden loss of oxygen from the room.

This morning it’s an ice cold shower to cool the fire I still feel dancing across my skin.

It hits me when I turn off the tap. That was my last little pill. My last shot at the perfect David dream.

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David isn’t at work when I arrive. But I have an email of explanation. Sheila in accounting heard that his sister is visiting from Australia. So he took the week off to show her Chicago. He isn’t sick at all. Maybe that’s what went wrong with the last pill. Not only did I create a fake place for him to live, I gave him an illness he doesn’t really have. I strayed too far from reality.

I needed another chance. A chance to imagine the perfect scenario. One that I knew enough about to bring in all the right details. But I’m out of pills. And I know the doctor won’t give me another prescription. They say it’s dangerous. So is losing my dream. Losing my David.

The internet saves me. I find a pack of pills on Craig’s list. Well, it’s not a full pack. Two pills. Two more chances to get this right. I only need one.

A phone call, a meeting outside Taco Bell. Two tiny orange pills tucked into my pocket.

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It’s the weekend, and I use every second of it. I spend two days thinking about David, writing notes, imagining a series of potentially perfect moments I could share with David. On Sunday night, I release one more little pill. I hold it in my hand, stare at it, turn it over as I select one moment from my notes.

I swallow the pill, open my dream journal, and write a description of seeing David in the elevator. Feeling his hand slide behind my back, pulling me into his chest as his lips land on mine. I write three perfect pages then snuggle under the covers.

As I drift off, I hear the doctor’s voice in my head. “Only safe to take three…. Side effects…. Danger……”

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She was wrong, though. I don’t dream at all. It’s a dark, soundless sleep. I wake up laying in exactly the same position I tucked myself into last night.

I stretch, shift, roll over. David’s head is on the pillow next to mine. His dark curls are almost sharp against the clean white of the pillow. His lashes almost as dark against the lightness of his skin. His eyes open, revealing the flecked green of his eyes. I have only a moment to get lost in their depths before his mouth opens, revealing two rows of razor wire teeth. I don’t have time to scream before he lunges and I am lost in him.

The Night Tiger and Other December Reads

I finished nine books in December:

Tower of Dawn by Sarah J Maas
The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye (eARC)
An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris (audiobook)
The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea
A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab
Double Blind by Iris Johansen and Roy Johansen (audiobook)
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo (ARC)

This brings my total for 2018 to 129 books! For the third year in a row, I beat my Goodreads goal of 120 books. We’ll see how next year goes…

Click here for a list of all the books I read in 2018.

This month had a lot of good reads in it (and a lot of LOOOOONNNNGGGG books). My favorite ARC of the month was The Night Tiger (review below).

Click here for my review of The Paragon Hotel.


I received an Advanced Reading Copy of The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo from the publisher (Flatiron Books) in exchange for an honest review. The Night Tiger is scheduled for release on February 12, 2019.

The Night Tiger takes us to 1930s Malaya (currently known as Malaysia) where Ji Lin is working as a "dance instructor" in a dance hall to earn money to pay off her mother's Mahjong debt. An encounter with a salesman on the dance floor ends in Ji Lin holding a glass vial with a shriveled human finger inside. Ji Lin sets out to return the finger to a more appropriate place, without revealing to anyone her slightly shady job.

At the same time, a young boy named Ren is trying to fulfill the death bed wish of his former master. He is searching for the finger his master had amputated years ago so that it can be buried with the rest of his body and his soul can be at peace.

The paths of Ji Lin and Ren dodge and twist around each other while a man-eating tiger terrifies the area. Mythology, folklore, and cultural norms further bend their paths, leading to an intricate and tightly woven plot. The story explores the battle between personal desires and family expectations, the limits of societal norms, connections that we can't see with our mortal eyes, and the influence of outside forces.

The writing in The Night Tiger is lovely. Once I started reading Choo's words, I was dropped into this time and place she brings to life so well. She is able to describe things in a way that brings them to life, even the elements of the story that are drawn from the magical.

The Night Tiger has two main characters (Ji Lin and Ren) who are very different despite their underlying connection. Both of these characters are well-written, with clearly defined desires and wishes. They are surrounded by a variety of other characters, including foreigners, that are equally well-written. While there are definitely character types in this story (required to fulfill the mythological and folklore basis of the story) they are not two-dimensional. Everyone in this novel has their own goal and personality.

Overall, The Night Tiger was an enjoyable, lovely read that I whole-heartedly recommend to anyone craving a bit of magical realism.