I’m staring at my clock radio. According to the big green digital numbers, it’s exactly 3:14 AM. I think it might be off by a minute or two, but that’s not really the point. The point is that I’m awake to know it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 3:14 AM.

This is not by choice. Actually, it sort of is, I guess. I’m awake because I don’t want to fall asleep. And why I don’t want to fall asleep? It’s a fair question. I’d ask, if it were someone else.

The answer sounds stupid, even to me. If I’m honest, I have to admit I’m just being a baby about this. I don’t want to fall asleep because of the dreams I’ve been having. “Nightmares” is a better word. I don’t think even that really gets the point across, though. Is there a word for dreams that are worse than nightmares? There should be.

It’s been the same the last four nights, exactly the same. The people in it are the same, the places are the same, everything happens exactly the same way, in the same order, and the worst part is that it all feels so real. There isn’t any of that weird imagery that people always talk about – talking rabbits or losing your teeth while flying naked behind trains through long dark tunnels or whatever else. Everything that happens in this nightmare could come right out of the news. It could all really happen.

Oh, God. That’s a horrible thought. What if – maybe it is really happening?

No. Absolutely not. It can’t be.

I know, I know. There are lots of people who believe in stuff like that. Bob – my younger brother – is one of them. He’s sixteen years old, and the magazines he hides under his bed, or in the back of his closet or wherever teenage boys usually hide copies of Playboy or Penthouse, include Psychic Times and UFO Monthly.

Personally, I think most of that is nonsense. People don’t really have visions of the future or psychic flashes or any of that. This nightmare is probably just from some stupid slasher movie somebody rented for one of our dorm movie nights. Against my better judgment, I sat through it and even though I was only half watching, not really paying attention, it leaked into my subconscious or something. That makes sense, right? I’m sure that’s all it is. Probably happens all the time. Except that I don’t remember ever sitting through a slasher movie in the first place.

It wouldn’t be so bad, except that the dreams are incredibly disturbing when I’m actually experiencing them, and, of course, in the moment I’m not thinking logically. I’m just reacting to what’s going on, and it’s really getting to me. What makes it even worse is that, up until this last week, I’ve almost never been able to remember my dreams at all. And now, suddenly, I remember them perfectly. That seems like it has to mean something.

It’s not just what I’m seeing, either. It always feels like – and I know this doesn’t make any sense – I’m not in my own head. It’s completely wrong, in a very “not in Kansas anymore” sort of way. I don’t know the words to describe it any better than that. I’m not sure there actually are any better words.

And then once I wake up and the whole stupid horrible thing replays itself in my mind, I can’t fall back asleep even if I wanted to, which at that point obviously I don’t anyway. So then, on top of being freaked out and miserable, I’m a tired mess the whole next day.

To top all that off, I had another dream that I remembered right before the nightmares started. It had that same not-in-my-own-head feeling. But that first dream was different. I was frightened, because it felt so strange, but the dream itself wasn’t creepy or horrible at all. It was – well, “flattering” is the word that comes to mind. I remember waking up screaming, not because of the content of the dream but because I knew – somehow – I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I think that’s it, anyway. Unfortunately, I don’t really trust my own analysis of any of this very much right now.

Now it’s 3:20 AM, give or take. Beth is snuggled up under her blankets in her bed, and she looks all peaceful and happy. Every so often she makes these funny little noises, not quite snores, but almost. I never really noticed she did that before, and we’ve been roommates since freshman year. I suppose it makes sense, though. In the two and a half years we’ve been rooming together, I can probably count on my fingers the times she’s gone to sleep before I did.

I haven’t told her about the nightmares yet. Partly it’s because I have this feeling – and, yes, I know it’s a naïve, childish thought – that if I don’t talk about them, maybe eventually they’ll just go away. But mostly it’s because I know what she’d say. First, she’d pretend to analyze them, probably throwing in something from one of her advanced Psychology classes to make it sound better. And then she’d get just slightly more serious and tell me that the nightmares are my subconscious trying to get me to let my hair down, have some more fun, don’t take everything so seriously. Basically, live a little.

After which I would say that I do have fun, I do let my hair down and I do live a little, after all my studying is done. “Like the Halloween party,” I’d say. “I went to that, didn’t I?”

She’d scoff and say that, yes, I went, but only after she harassed me for over an hour to come downstairs to the party. And she’d point out that my “costume” was a lab coat with a plastic nametag reading “Dr. Feelgood” that my brother bought for me as a bad joke when I came home for Christmas my freshman year. Which I only had because Beth grabbed it out of my bedroom when she came to visit me last summer. She waited four whole months for just the right moment to embarrass me with it. She’s got good timing; I have to give her that.

Then she’d remind me that what “going to the party” actually entailed was me spending an hour standing off in a corner. And it included highlights like not dancing even though several people from our dorm tried to drag me over. Oh, and completely ignoring a tall, cute guy from another dorm who – according to Beth; I didn’t notice him – kept looking hopefully over at me the whole time. And then to top it all off, taking exactly three sips of punch (even Beth can’t really blame me for that – it was a mix of the vile forty proof fake vodka they sell in the little grocery store just off campus, combined with generic orange soda. No thank you!), before I snuck away to revise a lab write-up for Advanced Organic Chemistry that I was already going to get 105% on.

But she probably wouldn’t mention how lucky she was that I left early and sober and that when she stumbled back to our room at four o’clock in the morning I made her drink a big glass of water, take two aspirin and got her safely to bed. Actually, I take that back. She would mention that. She did mention it the next morning, when she woke up without a hangover, in a clean bed, with her smelly, nasty costume in the laundry bag. She was very grateful.

Anyway, like I said, I haven’t told her about the nightmares for what seem like very good reasons to me. Looking at her there, it’s as though she doesn’t have a care in the world. I wonder what she’s dreaming about…

…Sara is in the back of the ambulance, rattling off items on her checklist and somewhere between excited and frightened out of her wits. She’s been over this and over this a thousand times, but that was all practice, all fake, and this is real and it’s her first time and…

“Nice and easy, Sara,” comes Tom’s voice from up front. “We haven’t lost a volunteer yet, and I promise you won’t be the first.”

She manages a laugh. “It’s not myself I’m worried about losing.”

Sara expects Tom to say something, but the radio crackles to life and cuts off any reply he might have made. It doesn’t matter anyway, because now they have a call. Her very first call.

“One minute!” The ambulance speeds through the night towards the scene of the accident. The car wreck, Sara hears that much from the radio. The rest of the call goes right past her and then, more quickly than she expects, they’re there. Sara opens the doors, steps out. At first she can’t see anything; it takes her eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the darkness. Once she is able to see, she realizes she preferred it the other way.

The scene is a mess: a compact car – Sara thinks it might be a Toyota but it’s impossible to tell for sure now – had a run-in with a big Jeep and it had lost, badly. Her feet crunch glass as she makes her way towards what had once probably been a very nice car, and is now so much scrap metal.

The car isn’t anything compared to its driver; he’s lying on the ground and to Sara it looks like more of his blood is on the street and all over the remains of the car than inside him. Her first thought is to wonder how the man could still be alive, and her second is that if she doesn’t do something, and fast, he won’t be for long.

But what to do? She hears a voice, one of the policemen at the scene, running down the man’s condition. Somewhere in the back of Sara’s mind, as she listens to the litany of injuries – major blood loss, a broken leg, several cracked ribs, almost certainly internal bleeding and all that just for starters – she wonders if the policeman has any idea that she’s seventeen years old and a volunteer on her very first ever ambulance run and utterly clueless. No, Sara decides, he probably doesn’t know all that. He probably expects Sara to actually do something for the man. But where to start with someone this messed up?

The absence of a pulse gives Sara the answer. CPR, that’s easy, she can do it in her sleep. Except the patient’s ribs aren’t supposed to give way like that when she puts pressure on them.

Still, it works; the man’s eyes blink open. They focus on Sara and even though he can’t speak, she sees the question there. What can she possibly tell him? He has to know how bad it is, doesn’t he? She owes it to him not to lie, not if it will be the last answer he ever gets. She holds his stare and shakes her head. And then she reaches down and takes his hand, squeezes it. It’s only a few seconds after that; Sara knows the exact instant when he’s gone…

…Sara isn’t at the accident scene anymore. She’s somewhere else, somewhere strange. Except not strange at all. She’s been here before. Hasn’t she? Yes, she has, she feels very sure about it, but she can’t remember the circumstances.

It’s a bedroom. A big bedroom. Bigger than her dorm room. It’s also a man’s bedroom; there isn’t a thing in here that has even the vaguest suggestion of a woman’s touch. It’s certainly nice; the furniture looks expensive, as does the painting on the wall above the bed: a picture of a sailing ship with the sky full of color behind it, framed in gold.

Definitely gold. Sara knows that for a fact. Just like she knows that the watch on the dresser is a genuine Rolex. It doesn’t occur to her just now to wonder how, exactly, she knows these things.

Sara sits down in a comfortable recliner in the corner. She reaches down for the handle, on the right side of the chair near the back, exactly where she knows even without looking – how? – that it will be. She leans all the way back. Everything is right with the world.

No, it isn’t. She’s not completely sure, but she thinks she hears footsteps just outside the bedroom. Scratch that, she is sure now. Footsteps, and the doorknob turning, and the door opening.

A man enters. He’s big; easily over six foot tall and well built. Not quite Schwarzenegger big, but plenty big enough. And familiar. Sara knows she’s seen him somewhere, but she can’t guess where that might have been. He’s leading, or maybe dragging, a girl into the bedroom with him. She’s a teenager; she might be as old as eighteen, but Sara doubts it. She’s blonde and petite and Sara can just picture her leading cheers at a high school football game.

There won’t be any cheerleading from the girl tonight. Right now she looks scared to death. So scared she doesn’t notice Sara even though Sara is looking right at her. The man doesn’t see Sara either. Or hear Sara when she screams, after the man throws the teenager onto the bed and begins to tear at her clothes.

The girl is fighting, scratching, shouting her head off, but none of it does any good. Sara can’t help her; she stands up, but she can’t get to the bed. It’s as though there’s an invisible wall in her way. She can’t get to the phone, or out of the room. She can’t do anything except watch. And scream until her own lungs give out…

Someone’s screaming. No, not “someone,” me. I don’t know why. And then it hits me all at once. I see the whole nightmare, every detail. I go right on screaming.

It’s not until my voice just about gives out that Beth wakes up. That’s the only reason I stop, because my throat hurts too much. I can barely breathe, and I’m clutching myself, holding my arms across my breasts. In my head I’m still seeing that bedroom and the man and the girl over and over and I barely notice that Beth is sitting up now, staring at me.

She looks worried, or maybe frightened out of her wits is a better description. Frightened for me. I’ve never seen that expression on her face before. It doesn’t make me feel any better. All it does is make me want to cry, even more than I already am.

I can’t really see her, between the tears and the fact that I’m too much of a mess to even focus my eyes. She must have gotten out of her bed and walked over to mine, because now she’s hugging me, holding me, telling me everything’s OK, everything is going to be all right. I don’t know how many times she has to say it, over and over, before I start to believe it.

A little bit, anyway. Enough that I stop seeing the nightmare on infinite replay inside my head and I’m back in our room again.

I don’t know how long it takes me to collect myself enough to talk intelligently. A few minutes? An hour? I have no idea, and I don’t even have enough energy to turn my head to look at the clock to find out.

I’m still shaking, still about two seconds away from bursting into tears again. I don’t know why it was so much worse just now; it’s been the same the last four nights. Maybe the lack of good, restful sleep has frayed my nerves to this point?

That, and knowing that I’m probably going to go right on seeing this every night. If it’s been four nights in a row, why would it stop tomorrow night? Or the night after? Am I going to see this sick, horrible shit inside my head every night for the rest of my life?

Beth is looking at me with the saddest expression I think I’ve ever seen on her face. She clearly has no idea what to think about me right now. Having to take care of me in the middle of the night is a new experience; like the aftermath of the Halloween party, it’s usually me seeing to her.

I don’t want to say anything. I don’t want to think about it at all. But I have to tell Beth something. And maybe talking about it will help, somehow. I know I need to share it. I can’t handle this alone. And then the tears do come again, and it takes another few minutes before I’m able to speak. But when I do, finally, recover the power of speech, I tell her everything.

It’s not easy, obviously. Talking about the nightmare brings it back again. I can see it all and it’s just as bad the hundredth time through as it was the first. “It was really horrible,” I say. Beth still has her arm around me, and I can feel myself leaning against her without really thinking about it. She’s warm and comforting and best of all she’s just here.

“I’ve had the same dream the last four nights. Nightmare. Whatever the hell it is. It doesn’t start out bad. I remember…” What do I remember? Just a feeling, darkness, and a mixture of fear and excitement. And then two details come to me. “There was – I think it was a siren, maybe? And then glass – I was stepping on glass, under my shoes, it was making this noise, a sort of crunching sound.”

The ambulance. My first night. I must have been dreaming about that. What else could it be? “It was my first call as a volunteer, my first night out with the paramedics, you remember that, right?” I feel myself calming down a bit as I mention the accident, and yes, I do realize how disturbing it is that talking about a fatal car wreck is actually comforting to me right now.

Beth knows about it, because I told her the first night of freshman orientation. All the other freshmen in Carson House, too. We’d finished up the scheduled and approved activities and our group leader took us out to a scuzzy little bar two blocks off campus called Club Illusion, which I think is the least aptly named place I’ve ever been to. It’s a tiny hole in the wall with about three tables inside and a dance floor that’s something like two feet square. The appeal of Club Illusion, at least for us, is based on two things: it’s a five minute walk from the dorm, and (much less of a concern since I turned twenty-one back in October) they rarely if ever card anyone.

Anyway, off we went, and after a couple of pitchers of beer we ended up playing sort of an informal game of Truth or Dare. Someone, I don’t remember who, asked if anybody at the table had ever seen someone die. “I did,” I said, and I told them what happened that night.

I was a volunteer with one of the local ambulance units during my senior year in high school. I’ve always had the idea that I wanted to be a doctor, for as long as I can remember. That seemed like a great way to see how I’d do with the blood and guts and everything. And of course my guidance counselor kept reminding me how good it would look on my college applications.

Three months of training and it was finally time for my first ride. We drove around for maybe half an hour when the call came in, and then there was the accident scene, that poor man bleeding to death on the street. I hadn’t ever seen a dead person before, at least not that way. When I was ten, I went to my Uncle Albert’s funeral. But seeing someone laid out like that, after the mortician is done with them, isn’t the same thing at all. Seeing someone die right in front of you is something most people never experience, I think, at least not if you’re lucky. I was the only one at the table that night who had, for whatever that’s worth.

I handled it really well, too. I didn’t freak out and I think – I know – that I gave that poor man some tiny bit of comfort before he passed. Maybe it doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but think about it. He was in pain, he knew he was going to die, and he was all alone and frightened and pretty much as bad off as a person can possibly be. I couldn’t save him, but at least I was there. It could have been anyone, all I did was hold his hand and look him in the eye and not lie to him, but “anyone” wasn’t there. I was. It was only a few seconds, but as far as I’m concerned it was important. Nobody deserves to die cold and scared and alone.

Obviously, I still dream about it. I don’t really remember anything more than feelings and vague impressions, but I think it must have been a replay of that night. What little I do remember about my dreams is usually like that. Very boring. Until now, anyway.

I don’t have to tell Beth all that, so I skip ahead to the awful part: the man and the girl and the bedroom. I realize, as I’m telling her about it, it wasn’t separate dreams, it was the same dream. I was in one place, and then in the other, just like that. And it was the same feeling of being not in my own mind again, just like all the other times. I must have been on the street, at the accident scene, and then I was in the bedroom watching. There wasn’t any in-between at all.

By the time I get to the end, I can barely get the words out. I don’t want to see it, but it’s there, playing out over and over and over.

I don’t know how long I cry for this time, but Beth is a real trooper, she holds me until I finally recover a little. Not much, but enough to keep talking. “He killed her. I watched the whole thing, and I tried to help but I couldn’t move, and they didn’t hear me and there wasn’t anything I could do. She was – she was kicking and fighting but it didn’t do any good.”

Beth thinks about that. She’s staring hard at me, and I can tell exactly what’s going through her head. She’s wondering where the hell this came from. I don’t like horror movies; I hate even watching the news sometimes. And nothing’s ever happened in my life or to anyone I know like what I dreamed. Beth knows all that, and I can see from her expression that she’s nearly as freaked out as I am.

“God, Sara. I don’t blame you for losing it. That’s – I’d say horrible, but horrible doesn’t cover it.”

Yes, I know. “The worst thing is that it looked so real. And I have no idea who they were. They didn’t look like anyone I can think of.” Well, the girl didn’t, I’m sure about that. When I picture the man I can’t place him either, but I’ve got this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that I ought to be able to.

I keep talking. “It all came out of nowhere. The only thing I can think of,” and it’s just at this moment that it occurs to me, “is that it’s something subconscious. Maybe deep down I get off on that kind of stuff?” That can’t really be true, can it?

Beth doesn’t think so. She shakes her head and answers me immediately. “No way. I know you better than anybody. If you had that kind of a dark side – well, you don’t. Trust me.”

She’s right, I think. I hope. “Thanks. I guess I just needed to hear that.” She’s still sitting on my bed right next to me. I lean close, hug her, and give her a little kiss on the cheek. “I feel much better,” which isn’t true, but talking about this more isn’t going to make me feel better, and both of us should get back to sleep. “Why don’t you go back to bed? I promise I won’t wake you up again.”

“You’re sure you’re OK?” I nod. We both know I’m not, but she doesn’t call me on it. She just pats my head before she gets up and goes back to her own bed. “No more nightmares, right?”

“I promise.”

Thankfully, there aren’t any more nightmares. I actually get a couple of hours of decent sleep. I wish it could have been more, God knows I need it, but it’s Thursday and I have an early class.

So does Beth, but she’s still lying in bed when I get out of the shower. She’s awake, though, talking on the phone. It’s her younger sister Chrissy. It’s easy to tell, because Beth is complaining about how she doesn’t want to be called Liz or Lizzie. It annoys her, so of course her sister does it whenever possible. I’ve got a younger brother so I understand completely.

Beth is still on the phone when I leave for 9:30 AM physics. I don’t like 9:30 AM physics. I wouldn’t like it at eleven o’clock, or at any other time. Just like green eggs and ham, I guess. But I need it for the pre-med program so I’m trying to slog through it. I don’t have a problem with any of my other classes, just this one. It doesn’t click for me, and I wish I knew why.

I’ve got a nice long, cold walk to think about it. Physics is on the other side of campus, in one of the old, dingy engineering buildings on the main quad. At least it’s something to think about instead of the nightmares. On the other hand, it’s kind of disheartening that there’s something going on in my life that I like even less than physics.

I make it to class, and I manage to stay awake and even take some notes, not that I understand anything that Dr. Wallabeck said. I haven’t understood much in that class since the last exam. At least, I had to concentrate so much on trying to comprehend it that I couldn’t think about the nightmares.

No such luck now. I’m sitting in my Science in Western Thought class. It was the only class this semester that fit my schedule and that filled the requirements for a Liberal Arts elective, so I signed up for it. I can see where the material could be interesting, except that the professor, Dr. Sorenson, somehow manages to suck all the life out of it. She‘s a very dry speaker, and it’s hard to concentrate on anything she’s saying. Usually, it’s not that much of a problem since she’s taking everything straight from the textbook. But sometimes my mind wanders….

…the blonde girl’s on the bed, and the big man climbs on top of her, and all Sara can do is watch helplessly…

“Is there a problem, Miss Barnes?”

Yes there is. Very much so. “I’m – I’m not feeling well, I need to go to the bathroom.” I must have shouted something, or maybe I just completely spaced out when Dr. Sorenson called on me. I’m not really sure what I did, to be honest.

I don’t wait for her to even acknowledge me; I run out of the room, down the hall to the ladies room. I splash some water on my face and then I lock myself in a stall. It seems like the only sensible thing to do.

I thought I was getting over it. I talked about it with Beth, and isn’t talking about bad things supposed to make them better? Besides, for God’s sake, I’m twenty one years old. I’m an adult. Some stupid nightmare isn’t supposed to affect me like this. Right?

Wrong, apparently, or I wouldn’t be sitting here in the bathroom hiding. And I’m not even sure exactly what I’m hiding from. This absolutely sucks, and that’s by far the most polite way I can think of to say it.

I sit there another few minutes and then I hear the door open, footsteps echoing and finally a voice. “Sara? Are you there?” It’s Marcia Goldstein. She lives just down the hall from me, and she’s also in the class.

“I’m still here.”

“Dr. Sorenson wanted to know if you were OK. She was worried about you.”

I’m worried about me too but of course I can’t say that. “It’s really nothing. I’ll be fine. I’ll be back in a minute, OK?”

That’s good enough for Marcia, and, although it takes more than just a minute, I’m able to keep my word. I go back to the classroom, back to my seat and I sit quietly for the remainder of class. When it’s over, I tell Dr. Sorenson I’m sorry for disrupting class. She smiles patronizingly at me and shakes her head. “Don’t worry about it. It happens to all of us at one time or another.”

I don’t think so. I don’t think this kind of thing happens to most people ever. For their sake, I certainly hope not.

It’s almost twelve-thirty in the morning and I’m not asleep. I was staring at the poster of Daffy Duck over Beth’s bed, but I gave that up a few minutes ago. I thought he was staring back at me. I’ve got a print of Monet’s Water Lilies over my bed and now I half think they’re staring at me, too.