Lonely

They cried at night and whispered about his eyes...

He had never met another dreamer.

He had always walked the dreams alone, and shaped them with his hands. Sometimes he wandered aimlessly and supposed he was lonely. One day, he came face to face with the girl, very suddenly. He only looked at her, and she only looked at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but the dream took him away, far away. He woke, thrashing. He couldn’t remember the girl, only her eyes. Only her green eyes, like oceans of slumber and dream. Her eyes of peace.

All day he thought about her eyes. When night came, he slept but did not dream, and awoke exhausted. For weeks he searched, months. Two years later he found her again. He could only look at her, frozen, saying nothing. She opened her mouth, but then he woke. He only lay there in the darkness, crying, ripping at his arm with his teeth to keep from screaming. He shook the tablets into his palm and tried to dream again, but the dream was thick and sluggish and his steps were slow. He chased shadows the rest of the night. He skipped work the next day, and the day after that, letting the white pills drag him down, looking for her. All day he dreamed, within his cage of shadows. Some days, they spoke to him, to his mind, but he always searched for the girl.

He grew desperate now, and forced his ways into the dreams of others. The dreams of adults were hard to enter, but the children were rather easy. He grew gray, wasted, and his skin hung on his frame like something not alive at all. No one came around anymore, and the neighborhood children cried at night and whispered about his eyes. His lonely, lonely eyes. 

One day, he went out, into the street, into the gray world without sun. The hollow light hurt his eyes, and he brushed the dark glasses into place with his long, delicate fingers. He smiled at the first person to pass, but she bit back a scream and after that he did not smile anymore. It began to rain again, but the drops rolled off his brow and nose unnoticed. The passersby shied away from him.

“It’s him,” a child whispered, pressing back against his mother. “It’s the lonely man…”

He heard that, and hunched his body against the rain.

He rounded the corner and saw the girl.