In Your Dreams

by Noelle Shoemate

There are different types of screams—each one a battle cry to a certain horrific emotion. Sometimes the concavity of my mouth silences the sound, and yet I can still feel it ricochet through my lungs, vibrate around my tongue and get lost around my pulled molars. Her face looms over mine, a perfect round moon. Her green eyes have a reptilian quality when she smiles. When the trunk’s lid lowers over me, everything becomes the same shade of black.

***

The brochure for Anjelica’s Spa & Wellness digs into my palm as the plane gracelessly lands on the tarmac. It is hot. The sun overhead lends everything a phantasmagoric quality: A Dali-sequel trick of the eye.

“Welcome to sunny Phoenix. It is currently 115 degrees,” intones the captain.

“They better have a pool,” says Lulu.

***

Two months ago, working at Tell You a Story, a downtown Brooklyn bookstore, I unpacked boxes of a self-help book entitled How to Sleep Better. I scoffed at the cover art: a girl in a yellow chemise sleeping in the middle of a field of sunflowers. She looked peaceful. Dust motes flew around me as I read an endorsement of the book and its author, Dr. Clinton. A spotlight directed towards your dreams, refusing to allow any parts of your mind to cause fear, written by a PhD researcher and expert on the neural patterns of sleep. I read another testimonial from a woman named Gillian B—My boyfriend wants to sleep over now; I don’t scare him any more with my nightmares.

“I wish,” I said to no one in particular. As I thumbed through the back of the book, I saw that the author ran a nightmare support group in Manhattan. On Sundays.

I slashed a purple-colored lipstick across my mouth and took the F train to the Midtown address, 123 East 38^th street. Housed between a Starbucks and a dry cleaner was an unremarkable brick building from the Federal period. I pushed the building’s button three times for the sixth floor, and then realized the elevator wasn’t working. I’d had minimal sleep and no time for coffee; I trudged up the stairs, hand on my lower back. Right before I arrived at the sixth floor, I stopped to catch my breath.

“Breakfast of champions,” came a voice. Platinum blonde hair flashed in my eyes. A girl I wished I looked like blew smoke in my face.

“Nightmares?” I asked.

“You coming? I’m Lulu,” she said, showing me her only imperfection, her snaggle tooth. Inside the room there were about twenty chairs in a semi-circle. It was institutionally ugly, with floor-to-ceiling windows that needed a good wash. The tube lighting hummed faintly. Everyone had a green-tinged Walking Dead complexion. Lulu was the only one who looked like she genuinely did not belong.

“Come here,” she said, leading me to a metal folding table. I wrote my name across a paper nametag with a bubblegum-scented marker. “Now you’re legit.” Next, she dragged me to an adjacent table filled with urns of coffee and an assortment of sweets, including little bags of Skittles. She took two and insisted I take two as well. Afterwards we tripped over people’s legs, making our way to side-by-side chairs.

“Hello, hello, little ones,” boomed a voice like the groan of a tugboat. I turned toward the doorway. Dr. Clinton was a giantess, at least 6’4” with an arm’s worth of jangling gold bracelets.

“New blood,” said Dr. Clinton. She pulled a dog clicker out of the pocket of her drapey sweater and clicked it at me. “Tell us your name. What you do. And why you’re here.”

Hating to be the center of attention, I internally groaned. “Sophia. I have a master’s in creative writing. I work at a bookstore until I finish the great American novel. And my nightmares end up chasing every single potential boyfriend away.”

Everyone raised their left hand and said, “We see you, welcome.”

“Break time,” said Dr. Clinton. Bewildered with the group’s trajectory, I was ready to leave, but Dr. Clinton touched my shoulder with her baseball mitt hand and said I might get more out of the group if I sat next to someone else. “Class clown,” said the doctor.

Lulu rolled her eyes behind Dr. Clinton and then motioned for me to follow her back to our seat. She opened her purse. It was filled to the brim with more Skittles.

“Only the red ones,” she said, pouring the rest into the rubber plant behind our seats. Despite my fatigue, I felt awakened. I had never known anyone who suffered from what I did.

Lulu played with the gold Victorian-style locket dangling from her neck, opening and closing it continuously. I reached across to peek inside.

“My business,” she said, and slapped my hand away. She forced a laugh. “No sleep, no manners,” she said, clearly embarrassed for her behavior.

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Well, it’s totally weird but we’re all semi haunted here. But listen. I like you; I was an English major too.”

When I asked her where she went to school, she said vaguely, “California, small school.”

“Want to hear my nightmare?” she asked, shaking a few red Skittles into my hands.

I nodded. She fiddled with her locket. I waited.

“One night I couldn’t sleep and decided to take a walk into the woods,” she began. “For some reason, I was barefoot. It was so cold—snow hung like curtains on the bare trees. A voice called my name. Come here, I heard. At the clearing, there was a half-frozen pond. A naked woman signaled to me with her long fingers. They reminded me of snakes. Come here, I heard again—she teased me along. By the time I reached the woman, the pond’s surface cracked all over. The ice breaking apart was the loudest sound—it repeated thousands of times in my head. When my hands met her bony wrist, she pushed me into the water’s small opening. Her jaw unhinged and I saw she had no teeth. She screamed at me and never stopped.”

“That’s almost as messed up as my nightmares,” I said. I squeezed the roundest part of her shoulder, feeling I had known Lulu for a long while.

A shrill whistle sounded, indicating that break was over.

From the hall, Dr. Clinton appeared, pushing a rolling cart laden with a birthday cake blazing with candles. Vanilla icing dripped down the sides from the overheated room.

“Happy Birthday, little ones. We’re giving birth to our dreams by sharing the dark recesses of our minds.” Dr. Clinton’s face shone almost unnaturally; her fingers cobwebbed together in delight. “It is very simple, the business of nightmares. There is a finite amount of them—like people’s kinks. There are really four, I believe: being haunted or haunting someone; being chased by something or hurt by someone; not being able to speak and/or being paralyzed; and lastly, the monster of many faces, which is an archetype for intergenerational trauma.”

A collective hush followed. The whole group was lulled into introspection, wondering how Dr. Clinton would characterize their dreams.

“Which one of you would like to volunteer?” No one offered; the tension in the room was palpable. She laughed and pointed the dog clicker at the saddest sack of a guy, whose nametag said Milton R.

“You’re up,” she said, rubbing her hands with anticipation. His old baby face flushed a deep red.

He leaned back in his chair, the legs scratching against the hardwood floor. “Ever since I was little, I dreamed I was being erased. A giant pink rubber school eraser would start at my feet. First, I would lose my toes, especially the bent ones that were broken from running around while I slept.”

“A parasomnia case,” she sighed, fanning her hands in front of her generous chest. She turned her bovine eyes to us and explained that parasomniacs moved around and performed wakeful tasks when they slept. “I’m not bored,” she said. “Continue.”

“So the thing is, the eraser keeps erasing my flesh. Very neat. Going in lopsided circles.” I could feel the small hairs on my body singeing during his retelling. I thought about leaving, my body unaccustomed what to do with someone else’s trauma.

“What a crock right?” whispered Lulu. “An eraser. You got to give him credit. He’s making it up.”

I whispered my question: how could she know the difference from fake and real dreams?

“Experience.”

“We see you,” the group said.

***

 Arizona. I look over at Lulu in amazement—we have been friends for only three months. My stomach growls from the austerity diet we have been on to pay for what we both refer to as the wellness retreat.

“We are the Barbizon girls; this will be worth all of our sacrifices,” I say, tossing her a packet of beef jerky. It bounces off the steering wheel. She looks at me blankly. Dehydration is a thing in both the high and low desert, so I hand her a bottle of Poland Spring, wondering why she isn’t getting any of the literary references.

“This might be a mistake,” I say. It is my first time out west and the cacti remind me of an army, each one with arms raised, ready to vanquish an enemy troop.

“Girl, you need to relax.”  She hands me her vape pen. “I may or may not have added something besides cherry-flavored nicotine.” She taps the steering wheel with her filed-to-dagger nails. “What are your thoughts on children?” she asks me.

I laugh. We are on the young side of thirty. Single.

“Like now?” I cannot imagine taking care of a child. I can barely unravel myself from my nightmares, toting them around the way some mothers keep their babies in slings on their bodies.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m saying if it was the right opportunity.”

Opportunity. She looks at me with excitement and I don’t want to spoil the moment with my selfishness.

“Imagine! They’d have your organizational skills and those Bambi eyes,” she says, batting her lashes.

“It’s something I’ve always dreamed of, especially having a little girl,” I lie.

“Listen then, we could be mothers together!” Lulu says. She slows to a crawl because she’s squeezing my shoulder so tight.

A semi-truck’s horn blows behind us because Lulu is still driving the New York City speed limit. She flicks him off in the rearview mirror. We both laugh. Taylor Swift is our soundtrack. My eyes flutter, but my body jolts me awake, trying in vain to protect me from my own dreams.

“Don’t you dare go to sleep. I simply can’t deal with you shrieking yourself awake.”

I tap at the phone, angry that Google Maps says there is still another hour until our arrival at the retreat. Red lines show an accident up ahead. I wonder about the likelihood of our friendship. I feel like the grandmother in our little dyad: making us cookies, enforcing hydration. I ruffle through my out-of-style denim purse and pull out a bag of Skittles. I nudge her with my shoulder.

“Only red ones,” she says, as if I need a reminder. “This is everything,” she says, sticking her arm out the window, her yellow scarf fluttering around her like a children’s bike streamer on a windy day.

***

I stood outside of the nightmare group’s meeting space and debated whether it warranted going inside. I had zero faith that the doctor’s methodologies were going to work, other than to embarrass each one of us. I wound and unwound the stretchy Kelly-green keychain that housed all of my keys, spooling them around my arm. Dozens of them. I couldn’t let them go: a key to my gym locker that no longer worked because I quit the gym; keys to the house of an ex-boyfriend, who forgot to ask for them back because he was afraid of me. Suddenly I noticed Lulu exiting the room.

“You’re not backing out,” she said. The name Persephone was written on Lulu’s nametag. “You look like a jailer,” she said, pulling me inside. She maneuvered me past the bad coffee and grabbed a packet of Skittles from the metal table in the corner. “Give me the red ones,” she said. “It’s life or death.”

“You act like this place is a joke.”

“Isn’t it? I’ve tried everything else.”

We tossed along words like sleeping pills, laughing at their lack of efficacy.

“Hypnotherapy?” I said, citing promising research. She countered with EMDR, for trauma survivors, even though she insisted she’d had a very boring life.

“I started going to church,” I said, lowering my voice. “My grandmother said that maybe my nightmares proved I was possessed.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tears streamed down her face; the wings of her eyeliner smudged.

“Group’s about to start,” said Dr. Clinton.

We walked back to our plastic chairs. I played with the Skittles in my packet until I heard my name.

“Your turn,” Dr. Clinton said, pointing the dog clicker my way. There was a palpable hush. It reminded me of the moment right before it happened in my dream. Cotton mouth. Feet soaked through my socks.

“What do I say?” I asked. The napkin was shredded in my hands, but I had no memory of doing that.

“Your nightmare, of course.”

I wondered if I could trust the other members of the group. Maybe one of them would create a podcast about nightmare-afflicted weirdos.

“I always had trouble sleeping—”

I was interrupted by her sigh. I cleared my throat and began again.

“When I was nine, my family moved to a sleepy town along the Hudson. An old Victorian house. My mother offered afterschool tutoring because my dad had lost his job. One of her students, Paula, was three years older than me. She was gorgeous like a Disney princess, but cruel. At first, she pretended to befriend me, but that meant playing by her rules. Paula created elaborate games for me to take part in, such as coming up with sociopathic tricks to play on my unsuspecting parents.

One spring day, she unzipped her raincoat’s interior pocket and took out a dead bird. Its delicate bones were crushed from falling out of a tree, and she told me to put it in the oven so my mother would find it. Another time, she dared me to climb up our ancient oak tree, scream bloody murder, then refuse to come down. We’re like sisters, she said. And I’m the only one that gets you.”

“Sisters,” repeated Dr. Clinton.

“It might seem pathetic, but she was the only young person who talked to me because of the birthmark on my face.”

I steadied myself with three deep breaths. No one was laughing at me or showing pity. Reflexively, I rubbed at the faint outline of the birthmark, faded from many laser appointments.

“She started hurting me, pinching me in places my parents wouldn’t notice. She would pretend there was a bug in my hair and rip out strands. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I told my mother, but she said, We really need the money, lovely—just stay in your room.”

I paused.

“Do go on when you are ready,” said Dr. Clinton. Surprisingly she performed like a mental health clinician and said all the right things, furrowing her brow and clasping her hands to her heart.

“For two weeks I kept my distance. But, one day, I heard my name being called from outside my open window. Let me in, she said. I want to say I’m sorry. I ran downstairs to tell her to go home, but her face was pressed against the front door, shining like a Precious Moments figurine. When she asked me to open the door, I did.

“My mom has something to fix your face, she said. But let’s keep this between you and me. Look in my bag.I reached inside her Jansen backpack. At the very bottom of the bag was a small beaker with a twist top. Drink it, she said. What is it? I asked. She motioned for me to follow her up the stairs.”

I cleared my throat, conscious that I was taking up so much time and space in the session.

“So much better than the eraser story,” whispered Lulu. I was aware that the session was about to end, by the slant of the sun and the sounds of the commuter crosstown bus. No one was showing any signs of leaving.

“When we got to the attic, she sat with me on the floor and said, Warning, it tastes bad. Unafraid, I swallowed the solution in one gulp. Nothing happened for a while. I got impatient. Without warning, a clear stream of liquid shot through my mouth. And then I lost all dignity—I soiled myself. With superhuman strength she dragged me to a wooden steam chest and then she put me inside like she was playing dolly with me.

“Be a good girl now, she whispered. She closed the lid. I screamed but no sound came out of my mouth. My body was partially paralyzed. The sounds of the attic mice running around kept me company, while I prayed and got no response from God.

 “I scratched at the top of the trunk for hours. By the time my mom found me, I was unconscious, and three of my fingernails were ripped off, stuck in the trunk’s lid.”

Scribbling interrupted my retelling of my dreams; I surveyed the room to catch who was being rude and saw that it was Lulu. She was taking notes during my share?

“In these nightmares I feel my nails detach from my nail beds. I hear the mice scratch across the floors.”

I didn’t realize I was crying until Dr. Clinton said, “We’ll end here for today.”

Everyone left, except the doctor. And Lulu.

Dr. Clinton’s eyes were wild, and her red lipstick bitten off. She smelled like gunpowder; she smelled like fear. “I think you need more special attention,” she said, rifling through her bag.

Finally, she handed me a card for Anjelica’s Spa & Wellness.“I can’t have you come back. We aren’t set up for unpacking complex trauma, just garden-variety nightmares.”

Lulu pushed me out of the room, her soft hand woven into mine.

***

We pull up to Shanti Lodge. A crow circles overhead, which feels like a bad sign. Unprepared for the sharpness of the high desert night, we both pull our lightweight coats tighter around us.

“Bellhop,” jokes Lulu, as we walk on the gravel Zen path towards the hotel. My back left suitcase wheel gets stuck in the red dust that blankets everything. There is chanting in the distance.

The smell of sage is so strong, it seems piped out of the ceiling vents. Two statues of winged behemoths flank the reception desk. Lulu winks at me as she presses the reception bell one too many times. “Selfie,” I say, holding up my camera.

“Photos not allowed,” says the woman who sashays through the beaded curtain bifurcating the office and lobby.

The woman wears all white and offers us identical robes. Shoes are discouraged inside. “Cult chic,” says Lulu.

“They are dream eaters,” the woman says, noticing our obsessive stares at the statues. She tells us one of the former guests, back in the 1940s, was a sculptress. After staying at Shanti Lodge, she felt unburdened, her bad dreams gone. “Obviously, it’s a bit of folklore,” she says, flicking her bored eyes away from us.

She asks us to fill out some paperwork; red asterisks are placed where she needs our signatures. Dehydration, lucid dreams, and cold extremities are some possible side effects of the treatments offered.

“Anju has time to see both of you before dinner, if you’re interested.”

She tells us to drink some of the special spa water before every treatment: there is a glass container that contains slightly off-color water. Greedily, we down four paper cones between us, parched from our flight and the altitude. Schedules are thrust into our hands, outlining classes with names like Night Stargazer, Gong and Going Deeper. The hallway towards our shared room is an optical illusion. At first it seems there are dozens of doors lining the red-carpeted hallway. But, when we reach room three, we realize that the hallway is short, a hall you might find in a basic colonial house.

“It’s always confusing here,” Lulu says. When I tell her I thought this place was a first for us, she sticks her tongue out at me and says, “Nightmare brain.”

Our door is already open to the touch.

“Did we land in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper?” I ask.

Lulu just looks at me. “Such a bookworm,” she says, moving our suitcase into the closet. To make a joke I tell her we won’t have lots of lovers on our trip, since there is only one skinny bed in the room.

“Nobody wants us anyway, since we scream and moan after the main event, when no one decent is still awake,” she says.

I gently tap her on the butt with the map and convince her we should hurry to make it to our class on time. We change into our cult robes and leave our shoes behind in the room. For a retreat, the carpet seems an unlikely choice. For starters, it’s dirty; orange flowers in mid-bloom try their best to conceal spilled tea, and there are pieces of gravel from outside embedded in the fibers.

The movie The Shining flashes into my mind. Together we walk side by side, peering at every door’s number, unable to find room 202 for the treatment.

“Obviously, it’s the only unmarked room,” she says. Smoke curls from underneath the door, alerting us to a possible treatment.

“Perfect, the place is burning down before we get our money’s worth.”

“Maybe they put peyote in the water,” she says.

The door swings open. A woman with a shaved head and orange lipstick invites us to fill out a waiver. Just in case,” she says.

“Ow,” I say as she walks behind me and pokes at the back of my head with something metal.

“Sorry,” she says. “You are very tight. I might recommend you see Julio—he is wonderful with cranial massages, letting out stuck associations.”

“Not for us,” I say, grabbing Lulu by the wrist.

“For the road,” Lulu says, grabbing two more glasses of water.

Drenched in sweat, we awaken on the bed in our room, our hands clasped together. I slept solidly, dreamlessly. One. Two. Three. I count the crowdedness of my heartbeats—it seems there are more than I need. I look for my phone and then remember our phones were confiscated—so we would be ready to do the real work, words I kept hearing from everyone at the retreat.

I try to look at Lulu, but her skin seems too bright to stare at, each cubic square (inch?) fashioned out of diamonds. I ask her, “Legally they can’t take our phones, right?” She stares as if she forgot how to blink. Did they chase us with a butterfly net and deposit us in our room with the yellow wallpaper? Minutes become hours and then return to minutes. Lulu’s energy is focused on her notebook again.

A groaning can be heard from anywhere or everywhere. A woman’s voice calling, calling, calling.

“Can you hear that?’ I ask Lulu, but she is absorbed in her locket.

“Aaahhhh, aagggh,” repeats from the vents.

“Aren’t you worried? It sounds like Bertha Mason.”

“Who?”

I snap. “You studied English, for God’s sake. How are you unfamiliar with all the fundamental literary greats? Bertha Mason—the former wife from Jane Eyre?”

“It’s not Jeopardy, for God’s sake.”

The groaning continues, until I can pinpoint that it is wafting up from the grates. The part of me that loves storytelling imagines that it could be the basis for a novel. The more self-protective part of me wonders if we should continue staying at the lodge.

“I’m sorry, weirdo.” I look up from the floor, noticing the overhead lights shining down on Lulu’s head—the hollows under her eyes are magnified in a way that seems old for her age. I dust the lint off my hands and sit next to her on the bed. “Anything good?” I ask, pointing to open notebook.

“It’s private,” she says, glaring at me.

I pour myself a glass of water from the sweating carafe on the nightstand but only feel thirstier with each sip. I ask if she is interested in taking another class.

“You’re kind of codependent,” she says. A proverbial slap rings through my ears. Disgusted with Lulu and myself, I decide to take a solo walk and get a feel for the property. I grab the old-fashioned room key and make my way down the hallway. The carpet’s orange flowers look larger, and I swear that the pistils are waving at me like a field of angry tongues.

Around and around, I walk the hallway. Each time I turn the corner I end up right where I began. Frightened, I sit down on the floor, legs crossed in front of me, and cry.

“Newbie, huh?” A man of sixty or sixty-five bends down next to me. He exudes gentleness, but his teeth look sharp.

“Slow down on the water,” he says. “I can confirm we’re being drugged. Of course, it will help you do the work.” We knowingly laugh.

Unsurprisingly, he tells me he has been haunted by nightmares. His granddaughter surprised him with the trip. “And how did you get mixed up here, out of all the gin joints?” he asks, then shakes his head. “Ah—none of my business.”

He tells me that he is certain that he wouldn’t have lost every one of his previous wives if he didn’t vacillate between vivid dreams, snoring, and nocturnal strolls.

“So, you’re a modern-day Lothario?”

He laughs, showing me again the sharpness of his teeth. “The worst were the pickles!” he says. He tells me his previous wives would find him making middle-of-the-night turkey sandwiches or eating pickles. Asleep with bedhead and night sleep crusted over his eyelashes. He pats his slightly protuberant belly. I think of a cat who has gorged itself on a bowl of fresh cream.

“Parasomnia,” I yell out. I want his approval, though I don’t know why.

“Damn straight, girl. Pro tip,” he says, handing me a card out of his robe’s pocket.

Replacement Therapy. Floor 12B. Expensive paper stock, embossed with gold font.

“Changed my life, if you can afford it.” He winks at me. I watch him walk away, whistling.

I trace 12B with my pointer finger.

Clutching the card in my hand, I walk to the front desk, this time not bothering to hop over the orange flowers. What would it feel like to have things change? When I get to the front desk, I see that there is a small sign that says closed, posted behind the wall. Before I can ring the bell, an attendant comes over. “We’re closed,” she says.

“But I was invited to try this,” I say.

I am shocked when she grabs it from my fingers. “Not for you,” she says, ripping it up. She walks behind the desk and grabs a pamphlet, circling lectures she thinks I might like in pink highlighter. I explain that I heard it was life changing. “It’s expensive, and you have to be vetted,” she says, pivoting away from me.

I hate this place, I think. The governance. The arrogance. The apparent drugging. I walk back to the room, ready for an argument with Lulu. I open the door and see that she has small trays of food and two plates lined up on the bed. “I hope you like Indian,” she says.

After two bowls of fragrant chicken curry, I launch into my story.

“Actually, I was hoping to tell you about it,” she says. She opens and closes her locket. “I have not been totally honest—I have been here at least a hundred times,” she says.

“What?” I ask.

“I have something to share with you that could change your life. It’s my invention. It would be my treat.” Words like choosing dreams, blood tests and the implantation waterfall out of her mouth.

Breathless, I launch myself off the bed and walk over to the sliding patio doors. A succulent garden is planted with native plants. Their spiky exteriors seem less daunting than Lulu. I feel her behind me even though I didn’t hear any footsteps.

“Can I show you something?” she says, hovering right into my space. She removes the locket from her neck and places it in my palm. “Meet my daughter. Dani. She was three.”

“Is this a joke?” I look at the photo: same blond hair. Same perfect nose.

“I wish. Because I lost her.” Lulu digs her nails into my arm.

“She ran away?”

“No,” she says. “I’ll explain what happened later.”

“How did you have time for a kid? You were in college recently.”

She turns to me, squares her shoulders and says, “I wasn’t very honest with you. I’m older than you think, I just have good skin.” She pats her cheekbones.

“But your nightmare of the woman on the ice—”

“Well, the water part was correct.”

“So, all this … What for?”

Angry, I walk back inside the room and start throwing my belongings into my open suitcase.

“I can help you,” she says. I feel her breath on the back of my neck, smell her strawberry shampoo. She’s a stranger to me, I think.

Lulu jumps in front of the door as I wheel my suitcase out of the room.

The timer on the room’s clock chimes, alerting us that we have new room messages. They can wait. I look behind at the yellow wallpaper. All these little clues that are now so obvious: her privacy issues. The way she didn’t understand obvious references.

“Do you even have an English degree?”

Her cheeks redden. How stupid I was! I feel overwhelmed with wanting to run over her foot with the suitcase’s wheels. Leave track marks across her body.

“Just give me a minute to change your mind. And if you still don’t believe me, then go. Never talk to me again.” Her hand on my shoulder feels so heavy that I turn around.

She hands me her journal, the one that I thought was filled with ordinary secrets: crushes, nightmares etc. What I don’t expect to find are drawings on the technical level expected of an architect or engineer.

“What are these?” We sit side-by-side on the bed; my curiosity outweighs my disgust. Drawings of people lying down, attached to overhead tubes with images of faces, hearts and monsters. Cross-sections of people’s brains, nozzles, and mathematical coding. I flip through to the end of her journal, wondering if Lulu is an evil genius.

“Look at me,” she says. “You’re in hell with your nightmares and so was I, before…What if there was a cure? Would you be interested?”

Nauseated, I open a package of crackers that came with the meal she brought us.

“Do you understand? I did it! I mean, it’s not been FDA-approved yet, sure, but it works.” Her eyes are wild, a high color on her cheeks. I should stop her rambling but aside from feeling betrayed, I am curious. Maybe things happen for a reason after all.

I let her take hold of my arm, watch her apparent expertise in navigating the hallway. No silly laughing. No disorientation. I question if she ever really drank the spa water or if that was just another way to lure me in.

“You’ll see,” she says. We approach a large, gilt-framed picture of a mermaid, an unusual choice for the desert. She holds up her pointer finger and uses an old metal key to unlock a groove in the woman’s hair. A rumbling occurs and the entire painting shifts; behind it is a staircase.

“Let me show you,” she says. After descending thirty steps, we are in a laboratory. Everything is white. The floors. The walls. The researchers’ outfits.

“I want you to meet someone who benefited greatly from my pursuits.”

The avuncular guy who gave me the card comes over. No robe, but white clothes, nonetheless. “Good to see you again, kid.” He shakes my hand and apologizes that he came on a little strong.

“You almost spoiled everything, Greg,” Lulu says. He is dismissed but seems nonplussed. An angelic smile never leaves his face; she is his queen.

“It really works,” he calls after us.

Lulu, if that is even her real name, brings me into a small interior room with no windows. There are three beds in a row, occupied by sleeping bodies. All the subjects are peacefully asleep, a tangle of tubes crisscrossing over and around their bodies. Above each person’s head is a strong medical light; attached to the crown of each head is a plastic arm. The pictures over the subjects’ heads seem to be what is being piped into the strange wires. I am reminded of the feeder on my juicer back home.

I approach the bed closest to me: a younger woman, pale face, no lines.

“Is she dead?” I ask.

Lulu pulls me away from the bed. “Hush. They are so fortunate. Her worries are gone,” she says. “Music please,” she yells out, and the sweetest lullaby comes through the ceiling’s speakers. Below the surface is a discordant tone. It gives me shivers.

I follow her to another room that feels more normal, less clinical. A pink and yellow wallpapered room, unusual for a lab. There are two white pleather couches. Seeing my distaste, she says, “Small budget for décor.” She makes odd fidgety movements, jumping from one foot to the other. She busies herself making coffee and adds a few shots of Kahlua. I wonder if she is manic.

After she makes our coffees she smiles at me, switching over to play the part of Lulu, dear friend. Papers are spread across the small side table, with more graphs and photos.

“What is this place?”

“Darling, this is where dreams literally come true.” She taps the top part of the page. I lean in closer, careful not to spill my coffee, and see the words Dream Replacement Lab.

“Don’t you trust me?” says Lulu. Her pupils have bloomed so big that her eye color is almost overtaken by black. She hands over her booklet. Microscopic handwriting fills the pages. The drawings and codes make no sense. The final page has a humble envelope stuffed with pictures. She nods that it is OK for me look at the contents. Picture after picture of her daughter.

“She was like you. Inquisitive. Do you know why she died? Of course, you don’t. But I am sure you imagine some childhood illness, something unpreventable. It wasn’t.”

 I bite my lip, wondering what she plans on telling me. It is apparent how much she adored Dani.

“How did she die?” I ask.

“She drowned. But it was odd, because she was already three years old. Bath time was important in our household. I spoiled her, bath beads or bombs for each time. Part of the ritual, aside from the fluorescent tub toys, was that she loved Skittles. Only red ones.”

Lulu places her hands over mine. “Do you understand?” she asks.

I do not.

“You probably think I spoiled her; I did. But she believed the Skittles let her see in the dark, all the monsters I could never kiss away.” Sickened, I realize the ending, but Lulu wants me to hear the rest. I try to put my hands over my ears, but sheholds them tight in her own.“I left her for only a minute—it was a small house. After rifling through the pantry, I remembered the Skittles were in the trunk of my car.”

“Stop,” I say.

She barrels on. “The car was locked, so I had to run back inside, get the keys, grab the Skittles. It would have been OK, but then I accidentally let the door close, and I was locked out of the house. By the time I broke through the window, using some extra bricks from our walkway repair, she had drowned. My floating blue baby.

“Have you tried doing CPR on a baby? It is not the same as what they teach you in the courses.” Tears stream down her cheeks.

“Sophia, that was the worst thing that has ever happened to me and ever will. Awake I was tortured, replaying every wrong move. Matthew, my husband, never stopped blaming me for what I did. At night, was worse. In my nightmares, Dani would follow me, leaving damp prints on my clothes. Carpets would turn into rivers, plastic starfish shooting down my watery floor. And every moment, she would ask for more red Skittles. Please, oh please.”

An animalistic sound escapes from my mouth. I hate Lulu for her mistake, even if it wasn’t an intentional act.

“Until I designed the dream replacement procedure, every sleeping moment was a testament to my poor choices,” she says.

I allow her to show me the machinery. It is very quiet, except for one lone nurse checking the patient’s vitals.

“Each one is in a medical coma for a week.”

I gasp.

“To stabilize, silly. I have successfully treated ten patients already. Twelve if you count Greg and me.” Most of my questions she effectively dodges, such as costs for the treatment, funders, bad side effects. “You worry too much.” Lulu walks back to her desk and hands me a present with a red bow. I tear through the wrapping and see there is an old-fashioned key.

“It opens nothing, of course.” She grabs it from my hands. “Congratulations are in in order,” she says, nabbing a bottle of champagne from the staff kitchen.

After three glasses, she tells me I am perfect, I can be fixed. Bubbles fly out of my nose. No one has ever used the word perfect in describing me. Notations are made of my weight and height. No known allergies and low blood pressure have already been considered—the hazards of sharing during the time we were just friends.

“Is Dr. Clinton involved in this too?” I ask.

“Of course not,” she says.

What might scare another person, being in a chemical sleep, delights me; I will be floating in a liminal state, slowly being introduced to new dreams and granted freedom from my terrors.

“What did you decide?” Lulu asks.

“If I can really be helped, then yes!”

 Lulu hugs me. “Then I’ll see you on the other side.” She is proud of me.

The nurse measures the circumference of my head and places spiky metal disks on my crown. I think of the metal instrument that poked me when I had the scalp assessment in the spa. I try and say “No, I changed my mind—”

The nurse pricks my vein with a needle, and a slow warm burn invades my body. “Have a safe journey,” Lulu says.

How quick is the descent of madness? Is it a steady decline, like taking a spiral staircase down in the middle of the night, a precarious heel-toe balance while you cling to the railing? Or is it faster? Maybe it happens at the pace of a misstep, like tripping over a log while hiking, the unreal moment before you land and hear the crunch of bone, your femur head exposed.

In this space, Paula doesn’t exist anymore. Twilight filters through the plate glass windows, encircling everything in a cinematic glow. A little girl, wet from a bath and wrapped in an oversized pink towel, follows me. “Mama,” she says. She loops her arms around my knees.

I bend down to her small size and tell her, “We don’t belong together; you’ve made a mistake.” She beats her fists on the floor and cries. I try walking away, placing my hand on the metal doorknob. An electric current rips through my head. Is this a sick joke? Memories are hazy— perhaps I drank too much champagne? But why was I drinking champagne? I can’t afford champagne on what they pay me! The little girl screams again—she asks for Skittles. Only red. Something is very wrong. “I don’t like kids,” I say, hoping that she will leave me alone. She is nothing to me.

“Bad mommy,” she says.

Weak, I sit on the dusty rose couch. Wasn’t I on vacation? A retreat? I walk into the kitchen, looking for a coffee maker; maybe caffeine will clear out the brain fogginess. The child runs after me, asking if we can read a book together, the one about the three dinosaurs that want to learn to ski. This confirms it, people should not be so lazy with the adage It takes a village to raise a kid. It does not: just the mother. And I am not her mother.

Lounging on the couch, my tongue feels too big for my mouth. Dried out. There is no water left in my glass and the kitchen taps are broken.

The little girl has changed into a blue dress with ribbons. She sits down next to me, opens her little palm and offers me those red Skittles she was begging for when we first met. “What the hell,” I say, chewing through candies, tasting only ashes.

“You said a bad word,” she says, scrunching her face up in anger.

“I’ll read to you,” I say. The book magically appears in my lap.

“Welcome back,” I hear, watching the fluorescent lights overhead. My head feels fuzzy. I don’t trust that I can safely get up from the bed without tripping over my feet. I am in the clinic. I am alone. The bars are pulled up around my bed—I wonder if it is for my own protection or theirs.

“Hello!” I call out. “I’m ready to leave.” Lulu floats over to the bed in an oversize orange dress, her hair slicked back and held in place with a pair of chopsticks,

“Not so fast, girl,” she says, pushing down my shoulders, letting me know she can use more force if she wishes.

Her face seems altered in a way that I don’t recognize. It’s her lack of makeup—it makes sense now that she is older. Her face is pale because she’s not wearing blush.

“What the hell?” I say. “I thought you were replacing my nightmare with something pleasant. But I seem to have the ghost of your daughter.”

She looks at me as if I am stupid, not understanding the point of the exercise.

“I pegged you as being more maternal, my friend, but you’re awful at this. When a kid cries or says mama that’s your cue. You act the freaking part.”

I try to lift myself off the hospital bed, but my left hand is surrounded by metal. With horror, I understand that I am handcuffed to the bed. What could I have done wrong to be treated like a criminal? I think back to my keys, wishing for the skeleton key I recently acquired.

I look at the picture across from the bed and want to scream. It is a picture of a kitten curled around its mother. The caption says Always Dream Big.

As if she can read my thoughts, she tells me that I need to be prepared for lots of training now that I have a daughter.

“I do not,” I say, trying to shake my hands free.

“But you do. You will submit. Your life can be pleasant, even happy, if you do what you are told.”

“Why me?” I ask.

“Because I am too close to the situation. You aren’t related; it will be easier for you to bear.”

I scream at her, and she leans over and says, “Be a good girl now.” I realize that I am dealing with someone with the same psychological profile as Paula.

The nurse comes over and pulls another long needle off the tray. Wait, I try to say, but I can feel the chemical burn taking me down into a dream…down a rabbit hole I go.

***

The oven dings, letting me know that the chocolate ganache cake is ready. It is her eighteenth birthday today.

“Buttercream?” asks Dani.

“Absolutely,” I say.

For the past fifteen years, I have raised Lulu’s daughter in my dreams. At first, I refused; after all, she wasn’t mine. She wasn’t real. I can tell you, the funders of the lab, that what Lulu did is extraordinary. When I wasn’t asleep and forced to raise her virtual dead child, then the waking hours were mine. True, I never left the laboratory, but she supplied me with enough Vitamin D pills, heat lamps, pizza every Friday, that eventually I didn’t notice what was taken. The sunshine. Freedom. Jumping into the ocean, even if it was cold.

“Are you OK, Mom?” she asks me.

I nod my head in return, focusing on how beautiful she is, how her hair curves in waves around her thin shoulders despite being a hologram blend.

“You look sad,” she tells me, offering me a bite of the cake.

Sugar crystals melt on my tongue, but in this world, all the food tastes like ashes. I can’t tell her that after today I will never see her again. If I could stay suspended in this liminal space between dreaming and waking, I would be thrilled. Instead, the dream lab has been suspended until further notice because of a few ethical violations. The forced stop date of the medical experiment coincides with Dani’s birthday.

Each time I awaken, materializing back into real life, I am required to write copious notes about Dani’s development and estimate her weight and height. Lulu never had the courage to look through the cameras attached to my skull, preferring to just listen in with the microphone. Her loss. I am told that there will be a sizable amount of money left for me, so that I don’t have to worry about gainful employment. My hands reach over and clasp Dani’s hands, memorizing each lifeline, breathing in her honeysuckle scent.

“Countdown to three, two, one,” crackles in my ear.

“Awaken,” I hear as I let go, my hands drifting away from Dani’s. Her fingers are like puffs of air in my own, disassembling until I feel nothing.

My eyes resist opening. My lips curl into a fierce snarl, refusing to adapt to my new normal of never seeing her again. My daughter. Lights flash in my eyes, testing the dilatory function of my pupils.

All at once, the bed lowers and the bars on each side come down. Lulu stands there, frowning as I make no motion to get up.

 I have returned but am already gone, tripping in the recesses of my mind with Dani as we talk about existentialism. She asks me if I believe that in such a bleak existence, anything really matters.

“We matter,” I say, acknowledging the glitch in the system: Lulu and the team told me I would have no memories of my medicalized time; it would be erased. I smile. They were wrong.

BIO

Noelle Shoemate has taken writing classes at NYU, Gotham, Catapult and the New School. She holds a master’s degree in clinical counseling; her therapeutic background informs her writing. Her work is published in Bellingham Review, The Courtship of Winds, ellipsis… literature and art, Five on the Fifth, Night Picnic, Packingtown Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, The Thieving Magpie, and Umbrella Factory.