My bed is black, my room is black, the space behind my eyelids is black, but there are shades of light floating, spinning, changing, barely visible in the black. Heavy eyelids are not the cause as much as another state of mind. I feel my mentality shift from processing alertness to the calmness of flowing waves, and in this state, I lose sense of my heavy body and begin to drift out to sea to a new world not quite bound to the one I’m tethered to in wakefulness. I’m traveling on the black sea of my mind, the faint buzzing of electricity crashing about me, moving me deeper into tranquil numbness, silence, sleep.

I travel on the waves with the content knowledge of past experience. I know where I’m going, but I don’t know what I’ll find there. Soon, I arrive on the shores of a new reality. I know when I arrive, I won’t be fully aware I’m dreaming. That it will be just like wakefulness, but with a different set of rules that make complete sense in context. I hear the tick of the clock on my wall distort until each tick is a piercing, metallic ring, like the pounding of steel beams against each other. The black quickly deteriorates from the middle, another scene bleeding through.

It’s a bookstore. I’ve just entered, and I walk past the popular fiction display at the front, the smell of coffee wafting from the shop on my left. I love bookstores. They’re almost too much - a place stacked with shelves and shelves of thousands upon thousands of books with pages upon pages of alternate realities, differing perspectives of life, love, sorrow, and happiness. It’s a place of infinite possibilities. I remember days of youth spent in libraries and bookstores, reading books without buying them, the new book smell, fast food, essays and quietly waving goodbye, the second-to-last person to leave.

I take a step toward the fiction section but for some reason am compelled to look to my left. There, I see a girl I know but am afraid to recognize. I can see emotions battling on her face, eyebrows knitting as she starts to smile, then her face softening with worried, hopeful eyes. She lifts a hand. “Hi.”

This inevitable meeting is something I’ve consistently prevented myself from thinking of, and now, confronted with it, I don’t know what to do. She might disappear if I turn away, so I do that. Everything behind me fades into a blur of grey as I walk around the display Now, before me is a man in a trenchcoat with a hat pulled low over his face. He seems to be smoking, but I can’t smell anything but the delicious new book smell blending with the coffee. The man reaches into his coat and pulls out a container. “Hey, man, you want some hummus?”

“Actually, I do.” I take the container from him, and he gives me a spoon.

“This is going to be the best damn hummus you’ve ever tasted.”

I pry the lid open and eat a spoonful, realizing that this is, in fact, the best hummus I’ve ever tasted. I remark, “You’re right, this is the best hummus I’ve ever tasted.”

“Told you,” he said. “That’ll be just ten dollars.”

I nearly choked on my second scoop. “What? I’m not paying ten dollars for -”

“Look, you took the hummus. It’s ten dollars.”

“I don’t want it.”

I try to give him back the container, but he refuses to take it. “Hey, I offer you some hummus, and you take it, and then you don’t want to pay me. What kind of a person are you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have ten dollars.” I wag the container in my hand, but when he doesn’t take it, I drop it, turn around, and walk away.

The girl is gone. I escape into rows of bookshelves, keeping my head bent, scanning the spines. What I’m looking for, I don’t know, but I’ll recognize it when I find it. I search thoroughly, scanning each individual title, author. I search row by row, up, down, and across, but I still can’t find it. I move to the next row and stop, startled by who’s standing there.

My heart plummets and races at the same time. It’s my dad. He’s spent eight years avoiding me, and I’ve spent eight avoiding him, and here he is, casually browsing through a bookstore as if he has a life outside of my supposed construction of him. He sees me, and his face lights up. He says my name, and I frown in disgust. He takes a step forward, and I take a step back. I don’t want to deal with this right now, so I turn my back and walk away, hiding a frenetic impulse to run with a collected demeanor.

I turn between the bookcases until I feel I’ve lost him. I slow, along with the thumping in my chest, and turn one more time. There she is again. Ana. I nearly jump when I see her. This time, the hope in her face has been eclipsed with sadness. She utters a dejected, “Hey.”

“Hey.” I stand fair distance from her, an asinine precaution considering that she can hurt me from any distance. The mature thing to do would be to stay and talk things out, but a little, red alarm is screaming in the back of my mind.

“So,” she starts, “how are you doing?”

Ana stands immediately before me, and there are books on either side, but beyond that is a blur of grey. She’s looking at me, awaiting my reply, and I can feel the tension of an unstable reality pulling me at the seams. I need to escape somehow. I need to change the course. Time seems to stand still, and I have the odd sense of the gears in another part of my head turning. I’m thinking, but I can’t access what I’m thinking about. And that’s when I realize that this is a dream.

I turn away from Ana and walk deeper into the store. I don’t want run from her just to bump into my dad again. At the same time, I’m pushing to find a way out. I’m straining to get back to that state of blackness, back to the sea through which I can bubble to wakefulness. But, it’s no use - I’m stuck here. In the middle of the store is the man in the trenchcoat standing behind a small stand that holds canisters of coffee.

Coffee! That’s what I need! Coffee can wake me up! I approach the stand and ask, “Can I have some coffee?”

“Yeah,” the man says from below the brim of his hat, “for twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars! You know there’s a cheaper coffee shop right over there, right!”

“But that coffee won’t keep you awake. This one will.”

“Fine.” I pull a twenty from my pocket and lay it on the table. What flavors do you have?”

“Got regular, decaf, and hot water.”

I take the regular and sip it vigorously as I make my way back toward the door, bracing against the searing heat that burns my mouth and raises the bumps on my tongue. The shop grows fuzzy in my peripheral as I approach the exit. Black spots swim in my vision, and, though I’m standing, I feel as though I’m not upright. My eyelids are heavy as I feel myself drifting from the dream and repopulating my body. Finally, I push on the door…

And it’s locked. I snap back to the bookstore with a sense of dread. The door shifts and buckles against my futile pushes. Dread crashes over me, an uneasy swimming feeling. I’m trapped. I turn from the door and scan the building. Leaking coffee slides down my fingers, drips from the cup, and disappears into the stylish, spotted carpet.

I don’t see my dad, Ana, or the trenchcoat guy, so I pick a armchair in the corner and pretend to read a titleless book from the shelf. I hold it in front of my face so I can peer over it, but then I hear a voice to my left. Of course, it’s Ana. I gulp, my throat suddenly dry.

“Oh, hi,” I say, “what a coincidence running into you here.” I look at the book, realizing that no one could have gotten three-fourths of the way through in such a short amount of time. Nervously, I stand, placing the book upside-down on the chair’s arm. I grip the coffee, using it as a barrier between myself and her.

“Hey,” she says. She’s nervous too. She’s wringing her hands and biting her lip. Despite the cold front I put on, something inside of me goes soft. I want to embrace her, to be close to her again. To tell her everything’s okay. To forgive her.

She continues. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but…” she looks down at her feet. I’m not ready for this. I know what she’s about to say, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget or to let go of the acidic pain I’ve been clutching. “...I’m really really sorry for what happened. How I treated you… it wasn’t right, and I’m so sorry.”

The tears welling up in her eyes trigger my own, and I don’t try to wipe them back as they fall. I try to say something, but the words won’t come. I desperately need to get out of here. I take swig of coffee.

Suddenly, a shadow overtakes Ana. It’s my dad, I recognize more through implication than through form. He’s eschewed his human form for that of a shadow that towers tall and spreads wide and bleeds in disappearing currents. Fear strikes to the core of my being, and I turn to run, but the shadow expands, enveloping Ana and everything around me until I’m floating in a completely black space. Before me, I see remnants of my dad’s distorted face hanging in the air, his eyes, nose, and mouth disassociated from any physical body, his features one with the darkness.

“Son,” he says, his voice muted by surrounding black, “We should make some time to talk.”

I cross my arms, and I know if I turn my back or close my eyes, his face will still be right there in front of me. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I say.

“Son, you have to understand. I am a sinner. Will you please hear me out?”

Anger and pain rushes to the forefront, and I hate that it manifests as hot, seething tears. “Why should I?” My sobbing voice can’t convey the hatred and bitterness I feel, though I try to squeeze it into every word.

“Because I’m your father,” he pleads.

“No,” I shout, the anger bursting forth. “You were my father before you left, but you threw that all away. I’ll never forgive you!”

With that, my dad’s face dissolves, and the black seems to swirl to a central point, releasing me into the bookstore. The light blares into my squinting eyes, and I hear a horrible sound - a collective wail, sorrowful, heartfelt weeping from an entire crowd. What’s going on? My eyes adjust, and I see the man in the trenchcoat looking down on me from under his hat, shaking his head. Behind him, is the weeping crowd - my family and friends - my mother, brothers and sisters, my best friend, my grandparents, Ana, and my dad - all crying uncontrollably, all covering their faces. My mother holds my grandma as she sobs, staring at me with the black make-up smearing down her face. My best friend covers his mouth and shakes his head at me. Ana hugs herself and rocks back and forth, unable to meet my gaze, and my dad sits cradling his face, his tears soaking his shirt.

The weeping is horrible and overwhelming. It rattles me to the core until I’m weeping too, crumbling to my knees, and I lose grip of the coffee and shut my eyes as the tears stream and flow like water from a creek flowing naturally between rocks at night, traveling in aimlessly in a direct route going further and further and deeper and deeper and closer and closer until I open my eyes in my dark room with a heavy heart and a gasp.

I roll onto my side and find my phone, prompting its cold light that cuts the night. New message from Ana: “Hey”.