"The dream is the liberation of the spirit from the pressure of external nature, a detachment of the soul from the fetters of matter."

-Sigmund Freud

***

"Come back to me, Pacem."

I woke up.

At first, I didn't recognise anything. My thoughts had muddled themselves up into a puzzle that I couldn't decipher.

Lurking above me was a doctor in a white coat, with a name badge that I couldn't make out. I appeared to be lying on what looked like a hospital bed. It was a normal hospital bed. Not those fancy things that Alluna had shoved me in when I'd first woken up.

That's when I knew something was wrong.

I glanced around, trying to make sense of what was going on and then I saw
a good old fashioned television attached to the wall. I rubbed my eyes thinking that I might be seeing things.

"W-where am I?" My words slurred and even I could tell that I'd been pumped with drugs.

"My name is Doctor Clark." The man in the doctor's suit had a disconcerting frown on his face. "Do you remember anything? You're name?"

I had to think for a second.

"Pacem Creed."

"Do you remember the... accident?"

I composed my thoughts and my eyes widened. "Alluna she... did something to me."

He looked like he wanted to say something about my statement, but instead he moved on.

"You're in a rehabilitation centre, Pacem. You've been in a coma for quite some time now."

"Coma?" I bit my lip. "For how long?"

"Almost six months now."

"Where's Jake? Why isn't he here?" I asked frantically. "Do you work for Alluna?"

I heard a beeping on a machine next to me but I ignored it.

"Have you been keeping me here?"

"Pacem, you need to calm down."

Although his words exhibited concern, his face didn't really seem to care. In fact, he was flipping off my questions so easily. As if they didn't matter.

"Don't tell me to calm down!" I yelled. "You're taking me prisoner! Where is Alluna? I want to talk to her."

"Pacem..." He paused. "Nobody is going to hurt you. You're in a rehabilitation centre to help you recover. You were hit by a car."

I blinked twice. "Nice try but I wasn't born yesterday. This is one of Alluna's games, isn't it? Well, guess what? I'm not falling for it."

"Pacem, please calm down. Your parents will be here in a couple of minutes and-."

"Parents..." I glanced back at the television. "When am I?"

"When?" The doctor didn't seem to understand.

"Yes, when. What year is it?"

Because when may not always be what you think.

"2026."

My eyes widened. "You're lying."

The beeping started up again.

"Miss Creed, you need to calm down. We can discuss this later."

"Stop saying that!" Beep. "Your lying!"

"I understand that the accident has been very traumatic Miss Creed, but you need to calm down for the sake of your health."

My eyes widened. He was so convincing that I could almost believe him.

"Who hit me?"

The doctor folded his arms and finally looked me in the eye.

"A young boy who worked at the coffee shop near your school. He suffered some damage but nothing major. 'Jake' something-or-other."

Beep.

I went to that coffee shop every morning before school. If he worked there I would have seen him before.

Had it all just been a dream?

"Maxwell?"

"Hmmm?" The doctor had picked up his clipboard at the bottom of my bed and was flipping through things. Probably to look more professional than he actually was. 

"Jake Maxwell. Was his surname Maxwell?" I raised my voice. Couldn't he understand the urgency of the situation? He was acting so cool and collected and it just made me want to punch him in the face.

"Yes that's right. You know him?"

"Shut up!" I shouted. "I wasn't in a car accident."

A tear escaped onto my cheek and a memory of a car skidding around jumped into my mind.

Trick.

It had to be a trick.

I couldn't lose the people that I love again. I couldn't.

The beeping seemed to get louder. The doctor, skittishly, walked over to his desk and pulled out a needle. Before I could even attempt to get out of the bed, he injected something into my drip. Soon after, I fell into a deep sleep.

Again.

That seemed to be happening a lot lately.

I woke up to six eyes hovering over me anxiously.

At first the figures themselves were blurring and I rubbed my eyes a little because I thought I might be seeing ghosts. My family were standing in front of me. The same family that I had been mourning for almost a year now. My father, my mother, and my brother Caleb.

They were just as I remembered them. And each one had  their own perplexed look on their face.

I never, ever, thought I'd see them again.

This life seemed like nothing but a distant memory to me and my family's faces had begun to fade into the back of my mind, like a dream I couldn't reach. Yet here they were right in front of me. This was the one thing that I'd been wishing for since I'd lost them.

So why did I feel so shitty?

My mom cried, kissing me on the forehead and my dad gave me the same proud look like he always did. My brother rolled his eyes mocking me in his own loving way.

Just liked I had always dreamed of.

But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was leaving people behind.

My people.

"The boy who hit me..." I began, when my parents had finally calmed down. "Jake Maxwell."

"We don't need to talk about him." My dad frowned in disgust.

My mom gave him a warning look. "What about him, dear?"

"I knew him," I stated.

"He didn't say anything about that. He was here with his girlfriend just about everyday after he recovered. He bought you those flowers." My mom pointed to a bouquet of sunflowers on the windowsill.

"Girlfriend?" I tried to hide my obvious disgust.

"Yes, Veera. She's not the nicest person around, but she did her part."

That accounted for just about everyone. My mom soon told me that Veera worked at the coffee shop with Jake. They wore name badges. I must have subconsciously plucked them out of my memory based on my many visits to Coffee Central.

Two weeks later, I even got to see him again.

It was very formal and it was so weird to feel as if you know someone so well and merely be acquaintances.

He came into the hospital with a another bouquet of flowers and something in his hand.

I pretended to  sleep when I heard him walk into the room. I couldn't bring myself to say anything. I was too afraid to discover that he was a completely different person to the man I knew.

This could be my last chance to ever speak to him.

I forced myself to roll over and look at him.

"Hi," He said feebly. He was probably hoping that I wouldn't wake up. His 'every day' visits had ended when he'd found out that I'd regained consciousness.

I waited for him but he never came.

Why would anyone want to face the person they nearly killed? But my memory of him was quite the opposite.

"I'm-"

"Jake," I nodded.

"I guess you heard about me, huh?"

I shot him a sad glance, almost afraid to look him in his normal, chocolate-brown eyes.

It didn't matter anyway.

He didn't know me. I was stupid enough to hope that he'd look at me and remember me like I remembered him.

"I um... bought you these."

He put he Daisy's on the window next to the sunflowers that were starting to die.

"What's in your hand?" I asked.

"Oh." He looked down at it. "I found it in the gift shop."

He handed me a stuffed lion on a key ring. It was similar to the one my mom had given me as a child.

I stared at it and tried to restrain the tears suddenly pushing themselves to the surface.

"Why a lion?" I asked.

He stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I overheard your mom talking to you one day. You know, when you were out. She said "a lion for a lion" and I guess it kind of stuck with me. Strength for strength."

"Thank you." A tear ran it's way down my face and I blushed at my moment of weakness.

He nodded. and suddenly the room was filled with another voice.

"Jake." Veera entered, wearing her usual versatile black combo. "We have to go if we're going to make it to-"

She stopped and looked at me wide-eyed.

"Oh, hello... You must be Pacem."

"Yeah."

"I'm Veera. It's nice to meet you." I'd never seen Veera quite so... uncomfortable. "We're very sorry about the accident."

"It's fine, I'll recover," I confirmed.

"Well it was nice meeting you." She signalled to Jake with her usual dose of bitchy. "We really have to go."

Jake rushed towards the door and I'm sure he was disappointed when I stopped  him.

"Jake," I called.

He froze by the door, in the midst of his escape.

"Goodbye."

"Um... Bye Pacem."

And that was the last I saw of Jake Maxwell.

The hardest part was looking in the mirror. It had taken me a long time to come to terms with the red glow that tainted my eyes, but seeing it's absence now made me feel rather... empty.

Alluna was one of my nurses, I met her later. She was a lot kinder than she'd been in my dreams. But I couldn't help but hate her.

Dante, Jeremiah, Danielle, everyone seemed to be emerging with an explanation as to how I'd know them.

Everyone except Malvin.

I searched for him for weeks, on the internet, in the newspaper, I'd even checked in the phone book.

There's was no record of my Malvin Shaw anywhere in the world.

That night, I woke up with a jolt to the sound of breaking glass. I immediately rolled over to find the source of the sound and Jake's flowers were lying crushed to pieces on the floor.

I couldn't shake the feeling that somebody was watching me. A presence that I couldn't explain.

So I took off the drip connected to my arm and followed the sensation into the corridor.

Lying in the middle of the hallway was my lion. Not Shir, but a tiny replica of her that Jake had given me. I bent down to pick it up and realized that it now had a small incision on it's stomach.

There was something inside.

I reached in the stuffing and pulled out a small piece of paper. The words slowly revealed themselves as I unraveled the paper.

Remember Pacem, when isn't always what you believe it to be.

I sucked in a breath and exhaled with one single word,

Malvin.

Thank you so much for reading!
I hope everyone enjoyed the ending!