Alessandra? The teacher asked.
Alessandra's eyes were closing. She couldn't focus.
What?
Alessandra, do you need to see the nurse?
Alessandra hit her head on the desk with a bang, and the last thing she heard was frantic movement.
Alessandra?
Alessandra?
Alessandra?

~•~•~

"Huh? Where am I?" Alessandra cried upon arrival to the Dreamscape. We were standing in a canyon of pink clouds, a pink sun shining somewhere behind it, making it very bright.

"Welcome back!" I said. I went to embrace her but she pushed me away.

"What the...?" Alessandra looked confused. I looked at her uncertainly. I thought she'd be happy to see me.

"Did you have something to do with me like dying?" Alessandra said accusatorially.

"No, you're not dead, you're just in a self induced coma! Now you can stay here forever! With me!" I smiled.

"I'm sorry, what was that?"
"I said you can stay here--"

A slap came across my face, hot and fast. My skin turned red.

"What the heck is wrong with you?!" Alessandra said.

"Don't do that again," I said. This was not going as planned.

Alessandra slapped me again nonetheless, harder. "I want to wake up, now."

"Alessandra, stop," I said. I had never felt like the way I was feeling now. It felt like a fire burning in every part of me, violent and destructive.

A knife was pointing at my neck. A long, kitchen knife Alessandra must've conjured up just now.

A longer, sharper knife was pointing at her own throat, and to my surprise was attached to my own hand.

"Alessandra, I love you," I said.

"The thing is, you think you do. But you don't. You are me, and I control you because I am you," she replied, thrusting the knife further into my neck so that it was closer to piercing me.

Then something changed.
"No. No, I am not you. I am not you because I am separate from you and I am my own person."

"You are a dream Kenny! A dream!"

"No."

My knife fell from my hand without me touching it. I gasped.

"See? I can control you. You are just a figment of my imagination, a fantasy made up to make myself happy because Kenny Walker, the real Kenny Walker, only thinks of me as a friend."

Scene change: a dark, bricked up room with a single cage light dangling from the ceiling. A recurring nightmare for Alessandra, being trapped in this room and tortured.

If we are going to play dirty...

"See, the thing is, I control the playing field. I know this place better, way better than you. So obey, or face the consequences."

I pressed her against the wall, my elbow keeping her pinned in case the knife pointed to her chest doesn't.

"Go ahead. Kill me, I'll just wake up!" Alessandra said. She tried to shove me off of her, but it didn't work.

"No, you won't wake up. Because I am sentient and apart from you, you will die and I will enter a new body." I didn't know if this was true, usually when dream errors manifested sentiency they stayed in the same body. But Alessandra knew nothing about this.

"Kenny, I just want you to know that I hate you."

"I'd never do anything to hurt you, I just want you to stay with me."

Except I was screaming it, and she was screaming at me and I had a knife in my hand.

And then there was blood all over my hands and my arms and Alessandra, and Alessandra lay on the ground. Dead. A red flower blooming on her shirt, staining,

"Alessandra?" I said. My hands were shaking.

I heard shrieking, so loud it made the room vibrate.

The Extras.

The room exploded, and I was surrounded by a tsunami of people of abnormal sizes and no set faces.

"Dream Error! Dream Error!" They shouted and then pulled me under.

and then I woke up.