Dreams Qf Nightmares

Chapter 3 ~ Curiouser and Curiouser

Jack opened his eyes. Apprehensively. He hoped he'd only imagined the reflection in the mirror smiling back at him. But that familiar face was still there, although the smile was now wearing a quizzical look of concern.

"You okay, Jack?" the reflection asked.

"Yeah, uh, sure, well, uh, no, not really," Jack sputtered. "Gotta be hallucinatin' or somethin'. Or maybe I got, like, a concussion. Or...."

"Or how about none of the above," the reflection interrupted. "You see, Jack, you were dreaming. Correction, you are dreaming."

Jack squinted to get a better look at his unlikely likeness. "Wait a minute, what'd you just say? Dreamin'? How can I be dreamin'? I'm right here, right now, wide awake, talkin' to you. I mean, I was, like, talkin' to myself and, like...."

"Actually, Jack, you were talking to yourself. And your other self. That would be me."

"What's that supposed to...?"

"It means I'm a second you. We're  doubles, sort of twins, a pair of Jacks, two peas in a...."

"Like that's even...."

"Oh, it's possible alright."

"Oh, yeah? So how come...?"

"Because, believe it or not, Jack,  you and I exist only in each other's dreams. And right now, for the first time ever, anywhere, you're dreaming of me at precisely the same time I'm dreaming of you. That's how come."

"No way."

"Yeah, way. Our dreams have collided like a couple of those mysterious things that go bump in the night. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Pretty crazy, you mean." Maybe I'm the one who's crazy, Jack wondered. Or maybe I'm really dreamin' like he said. 

Jack's dreams were often vivid and almost always in color. But he rarely recalled them entirely. They were mostly restless snippets of things he'd worried about during the day. Like bombing on another quiz. Or oversleeping and chasing futilely after his school bus all over town. But nothing like some creepy reflection in a mirror that was claiming to be some other kind of him.

"It makes sense, Jack, if you don't think about it too hard. That just complicates things. Listen, you and I exist only because of something amazing called thought transference. It's really a lot more common than you might think."

Jack leaned closer to the mirror, the tip of his freckled nose all but touching the glass, and glared at his reflection. "It's nuckin' futs is what I think."

Jack's reflection leaned closer, too, and snickered. "I can see you're not entirely convinced."

"Convinced! I have no freaking idea what you're freaking talkin' about!" And why am I standing here in this stinkin' crapper, with a humongous headache, listening to some crazy spook in a mirror who thinks it's some sorta dream wiz?

The reflection ignored Jack's unspoken words. "I didn't wanna get all kinds of technical on you, bro, but here goes. Thought transference is a phenomenon of quantum mechanics. You might've learned something about it in Mr. Drewson's class the other day if you were paying any......"

"I was home that day...sick."

"Yeah, right. Well, while you were playing hooky, Mr. Drewson told us reality isn't exactly real. Get this. He said Einstein called it an illusion. That's because everything you always thought was real is only your perception of reality. And since everyone more or less sees things differently, how you view 'reality is just a figment of your own imagination."