I sat in my office at 2:57, glancing at the clock and taking a long drink of my coffee as I waited for Mika to come. I don't know why I was so nervous. There had to be some kind of mistake. There was no way Mika could be writing my dreams. Right on time, Mika knocked on the glass door of my office and smiled at me, waving. I smiled faintly back at him and motioned him in. He stepped in. "Do you have more for me?" I asked right away. He smiled, "Glad to see you like what I have so far." I nodded quickly, "Oh, um, yea. Very good. You've written more?"
"Yup. But not much."
"That's alright. Let me see it, please." I hated how anxious and nervous my voice sounded. And how confident Mika's sounded. This was all backwards. He pulled out his huge folder and opened it, finally emerging with two typed pages. Well, one full typed page and an extra paragraph. I held out my hand and he gave me the papers, probably wondering why it was that my hand was shaking slightly. I took in a deep breath and looked down at the papers.
I wake up almost immediately after I have fallen sleep but for some reason feel completely satisfied. “What was that noise?” the voice repeats, closer now. I sit up. The bed shoots back up to where it was before so that I am sitting on it normally. I look down at the confused man on the floor and recognize him to be someone I have met recently. Perhaps in the living room? “I dropped my ladder,” I yell down at him. He looks up at me. “Oh.”
“Could you pass it up to me so I can get down?” He shrugs, “I think you can jump.”
“Nuh-uh! It’s so high!”
“It only looks like it from up there. From down here, you look very close." I bite my lip, “Really?” He nods. “Alright. Will you catch me?”
“Sure.” I close my eyes, stand up, and jump. It seems like I am falling forever, but then I finally land in the man’s arms. “I’m Mika,” he says. “I’m not,” I reply. He nods, “Yea, I know.” I take his hand and say, “Did you know that in the backyard there is a jungle gym?” He wrinkles his nose. “I don’t like jungle gyms.” I look at him, taking a sip of the drink I have just pick up from the little table behind me. It tastes like water. I hand him the cup, “Is this water?” He takes a sip and nods, “Yea, that’s water.” I blink as we suddenly shrink until we are about the size, (and shape,) of four year olds. He looks at the cup in his hand, now seeming much larger than before. “You really don’t like jungle gyms?” I ask. He shrugs, “I don’t know.”
“Do you like swings?” He smiles and nods energetically. I smile too and say, “Ok, let’s go!” We hurry through the hallway and all the adults stare at us. “Where did the kids come from?” a man asks. I looked up at him and recognize him as the man who had asked me where we were. He must recognize me, too, because his eyebrows rise and his jaw falls open. Mika and I go into the backyard and it is very, very dark indeed. “Oh dear,” I say, “I’m afraid of the dark.” Mika squeezes my hand, “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’ll protect you.” I smile and we run over to the swings, pumping ourselves with our feet and keeping our hands connected as we swing higher and higher. Mika starts singing ‘Two is Better Than One’ by Taylor Swift and Boys Like Girls. I listen to him as we swing, and then I start singing too, at the part where Taylor Swift usually joins in.
We finish singing the song and suddenly I see headlights coming down the street, from outside the fence of the house. The car slows as it passes us, and then continues down a turn in the road. I look at Mika. "Do you know where we are?" He smiles widely at me, and I notice that he is missing two teeth. "Come on," he says excitedly, ignoring my question and letting go of my hand as he jumps off the swings. I follow quickly behind him and grab his hand again as he pulls me to the side of the yard and reaches up to open the fence. He reaches and reaches, but it is too high. "I can't reach," he says, "let me put you on my shoulders, and you can open it." I frown, not liking this plan much, but don't argue when he bends down. I climb onto his back and reach up, unlatching the fence. Mika puts me down and he quickly presses the fence open, once again taking my hand as we hurry out of the yard and into the street. He checks both ways and then rockets down the road after the fence. I let go of his hand so that we can run easier side by side. It is dark. Really dark. "Mika, it's dark, I'm scared," I pant as we turn onto another street, the headlights of the car flashing bright far ahead of us. I wonder how Mika had known that the car turned this way, but I don't ask him about it. "Don't worry," Mika says quickly, taking my hand again as we run farther and farther away from the house, the people, the jungle gym. "I think it's lighter up here," he motions towards where the car is headed. "How do you know?"
"I don't. That's why I said 'I think.'" I glance at him and the car finally pulls onto the side of the street, letting us catch up to it. As we do, the woman in the driver's seat rolls down her window. She has a large fur coat, a red hat, black gloves, and large, dark sunglasses. As her window disappears from our sight and she looks at us, the song, "The Violet Hour" by Sea Wolf plays on her radio and spills out onto the street.
I let out a deep breath and Mika rose an eyebrow as I set the paper down on my desk and turned in my chair so that I was facing the opposite wall, the one that wasn't glass. "Is something wrong?" Mika asked. I turned slightly in my chair, only enough so that I could see him. "Is it bad?"
I shook my head, looking down at the ground. "No. It's just...I recognize it." He laughed, "Huh. And here I thought the idea was completely original." I turned quickly now, facing him completely. "The idea. What's the idea? What's the plot? How does it end?" Mika laughed, clearly pleased by my eagerness. Clearly thinking I was hooked on the story. Which I suppose I was, in a way. "I'm afraid I can't quite answer any of those questions. I just...I don't know. It's like the story is writing itself for me. That's kind of one of the reasons I came here." He leaned forward in his chair now, looking excited, like a little boy wanting to tell me a secret, and I recognized him as the little boy in my dream. In that moment, the strangest chill went through me, and I felt myself freeze, motionless. "It was the weirdest thing," he said now, his tone hushed, as if he wanted what he was saying now to be heard my only me, "I had this dream, the night before I called you." Now he had my attention. "In the dream, I saw this hand, a gloved hand, the hand of a woman, and it reached out and picked up a book from a coffee table. As she brought it up to her face, I saw that she had sunglasses on, and her hair was hidden by a red hat." He motioned to the pages on my desk, "Sort of the like the woman in the car. Anyway, I couldn't tell at all who she was, because she was covered up, so I looked at the book." He sat back in his chair, as if pondering whether to tell me something or not, "Actually, I had the dream another time before that. But the first time, the woman brought up the book and it was just a blank, white cover. The second time, the night before I came here, the publisher of the book showed up on the bottom of the cover. It said, 'Danny's Publishing'." He looked at me, "That's why I came here." I nodded, slowly, watching him closely. "I had the dream again last night, actually," he continued, looking away again, "and this time, along with the publisher, the book cover also said, 'By Mika Debut'. But everything else was the same." He sighed, shaking his head, "It was so weird. I never have follow-up dreams." He looked at me again, and I nodded, "Yea," I said, "I know what you mean."
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