Bleeding Fiction

Last night I had a dream about Jenna. In my dream, she was still alive. "It was all a misunderstanding," she told me, "just a mix up. I've been here all this time." Here could've meant either SoHo, where we were standing in my dream when she said this, or in dreams, where we both half-knew we were. I wasn't sure which. Jenna was a little sadder than when I knew her, but being alive when people think your dead can have that effect on you. We decided to drive to Hoboken, because taking the train was a waste of time, and once there to see what we could make of ourselves. She was an editor for the largest publisher of speculative fiction in the English speaking world; I was an international traveller cum graduate student. We fought crime.

I woke up from my dream already tired, and I've felt... haunted all day long. There are many, many people who knew Jenna better, longer and closer than I did. My claim to her friendship is minimal at best. This is to say that if there were such things as ghosts and Jenna was unfortunate enough to be one, she would have as wide a selection of people to haunt as a ghost could wish for and I shouldn't make the top fifty on the list. But dreams rarely do what you expect and I don't see why ghosts would, either.

Whatever way you look at it I feel weighed down. I want to drift. I want someone to make me tea. I want to lay my head on someone's lap, to get a back rub, to go to sleep pressed up against a living, breathing human being. I want this day to be over.