My eyes widened, and I started breathing heavily, fear creeping into me. I was in the middle of the city, my arm broken and soaked in blood.
I tried to calm myself down, but how could I? It wasn't the first time in my life my arm had broken, but this is not a broken arm.
"I'm dreaming, I'm dreaming," I muttered, squeezing my eyes shut tight.
I tried to imagine my arm healing, forcing the image into my mind.
After a few seconds, I opened my eyes. Slowly, I turned my head to the right.
"No, no, nooo..."
Panic strangled me. My arm wasn't healed, it was still shattered and grotesque.
When I lifted my head a little and stared at my arm, I understood exactly why it was bleeding so badly.
My arm had snapped right between the wrist and the elbow.
One of the broken bones had pierced through the skin, tearing it apart, and had shredded some veins on its way out.
The bone itself hadn't caused a huge gash, but if you looked closely, you could see parts of the inner tissue. Bloody and raw, poking through.
The bleeding had slowed, but it was still dripping steadily, staining the ground below.
And I'm not even talking about the other scrapes and the flaps of skin that had been ripped open and were now dangling pathetically from my arm.
I had to wake up. Maybe I had actually fallen in real life, and the pain in my arm was leaking into this dream.
Yeah, why not? It's possible. I had read an article about this once.
How the brain reacts to external sounds or events while sleeping, weaving them into our dreams. If someone calls your name while you're asleep, the brain, in a fraction of a second, creates an entire dream scenario to explain that sound, stuffing it into the end of whatever dream you're having.
In real time, it's over in less than a second but for the dreamer, it can feel like hours, days, even months.
There's even a name for this: Retroactive Dream Generation.
But I don't need a theory, I needed to wake the fuck up.
Honestly, I had no idea how I hadn't already woken up from this kind of pain, but I figured I had done enough of dreaming.
Thinking that, I struggled to lift my left hand and brought my thumb close to my mouth.
I clamped my teeth down onto it with all my strength.
"Agh!"
I yanked my thumb out instantly. It hurt.
But how?
How the hell could I not wake up? That was a basic rule, wasn't it? If you hurt yourself in a dream, you're supposed to wake up.
But it didn't work.
I didn't wake up.
Why?
Maybe... maybe I had to want to wake up too? In dreams, a lot of things depend on your willpower.
I had two options now. Either I would choose to heal my arm, or I would wake up.
If I was injured in real life, waking up was the smarter move. There was no point fixing a fantasy arm while my real one was injured.
The pain was already unbearable, gnawing at my nerves like acid.
I was holding back screams with pure desperation. My teeth and lips were clenched so tight together, I thought they might crack.
I lay on the ground, staring up at the sky, squeezing my eyes shut again.
"Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up..." I kept whispering to myself, over and over.
But nothing happened.
It felt like I was just lying there, eyes closed, mumbling like a lunatic.
Then, I felt it again.
The wind.
Cold and sharp, cutting across my skin.
I couldn't tell where it was blowing from, but I could feel the temperature drop instantly.
And then…
That sound again.
Paper.
The rustle of paper.
I turned my face toward the sound and a sheet of paper slapped across my face.
"For fuck's sake, how much more of this bullshit am I supposed to take?" I thought bitterly, struggling to raise my left hand and peel the paper off my face.
As I tossed it aside, I caught a glimpse of what was written on it. Blood-red ink scrawled messily across the page:
"Are you sure this is a dream?"