Liandra and the Average Joe: Average Joe Universe

Chapter 6: Crossed

It was a strange night for sure. Despite the excitement of it all, Liandra managed to drift to sleep easily. What was stranger than the night was this current feeling. In her dream, she was floating in Roocean's apartment, all alone. It was quiet, and when she looked out the window she couldn't see anything except black nothingness. She was amazed that she could look around, and even more amazed that she knew she now felt amazed. These feelings were strangely concrete. She wasn't used to that.

Time passed, and Roocean's apartment disappeared from around her. It was replaced by her bedroom in Westminster and the dark hallway outside of it. Awaiting her out there were the same pair of furious eyes from before, so she was more than happy to stay in her spot, observing. She wrote it all in her journal, only now it looked like one of Roocean's old tomes, like something magical.

The beast didn't cross into her room. It was interrupted by another pair of blue eyes—these smaller, paler, colder. A man's form filled in around the eyes—tall, muscular, and blond-haired. It was Robert, who she'd just met. He and the formless beast stared each other down and Liandra heard the man ask the beast a strange question.

"Father, why?"

The beast erupted in anger then. Its roaring voice was thunder. Liandra's whole dreamscape shook. She tried to make out what the beast was saying but found it impossible to do. Her room fell away, leaving only a darkly blank stage for the three of them. The beast appeared in full bullheaded form and towered over Robert by the height of a whole other man. Robert stood his ground and simply repeated himself.

"... why?"

The beast grabbed and lifted him with powerful arms to its eye level and sneered at him.

"Why her?" Robert asked firmly.

The beast squeezed Robert and as it crushed him Liandra felt something inside of her suddenly scream out. The beast took notice and dropped Robert into the void. Its furious gaze was now on her and she despaired when she saw it open its mouth. She could now hear it clearly; its voice held complete bass and authority.

"Killer and traitor!"

From its very breath came a stream of instant pain.

She woke up covered in sweat with her heart pounding fast in what felt like the same moment, only now she was really in her room in Gamla stan and felt all sorts of sensations that her dream lacked, like the cool air against her burning skin. She ripped off the blanket to let her body breathe and remembered what had just killed her.

"It breathed lightning," she said. "Damn, that thing's scary!"

She checked her clock radio and saw that it was only 3am, so she decided to exercise the night away rather than try to exorcise her dream demons.

******

Roocean looked baffled when he saw Liandra's page full of details about last night's dream. He almost lost it when he saw the three-page story chronicling what had happened, in sequential order. Liandra felt as if she'd skipped some steps in his recovery program, and with the way he was acting she felt as if she'd done something forbidden.

He finished reading her journal and asked her to recount the details of her dream again, this time orally and with as many details as she could remember. Even after hearing the same story told again he still looked flabbergasted.

"What is this?" he muttered to himself. "What is the meaning?"

He went back to his bookshelf and consulted a few of his old tomes, but he soon put them away, looking concerned and disappointed.

"I'm going to call Robert over."

"Should I go?" Liandra asked.

"No, I think we'll all need to talk."

Now she was confused.

******

Robert arrived about twenty minutes later and sat at the table near Liandra, at Roocean's behest. Roocean continued to stand and pace about rather frantically. The lingering silence was beginning to make Liandra nervous.

"You have both told me some very interesting things today ... things that defy everything I've seen, heard, and learned over many decades. This information is so fanciful that I'm forced to conclude that this is a very elaborate prank by the two of you."

He smiled and eyed them both in turn.

"I'd just like to know how you coordinated this on such short notice. It's really ingenious."

Liandra and Robert looked at each other blankly. Roocean's weak smile began to fade away.

"This cannot be. This isn't your prank?"

Robert looked annoyed.

"I'm here for treatment, Richard, not to play games. You're my last hope here. If there's something odd about what happened in our dreams last night, I think you should tell us just what that is and why it has you so shaken."

"Of course. I apologize for my unsettling behavior. This simply unravels much of what I've come to believe. I suppose we'll just have to talk about your dreams."

Both of their dream journals sat atop one another on the dining room/kitchen table. Roocean slid them to Liandra and Robert. Liandra complained.

"This isn't mine!"

"I know."

He quickly flipped through the pages of Robert's journal to today's date. She didn't get a chance to even glimpse the previous pages. He then did the same with her journal in front of Robert. She noticed a page, in Robert's journal, filled with similar details as hers was from last night. She even saw her name in it, along with ... a description of the blue-eyed shadowy beast, only Robert described it by its name in classical myth: The Minotaur.

She read over his shockingly similar account of last night's dream and saw that his version lined up with hers. His kept on longer than hers, as he engaged the beast in bloody combat after she was struck down with a lightning blast from the beast's mouth. His account ended after the beast strangled him. They both looked at each other when Liandra was done reading, and then back at Roocean.

"What does this mean?" she asked.

"I don't exactly know. What's obvious is that you both shared the same dream and perceived those events in the same sequential order. Where yours ended, Liandra, his continued. Same exact continuity. There is no explanation for that. I can't begin to fathom how this happened."

He took a deep breath, closed both the journals and handed them to their respective owners. He exhaled and was suddenly very clinical.

"Okay, there will be no more swapping," he announced. "We will continue on as I'd originally planned, with the separate sessions and dream journals. I'm sorry that I called you all the way back here, Robert. You may go now."

"You gotta be kidding me! Really, Richard? That's it? Just bye?"

"Perhaps I've done too much in sharing this with you both. I think it's best for both of you to continue to keep each session contained, that's all."

Robert shook his head and grumbled, "Fine. You're the expert."

He got up, rushed out the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Roocean winced and looked at Liandra apologetically, "That man is filled with a lot of anger."