Chapter 5 – The Landlord of the Dreamscape

My dream started out perfect.

It was a Saturday afternoon in a suburb that didn’t exist. The sun was shining at a comfortable seventy-two degrees. I was standing in front of a heavy-duty chrome grill, flipping burgers that sizzled with the promise of cholesterol and happiness.

A Golden Retriever named Buster was chasing a tennis ball across a lawn so green it looked like a Windows XP wallpaper.

I didn’t own a Golden Retriever. I didn’t own a grill. I definitely didn’t live in the suburbs.

But that’s the beauty of REM sleep.

I reached for the spatula.

“Time to flip these bad boys.”

I hummed a tune that was vaguely Dad Rock.

Then the sun turned purple.

The green grass withered instantly, turning into jagged shards of black obsidian.

Buster the dog stopped mid-run, dissolved into smoke, and reformed as a three-headed hound with eyes of burning coal.

“Oh, come on.”

I didn’t even look up from the grill.

“I was about to put the cheese on.”

The picket fence melted into sludge. The quaint two-story house elongated, twisting upward into a gothic spire that pierced the bruising violet sky.

Gravity shifted. The air grew heavy, smelling of ozone and crushed lilies.

“The cheese is integral to the burger experience, Kai.”

Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

I sighed, setting the spatula down on the side of the grill, which was now a stone altar.

“Thalia. Get out of my head.”

“But I like your head. It’s the only place that’s truly quiet.”

She materialized across from me.

Not walking. Just appearing.

In the waking world, Thalia tried to pass as human. She wore clothes, limited her limbs to four, and generally adhered to Euclidean geometry.

In my dreams, she didn’t bother.

She was ten feet tall. Her skin was the color of starlight on deep water. Instead of legs, the hem of her dress—which was woven from literal shadows—bled into the floor, spreading out like an ink stain that covered the entire yard.

Her eyes were galaxies. Actual, spinning galaxies.

“You ruined the barbecue.”

“I improved the aesthetic. Suburbia is so… pedestrian.”

She drifted closer. The obsidian grass crunched softly beneath her shadow.

“I like pedestrian. Pedestrian is restful. Being an eldritch horror prison guard is stressful. I need my imaginary burgers.”

“You don’t need food here. You need sustenance of the soul.”

She reached out. Her hand was cold, fingers elongated and tipped with claws made of diamond.

She touched my cheek.

The sensation wasn’t physical. It was a psychic weight, a pressure that tried to push through the walls of my consciousness.

“I missed you.”

“I saw you three hours ago. You froze an entire cell block.”

“That was in the flesh. This is spirit. It’s deeper.”

She leaned down, her face inches from mine. The galaxies in her eyes spun faster. I could see civilizations rising and falling in her irises.

“Stay with me here. We can shape this reality however we want. We can build a castle in the void. We can rule over a billion dream-subjects.”

“I don’t want subjects. I want to pay off my car loan.”

“We can imagine the car loan is paid.”

“It’s not the same.”

She frowned. The sky cracked with silent lightning.

“You’re being difficult.”

“I’m being asleep. There’s a difference.”

Thalia circled me. Her shadow-dress swirled, wrapping around my ankles like tentacles.

She was testing the boundaries. She always did.

Entering my mind was her favorite hobby. Most people would have their brains liquified if a being of her power level stepped inside their subconscious.

But I was immune.

My mind was a fortress. Or more accurately, a very boring office building that she kept trying to decorate with goth posters.

“You know I have to kick you out, right?”

“Not yet.”

She tightened the shadows around my legs. A playful restraint.

“Just five more minutes. The connection is stronger here. I can feel your thoughts.”

“You’re reading my mind?”

“I’m tasting your emotions. They taste like… exhaustion. And pizza.”

“I had pizza before bed.”

“You have terrible dietary habits for a deity.”

“I’m not a deity, Thalia.”

“To the cult you are.”

“Don’t bring up the cult. I’m still mad about the cult.”

She laughed. The sound vibrated through the dreamscape, shattering the windows of the gothic spire behind us.

“You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”

She moved in for the kill.

The shadows surged up my legs, binding my waist, my chest, pinning my arms to my sides. It wasn’t an attack. It was a hug. An aggressive, supernatural, inescapable hug.

She pressed her forehead against mine.

“Submit to the dream, darling. Let me take care of you. Just for tonight.”

The pressure increased.

She was pushing hard now. Trying to overwrite my will with hers. Trying to turn the dream into her playground where she could keep me forever, or at least until my alarm went off.

It was tempting.

To just let go. To let the cosmic entity drive the bus.

But if I let her win here, she’d try it in the waking world. And I really didn’t want to explain to the Warden why Sector 7 had turned into a shadow castle.

“Thalia.”

“Shhh. Just drift.”

“Thalia, look at me.”

She opened her eyes. The galaxies swirled.

I looked back.

And I stopped suppressing the thing inside me.

I didn’t have magic. I didn’t have reality-warping powers. I didn’t have tentacles.

I had Immunity.

But in the dream world, Immunity wasn’t just a shield. It was a wall. It was an absolute, immovable point in a universe of chaos.

I flexed my will.

Silence.

The wind stopped. The lightning froze in the sky. The shadows wrapping around my body didn’t break—they simply ceased to be relevant.

I stepped out of her binding like I was taking off a coat.

Thalia gasped, drifting back a few feet.

Her giant form shimmered. For a split second, she looked small.

“You’re getting stronger,” she whispered.

“I’m not getting stronger. You’re just forgetting who owns the lease on this brain.”

I waved my hand.

The gothic spire crumbled into dust. The obsidian ground smoothed over, turning back into gray concrete.

The purple sky bleached out, returning to a neutral, empty white.

I stood there in my t-shirt and boxers, looking up at a ten-foot tall goddess of the void.

And I looked down on her.

Not physically. Conceptually.

In this space, my indifference was a weapon. It was a gravity well that swallowed her chaos and spat out order.

“This is my head, Thalia. My rules.”

“I just wanted to be close.”

She looked hurt. Her galaxy eyes dimmed, turning a soft, sad hazel.

She knew the rules. She knew this moment was coming from the second she invaded.

She did it anyway.

Because she was Thalia. And she had zero impulse control when it came to me.

I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck.

“I know.”

I walked up to her.

She was still floating, towering over me, but she flinched slightly as I approached. Like she expected me to strike her.

I didn’t.

I reached up and patted her hand. It was still cold, still deadly, but under my touch, it felt solid.

“You can’t force it, Thalia. That’s not how it works.”

“It’s the only way I know.”

“Then learn a new way.”

She stared at me. The swirling stars in her eyes slowed down.

“You’re cruel.”

“I’m tired.”

“Will you visit me tomorrow? In the cell?”

“It’s my job. I’m always there.”

“It’s not enough.”

“It has to be.”

I stepped back.

The white void around us began to vibrate. The stability of the dream was returning. My subconscious was rebooting the scenario.

“Time to go.”

“Kai—”

“Goodnight, Thalia.”

I snapped my fingers.

It wasn’t a magic spell. It was an administrative command. Eject.

There was no explosion. No flash of light.

Thalia just… unspooled.

Her form unraveled like smoke caught in a vacuum cleaner. She didn’t scream. She didn’t fight. She just faded, her expression a mix of longing and frustration.

“I’ll see you soon,” her voice echoed, fading with her body.

“Yeah. Sure.”

And then she was gone.

The pressure in my skull vanished.

The ozone smell dissipated, replaced by the scent of charcoal and cut grass.

I blinked.

The white void filled in with color.

Green lawn. Blue sky. Seventy-two degrees.

The chrome grill was back in front of me.

“Woof!”

Buster the imaginary Golden Retriever dropped a slobbery tennis ball at my feet. He looked happy. He looked like a good boy.

I picked up the spatula.

The burgers were perfectly seared.

“Finally.”

I flipped a patty.

“Now, where was I?”

I looked around my perfect, boring, suburban paradise.

No monsters. No gods. No destiny.

Just me, a dog I didn’t own, and a burger that wasn’t real.

I took a deep breath of the fake air.

“Right. The cheese.”

I reached for the slice of American cheese.

This was the life.

I ignored the lingering feeling of cold on my hand where I had touched her.

I ignored the fact that for a split second, the gothic castle had actually looked kind of cool.

I slapped the cheese on the burger.

“Eat up, Buster.”

The dog wagged its tail.

I had about four hours of sleep left before the alarm went off.

I intended to enjoy every single second of this lie.