Archive of Our Own

Chinatown, New York, 2016

It was a quiet and chilly night. In the studio, where a tall man all dressed in black stood looking around him, there wasn't much:  a scarcely utilized kitchenette, a time-worn stereo bearing witness to the ungodly hour of 3 am, a mound of questionably clean garments, and an abundance of books that adorned the space. 

Amidst the expanse, with a double bed claiming nearly half the room, a young man grappled with a fitful and unsettled repose. The Endless who visited him slightly bent towards him to take a better look at him. The sleeper tossed and turned in his bed, restless. As though sensing the presence of the otherworldly being, he cracked open his weary eyes. 

Vaguely surprised to see a man in his room, he decided he was still dreaming, emitted a faint groan, and muttered, "Hmmm, Simone…" before surrendering to the call of the night once more. He turned away from the King of Dreams, who laid his hand above the slumberer's head to usher him into his realm.

Simone, then a sixteen-year-old, was saying goodnight to an eight-year-old boy nestled in his bed. She planted a kiss on his forehead and prepared to leave, but the boy gripped her hand and begged her to stay with him, his large blue eyes staring at her. Simone gently caressed his hair and asked him if he had had another nightmare about his mother.

Jake nodded, tears beginning to fall down his cheeks. Simone consoled him with tenderness and brushed them away, before patiently explaining,

"You see, when the King of Dreams sends forth nightmares to haunt our nights, he often wants to tell us something. What did you see?” 

"It was awful. I tried to catch her by the hand, she touched my fingers, but a black wave, big like a monster swallowed her and dragged her back into the sea," Jake paused and looked straight ahead of him, his gaze vacant, then continued, “I HATE THE KING OF DREAMS. I’d rather have a nice dream of her,” he paused again, mustering a shy smile as he turned to Simone and added, “or of you”.

Simone smiled as her finger gently traced his cheek. 

“I’ll tell you a secret about your mum: she used to be a mermaid disguised as a human woman when she fell in love with your dad. But after he died, the call of the sea was irresistible to her… She had to go back there,” Simone’s voice trailed off, as she saw the sorrow etched upon the boy’s face. She held his hand tightly.

“Why didn’t she take me with her?” Jake's voice quivered with longing.

“Because she knew your place wasn’t within the depth of the sea, Jake. You belong here, with us, with me…”

“Promise me you’ll never leave me, please.”

“I’ll never leave you, Jake. Ever.”

Suddenly, Simone, little Jake, and their surroundings liquified and underwent a surreal transformation. Morpheus stood and watched the dream that was coming next. This one, he knew, was a nightmare cleverly disguised as a memory.

Jake, now twelve years old, was arguing with twenty-year-old Simone.

“I’m not a baby anymore! I know these are just stories,” restless and agitated, he continued, “She was never a mermaid! She’s gone! I know what happens when someone drowns: they can’t breathe, it's a horrible death, yet she chose it! I should have loved her more, I should have saved her, I should have…” 

His sentence was abruptly interrupted by a hiccup, followed by another, and then another, each convulsion jerking his body. As Jake was shaken by other uncontrollable spasms, panic gripped his being.

“I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe! I just keep –”

Simone patiently tended to him, employing her nurturing touch to ease his distress and alleviate the hiccups.

Gradually, the apparition of Jake, clinging to Simone, began to fade, yet the vast expanse of the sea remained. Morpheus kept watching the young man’s dream, still quiet, still invisible. 

Twenty-nine-year-old Jake stood atop a cliff overlooking an endless ocean, with nothing else to see but the distant horizon. His eyes remained closed, tranquility washing over him. The haunting melody of Nine Inch Nails' 'The Great Below' swelled, saturating the air with its mournful notes, as if its lyrics had been penned specifically for Jake.  

“Staring at the sea
Will she come?
Is there hope for me
After all is said and done
Anything at any price
All of this for you
All the spoils of a wasted life
All of this for you
All the world has closed her eyes
Tired faith all worn and thin
For all we could have done
And all that could have been"

Yet soon, fragmented images of his tumultuous past began flickering in front of him in an incoherent order. There he was, a thirteen-year-old teenager, desperately reaching out to Simone, who hastily got dressed but couldn’t look him in the face, consumed by shame for what they had just done.

Then there was Jake, fervently imploring Simone not to follow her boyfriend, Etienne, in France. 

“What about us?!” Jake exclaimed, his voice trembling. “What do we become? Have you ever thought of that?”

"There is no ‘us’, Jake. This bubble we lived in was only a dream! I’ve got my life to live, you should live yours too. You’re eighteen now, I can’t carry you on my back forever!”

“But you love me! He will hurt you, you’ll see…”

Simone never really loved him. Nobody ever loved him. How could anyone want to be with a guy so… Unloveable?

Intertwined with these memories, others came and shattered what was left of the serenity he had found when it was just him and the ocean: Simone’s mother yelling, branding her daughter a monster; the look of etched disgust upon his girlfriend Tess’s face as she finally comprehended the truth about Simone’s place in his heart; Tess’ eyes judging them, judging him; Simone claiming, “No one else will ever know you the way that I do.”; Jake getting the S of Simone and a mermaid tattooed in a creepy tattoo shop after she left; he and Simone in the same tattoo shop a year later, engraving a key into their skin as a secret code only they could crack...

Overwhelmed, Jake bent over the edge of the cliff, his arms enveloping his body tightly and his mouth contorting into a scream of anguish he couldn’t hear. Flooded with poignant memories, Jake couldn’t escape images of his mother, the one who had chosen the ocean as her final resting place when he was but a young boy. Jake knew that this part of Simone’s story was true. His surroundings turned into a vision of his mother gasping for air and agonizing, lost within the depths of the ocean. He felt as if they were but one being. His mouth was dry, but he could still taste the saltiness of the sea, and soon he felt his lungs fill up with water. 

Jake finally opened his eyes and realized he was deep in the wide ocean. Even in his dreams, he couldn’t swim, he realized. The irony! The sound of the laugh he emitted was muffled, remote even, as if it were someone else’s laugh.

Exhausted, Jake relinquished his resistance and surrendered to the watery depths, his eyes sealing shut. Death by drowning didn’t seem that bad after all, he thought before drifting into unconsciousness. 

It was precisely at that moment that an arm emerged from behind,  wrenching him from the abyss with immense strength and propelling him upward, towards the surface.

"I can still feel you
Even so far away
I can still feel you
Even so far away
I can still feel you
Even so far away
I can still feel you
Even so far away
Even so far away
(Even so far away)
(Even so far away)
(So far away)"

Jake, who felt the resurgence of air filling his lungs, crawled out of the water, coughing, then collapsed onto his back. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, blinded by the brilliant sunlight after so much time spent in the darkness. The sand in his hand felt unfamiliar, a sign that he was still dreaming. Jake searched for a cigarette but swore loudly as he found his pack soaked. 

Casting his gaze upward, his eyes settled upon a pair of sleek, black leather boots stationed beside his head. A flicker of surprise danced across his face as he saw a man dressed entirely in black and bearing an uncanny resemblance to him, save for a different hairstyle. The man, very pale with piercing blue eyes that gleamed like twin sapphires, didn't seem menacing, yet Jake brazenly inquired,

“Who the fuck are you, and what are you doing in my dream? Last I checked, I had no twin… Not to brag, but I look better than you, by the way.”

The Endless arched an eyebrow, but impervious to the provocation, retorted instead,

“It is time to wake up, Jake. The dream is over. You have dwelled far too long within this abyss of self-pity, burying yourself in its depths. It’s high time you rise and start living for yourself.”

Without warning, a raven came out of the ether and landed on the Endless’ shoulder. Fixing its piercing gaze upon Jake, the black bird cawed to say hello. Irritated by the audacity of the Endless, Jake glared at him, ignoring Matthew the raven, and asked angrily,

“Oh yeah? And what if I tell you to fuck off?”

To Jake's astonishment, Morpheus humbly knelt before him, his voice resonating with a timbre that echoed Jake's own, albeit even deeper.

“I know of your fears. For all your life, your dreams were plagued by chaos and confusion because I was kept away from my realm and had no control over it. But I can’t live your life for you, Jake. Nobody can, and nobody can help you if you don’t help yourself. And Simone… She cares more for what she will be without you than she cares for you. You can’t save her from herself any more than you could save your mother, who loved you immensely, but who was sick and afraid she would eventually harm you. Simone’s not your burden to bear, and you are no longer hers. Should you persist on this path, you both shall only run in circles and harm yourselves.”

Jake’s first instinct was to protest, but deep inside, he realized Morpheus was right. The tears cascading down his cheeks were met without resistance. Every word uttered by the man was true, which Jake, oddly, acknowledged with serenity. 

“And now, Jake, it is time to wake up. You won’t remember me, but you will remember what I said.”

Morpheus, the King of Dreams -Jake knew who he was, though he didn’t know how- retrieved a small pouch from his pocket. Plunging his hand within, he clasped a mere pinch of sand, then exhaled, directing the grains towards Jake’s face. The young man closed his eyes and followed the path that led to the Waking World.

When Jake opened his eyes, he was alone within the confines of his studio, bathed in the glow of morning sunlight that permeated from the gaps of the roller blinds. The stereo clock showed 7 a.m.; he felt oddly alert.

He felt… Awake.