I wrote this narrative experiment years ago, originally in Spanish, and now, while reviewing my files, I found it and made some minor adjustments to adapt it to English. I hopeyou enjoy it.
Shared Dreams
He wakes up after what seemed like centuries. He looks around. Everything is the same. He smells his hands. They smell of sweat. His sweat, not hers. He sits up slowly, feeling strangely tired. The top of his pajamas is torn, and the bottom is stained. He goes to the bathroom to wash up like he does every morning, like every time the planet turns on its axis, like he used to turn not long ago in his dreams with her in bed.
He throws his pajamas into the laundry basket and gets into the shower without paying attention to the scratches on his back and the bite mark on his left shoulder. He can barely stand up. The hot water runs over his body, and he remembers her tongue, her hands mixing their sweat and turning it into an acidic, sticky glue that prevented them from separating.
After almost falling asleep remembering her in the shower, he dries himself with the slowness of a turtle and gets dressed in the first thing he finds that isn't torn. Lately, he wakes up with torn clothes without knowing why. He assumes that, like when he was a child, he gets up and sleepwalks to God knows where. “Buy a cheap camera to monitor my sleep,” he notes in his phone's notepad. He grabs his backpack, his skateboard, and leaves the house for college.
The sound of the door closing wakes her up. She feels sore all over without knowing why, and her nightgown is on backwards, as on other occasions when she has woken up just as “battered,” which is her colorful way of saying bruised. She doesn't think much of it, figuring it's just fatigue after a night of studying for her exam today, and she put it on like that without realizing it.
After a while, she finally decides to get out of bed and sees a phone that isn't hers on the floor next to her slippers. She turns it on, and a strange message appears on the screen that makes her think: “Buy cheap camera to monitor my sleep.”
©bonzopoe, 2025.
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