Chapter 1
Everyone else had dreams so Daniel, until he was in his late teens, figured he was a normal person as far as sleeping was concerned. Until he woke up.
“I don’t dream like everyone else, professor,” Daniel told Jalen Tomlinoff as the two sat in Tomlinoff’s tiny office in one of the University of Toronto’s huge array of structures in the city’s downtown.
“I’m not a professor, just a teaching assistant,” responded Tomlinoff with a slight smile.
Daniel was losing focus. He was thrown off by the brown teeth revealed in the slight parting of Tomlinoff’s lips. Tea, coffee, cigarettes. Daniel wondered what the young teacher ate or smoke to turn his mouth into a marsh of discoloured incisors, canines and molars.
“Okay, Mr. Tomlinoff...”
“Let’s do Jalen, Dan,” Tomlinoff smiled through his pencil-line lips and straggly beard.
“Daniel. I prefer Daniel,” said the 19-year-old, second-year student sitting on an uncomfortable wooden chair in front of the scarred and littered desk in the Psychology Department’s collection of offices for the lower ranks. Daniel didn’t smile. He was losing enthusiasm for the session with Tomlinoff. The teen had been hopeful when he booked the extra time for a personal visit to the psychology teacher but it looked like a waste of an hour he could have spent on his formal studies.
“Okay. Daniel.” Tomlinoff looked miffed. His eyes began to squint under their untrimmed brows. The instructor shifted his slight weight in the big, faux leather desk chair with its squeaky wheels. “Tell me why you’re so concerned about these dreams of yours.”
“That’s just it, sir... Jalen.” Daniel Manning leaned his six-foot one-inch, trim body forward. The position took his back off the thin spindles of the chair back. “They aren’t dreams. At least, they aren’t like the dreams everyone else has. I don’t know what else to call them...”
“You said you’ve asked everyone about what you’re experiencing?” The teaching instructor sounded disappointed. If everyone else had already heard about Daniel’s problem, there was nothing left to make this experience exclusive and therefore profitable for Tomlinoff. No note in another of his dissertations. No entry in a psyche journal.
“Just to find out what they see and feel in their dreams. I don’t get into mine.” Daniel’s voice was even. He was trying to be patient in his explanations to the instructor. “My, uh, experiences aren’t random. They don’t shift around. I don’t think what I see in my dreams is influenced by the day I’ve just had.”
Tomlinoff opened and reached into a drawer on his side of the utilitarian desk. He pulled out a wrapped piece of candy, peeled off the yellow paper and popped the caramel bit into his mouth. Daniel glanced off to one side, at the small window that looked out to a green lawn backed by a jumbled cityscape. He turned back.
“Mine are consistent stories. Actually, one story. It has been like that for as long as I remember.”
Tomlinoff made a sucking sound as he extracted the juices from the lump of caramel. “You say you get these snippets... uh, dreams or whatever... occasionally. But, they link together in one story. What happens on the other nights. When you don’t tell yourself this continuing story.”
“I don’t dream.”
“Not at all?”
“No. I don’t dream; just when my story goes on. I don’t ‘tell myself’ a story. it just happens.” Daniel couldn’t keep the impatience from creeping into his tone. Why can’t we move on? Get some answers...?
“That’s strange. I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Come on, Jalen,” Daniel didn’t like the tone of his own voice now. There was a hint of desperation, of pleading. “Have you ever heard of something like this? I mean, you’ve been in psyche for a long time and...”
“Not so long,” muttered Jalen.
“Well, I’ve been doing this for 19 years...” Daniel was angry now. He always had disliked indecision. In others and in himself.
“As a baby?” Jalen broke in, oblivious to Manning’s change of mood.
“What?” Daniel’s brow wrinkled. “What as a baby?”
“Did you, Daniel Manning, experience dreamlike episodes as you have described, from the time of your birth?” Tomlinoff was getting edgy.
Aha, thought Daniel. This new formality implied this character was writing a note for the Annual Review of Psychology. Screw this nonsense. “Is that a quote? Are you writing something in your head?”
He stared into Jalen’s squinty eyes. They were a muddy shade of brown but there was a hint of a sparkle in the iris. Daniel could sense Jalen was on the hunt now. Daniel had changed from an inquiring student on a personal quest to a ‘subject’. Jalen was going to steal Daniel’s dreams or whatever they were and bolster his reputation with publication of an article about an anonymous ‘subject.’ This isn’t why Daniel had asked for a session.
“Let me rephrase my question, Daniel,” said Jalen, sensing his article slipping away.
“Don’t bother. I’ve got a class,” Daniel blurted, peering at his Garmin watch and reading his heart rate setting rather than the time. The watch also told him he had taken 800 steps that day, all the way from his on-campus dorm room to Jalen’s shoebox office. That included a stop at the nearby cafeteria for coffee and a muffin and a detour to the nearest bathroom. He realized he was not only pissed off at this lecturer, he needed to hit the urinal again and was really hungry. He rose and turned his lanky body to the door. Two steps later, he was in a hallway heading back into the teaching section of the building. He was glowering. Behind him, Jalen Tomlinoff was taking another caramel from his drawer while feeling a little defeated.
