The Mindless Man's Paradise

Chapter fifty-seven

Roughly 48 hours had passed and Cyrus hadn’t woken.

  My mind was reeling with the pain he would feel when he woke up. The images that would flicker through his mind.

  Images still flew through my mind in fact, but I managed to keep calm, I had to be there for Cyrus.

  Every once in a while, he would mutter something. Usually it would be, “No!” or “Aspen!” or “Help me!”

  I tried to feed him food, but he didn’t swallow it. I successfully got him some water, which was the more important of the two, anyways.

  I found myself halfway asleep when I heard Cyrus mutter something. It wasn’t any of the usual things.

  It was: “35.7 degrees north, 83.5 degrees west.”

  There was no mistaking it. He had just recited the Society’s coordinates. My heart was speeding up. Whatever was happening in Dream Land in Cyrus’s head at this very moment could be anything involving the Society, but something brought me back to the moment I was leaving for my Journey.

  I had etched those coordinates into the back of my head. Could it be possible that Cyrus was a Landie setting out on his Journey? Is that a fear Cyrus may have?

  Indeed it seemed plausible, extremely plausible. I remembered how much he and his family hated my presence when I was just a simple-minded HQ girl, and knew how much Cyrus would hate to be a simple-minded HQ boy.

  That meant that hopefully, I would still be his Soul Mate in this wicked dreamscape, and maybe I could reach him through myself.

  “Cyrus.” I whispered in his ear. “You’re not really on your Journey. You’re in Dream Land. This isn’t real. This scenario. You’re dreaming. Remember everything. You have to remember the pills. You have to remember me. Aspen.” I said things like this for a very long time.