The Ill-fated Lovers

Chapter 2

I gasped for air jolting up in my bed as if someone pressed a defibrillator to my chest. My heartbeat was erratic as I breathed heavily. I pulled my sweat-filled shirt over my head and tossed it to the side.

I touched my throat where a woman was throttling me in my dream. The other man that's always in my dream was dead across the room and I cried for him.

This is not the end...

Something told me when I let out my last dying breaths in the dream.

Why was this happening to me? I wasn't a bad person. Why was the universe testing me? I felt like I'd lost my mind. I was cleared from all psychiatric disorder tests. There was nothing wrong with me mentally but yet I felt like there was. If this continued I'd have to book myself in a mental institution maybe the doctors made a mistake.

I looked around my room it felt bigger in the dark. It also felt colder. I got out of bed and walked to the tap to pour myself a glass of water. Taking the glass back to bed I opened my bedside drawer and pulled out my notebook to write down the dream so that I could find another pattern.

So far I had the man and then death by a murderer. Was the man death? Was he the Grimm? or was he something that came to warn me about death?

He didn't look or feel like it. He wasn't a family member, but he was someone that I felt I knew forever. All I was certain of was this man brought death along with him like a companion.

Frustrated I shut the journal and tossed it to the side putting my head into my hands. I can't do this anymore. I can't live with this forever.

I checked my alarm clock and it was only three am in the morning. I put on some sleeping tapes suggested to me by another therapist. It was the sounds of the ocean.

I lay back in my bed and focused on the sounds and my breathing. I was afraid to fall asleep. I didn't want to die again.

***

"Yes, I'm charmed to meet you too. Ah yes, I too have a love for writing. Here's my dream journal, detailed descriptions on how I get murdered on a nightly basis."

No, I couldn't say that during an interview.

I adjusted the navy blue blazer I wore with a white flower on the top pocket. I turned sideways and twirled my straight brown hair with one finger.

"Valerie," Ben called as he walked into my apartment with two coffee cups in his hand. "Wow, you look professional. Like you were born at the world bank." He kicked the door closed with the back of his foot.

"Thank you, thank you," I did a bow and he came over placing a chaste kiss on my cheek.

Ben was my first kiss. We looked at each other and started laughing afterward. We were so good at being friends that we couldn't be in a romantic relationship. I guess the kiss had to happen for us to understand that we weren't meant to be anything more than what we were.

"Come on you going to be late," he placed the coffee in my hand.

We walked out of the building together and he lead me to his car that he parked on the side of the road. "Hello there." Zane stuck his head out the car window. "Looking smoking Val. The sexiest writer yet," he winked at me and I turned to glare at Ben.

Did he have to bring his hormonal pet. Zane and Ben met in college. Zane hit on me every chance he got. He was mostly funny than creepy but I wasn't in the mood to put up with him before what could possibly be the biggest day of my life.

"Ah come on you know we work together," Ben said as if he knew what I was thinking when I sent him a soul shriveling glare.

I got into the back seat of the car. Zane looked at me through the car's review mirror. "So sweetness you know you're my weakness. When's our first date?"