Lacuna: Somnia

My name is Xavier Sinclair.

I woke up in Ward 17 with no memory of being admitted.

The nurses insist I've been here for six months. The doctors show me medical records bearing my name, photographs of me inside the facility, and pages of observations written in handwriting I recognize as my own.

I remember none of it.

Then I begin dreaming.

At first, the dreams are harmless. A nurse dropping a glass. A patient standing beneath a flickering light. A door opening at exactly 3:17 in the morning.

The following day, every dream becomes reality.

Soon, the dreams grow darker.

I begin seeing blood beneath the ward's floorboards. Patients screaming from rooms I've never entered. A body lying beneath a white sheet.

Then I dream about myself.

I'm lying motionless on a hospital bed while someone records my time of death.

I wake before I can see what happens next.

Afterward, reality begins changing around me.

Patients remember conversations I've never had. Hallways shift when nobody is watching. Doors lead somewhere different each time they open. My medical records contradict themselves.

Then I find a journal hidden beneath my mattress.

It's written in my handwriting.

Its first page contains a warning:

DO NOT TRUST ANYTHING YOU REMEMBER.

Its final entry is dated six months from now.

Beneath it is a single sentence:

"Xavier Sinclair died three nights ago."

The deeper I descend into Ward 17, the more I question whether I'm trying to escape an asylum-

or waking up inside one.

And when I finally discover what Somnia means, I realize the most terrifying possibility isn't that I'm losing my mind.

It's that someone else has been dreaming through mine.

"If you wake up tomorrow and everyone remembers you differently... don't tell them who you are."