Yesterday's Gone: Season One

on the other side, heading into the nearby woods. Though he knew he was dreaming, a large part of him didn’t care. He might never see her again in the waking world. But, if he could see her in his dreams, that would at least be something. The worst thing he could imagine would be to forget her completely. The sound of her voice, the look in her eyes when she looked at him, the way her nose crinkled when she smiled.  
    “John!”
    He saw Jenny, standing beside a slender tree, wearing the matte silver dress he loved, the one that made her look like an Ann Taylor princess.  
    He approached his wife, tears filling his eyes. “I’m so sorry,” he said.  
    Jenny was silent.  
    “Please, please, please forgive me,” he said. “I never meant to hurt you.”  
    Her lips didn’t move.
    Her silence pained him. Though John knew it was a dream, cold indifference was a coffin of discomfort.  
    “Please,” he begged, “Answer me.”
    John reached out to touch her face, but recoiled in terror as it started to shift, starting with her eyes, which went hollow. Her face reshaped itself into a breathing image of agony. His wife was gone, and in her place was the burned hide of a corpse. Its cracked skin was crimson and black, its eyes ebony and large and almost circular in shape, like a snake’s. The bones beneath the thin flesh of its face rolled like ocean waves beneath the surface as it tried the faces of people from John’s neighborhood, starting with Mary, and then Paola, Desmond, and Jimmy, moving on to everyone from the Franklin kid to the old man who spent his evenings calling out for his dog, “Miley.”  
    John took a step back, confused. How did it know how to make all those faces? It was as if the monster was running through John’s mental Rolodex.
    The beast’s face softened, then relaxed into the familiar creamy cheeks with a rosy glow John had loved since the second he first saw her.
    Perhaps, John thought, all that darkness was simply his feeling about their fight manifesting in some monstrous shape.
    Jenny smiled at him.
    She was back.
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “It’s okay,” she said in that familiar voice that greeted him every morning, holding her arms open. “Everything will be okay.”
    John’s heart melted and broke all at the same time. Happy that she’d found the heart to forgive him, but then sad in the realization that this was surely just a dream. And when he woke, the world would continue to decay without her.
    “You don’t have to go back,” she said.
    “What?”
    “You can wake up now. And be with me.”
    “What do you mean?” John asked. “If I wake up, I’ll be back in the hotel.”
    “No,” Jenny said, “ That is the dream. This is a dream. But in reality, I’m at home, in bed, waiting for you to wake up. Right now.”
    John’s head was pounding in confusion, trying to make sense of what she was saying. It didn’t seem right. Everything that had happened the past few days, that was reality... he thought. But the more he considered events, the less sense that world made. A world where everyone vanished, where bodies floated down rivers, and monsters attacked you. A world where a little boy comes and saves the day but ages in the process. Maybe that was the dream world.
    “How do I wake up?” he asked.
    “Just let me in.”
    “What?”
    “Just open your mind. Open your heart, and let me in.”
    “How do I do that?” he asked, now crying and more confused than ever. His head felt like it was in a vice, being squeezed tighter and tighter. He was so afraid to make the wrong choice and risk losing her forever.
    “That headache you’re feeling right now... that’s your dream self trying to stay in the dream.” Jenny said. “Don’t let your fear keep you from waking. Reality is waiting. You just need to let go. Come to me, John.”
    She held her arms open.
    Tears streamed down his face. But they weren’t just tears of love or joy at being reunited with Jenny. Something else was there which he couldn’t quite place.
    “Just let go,” she whispered as he fell into her embrace and kissed his cheek.
    She brought her lips to his, then reached her hands up his back, and found the back of his head. Her fingers swept through his hair in that way he loved, swirling and massaging, and then... tightening.  
    What the?
    Her fingers began to dig into his skull, feeling like several bits drilling through his flesh and bone. He tried to scream, but