* * *
Hours later, I wake with a start. Sweat beads on my brow soaks my bathrobe, making it feel like a straightjacket. My throat is dry and scratchy, and my tongue tastes of ashes.
“Shit.” I pull off the covers.
I left the heating on the entire night and slept in my fluffy robe and socks. No wonder I’m overheating. I tear off my clothes and toss them on the floor, but I’m still too hot. When I get out of bed to walk to the radiator, it’s stone cold, which makes absolutely no sense.
Maybe if I open the window—I shake my head. I’m not about to let in the cold. Not in the middle of winter.
The soulmate meditation continues to play, and I check the time on my phone. Its display says 1:45. I still have hours before my shift starts, so I flop back into bed and close my eyes.
As I drift back to sleep, a dark figure appears in my mind’s eye.
“What?” I blink myself awake.
A man stands at the foot of my bed, his head nearly reaching the lampshade. Moonlight streams in from the window, illuminating his biceps and broad shoulders.
He’s taller than a basketball player, but with the muscular build of a heavyweight boxer, and I have no idea if I’m hallucinating.
The air heats, making my room feel even hotter, smaller, and the muscles of my throat tighten until I can’t breathe.
This has to be a nightmare. Inhumanly large men don’t appear in women’s bedrooms, just standing there like motionless statues. I squeeze my eyes shut, and inhale a deep breath.
“One,” I say, my voice wavering. “Two. Three.”
When I open my eyes again, the room is darker. It’s as though a cloud has drifted over the moon and sucked out the light.
But the tall figure is still standing at the end of the bed.
With fingers that won’t stop trembling, I pinch my thigh, hoping the pain might snap me out of the dream.
Nothing happens.
“Hello?” I whisper.
He drifts closer like a wraith. That’s when tendrils of doubt creep out from the farthest corners of my mind. Maybe this isn’t a vivid nightmare.
“Hello, my love,” he says in a voice that’s deep and dark and melded into the shadows. It’s the same sonorous sound I heard earlier when I thought the wind had spoken.
“Who the hell are you?” I ask, my voice a dry rasp.
“Your soulmate.”
“What?”
“Your soul called to mine from across the dimensions.”
“No I didn’t—” My teeth click shut because my brain finally catches up with what he’s saying. “Listen, if you’re talking about that soulmate meditation, it was a mistake, alright?”
He tilts his head in a silent request for more information.
“It was just a recording I got from the internet.” I reach for my phone and show him the screen. “See? It says forty-thousand plays. Everyone’s listening to it, not just me.”
Silence stretches out for a few heartbeats and the room darkens further, consuming the man’s shape. Just as I’m about to dismiss his presence as a lucid dream, he speaks.
“That is not why I am here.”
I straighten. “Then why—”