Am I dreaming, or am I the dream?

I’ve decided that it must be one or the other. How else could I explain seeing the same person everywhere I went?

He’s impossible not to notice with his long gray mustache waxed to a pinpoint. Bushy eyebrows caught in a perpetual explosion, floppy white hair that looked like it was having an argument with the head. He doesn’t always speak to me, or even look at me, but for the last two years he’s always been there.

He first appeared as a substitute teacher when I was in my junior year of high-school. He introduced himself as Mr. Brice, although there was a long hesitation before he gave his name as though he couldn’t decide what he wanted to be called. His voice wasn’t right either — I remember him spending half the class switching accents, his speech collapsing occasionally into a variety of foreign languages before he caught himself and readjusted. The class found him “dapper” and charming in his fine tailored wool suit, and I didn’t initially suspect him of anything more than being eccentrically addled.

The next day he was working in the cafeteria. Substitutes go where they’re needed, I suppose, but oddly none of my classmates seemed to remember him. They remembered that we had a substitute teacher, but everyone was quite sure that it wasn’t him. He gave me an extra scoop of chili and winked at me, muttering in an English accent: “I won’t tell if you don’t.” I don’t think he was talking about the chili.

Mr. Brice spent the next few weeks rotating throughout the school. One day he was the janitor, next he was a guest speaker, or even the principal himself. I quickly learned to stop bringing up the phenomenon when it became obvious that I was the only one who noticed. Mr. Brice was learning too — it didn’t take long before his speech stopped fluctuating and his clothing adapted to nondescript khakis and a polo shirt.

I tried questioning him more than once, but the man stubbornly adhered to the role he’d currently assumed, pretending he knew me only as well as the character he played. At the same time, there would always be little winks or enigmatic phrases thrown in which conveyed our peculiar intimacy. I caught him alone one day when I’d forgotten my calculator and had to double back for it. Mr. Brice was on the phone, casually reclining with his feet flung up on his desk. I distinctly remember the words:

“Of course he’s caught on, but he isn’t frightened yet.”

He winked again when he met my eye. I stood in abject confusion while he politely disengaged from his phone call.

“Were you talking about me?” I asked.

The feet came down with a stomp.

“All the time,” he said, leaning forward to fold his well-manicured hands demurely on his desk. He cocked his head to the side, studying me intensely. “You preoccupy most of my attention nowadays, but I mustn’t get too attached to you.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t belong here. I don’t want it to hurt when I have to get rid of you.”

“Um…”

He coughed. Then the infuriating wink. “What I mean to say is: the teachers can’t go home until the last student leaves, so run along.”

I snatched my calculator without another word. The whole situation was so unnerving and I couldn’t think of anything to respond. Mr. Brice blatantly picked up his phone again as I left.

“He’s just leaving. No, I don’t think he’ll run yet. Where could he possibly go where I couldn’t find him?”

I didn’t see him at school much after that, but he was always somewhere, always watching me: on a bench reading the newspaper, or bussing tables, or working behind the counter at the gas station. I never confronted him, although I did try taking a picture of him a few times. The pictures would work, but only for a day. When I looked back at the photo after that, everything else would be the same except for Mr. Brice, who would invariably be replaced with the real person — the same person that everyone else remembered being there the whole time.

Like he said, I wasn’t afraid yet though. The situation enthralled me for a few weeks, but after that it simply became part of life. And as long as Mr. Brice was there, my life was being steered in a particular direction.

Mr. Brice the school counselor took the liberty of submitting my application to a science program at Stanford University where he felt I would excel.

Mr. Brice the college administrator overlooked my mediocre grades in favor of my exceptional essay, which I never remember writing.

Mr. Brice the restaurant manager fired me when I mentioned wanting to wait a bit on college. He said he didn’t want my life here interfering with my “future opportunities”. I almost hit him when he winked that time. More than all his other meddling, that one really got to me. I was fired right on the spot in the middle of my shift with two co-workers watching. I just felt so angry and helpless and alone. I wanted to scream at him and tell him that I won’t play his game anymore, but that would just make me look like the crazy one. I wanted to tell him that he didn’t control my life, and that I wasn’t afraid of him, but of course he already knew that to be a lie.

“Go quietly now, won’t you?” he said. “You don’t want an incident on your record.”

“Why not?” I was conscious of all the eyes on me, but I had to say something. “Since when has anything I’ve done made a difference?”

“Oh but it can. Not to you maybe, but I’d hate to think of how other people might be affected by your stupidity.”

“Are you threatening me?” I said it loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear. Five seconds of silence can feel like a very long time, and I gloated the whole while. He wasn’t embarrassed or defensive like I thought he would be though. He glanced dispassionately at the surrounding patronage before taking two long strides toward me — close enough for me to feel his breath on my face.

“Yes. I’ll threaten you, if that’s what it takes.”

I hadn’t expected that. Neither had anyone else around us. One of the waitresses made a nervous giggle, but it was cut unnaturally short.

“I’m doing this for your own good,” Mr. Brice added. “Don’t test me.”

We stared off for a moment before his phone started ringing.

“You’re a piece of shit,” I told him as I left.

He just smiled, speaking into his phone: “Please calm down. Nothing has changed. We own him, and he knows it.”

I lingered by the door to listen in, but he’d already hung up.

Both of my parents were fired on the same day. Neither were given more than a superficial reason. I suppose I should be thankful that it wasn’t Mr. Brice the serial killer that visited them instead. I’d gotten so used to his ubiquitous presence that I never really stopped to think how much power he had over me. Over everyone. I fantasized about trying to kill him for a while, but immediately thought of Mr. Brice the policeman and Mr. Brice the judge who would find me wherever I went.

The mood was really dark around my house for the next few days until I received a full academic scholarship in the mail. Considering their recent terminations, my parents made it clear that they wouldn’t be able to help me with my tuition. They told me that I’d be an idiot not to accept it, and of course they were right.

It didn’t seem like a bad life that he had planned for me. I was being handed opportunities that other people could only dream of, but it wasn’t my life. If I just gave up without a fight, then who knows where it would end? Maybe he wanted to use me to build a new bomb or design a weaponed virus. If I gave into him now, then I’d be surrendering my whole life to him. Trying to confront him again seemed too dangerous, but whoever he kept talking to on the phone must know what was going on. I just had to steal it and see who had called him while I was being fired.

This wasn’t exactly a simple matter. I couldn’t break into his house because he could be anyone or anywhere. I had to lure him to me, and that meant doing something which threatened to destroy his plan for me. As long as he controlled the situation, it seemed like any criminal offense or outrageous act could be covered up by the people in power he posed as. It was overwhelming how powerless I felt, but with or without him, I could never control how other people acted. I just had to focus on myself — the one thing he couldn’t take away.

I chose the top of a bank for this purpose. I was able to climb up pretty easily because of the adjoining buildings, and it had a nice flat roof that was high enough to do some real damage if I jumped. I stood up there for a long while, watching a street so familiar and mundane yet surreal and incomprehensible that I felt like a visiting alien. As the wind whipped around me I wondered whether I would still jump if he didn’t show up to stop me. Would my death be a victory over him? Or was it the inevitable conclusion that he had always lead me toward?

A hand on my shoulder meant I never had to find out.

“Took you long enough,” I said without turning. I stiffened my shoulder under his grip. I wanted my tension to be obvious. I wanted him to really believe I would do it.

“It’s a hard climb for someone my age. Couldn’t you have found something a little lower to jump from?” I could almost hear the wink in his voice. His hand tightened slightly, but I pulled away — the toe of my shoe now over the edge.

“I’m not here to negotiate. I want you out of my life.”

There was a long silence. I glanced behind me — he was dialing a call. “Hello hello — I have a bit of a pickle,” he said into the phone.

I didn’t waste my chance. Pinning his free hand against my body, I spun to snatch the phone from him. He lurched back, but I dove after him. A quick spin as he tried to shield the phone with his torso — hands buffeting each other out of the way — then another lunge and I had the phone. I wrapped my whole body against it, hurling myself to the ground to protect it. His arm was still tangled up in mine though, and with the turn he slipped straight out into the open air. Those few seconds watching him tumble were the longest of my life. I turned away before he hit the ground, but I still heard the sickening crack.

“Who is there? What’s going on?” the voice in the phone. My voice, strained and weary, muffled and distorted, but unmistakably mine.

I didn’t have time to decipher this. I couldn’t decipher much of anything, except that the world was coming to an end. A man collapsed in the street, causing a small turbulence of panic around him. Then a second, and a third — everyone crumpling into discarded bags of meat. The buildings were dissolving into so much dust, and the light of the sky bled and ran like water color. A moment later and the building beneath my feet gave way, and tumbling into blackness I —

— woke on a narrow cot, holding a phone in my hand. I tried to jerk upright, immediately regretting my decision as my tether of IV lines dragged inside my veins.

“A few more years and we would have had a cure.” Mr. Brice’s voice, but not Mr. Brice. The thing over my bed was more akin to the dissolving world I just witnessed than any human being I’d ever seen. Skin in constant dissolution, warping and reforming before my eyes.

“Am I dreaming?” I asked.

“Not anymore.”

“You — you did this to me —”

“I spun the dream. A dream about the life you could have lived. And if you were to discover a cure in that dream, you’d wake up and still remember it. You’d be able to get better again but now —”

I couldn’t look at the creature. I turned away to look down the length of my body. My emaciated arms. The outline of knees as sharp as blades beneath my blanket. That was even worse.

I’m not writing this as a warning. There isn’t a lesson here — although perhaps there is some merit in trusting one’s dreams, no matter how outlandish. No threats or looming dread. I’m simply sharing my story because the dream spinner has left me. I’m alone, and angry at myself, and so very frightened. I’m going back to sleep in the chance I dream again, but if I do not wake, then I suppose what I’m really writing this for is simply to say goodbye.