CHAPTER 23

"It's not funny!" he cried out, running over to the nearest urinal and letting loose a large blast of piss. It was like the jet stream setting on a hose, and he couldn't get it to stop.

"It's the... it's the... the piss dream!" Lily now sat on a chrome stool, tears running down her face as she held her stomach. "You found an anxiety!"

"It's not funny!" Shame and rage filled his cheeks, and he knew then that he was losing control of the Dreamscape. Without Lily's venom in his veins, he was susceptible to slipping into an ordinary dream, one where he would watch his own actions as if in a movie. "What do I do?"

The succubus laughed. "You keep peeing!"

Mike swore under his breath, trying desperately to aim the stream into the mouth of the urinal. He ended up peeing everywhere, and then the urinal clogged, so he sidestepped over to the next one, which quickly clogged up, then the next. He did this for several minutes, doing a shuffle each time, the frustration building up.

"Lily, help me!"

"Oh, fine." Her eyes flashed yellow, and she gave him a grin.

He turned away from the urinal, the full feeling in his bladder gone. Looking down, he saw that his pants were back on. Puzzled, he turned back to the urinals behind him. They were now overflowing, water spilling over their edges and filling the whole room with water.

Lily grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind them. With a kick, she knocked it to the ground. Water leaked up out of its edges, staining the sand with moisture.

"That was some of the funniest shit I've ever seen." She wiped a final tear from her eye. "I thought you were going to drown in there!"

"I..." Mike realized that he didn't feel angry anymore. "What happened?"

"Well, first things first, you're welcome. I gave you a little sting to put you farther under." She kicked sand on top of the door. "You stumbled into an anxiety, a recurring dream that people tend to have. Like going to school naked, that kind of thing. You panicked and started to wake up, which is how it trapped you. Once you were in control again, the scenario fell apart."

"That's kind of weird. What caused it?"

"What do you think? Stress. I'm guessing you miss everybody's favorite screamer, and are burnt out on trying to get her home. And though I'm no psychologist, It definitely could have been way worse." He figured she was referring to his mother, who had tormented him as a child. When Lily had trapped him here the first time they met, his mother had been a literal specter that followed him through his dreams, trying to drive him mad.

"Yeah, I guess." He balled up his fists. "Should I try again?"

"No. Once your mind gets stuck on a visual like that, it tends to repeat itself. You'll have to make a different door, summon that one again and you'll be back in that dream."

"Yeah, that would be—" he caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look. Up at the house, he saw a dark figure step out of sight behind the curtains.

"What?" Lily turned to look at the house. "Did I miss something?"

"The shadow is back." He shivered. The shadow came to him often in his dreams, but this was the first time it had shown up while Lily was in his head. "He's watching us."

"Oh, I've got to see this." Lily's wings burst from her back in a sulfurous cloud, and she took off, racing toward the house.

"Hey, hey!" Mike gave chase, trying to will himself into the sky. Dream flight was something that was beyond him, so the best he managed was large leaps across the dunes and onto the grassy front yard of his home.

The house in his dreams matched the house in the real world. He was inextricably tied to it by the fact that Naia had embedded a piece of her soul into his. Just as Naia could never leave her fountain, Mike couldn't travel beyond the ocean inside his head. On one occasion, he tried shrinking the house down to put it in his pocket. It had nearly worked, but he had been startled awake by Tink falling out of bed next to him and unleashing a litany of curses.

Lily stood sideways on the outside of his house, bent over to peer into his bedroom window. Mike navigated a small cluster of bunnies made out of stone that had congregated beneath her, careful not to trip over them. It was odd how beings like the rock rabbits populated the corridors of his mind, and Lily had explained to him once that his brain did a lot more thinking while he was unconscious than he realized. In a way, it reminded him of the abstract thoughts of artificial intelligence, only his brain was much better at creating order from the chaos of his thoughts.

"And?" he asked from below.

"Don't see him." Using her foot, she slid the window open.

"Hey, don't go in without me." His words fell on deaf ears as she hopped into the house, falling horizontally. "Damnit, Lily," he muttered, then tried to jump up to the window. The rabbits, however, were now scrambling across his legs, their imaginary weight holding him down.

"Fucking dream logic." He kicked them away, stubbing his toe in the process. The rabbits multiplied, suddenly doubling in number, then scrambled across the top of his feet, snuggling up to him. He turned away from them and shuffled to the back door of the house. When the Dreamscape got away from him, it was always best to allow simple logic to take over.

"No rabbits in the house," he shouted, and the weight fell away from his feet as he stepped through the back door. Looking back, he saw the horde of stone rabbits milling about, blinking their obsidian eyes at him. They seemed to fade away into the scenery until only a small cluster of them remained. He wondered if once upon a time, he had dreamt of a bunny made of stone, or even seen something in a movie that triggered it.