At an old bookstore, you find a book that helps you interpret your dreams. But something is strange about it. You fall asleep reading the book, and find yourself in a dream that you cannot wake up from. What is it? And how will you snap back to reality?
* * *
I used the key she’d given me to get into Jenny’s room. The campus cops were gone, so now I could investigate. Girls like her don’t just suddenly lapse into a coma.
The room looked normal: tidy with chaos around the edges. The only unusual thing was a book lying on her bed. Jenny hated reading in bed. The title was “The Eidolon”. I flipped through it. At first it was standard printed text, but the font morphed to handwritten script as I scanned further. I’d known Jenny long enough to understand that that meant magic. The last words were “come stay with us”.
I’d been forbidden to see Jenny in the Infirmary. She was in a coma and they wouldn’t let some geek who claimed to be her boyfriend in. But I knew now that it wasn’t a coma, and it would take magic to wake her. I only had one idea, and it required me to get close. Really close.
Science wasn’t up to the task, at least nothing I knew, so I would have to try magic. Jenny had been teaching me The Rules since we started dating, and I hoped I understood enough. I took a tiny pinch of Jenny dust – enough to transform me into her for a couple of hours. Now I needed something to make me look different.
Jenny had told there’s power in names and I hoped she’d been right. She had a plastic bottle of baby powder. Jenny loved the scent, and rubbing it on her back was the closest we’d got to – other things. I mixed a few grains of powder with the Jenny dust, then touched the dust to my tongue.
Everything except my shirt fell off. I uncovered Jenny’s mirror (she kept it covered for magical reasons) and the effect was perfect; I was Jenny, but a 14-year old Jenny. A quick rummage of her closet turned up a short green dress that almost fit. It would have to do.
Getting into the infirmary was child’s play – literally. The gestapo nurse accepted that I was Jenny’s little sister Tammy, and soon I was by her bed. I kissed her; that was how you woke somebody magically. I hoped.
I could tell something was wrong; it took me a moment to realize that I’d missed her mouth. Right. Jenny is normally nine inches tall. Luckily she had told me where her center was – right where her heart was in big form. I leaned over and kissed her chest, acutely aware of how perverted it looked.
Her eyes fluttered open. “Tim?”
“It’s me.”
“Then you…?”
I nodded. “The kiss of someone who truly loves you.”
Tears of joy formed in her eyes. “I hoped… I prayed…Oh, Tim!” She all but fell out of bed kissing me – lips to lips this time.
A playful smile crossed her face. “When you change back, I want you to rub me with baby powder – all over.”
I am the luckiest man alive.