The Man of Her Dreams

The Ashthorns, a wealthy family of noble origins, are desperate, as their daughter Melissa seems to have succumbed to a mental illness:

She refuses to sleep, trying everything to stay awake, from coffee over cold baths to physically hurting herself, with needles, blunt objects etc. If she finally falls asleep, she’s tossing and turning around for a while, before she seems to wake up, acting in a very different manner to her usually gentle personality, which she later denies.

Ask upon these events, the frightened Melissa explains, that sometime before, she encountered a man in her dreams, who claims to be from the dreamlands. The man has become aware of the real world and wants to break through to it, a goal, which in exchange would probably kill Melissa.

Possibilities

1 Melissa is suffering from a severe case of schizophrenia, which derives from being abused by her father and her older brother in younger years. Her ‘other Self’, who is confirming ‘her’ version, has the personality of a lewd, uncaring man, who insults and hits other people, smokes cigarettes and drinks whiskey and shows a deep hatred against the Ashthorne family, even trying to kill the other family members. So far, the personality switch has only lasted a few minutes, but is steadily becoming longer.

2 Melissas story is true, the man from the Dreamlands exists. He is slowly overpowering Melissa, and has now reached the point, where parts of him can physically manifest, resulting in the scene, where an entire forearm comes out of the unconscious, twisting girls mouth! Physical damage to the arm will make him retreat for now, but if nothing is done, he will sooner or later burst out of the poor girls body.

3 Things aren’t quite, what they seems to be: the man from Melissa’s ‘dreams’ is in fact a magician, and he’s not from the Dreamlands, but from the waking world, trying to save the investigators, who themselves are trapped in the Dreamlands. He uses the dream figure of Melissa as a portal to make contact with them, but unfortunately his words turn into gibberish and written contact is not possible. If the magician loses contact, the investigators might be forever trapped in the Dreamlands.

© Philipp Mählmann