You wake with the weight of a dream still pressing against your thoughts.
In it, the world bends because you expect it to. Matter gives way. Cause and effect feel optional. Reality isn’t something you fight—it’s something you nudge, and it moves. You don’t force it. You don’t struggle. You just know how things should be.
The alarm is screaming.
You groan, half-awake, already craving coffee—the warmth, the bitterness, the way it cuts through the fog. You reach out blindly to smash the snooze button and buy yourself a few more minutes.
Your hand plunges into heat.
Liquid sloshes violently as the sound cuts off mid-note. You yank your hand back with a sharp breath. Coffee spills across the nightstand and onto the sheets, steam curling upward. A ceramic mug sits where the alarm clock was, cracked from the impact, dark liquid pooling and dripping onto the floor.
The smell hits you immediately.
Real coffee. Fresh. Hot.
Your heart pounds as pain blooms across your fingers. You stare at your hand, skin reddening, already blistering. Then—without thinking, without deciding—you focus on it. Not the pain. The wrongness of it. The certainty that it shouldn’t be there.
The heat fades.
The redness drains away beneath your eyes. Blisters recede, skin smoothing as if nothing ever happened. Within seconds, your hand looks untouched—no burn, no ache, no lingering sting.
Silence fills the apartment.
You look from your hand to the mug, then to the empty space where the alarm clock should still be blinking red numbers. Your breath feels too loud. The room hasn’t changed. Nothing else is wrong.
Except it is.
The dream is gone now.
The proof isn’t.