Night Vision

Dreams hover like holograms above sleeping heads.

Above Marcus: a coffee shop that doesn't exist, rain on windows that never were. The woman across from him wears Elena's face from ten years ago—before the miscarriage, before the promotion that stole her laughter, before her eyes learned to inventory his failures. Dream-Elena reaches across the table, fingers lacing through his with the hunger of someone who still wants him. She whispers something that makes his sleeping body smile. The vision hovers eighteen inches above his skull, sharp as accusation, clear as verdict.

Elena watches from their bed—book closed, spine cracked, page forty-seven abandoned like everything else. His unconscious theater plays the same scene: kiss across café table, light catching in hair that moves like Elena's used to, before mortgages and midnight feedings carved lines around her eyes. Seventeen nights. Same woman. Same gentle betrayal floating above his head like morning mist.

"Morning," he says, eyes opening.

She doesn't answer.

Above her sleeping head—though Marcus pretends not to see—their apartment from twelve years ago materializes in gossamer detail. Kitchen cabinets painted bright yellow, weekend project that took three tries to get right. Her voice younger, reading him sonnets she'd written on napkins. His dream-self listening with the patience of someone who doesn't yet know that love calcifies. The vision shimmers above Elena's pillow like heat rising from summer asphalt—memory refined into gold leaf, too beautiful to touch.

Marcus knows this museum too.

He rolls toward the wall. Clock face: 7:43.

"Coffee?"

"Sure."

Neither moves.

The marriage counselor's voice echoes: Dreams lie. They exaggerate. Distort.

But Marcus returns to that coffee shop like a pilgrimage. And Elena's unconscious rebuilds their history with surgical precision—each memory lacquered until it shines, perfect and unreachable.

She rises. Feet on cold wood.

In the kitchen, she measures grounds with surgical precision. Three scoops. Two cups.

Above their empty bed, the dream-space hovers blank and merciless.

Marcus appears in the doorway, hair standing at angles, eyes avoiding hers. They've seen too much. The terrible democracy of sleep—no privacy, no lies, just the raw feed of want and memory projected like home movies nobody asked to watch.

"Elena—"

"Don't."

The coffee maker gurgles. Steam rises like incense from a funeral they haven't announced yet.

She pours. Black for him, cream for her. The ritual of two people who know exactly how the other takes their caffeine and nothing else that matters.

Marcus sits. Drinks. Burns his tongue.

Above him, faint as morning light, another dream begins to form—Elena packing suitcases, moving through rooms that echo with absence.

She sees it too.

The coffee grows cold between them.