Seven Dreams

I had the first dream on a rainy night in March. I was sitting inside a train, watching fields blur past the windows, when a stranger slid into the seat across from me. He had tired eyes, the kind that carried stories heavier than his shoulders could bear. We didn’t speak, but when the train jolted suddenly, his hand reached out and steadied mine. I woke up with the strange sense that he had been real.

The second dream came three days later. This time I was in a burning house. Smoke curled through the ceiling, and flames licked at the curtains. Panic filled my chest as I searched for a way out, only to find him again. The same stranger, his face streaked with soot, grabbed my arm and whispered, “This way.” We ran together through a collapsing hallway until the fire roared so loud that I woke up choking. My pillow was damp with sweat.

By the third dream, I was paying attention. I kept a notebook by my bed, scribbling every detail. That night we stood on a deserted street under flickering lamps. He looked at me as if we had known each other for years.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” he said softly. “But neither am I.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the lamps blinked out, and the darkness swallowed us.

Four dreams. Five. Six. Each one different, yet always the same man. On the fifth night, we were in a hospital waiting room. He sat slouched in a plastic chair, clutching a paper cup of coffee. When I asked him his name, he only shook his head and said, “Names don’t work here.”

By the seventh dream, I had memorized his face. The sharp line of his jaw, the shadow of stubble, the kind of half-smile that could either mean hope or despair. In that dream, we were standing on the edge of a cliff, the sea crashing violently below us. He turned to me, eyes more vivid than I had ever seen, and said something I can still hear clearly:
“You’ll find me soon. Don’t be afraid.”

When I woke up, the world around me felt too fragile, too staged. I carried his words like a secret, tucked between the pages of my dream journal. I began to wonder if he was a figment of my subconscious or someone real—someone wandering through my nights because fate had tangled our threads together.

I searched online, desperate to find an explanation. Lucid dreamers spoke of “shared dreams,” a rare phenomenon where two minds intersect while sleeping. Others dismissed it as wishful thinking, a projection of the soul’s loneliness. But none of the answers satisfied me.

Then it happened.

It was a Tuesday evening, the kind where the sky turns gray too early and the air smells of storms. I ducked into a small bookstore to avoid the rain. The bell above the door chimed, and I shook the water from my jacket. As I wandered past the shelves, my gaze landed on someone in the corner, leafing through a worn paperback.

My heart stopped.

It was him. The same stranger. The man from my seven dreams.

I froze, half convinced I was still asleep. But then he looked up, and recognition flashed in his eyes as if he had been expecting me. The book slipped from his hands.
“It’s you,” he whispered. “I thought I was going mad.”

We stood there in silence, the world narrowing to the space between us. The rain drummed against the glass, and the smell of old pages wrapped around us like a blanket. He told me his name—finally—and I told him mine. He had kept a journal too, filled with entries that mirrored mine almost word for word. Seven dreams. Seven meetings.

I don’t know what happens next. Maybe we are two dreamers destined to collide. Maybe it’s all coincidence, a trick of the mind searching for patterns in chaos. But I know this: when someone steps out of your dreams and into your reality, you don’t walk away.

You listen. You remember. And you wonder if the universe has just handed you the beginning of something that feels like destiny.