Have you ever noticed how jellyfish float along, drifting aimlessly, unaware and content (if a brainless blob can be content) no matter what ocean they land in?

Some people are like that, aren't they? Going along, floating. When you dream, it's almost like everyone becomes that way. You might dream that your uncle needs you to train his dog for the circus, and by God, that is the most urgent thing you've ever experienced in your life - until you wake up and realize your uncle doesn't even have a dog. And if he did, whether or not the thing can trapeze wouldn't be remotely a priority in your mind. You wake up and shake your head, maybe laugh to yourself. You might even just completely forget the dream.

But the dream may not forget you. I don't.
I travel in your dreams. Yours, hers, his, everyone's. I don't know how I started to, but it's been a while, and I think at this rate, it's safe to say I'm somewhat trapped here.
It's not too bad sometimes. I meet a lot of new faces who usually forget mine. Most people just dream nonsense, or it might be the mundane office setting that a restless salaryman practically lives in. I pity the children with nightmares.

Currently though, I see a familiar face. Too familiar, really. This guy dreams too much, and I doubt someone is really this tired all the time. Is he a bum? Doesn't he have things he needs to be awake and doing? He doesn't have much hair on his head, just a basic buzzcut, but he has a lot happening on his face almost every time I see him. He's so expressive, but again, mainly just in his face. Half the time he looks startled, which is understandable because he has really really weird dreams.

This time though, we're at a school. I think this is his old school, because he certainly looks like he's a working man now, going based on the beard on his face. Either that, or he's a teenager who was slammed headfirst into puberty. I don't usually talk to him, just watching from afar and trying to blend into the scenery of his dreams. I can normally pop freely between dreams, but I've been stuck with this guy for a while. It's jarring watching the scenery change so often. When he's awake, everything stays somewhat static, and everything grinds and sways into a new shape once he goes back to sleep.

And despite the fact that these are his dreams, no matter what, he always has stupidly widened eyes, like a baby trying to take in everything with immense shock and maybe curiosity, to be generous. He's staring at a book on his desk. Out of some of the recent scenes he's dreamt up, this school setting is kind of boring, honestly. Despite that, he's gripping his book like it holds profound secrets. Unfortunately for him, books in dreams don't operate correctly. You imagine some of the words, but as you read along, the earlier words disappear, new ones don't string along the same sentence properly, and you can't glean anything from the pages. Even the teacher isn't making much sense, with her words disjointed and unrelated to any particular individual school subject. In fact, I think she's spouting off nonsense about a historical war that never took place. I'm not a history expert though, but whatever repertoire of knowledge this dreamer has that his brain is trying to pull from seems jumbled or completely lacking.

While I'm contemplating if I should wander out the door and see if the scene he's conjured contains any preferably creative elements, I notice that the dreamer is glancing toward my direction. Slowly, I try to follow his gaze behind me, his expression too much more alarmed, which I didn't think was possible compared to his usual, for me to find comfortable. Nothing there. In that moment, he's moved, approached me, and points a finger at me.

"I've seen you before. I see you. All the time!" he stammers out, his body shaking as if he's making a bold accusation, putting his life on the line.

Of course, I respond, "What are you talking about?" with an appropriate amount of denial and slight confusion. No need to make his dream muddier and give him a headache. I'm nice like that.

"You follow me everywhere! I see your face in- in everything! This isn't real," he insists.
Oh, so he's lucid dreaming? Has it been the whole time? Just this time? Why does he care so much that I'm a recurring character? I've pretty much only ever been behind the scenes until I wander off somewhere on my own.

"Well, what's real-" I start to ask, until he slams his hands on the desk.
"Don't lie to me." His voice is grittier now, quiet but full of rage. I've never seen that face he's making before either.

By now, I should probably explain. I am what we call in the business, a Dreamhopper. A chronic insomniac, a lucid dreamer, an aphanatsiac: all of these people are prone to become Dreamhoppers, individuals who cannot form these flights of conscious fancy on their own, and so embark on their own kind of voyeurism. It is, for the most part, completely harmless. Until you run into another one. Especially another who is unaware that they are a Dreamhopper.

Which seemed to be the exact predicament I had found myself in. He's still glaring at me, and I realize belatedly that arguing over "what's real" was a poor opening move. You don't win a metaphysical debate with an unstable narrator who controls the room's exits.

"Look," I try, hands up, palms out. "You're dreaming. That part's true. I didn't lie about that."

"Then what are you?"

I could tell him. I've told exactly four people the truth in however many years I've been doing this, and none of them took it well, which is generous phrasing for "one of them tried to wake himself up by biting through his own tongue."

"I'm nobody," I say. "Background scenery. You've had a long week, and your brain's recycling faces to save on rendering costs."

It's not a bad lie, as lies go, but this guy isn't buying it, and the room agrees with him; the chalkboard behind the nonsense-teacher starts bleeding its equations sideways off the edge.

"No." He shakes his head, hard, like a dog shedding water. "No, you're always watching. You don't do anything. You don't talk to anyone. You just...stand there, at the edge, like you're waiting for something."

"I get bored," I say, which is at least half true. "You people have strange dreams. I like to see them."

That should have been an insult layered thin enough to slide past him. Instead his fear curdles into something almost like delight, and I don't like that at all. Fear I can work with. Fear sends people running for the safety of waking up, gasping, forgetting me by the time they've found their glasses on the nightstand. Delight means he wants to keep this conversation going.

"You've seen my dreams," he says slowly. "All of them? For how long?"

I really should have left through the door the first moment I had the chance. "That's not really how it--" I start, and the classroom lurches like a subway car lurches.

"Are you real?" he asks again. "Have you been paying attention? Do you know what I want?"