“Don’t listen to him Amy, everything will be just fine. You can go home and change your clothes right after I kick that trouble maker’s skinny little–aaaahhhh!–” The shrieking that ended Sandra’s sentence was short winded, as the old woman sprung to life and sunk her teeth deep into the manager’s veiny neck.

No, not teeth– they didn’t look like teeth at all to Amy, they just looked… wrong. Too long and shiny, like rows of little golden daggers. Amy stood shocked, as tiny bits of Sandra were caught in Mrs. Larkin’s deepest wrinkles; the old woman relished her meal with closed eyes–wait no, she had no eyes! Two black holes were all that filled Mrs. Larkin’s sockets, darker than the loneliest voids of space between dying stars. Amy fell back into the shelves behind the register and knocked over a bottle of red shampoo, dousing her CloudWalks in thick bloody soap, completing the ensemble.

“Amy, we need to go,” the tall guy said, “right now. Please, I need you to leave your register and let’s walk away. Carefully.”

“I — I can’t…” she replied shakily, unable to take her eyes off of Sandra. “Mrs. Larkin is a vampire?”

“Something like that,” he said, reaching out, “and yes you can. You can leave here if you want. But you have to want it, and quick before Mrs. Larkin is finished with her meal. Who do you think will be next?”

The old woman released her golden daggers from Sandra’s neck; then as if her lower jaw came unhinged, Mrs Larkin’s mouth opened wide enough to swallow Amy’s manager whole, head first. Her crooked body seemed to stretch and grow just tall enough to do it, and picked up a limp Sandra with very little effort. Before long she was sliding the feet down with a wet slurp.

“Don’t just stand there Amy, come on!”

Like breaking from a nasty spell, Amy turned to him and, shaking her head,

“I’m dreaming…”

“Took you long enough, now let’s go!” His hand stretched further, wriggling anxiously for her to take it.

“Yeah,” she agreed, and their fingers met with tingling excitement. Off they went and he led her past the other checkout counters and to the big exit doors at the front of the store. A large man with no eyes stepped on their path reaching out with long stretching fingers; Amy’s new friend dodged expertly and rolled her around to his other side.

“Don’t let them touch you!” he shouted, and picked up an umbrella to beat off a persistent eyeless baby crawling around their feet with tiny gnashing golden daggers. “Geez Amy, are all the demon babies this quick in your dreams?”

“I wouldn’t know!” she replied, “so that’s what these things are? Demons? These dream characters with no eyes?”

“Something… like… that!” he managed through strong forward thrusts. “And you… can call me… CLAY!” With the last word the tall guy swung the umbrella low and putted the baby high in the air and deep into the store; they ran harder. “You know, that way you can stop referring to me as ‘he’ or ‘the cute tall guy!”

“You’re reading my thoughts?” Amy yelled back, tearing her hand free but keeping pace. “I didn’t know dream characters can do that! Are you like some special kind?”

Clay didn’t answer, just gave her one long look as they neared the exit. A calm night peeked through the glass doors and Amy could just see her car out in the parking lot.

“They’re not opening!” He waved the umbrella at the doors’ sensors. “Ok we’re going through…”

“Through?” Amy slowed, wheeling in thought, “oh, I’m not good at going through things… especially in a hurry…”

“It’s easy, just don’t overthink it. Like how we have so much time to discuss all this even though we’ve been approaching the doors for quite a while. It’s a dream Amy, there are no doors, not really!”

“Ooooh, I don’t know!” She winced. “There’s got to be another way out…”

“Listen, doors aren’t important, we just need to get to the other side, the parking lot. Just close your eyes and think about the parking lot!”

She did and, after a short woosh, when her eyes opened they were now running outside and across the dark, near empty lot. Her car seemed a lot further than she remembered parking, but her mind was on what just happened. Did I go through the doors, she pondered, noticing the big cheese-yellow moon hanging over them as they scurried like mice away from the store. Or did I teleport? I totally teleported, didn’t I?

“Something like that,” Clay said, and she promptly ordered him to stay out of her head. “Really?” He replied, and she could’ve felt his smirk from eons away. “I’m not even reading your thoughts, Amy, you do well enough alone to broadcast them out like a free concert! You know, in a dream, your thoughts still feel like they’re in your head, but where is your head, Amy?”

“All around?”

“Something like that.”

Amy thought about what horrific things she might do to him if he used that phrase again; Clay requested she’d not go with shooting fireballs at him since he took so long choosing his outfit.

“STOP IT!!”

“I will when you will!” He shouted, and ducked as an expertly crafted iceball whizzed by, grazing an ear. “Oh good job, you’ve been practicing, huh?”

Amy didn’t know what he meant by that, and didn’t have time to explain where she learned the trick because two eyeless demons climbed out of a nearby vehicle and took chase with considerable speed. Amy threw large ice balls at them but any that would’ve hit were swallowed whole.

“Hey, you still know how to fly?” Clay shouted from further ahead.

“Yeah I can fly! Uh, but I have to jump off of somewhere high…”

“Oh you’re still on that? Ok, come here.” He flipped the umbrella down and pointed the long gilded tip at her shoes. “CloudWalkers, huh? That’ll work.” And with a quick incantation (“Hocus pocus… wibbly wobbly…abra kadabra!”) golden sparks leapt from his makeshift wand and disappeared into Amy’s shoes, now restored to a pristine white. The umbrella then opened high above his head and he lifted up and away into the night sky. “Now just walk right up to me, Amy! Actually, RUN!”

With a narrow escape of gnashing dagger-teeth and long stretching arms, she ran vertically right up to Clay who was already high above the power lines. Each step created a literal cloud to cushion her climb, accompanied by a cute little ‘poof’; luckily the eyeless demons couldn’t fly. When she caught up to him she asked again about the creatures chasing them.

“They’re kind of like an immune system response,” he said while they hovered well above the parking lot (Amy could see part of the town twinkling further down.) “Okay, or say that a dream is like a supermassive simulation with an aggressive autocorrect function. Those are the autocorrect. Correctors, I call them.”

“When things go wrong,” Amy added, “or off script like you said earlier…”

“Yeah, the correctors are the number one reason you don’t get lucid more often. They show up lots of times when you start noticing things are unusual, but especially if someone tries to tell you that you’re dreaming. They get real nasty then. And it’s not hard to keep you on track, they just swallow the evidence, literally.”

“Well I don’t remember seeing any dream characters like that before! It’s certainly not something to forget…”

“Of course not. When they destroy the evidence it’s like it never happened, including their sudden appearance. You just go on with the dream, maybe under new circumstances that you believe were always there. The mind adapts. And when all else fails, they’ll just eat you. Then you wake up and poof– it’s like it’s never happened.”

“So that’s why I don’t remember so many of my dreams?” A topic heavy on Amy’s mind as of late.

“Something like–

“Don’t even!”

“Sometimes.” He said instead, and began to lift higher and higher to the pull of his umbrella; Amy thought he looked more like Mary Poppins now than a handsome movie star (well I guess he could be both…) “And sometimes you just have really awful memory,” he added, and dodged a whizzing fireball or two. He swung the umbrella far away to avoid losing his fabric vehicle to Amy’s fiery retaliation– “Hey I’m flying here!”

“Fly away then, you’re no help!”

But before she could spray him with a barrage of fire and ice, a helicopter zoomed up from the parking lot and three more correctors leapt out, diving straight for the quarreling duo.