Ramses awoke with a start, sweat clinging to his back and neck, breath coming in short, desperate bursts. The rooftop garden above him was still. The wind blew gently through the mint leaves. The stars hung heavy above, unblinking, uncaring. And yet his heart pounded as if he'd just sprinted through fire.
He had dreamed of someone.
Not just a fleeting face or vague silhouette—no. It was her.
Leah.
Her laugh. Her crooked smile. The way she would tuck her hair behind one ear when she was nervous. It was so real he could still smell the lavender lotion she used. He hadn't seen her in years before the freeze. She had been a college friend. Maybe more. But life had scattered them apart like autumn leaves.
In the dream, she'd been sitting beside him on a bench, their shoulders touching. She'd leaned over and whispered, "You're not alone, Ramses. You never were."
Then she vanished.
He ran his hands over his face and sat up slowly, knees pulled to his chest. His mind churned. This wasn't the first dream. Over the past few days, they had begun to happen more often—old friends, old places, old conversations. Sometimes they were loving, other times terrifying. But always real.
Painfully real.
That morning, he wandered through the city with a different energy—uncertain, unsettled. Buildings towered around him, silent sentinels. Cars remained frozen mid-turn, traffic lights stuck in endless red.
But his mind wasn't here.
He was back in a high school classroom, hearing his math teacher's sharp bark. He was at a family dinner table, his mom scolding him gently for eating too fast. He was laughing with his brother in a parking lot at midnight.
Were these just memories resurfacing? Hallucinations? Or something else?
The longer this solitude stretched, the harder it became to tell the difference between memory and fantasy.
That night, the dreams deepened.
He saw his father.
A man with calloused hands, tired eyes, and a quiet strength that Ramses had always admired—but never fully understood. In the dream, they sat together on the old porch of Ramses' childhood home. The air smelled like woodsmoke and jasmine.
His father looked at him, full of warmth, and said, "I'm proud of you, son."
Ramses felt a sob tear through his chest. "Are you real?"
His father only smiled. "Does it matter?"
When he woke up, tears stained the corner of his pillow. He stared at the ceiling for a long time, unable to move. He hadn't spoken to his father in years—not out of anger, just distance. Life. Time.
And now, when there was no one else, the people he once pushed to the edges of his life were returning—not in the flesh, but in dreams. In whispers.
Ramses began keeping a second journal, separate from the one where he recorded growth and goals. This one was for them—the people who visited in sleep.
He wrote down everything he could remember: words spoken, gestures, clothes, even the scents. Some pages were full of warmth, some regret. Some entries made him smile. Others left him trembling.
One night, he dreamed of an ex-girlfriend—Camille.
They hadn't ended on bad terms, just mutual silence. In the dream, they danced in a crowded room filled with moving people—moving. It was the first time Ramses had seen the world alive again.
"I missed this," he'd said.
Camille had looked at him and asked, "Then why did you stop reaching out?"
He woke up with her question echoing in his bones.
Why hadn't he reached out to the people who mattered?
Why had it taken the end of the world for him to want to reconnect?
These phantom connections began to bleed into his waking hours.
Walking through the park, he sometimes felt someone beside him. He'd turn quickly, but there would be no one.
While playing piano, he'd hear a second note—slightly off-key—like someone playing along.
While painting, he'd hear faint laughter.
Was it madness? Hope? Or something his mind had created to cope with endless isolation?
He didn't know.
All he knew was that these dreams, these whispers, were shifting something deep inside him. Pulling him back toward connection. Toward people—even if they were only echoes.
One afternoon, while cleaning out an old library, Ramses found a Polaroid camera.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, flipping through a book of poetry, when the thought came: What if I started documenting this part of my journey—not for me, but for them?
The dreams weren't just dreams anymore. They were messages.
Not necessarily from the people themselves, but from his memory of them. From the part of him that still loved them, feared them, missed them.
He began a new project: portraits of silence.
He'd set up the camera in places where he'd once spent time with others—a café table, a bus stop, a concert stage—and take a photo with one empty seat next to him. Then, he'd journal what he remembered about the person who once sat there.
Each photo became a kind of offering. A conversation. A confession.
And slowly, the line between memory and imagination stopped mattering.
What mattered was that he still felt them.
One night, he dreamed of his mother.
She stood in a kitchen that glowed with light, humming a song he hadn't heard since childhood. She turned to him and held out a bowl of soup.
"You always worked so hard to prove yourself," she said, smiling. "But you were already enough."
He woke up sobbing, the kind of cry that came from a place deeper than thought—from the soul.
That day, Ramses cooked her recipe from memory. He sat at the table, placed a second bowl across from him, and whispered, "Thank you."
He didn't care if it made him look crazy. It made him feel whole.
Journal Entry:
"I don't know if the people in my dreams are real. I don't know if they're spirits or memories or just figments of a lonely mind. But they remind me of who I was. Who I loved. Who I lost. And in a way, they're keeping me human. I think the soul remembers more than we give it credit for. Maybe these dreams aren't hallucinations. Maybe they're bridges."
The city was still frozen. The world still silent.
But Ramses was no longer truly alone.
Every night, he crossed the threshold into dreams, where voices waited.
Some familiar. Some forgotten.
But all of them reminding him that connection didn't need to be physical. That love lived in memory, in hope, in imagination.
And in a world standing still, Ramses walked through the echoes—carrying them forward, one heartbeat at a time.