The first sign that my brain had finally surrendered to the stress of a forty-hour work week was the toothbrush.
I stood over the bathroom sink, my eyes half-glued shut, reaching for my electric toothbrush. It's one of those fancy midnight-blue ones that vibrates with the intensity of a chainsaw. I felt the familiar weight in my hand, but as I lifted it, my wrist buckled. It felt like I was lifting a dumbbell.
I blinked, cleared the sleep from my vision, and stared.
I wasn't holding one toothbrush. I was holding two. They were joined at the base, fused together like plastic Siamese twins, before one of them suddenly... slid away. It didn't fall. It just detached and hovered for a fraction of a second before settling onto the counter.
"Right," I whispered to the mirror. "Lucid dreaming. Step one: try to fly."
I flapped my left arm experimentally. I remained firmly planted on the bathmat.
"Okay, no flight. Step two: realize I'm probably having a stroke."
I poked the second toothbrush. It felt real. Cold. A bit lighter than the original, maybe? I picked it up, and a strange, static-like tingle surged through my palm—a sensation like my hand was falling asleep, but with a caffeinated pulse.
Pop.
A third toothbrush appeared.
"Ha! Brilliant," I laughed, a sound that bordered on manic. "I'm still asleep. My subconscious is clearly obsessed with dental hygiene. In a minute, a giant talking hamster will walk in and demand I file my taxes."
I decided to lean into the dream-logic. If my brain wanted to play games, I'd play. I marched into the kitchen, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
"Coffee," I told the empty room. "Coffee fixes the brain-fog."
I grabbed a slice of sourdough. As I pulled it from the bag, that tingle returned, humming up my arm. I squeezed the bread. Hard.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Sourdough slices began to cascade from my fist like a deck of cards dealt by a professional magician. Within ten seconds, I was standing knee-deep in artisanal grains.
"I am the god of wheat!" I shouted, tossing a handful of bread into the air. "I am the baker's ultimate nightmare!"
I grabbed the three original-looking slices and shoved them into my two-slot toaster. I was grinning, waiting for the dream to shift—waiting for the bread to turn into gold or for the toaster to start reciting Shakespeare.
But then, the color started to drain. Not from the kitchen, but from the bread.
The extra slices on the floor didn't just sit there. They began to turn translucent. They looked like low-resolution holograms of toast. One by one, they shimmered and simply... evaporated. No smoke, no sound. Just a faint ripple in the air, leaving the floor perfectly clean.
The two extra slices I'd jammed into the toaster vanished next, leaving only my one, original piece of sourdough sitting lonely in the heating slot.
My laughter died in my throat. The "extra" toothbrush in the bathroom had probably vanished, too.
"Okay, Artie, think," I muttered. "In dreams, you can't feel pain. That's the rule."
I reached for a fridge magnet—a small, plastic lobster from a Maine vacation. I gripped it, focused all my energy on that 'tingle' in my hand, and watched as a second lobster budded off the side. It felt solid. Heavy.
I took the new lobster and pinched the sensitive skin of my forearm with its tiny plastic claw.
"OW! Son of a—!"
I jumped, tripped over my own feet, and fell backward. My hand instinctively reached out to catch myself on the kitchen table. The tingle didn't just hum this time; it roared. It felt like my arm was being pulled through a straw.
CRACK.
The table didn't break. Instead, the air warped. Where there had been one sturdy oak table, there was now a second one, perfectly identical, shoved right next to it. The sudden shift in mass caused the floorboards to groan in genuine, non-dream agony.
I scrambled back, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I waited for the table to vanish. I waited for it to turn into a hologram and flicker away like the bread.
One minute passed. Two. Five.
The table stayed. It was dense, real, and currently blocking my path to the refrigerator.
I looked at my hands. They were shaking. I wasn't dreaming, and I wasn't a god. I was a human photocopier who had just doubled the weight of his dining room furniture, and I had absolutely no idea how to hit the 'delete' key.