This Day’s Life (a 400-word story)

Every morning when I wake up I am a new person.

Only in my dreams do I remain me.

I know you're thinking that I simply got it backwards, but things happen in my dreams that are entirely nonsensical, which I remember in the morning. I just remember them as someone else.

Every day I try to solve this problem and I know it's driving me crazy.

Last night I dreamed I cheated on my wife of twenty-three years. I had spent three days of her week-long business trip at a young female co-worker’s house. This was two or more years ago, the timing was nondescript in the dream, but the guilt had burned for more than a couple years, since I had not yet told her.

This was the dream. When I woke up, I knew this wasn’t true. Especially since I wasn’t married in this day’s life.

And I know this particular dream doesn’t seem surreal, but too much in there makes no sense. My wife, yesterday’s daylife wife anyway, didn’t travel for business. And that was when my youngest child, yesterday’s day life’s youngest child, was still living at home, so it would be an impossible-to-hide ruse.

This morning I wake up excited. Larry’s mother makes the best breakfasts and Larry’s father was going to drive us, the self-proclaimed “four musketeers”, to Six Flags. None of my three friends were awake yet, but I could smell the bacon from the kitchen up the stairs.

My Mom doesn’t let us have bacon, so this was extra exciting to me. I had to make sure I had enough energy to make it through the day and keep up with my larger, more athletic friends. I pulled the sleeping bag back up to my neck and put my head back down on the pillow. A few more minutes’ sleep would be good, since, due to the excitement, I didn't get much sleep last night.

I closed my eyes, breathed in deep through my nose hoping the smell of bacon would lull me back to dreamland.

But something … someone? … told me that if I fell asleep again, I would miss the whole day.