(Photo by meo)

Dreams were the only place Simeon felt truly comfortable. He always knew it was a dream and he could do whatever he liked. Most of the time that meant he spent his dreams going to foreign places and seeing the sights. He took a cruise into the arctic. He walked around the seven wonders. He even took a submarine to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. What he didn’t do in his dreams was fly, or have any sort of super power.

“But why not?” was the all too common question whenever the subject of dreams came up and people discovered he had such control over them.

“Because it’s not real,” was his usual response. He wanted to dream of things he might someday actually get to do and the dreams motivated him to pursue them.

Currently, Simeon was sitting in an outdoor cafe in Paris, enjoying the sunshine and sights of the bustling city. If he leaned back enough he could even see the Eiffel Tower. He didn’t speak French but the small phrase book he had with him was good enough to help him get by.

“Hey,” a clearly non-Parisian voice called out to him.

Simeon looked around but didn’t see anyone looking his way.

“Hey!” the voice came again, more insistent this time.

The edges of Simeon’s view began to fuzz and fade away as the illusion of sleep began to lift.

“I’m waking up,” he said through lips that felt far too heavy. “Gimme a sec.”

A short while later, he blinked and Paris was gone, replaced by his bedroom. In the open doorway to his room stood his roommate, Ben. He wore a broad grin on his face.

“What is it?” Simeon asked, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“You heard me, didn’t you?” Ben asked though it sounded more like a statement.

That gave Simeon reason to pause. The two of them had been roommates for a couple of years now and while they weren’t close friends, they had found that they didn’t mind one another as much as they did other roommates that they’d had in the past. Mostly they just each lived their own lives and stayed out of one another’s way. However, living with the same person for any extended amount of time meant that you got to notice certain things about each other that wouldn’t be apparent to most other people.

“Not this again,” Simeon groaned to himself. “What time is it anyway?”

“It’s a few minutes before six,” Ben said.

Simeon already had his cell phone in his hand and was checking the time himself. Sure enough, it was two minutes before six. Two minutes before his alarm was set to go off.

“Why’d you feel the need to wake me up two minutes early?” Simeon asked.

“You heard me,” was Ben’s only response.

“Thanks for the hearing check,” Simeon laid the sarcasm on heavily.

“Ah, but I didn’t say anything,” Ben said while wagging a finger. “I thought it at you.”

Simeon gave Ben a blank stare and rolled his eyes. “This again?”

“When are you going to believe me?” Ben asked.

“You’re not a psychic,” Simeon said.

“I know that. You’re the one who–

“Nope,” Simeon cut him off, getting out of bed and moving to push Ben out of his room so he could get ready for the day. “There’s no such thing and I need to get ready for work.”

Ben let Simeon alone after that. They each knew Ben was pushing his luck with his new fixation and after two years neither of them wanted to have to find a new roommate that didn’t drive them crazy.

“Sorry for waking you up early,” Ben’s voice was a bit sheepish as he spoke through the shut door. “I’ll handle the dishes today and clean the bathroom on Saturday.”

“Sounds good,” Simeon replied as he got dressed. “How was your date last night?”

“Eh, nothing amazing.”

“Going to ask her out again?”

“Probably not. I don’t think she was that interested. Kept looking at her phone and texting someone else.”

“Sorry, man.”

“It happens. On a cooler note, though, I’ve got something to show you.”

Ben’s voice was brightening now.

“What, you find some more hidden rooms in the old bio-labs building?”

Simeon knew Ben liked to poke around in the older buildings on campus to see if he could find lost rooms. He’d found a massive, soundproofed room with strange equipment set up for some unknown experiment last semester that even the dean didn’t know was there. From the look of it, no one had been in there in years.

As Simeon came out of his room, Ben was there with his phone out recording a video of their conversation.

“Here, take a look,” Ben said and held the phone out to him, ending the recording and having it immediately play back what he’d just recorded.

The video showed Ben’s face, repeating the conversation they’d just had.

“Sounds good,” Simeon’s voice was muffled coming through the door. “How was your date last night?”

“Eh, nothing amazing,” Ben said as his face took on a look of mischievous concentration.

“Going to ask her out again?”

Ben’s lips moved slightly but no sound came from him.

“Sorry, man,” Simeon replied a moment later.

Ben did a small and silent dance in the hallway before replying.

“It happens,” he said. “On a cooler note, though, I’ve got something to show you.”

“What, you find some more hidden rooms in the old bio-labs building?”

Ben took his phone back, his big grin back on his face.

“You’re not fooling me,” Simeon said. “All you had to do was mute the recording for that one bit.”

“Oh, come on! How can you not believe this is happening?”

“Easy. Now let me eat breakfast before you make me late to work.”

Ben knew better than to press his luck any further that morning but that didn’t mean Simeon stopped hearing him. From time to time Ben’s voice would carry across the apartment and Simeon would hear snippets of what he was saying. He’d asked Ben about it a couple weeks back since it seemed to be a new behavior of his that Simeon was less than excited about. Ben claimed he wasn’t talking out loud so Simeon tried to record it, only to find each of his recordings were silent. That was when Ben started his own experiments and, well, now he was waking Simeon up with his continued attempts at proving the hair brained theory he’d cooked up.

The only problem was that, although he didn’t believe in Ben’s theory, he also didn’t have a way to explain everything either because it wasn’t just Ben that he was beginning to hear.

“It might be psychosis or something,” Simeon said when Ben came into the kitchen to get himself his own breakfast.

“You’re not crazy,” Ben chuckled. “Believe me, I would have noticed.”

“No, really,” Simeon went on. “A lot of people don’t develop any symptoms until their early twenties.”

“What about me, though?”

“What about you?”

“I’m the one who’s voice you’re hearing, and I’m not crazy.”

“My brain could just be inventing all of this, or making it seem like this is how our conversations are going. Maybe you’re actually trying to convince me that I’m not actually hearing your voice and that it’s all in my head.”

“You going to go to the campus shrink, then?” Ben asked and making it sound like he thought doing so would be a stupid thing to do.

“I might, actually,” Simeon nodded slowly. “If I’m actually hearing voices then it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have it all checked out.”

Ben stared at him for a brief moment, then shook his head.

“And what about the other stuff?”

“Visual hallucinations are rare but not unheard of.”

“Dude, that wasn’t a hallucination! I saw–

“I can’t trust what you saw any more than what I saw since all of it could be made up in my head.”

“You caught that plate midair,” Ben stated. “I saw it. You saw it.”

Simeon was about to respond when he realized Ben hadn’t opened his mouth to say that last bit. Even so, Ben seemed to know that Simeon had heard him.

“You can go to that shrink,” Ben said finally, “but I think we both know there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re psychic or something.”

Simeon was beginning to lose his composure now. He really didn’t like how far this conversation had gone and he particularly didn’t like how convincing everything appeared to him. He wanted to find the inconsistencies, the pieces that would tell him it was all in his head, but so far everything was just too real.

Before he could second guess himself, he pulled out his phone and called his work.

“Hey, I need to use a sick day,” he said as soon as his manager picked up. “I should be better by tomorrow.”

He ended the call and immediately looked up the campus mental health center’s number and dialed it. All the while, Ben was in the kitchen making himself some pancakes and shooting him doubtful looks.

“Hi, um, I think I’ve been hearing things, uh, hearing voices.”

“Okay,” the calm, female voice on the other end of the line said, “are you okay right now? Do you need an ambulance or–

“No, I feel fine, it’s just the last few days I’ve been, uh, hearing voices. Like the people around me except they aren’t actually talking. Like I”m hearing their thoughts.”

“Can you come in today?” she asked.

“Yeah, I just called into work and I don’t have any classes today so I have the day off.”

“Well come on over and we’ll get you in with Dr. Roche. Bring your student ID and any insurance you might have.”

“Okay, thank you, bye.”

He hung up.

“Waste of time,” Ben said.

Simeon looked up to tell him to drop it when he realized Ben had already finished making his pancakes and had carried them out of the kitchen and into his room.

“Yup, hearing voices,” Simeon said to himself.

He put his dishes in the sink, brushed his teeth, and left the apartment. Hopefully this Dr Roche would be able to figure out what was going on.