From a very early age Johnny knew he was different.  It wasn’t just the standard plight of the adolescent when all kids thought they were different.  Johnny knew he was different.

You see, Johnny didn't dream.

He woke up each morning and remembered dreams from the night before, but he never realized they weren't his own until others started talking about their dreams.

At first he thought it was mere coincidence.  They were influenced by the same events around them.  But as he talked to others about their dreams, there were far too many details that he remembered from his own that raised this phenomenon well beyond the realm of sheer coincidence.

Within a few months he realized there was not a single dream he had experienced that could not be told by someone else.

Throughout junior high and into his first year of high school Johnny read every book he could get his hands on about dream theory and interpretation.

But it wasn't until he ran across a website on lucid dreaming and something called dreamscaping did he finally realize what he was capable of.  Without even trying, Johnny was dreamscaping.  He was joining in other people’s dreams.

But he had no control and would move fluidly from one dream to another as if they are all parts of a single dream.

He spent that exceptionally cool summer between freshman and sophomore year learning how to control his gift.

It started out simple enough.  He taught himself how to see the dreams around him as separate entities.  Not soon after that he was able to enter and exit those dreams and even stay as long as he liked in a single dream.

It was not until he could control his actions while in a dream and become more than just an observer did things really get interesting.

But the day that changed his life forever was the day he entered the nightmare of a four-year-old boy who lived across the street.

Whatever it was that chased the boy through his nightmare was nothing more than a shapeless shadow that was relentless in its pursuit.

Johnny, fully aware he was in a dream and could do anything he wanted, took flight.  He swooped down and grabbed the boy.  As he lifted him up out of reach of the clutching tentacles of the shadow the boy let out a scream.

The dream instantly dissolved and Johnny bolted upright in his bed.  It was the first time he'd been forced awake since he had learned to control his actions within others’ dreams.

A tiny scream pierced the darkness of his room and Johnny darted to his bedroom window just in time to see the little boy run out of his front door across the street and into the middle of the road.

The overly bright illumination from the headlights of a speeding vehicle was the first to hit the boy.  The sound of rubber ripping itself from the tires as the brakes locked barely even slowed the overloaded pickup truck.

With his hands pressed against the glass of his upstairs window all Johnny could do was scream “Noooooo!” a moment before impact.

But that's all that was needed.

The truck vanished before ever hitting the little boy.

Johnny pressed his forehead against the cool surface of the window glass in utter amazement.  A quick reality check reminded him that trucks didn't just disappear in the real world, so he must still be inside that little boy's dream.

That he woke up from a dream only to still be inside a dream is not what amazed him.  It was the fact that he was able to alter the dream itself.

Johnny had made the truck disappear.

He had changed the outcome of someone else's dream.

All his research had shown that people could learn to realize they were in a dream and even spin a new dream.  But to be able to enter into someone else's dream, and then change that dream.

That was something new.

Johnny had been so lost in thought that when he finally refocused his eyes to look out the window he saw that the little boy was standing in the street staring up at him.

Smiling.

The next morning the local newspaper's front page told of the miraculous recovery of a four-year-old boy.  He had been in a coma for two months after having been hit by a truck and had inexplicably emerged from his coma last night.

Johnny stared in disbelief at the picture of the boy who lived across the street.

Johnny didn't know who had given him this miraculous gift.  Whether it was God or the fates, he really didn't care.  But he knew it had been given to him for a reason.

#

As Johnny pinned the article from his sixth successful coma patient recovery to his bedroom wall he smiled to himself.  The past year had been very rewarding even though no one else knew what he was doing.

Johnny settled into the oversized beanbag in the corner of his room and started his meditative breathing exercises.  His skill had increased and he was now able to enter someone else's dreams without having to first fall asleep himself.

It was time to find number seven.

#

Johnny inspected himself in the bathroom mirror paying close attention to the fading bruises on his neck.  It had taken him a little over a month to find coma patient number seven, but when he got there someone, or something, had found the patient first.

He shuddered as he relived the moment when the shadow creature wrapped his hands around Johnny's neck and pushed him forcibly out of the dream.

Johnny pulled his eyes away from his reflection and stared again at the obituary of patient number seven he had ripped haphazardly out of the newspaper.

He knew what he had to do.

He wouldn't let that thing take another one.