the dream

Her eyes fluttered open only to be greated with darkness. Her breathing was ragged and her oversized t-shirt stuck to her heaving chest with sweat. She blinked up at the cieling collecting her thoughts and wondering what had just happened.
With extreem effort she pushed her body into a sitting position and instinctivly reached for the box of camel lights and red lighter sitting on the box next to her. She crawled to the window, her still asleep body screaming in protest.
With shaking hands she flicked the lighter with a practiced right thumb and her lungs instantly filled with the nicotine that had reassured her since highschool.
The familliar action of sucking on the tip, breathing in the smoke, blowing it out and flicking the ash comforted her and calmed her as her brain struggled to remember the details.
These dreams had been happening more and more lately. They always required a cigarette to calm her down and had been inturupting her sleep throughout the hot and sticky summer.
Her bare legs instinctivly curled into her body and she laid her tired head upon her knees as she looked at the sleeping city below her.
She wasn't sure who the man had been in the dream. When she woke up she could never remember his face. He was someone she knew. Somone she knew well.
When asleep her mind had a way of combining them and making them into one person who tormented her dreams.
He was always gorgeous. He had a mix of their distinctive features. Sometimes he had that half smile of Raphe's that had always made her melt and sometimes the hard and tanned body of that Latin boy. Sometime's his touch felt like Jack's which made her shiver at the thought. He always had that cold and reserved aspect that they had all had.
None of them had fully let her in. They had all hid something while revealing more than they thought they were. She knew them all better then they even knew but yet didn't know anything about them at all.
This time it was the thought of Colin which had awoken her. She was sure of it. Colin's rough touch could not be mistaken even in a dream.
She struggled to block the memory of her feeble voice asking him to stop all of those months ago and his strong arms holding her back.
Tears pricked at her eyes as the block she normally put on her memory broke and she remembered the unfeeling look in Raphe's eyes when he had told her she was lying about that night.
Her mind jumped to the night when he had looked as though he didn't have a soul when he told her he didn't love her anymore.
She despretly sucked on her cigarette trying to make the memories go away back to the place where she kept them locked and safe.
The beautiful girl who had been in the dream with the big eyes, transluscent skin, and tiny frame she had looked as though she could easily be broken in half. However, it was from her that most of the evil in the dream had come.
Jamie had come back in the dream. This happened all the time. Every night she came back to plague the girl's unconcious mind and make her prescence known. Jamie was the figure in these dreams who made her feel the worse. She came into these scenes, beautiful everytime, and did and said things that painted the girls flaws in bright color for everyone to see.
As the details of the things Jamie had said came back in fresh detail the cigarette between her fingers began to shake and she she took a drag that she hopped would restore her.
She hated how at night her dreams broke through her carefully constructed barriers  and made her remember, made her think. Her heart started to beat faster. She had to block the memories before they consumed her and once again destroyed her.
She had sworn she wouldn't do this tonight but she needed to. 
The cigarette glowed red as the hot tip reached ever closer to her fingers. She flicked the remaining butt out the window and reached below her and closed her fingers around the bag.
Her fingers were so practiced that light was not necessary. She measured the correct amount using her thumb and forefinger to make the plant as small as possible. Back into her pack of camels she reached and extracted tobacco to fill the remaining space in the white paper below her.
With a flick of her fingers followed by her toung and the red lighter once agin her shaking fingers took the lit stick and brought them to her mouth.
She inhalled and the sticky weed turned to smoke. With every exhale her mind and body relaxed. The dream seemed to float away with every hit and suddenly her fingers were stilll. Her lids became heavy and a lazy smile spread to her lips.
Yes, this was better. Her thoughts drifted from the scary place and the protective barrier returned.
She wobbled as she got up for the window sill and caught a look at her bloodshot and puffy eyes in her mirror. Quickly she stripped off her sweaty shirt not bothering to replace it with a new one. She climbed back in between her now cool sheets and drifted into a dreamless sleep.