I Killed Your Girlfriend In A Dream

I dreamed that your girlfriend died. And that it was my fault.

She and I were hanging out, like any old pals would, shootin’ the shit, and definitely not talking about how I once dated you for two years. (It turns out I’m very civil in dreams.) I think we were in Colorado, but who can really know—places twist and turn into new places while we dream; Colorado becomes Austin becomes new becomes old becomes stagnant.

It’s crazy to think that we were together for the same amount of time it’s been since we last fucked the morning I drove back to Austin with my grandfather. It was early—I was hung over, tired, and thirty-one hours into 23. My breath smelled like week-old peanut butter cupcakes and wine, but you insisted. I didn’t want to think it would be the last time I climbed on top of you, easily climaxing as you sat up against your hard, black headboard. It was the same headboard I banged my head on a few months prior when you thrust me off your dick, splooging in my belly button after only 30 seconds. I get it—no babies, but fuck, that hurt. For a while there, ever since I told you I was moving back to Austin, we couldn’t have sex for longer than a minute. Things got better once we stopped talking about it, though.

I’ve never come with anyone as easily as I did with you, but then again, you had the perfect dick—seven inches (I know because we measured it that one time with a ruler), thick, but not too thick, clean, pretty. I would tie a bow around it if I could and give it to myself as a present. “Dear Laura, I hope I give you many orgasms today, tomorrow, and every other day. Love, Your Perfect Dick.” I never was much of a romantic—that was always your territory.

I remember liking your girlfriend in my dream. I think I once heard her voice in a Facebook video and it soothed me in the way a friendly nurse who’s taking your blood pressure in a gynecologist’s office would. I still didn’t want to be there. Social media has a nasty way of crawling deep inside any nook and cranny of insecurity that you may have, slowly eating away at your feelings, and then blowing it up tenfold. Oh, were you having a beautiful day filled with excitement and the prospect of endless possibilities? Because a little pixelated box just told me that your ex is moving to an amazing new city with their new, amazingly talented girlfriend who can actually do a pushup, has a master’s degree in being the sweetest person in the world, and saves puppies out of burning volcanoes for a living. Fuck you, Facebook.

So, somewhere between Colorado, Austin, and my mind, she turned and with the utmost nonchalance told me that she was dead. I was talking to your dead fucking girlfriend in my dream. I mean, usually when I dream about zombies, I’m frantically running away, shooting wobbly bullets from my finger-guns (I never learned how to shoot a real one, OK?), somehow always managing to escape. But this was different. She sat calmly, at peace with being a dead person, and acting like it was no big thing that I had ultimately wished and caused her demise. How did it even happen?

I woke up. I hated how little time it took me to find her profile, but soon enough, there she was. You were there, too—scattered among messages and photos and heart eye emojis and trips to the coffee shop. Facebook, in all of its cat video glory, has become a digital graveyard for my past relationships, constantly reminding me of things I don’t do anymore, places I don’t visit anymore, people I don’t fuck anymore. I usually don’t let that shit get to me, but at this particular 4AM at this particular moment of self-deprecating addiction, I couldn’t help but get lost in the timeline of a stranger. I stared at your girlfriend and she stared back at me—still very much alive.