I don’t dream a whole lot. Or, well, I guess I probably do, because I think most people do every night, but I usually don’t remember the dreams all that much. Last night was different.

I was in a huge, black expanse. No walls, ceiling, or floors, just endless, eerily lit void. I’ve had dreams in darkness before, a recurring nightmare where a snake is chasing me and I can’t run fast enough to get away, but this felt different.

Nothing was chasing me. I was just standing, completely still, waiting for … something. I’ve never had such clarity of feeling before in a dream, outside of “run, oh god, run” and “please, let this be a dream and I’m not actually failing my junior year math final” but I just knew with absolute certainty that I was waiting for something. There was this strange, heavy breeze that kept moving across me, like it was trying to push me in one direction. But I couldn’t move my feet, I don’t think I was supposed to move my feet. And then, a light started to seep through a doorway, a doorway that wasn’t there before and it was growing brighter and brighter, humming with light, and the door was going to come to me when, all of a sudden, there was this terrible screech and I heard my sister’s voice say my name.

Then I woke up.

I know that there are some other Unusuals out there who had a similar experience to me when their telepathy first started. It’s different for each person, of course, but for me, it started with just a low, constant humming whenever I was around other people. I thought I had tinnitus or another hearing/neurological issue, but then the humming started to take shape. Now, when I do turn on the thought reading (which I promise I don’t do often, please don’t get on me about this, Chuck), it’s more like tuning a radio to the specific frequency of a thought train and then turning up the volume.

The sound in my dream reminded me so much of that early hum and then, that screech, like the first time I met another mind reader when I was at … well, you know. That Place that people like us go that we’re not supposed to refer to by name on here in case they found this sub and shut it down for “safety” reasons. When I was there for my initial training/Unusual-onboarding, I met another telepath and when we were in the same room for the first time, I got that screeching feedback. It calmed down pretty quickly, but I won’t ever forget that sound.