Rover.

My body is heavy as I wake up in a place I don't think I've ever seen before. It's unending darkness and I'm sitting on a chair as if I were a robot and someone had plugged me into an outlet to charge me up. The wires, I guess, in this case, represent the path that's laid out in front of me. It's straightforward until it's not, years upon years beat them up and cut them open to expose the electrical current to the world in the hope that maybe someone out there might notice that something isn't right anymore.

I blink my eyes, only once, and when I see the world around me once more I'm standing on sandy red dirt staring down at the boots on my feet. Metal clicks as I hear something lock in place and when I look up there's a man in a wide-brimmed hat pointing a revolver right at me about ten paces away. My heart quivers at the sight and for a second it feels like this might be it, this is where I die, but just as quickly I hear the same click, from somewhere else this time, and it's almost instantly followed by the fiery bang which sends a bullet right into the side of the man's head. I watch as blood flies onto the ground beside him.

Out from the side of a building, the girl appears. She's wearing a skirt that rests at the height of her ankles and her matching top is buttoned all the way up to her neck, it's worn quite a bit, but hanging from her right hand is another gun and she's walking towards me.

"I'm sorry about that," she says as she reaches me. "At least you being here woke me up from the dream."

I try to think of what to say, but I still feel completely lost.

"That guy was holding the town hostage and you showing up gave me my chance-" she goes on until I cut her off.

"We need to figure out what's going on, right now," I say.

The confidence my mysterious stranger had starts to dissolve as she looks around us. I hardly noticed the rest of the old wooden town that went up the street we just so happened to be standing on.

"What's wrong?" I question her erratic gazing.

"No- Nothing," she stutters, yet eventually goes on. "I'm just trying to make sense of all of this."

"But it's like you said, you knew that last night wouldn't be the last time this happened."

"I know," she tries to reassure me, "I wish I knew what to do about it."

"So, you don't want this to be real?" I ask her.

"No!" she answers, defending. "Of course, this is absolutely incredible. I just don't know how to react to all of this. You're Rover fucking Baxton. You scared the shit out of me yesterday, and I guess shooting the guy right in front of you and shoving you off the dock is kind of payback, but I'm kind of in awe that you are standing in front of me. I half expect this to be my brain tricking me and when I wake up this will only be another one of my dreams."

I take a step closer to her and she doesn't move away. Looking into her eyes I ask, "How do I prove it to you then?"

"You believe all of this?" she questions back.

I can't say for sure, but deep down I know there must be something bringing us together for a reason.

"I think so," I reply.

"Well-" she goes to say, but we're interrupted by the sound of glass shattering and a woman screaming from one of the buildings.

We both turn in the direction where the sound came from and I see a shattered window in the front of the convenience store. I don't hesitate as I run to assess the scene.

I slowly push the swinging door open and in the dim light, another rugged man has his left arm around a woman's neck and is holding her at gunpoint. The woman's skin grows pale as her hands shake in fear.

"Let her go," I tell the man.

He spits off to the side without breaking eye contact with me.

"Y'all ain't never going to understand partner," he says in a twangy voice.

"Partner?" I question his use of the word.

My friendly stranger comes rushing in right behind me.

"Sorry," she says, "that's my fault. I think I got a bit carried away with watching spaghetti westerns with my sister last night."

"So, we're in your dream tonight?" I ask her.

"I don't see any other explanation," she smirks.

"And, I don't disagree," I say as I turn back to the situation at hand. "Now," I tell the man, "just let the lady go, she's done you no harm."

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" he claps back. "This ain't my first rodeo."

As much as his voice is starting to annoy me, I know I can't just tackle the guy to the ground he would kill the woman before I could get to her.

I'm trying to think of what I can do, but again I hear a click and over my left shoulder the gun goes off leaving me with a ringing in my ear. The bullet misses the woman and lodges itself in the man's skull. The woman moves in the other direction stepping up against a cabinet as she tries to understand what just happened.

"What the hell?!" I turn to my revolver holding friend.

"If this is my dream," she tells me, "she was never in any danger. This is a lucid dream, thanks to you showing up, which means that I have complete control over everything."

"I'm not sure that will comfort her," I point to the woman who just keeps looking down at the now dead man who splattered blood onto her apron.

"Oh," she looks at the petrified woman, "I can fix that."

She walks by me to stand in front of the woman's field of vision, blocking her from the gruesomeness that she's witnessed. I watch her place her hand on the lady's cheek and she instantly seems to calm down, but it doesn't last long as embers start to float around in the air until they seem to consume her into nothing.

"What did you do?" I won't lie that I'm a bit scared.

"Rover," the girl says as she comes back to me, "she wasn't real, none of this place is. They're all figments of my imagination or people I must have known from high school. I'm not a witch if that's what you're thinking."

That last part makes me chuckle a bit. "I don't think you're a witch. This is just so new to me, I feel like I don't know what to say."

She looks away from me as if she's got some kind of shame she wants to hide. Her hands start to lose colour as I see her squeezing them in a clear attempt to distract herself.

"What is it?" I ask her.

Her face stays static as I can tell she doesn't want emotion to cloud her judgement, "Is it stupid that I prefer dreaming instead of actually being awake? Out there I'm a university student who will never leave the city I grew up in."

"There's nothing wrong with staying in one place," I tell her.

"But I don't want to," she says. "In here, I feel like I'm much more than I could ever be out there."

"I don't know what your life is like, but trust me when I say that it's not a life that I would ever wish upon anyone."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

I've never admitted this to anyone before, yet something inside me feels like it can't hold back from telling her. "I don't want to be the singer everyone expects me to be."

"Really?" her eyes seem to grow watery as I know I've just told her the one thing she didn't want to hear from someone she's followed since she was a teenager. My music must have meant something to her, but if she truly cares about me as a person, she needs to know that I don't want to do this for the rest of my life.

"It's been years since I've had the chance to stop and breath in some fresh air," I say. "I love music, it's my whole world, but nothing lasts forever and I can't keep going the way that I'm going."

She stays silent, but I can see her eyes dart from one place to the next like she's think something over and over, but then she takes a one step towards me and before she can talk herself out of it, she wraps her arms around me in a hug. It's nice, and I don't think I can remember the last time anyone has held me like this.

I return the hug as I ask her, "What's your name?"

"There's no use in you knowing," she says.

"But I want to," I tell her.

"Maybe one day," she replies.

I decide not to poke anymore at the idea, but I ask, "Will you send me a message?"

"A message? You mean out there?"

"Yeah," I say. "How else am I supposed to prove to you that I really am Rover?"

"How will you know it's me?" she questions.

"I'll know."