Story synopsis of a deconstructed supernatural-romance. Thoughts, suggestions, criticisms?

The story follows a girl Ashlin in her senior-year who lives an uneventful and gloomy life. In school she keeps up with mediocre grades and tends to avoid social situations and talking to people wherever—being involved in conversations is too draining for her. At home, she has a difficult relationship with her mother after her father's death. They don't argue much but are more disconnected to each other than anything, almost to an estranged degree.

One day she comes home alone from school, particularly exhausted that day. Right after closing the door she curls up on the couch and passes out. She "wakes up" to find herself in a fenced-in park and across from her sitting on another bench is a girl, about her age. She stands to go talk to her and while walking notices she feels oddly light, like a surge of energy woke her body up. Through conversation she finds out her name is Heather. Ashlin is still puzzled as to where they are, who she is, and more but as they talk those questions slip her mind. She strangely doesn't feel uneasy in the environment and actually feels much better there than in the "real world". Ashlin discovers she enjoys talking to her unlike most people. Their conversation continues until her mother wakes her up and tells her to go to her own bed and sleep.

From that point onwards whenever Ashlin went to sleep she would encounter Heather in her dreams. Eventually she becomes a skilled lucid dreamer and going to sleep feels like entering a second reality, much happier than her own. Her relationship with Heather deepens to a point where she considers it serious, despite it only existing in a dream. By this point she realizes she has literally found her "dream soulmate".

Ashlin becomes more eager to go to sleep more frequently and for longer periods at a time. Her late-night browsing at 2:00 AM has been replaced by self-imposed 7 o'clock bedtimes she didn't have since she 8. On weekends she's especially self-indulgent and spends nearly the entire time asleep. Nights where she has to stay up extra late for assignments stop mattering as she let due dates pass her by.

However, despite how much Heather and her dreams make her happy, her reality is still depressing, and in fact gets worse. Her sleeping creeps into other factors of her life, affecting her grades, health and straining her relationship with her mother. Heather becomes Ashlin's only escape from life and allows her happiness, even if only in the dreams. She makes an effort to drink chamomile tea and eat only foods that ease her into slumber if her body won't allow her to rest anymore. In severe cases she ravages the medicine cabinets for sleeping pills, cough syrups and other sedatives—anything that will force her into sleep. Even those measures soon become habitual as she abuses the medication regularly. This cycle continues to grow deeper and worsen overtime.

It builds up to the point where her mother can't bear it anymore and takes her to the doctor. Ashlin is diagnosed with depression and prescribed anti-depressants. Her mother cleans all shelves of sleeping meds and keeps a watchful eye on her. On the first night of this drastic change, Ashlin is horrified to find out that no matter how hard she tries, she cannot fall asleep. As a result of the bounce-back withdrawal, Ashlin's afflicted with severe insomnia. Suspecting the antidepressants to also be a cause for her insomnia, she finds ways to avoid taking them. Even if she is depressed, Ashlin thinks nothing less than being able to see Heather again can fix that.

The cycle culminates to the climax where Ashlin is walking down the sidewalk. She's tired and out of energy, forced to face the consequences of reality: the ever growing divide between her and her mother, her unrecoverable grades, stress of school in general—and now unable to dream, no one to turn to, etc.. She's at a lower point than before she even started having the dreams. Caught in a vulnerable moment, she rationalizes that death is better than no sleep and throws herself in front of a car.

The ending reveals she's alive but in a comatose state. The mother alone with the nurse asks her all she knows about Ashlin's condition. The nurse tells her she's in a normal, stable state but one strange thing she noticed was increased brain activity. The nurse also points to Ashlin's mouth and swears that she can see the faintest smile. Inside her mind, Ashlin is shown to be back together with Heather as they walk off towards a winding path.

—Side stuff: One of the goals I'm looking to achieve was writing concerning/creepy consequences into a seemingly sweet and almost cliche premise. Originally, I focused only on this concept but as time went on I realized the underlying themes of addiction and possibly an allegory Heather is for that. Another goal was to purposely leave a somewhat vague, ambiguous ending. Vague in how it's never revealed if she wakes up, dies, or the plug is pulled on her. Ambiguous in whether you can call it a "good" or "bad" ending depending on the circumstance. It's also intended to be somewhat short, since for the story I don't find it too important to focus a lot on why Heather exists nor anything beyond that since it would take away from the sentimentality in not knowing—in the case that she was revealed to be "some person communicating with Ashlin through the multiverse" or something like that. Also, 24 chapters of "Ashlin likes to sleep" would be pretty repetitive.

Thank you so much for reading through this long-winded post. Anything you guys would like to add—opinions, criticisms, all that—would be awesome.

edited 2nd Mar '17 12:40:57 AM by SkullySnot

It sounds like a good story, altough not really my cup of tea when it comes to stories. It is an really interesting story nevertheless with all its ambigiousnes.

One detail, Ashlin ought to be quite bit suspicious of Heather and the dream-world, at least initially. I do not mean that Ashlin would only be a bit suspicious in the begining of the first "dream", only to loose her fears a few minutes into their chat. I mean instead that Ashlin ought to be pretty suspicious about what's going on and why. After all, every time she fall asleep will she have increadibly realistic dreams where she allways meet the same person in the same place. Heather ought to be equally as suspicious if she is an real person.

Ashlin and Heather might become friends, but it should take some time, and they should try to figure out what the #£!! is going on.

There ought to be a lot of different suggestions trough the story, both good, evil and neutral, for who, or what Heather might be.