What a strange dream, thought Jon. There was a nagging feeling that the dream should have made him uncomfortable but somehow that discomfort had vanished and he enjoyed the image of strange sex with strange Todd.
He glanced over at the clock. 4 AM. Of course, he had fallen asleep very early--he didn't go to bed at bedtime, after all, he had fallen asleep in the process of moving in. So it was natural; he'd wake up very early. Todd was in the other bed, asleep.
When he woke up, he also noticed something else. The headboard was six inches thick but there was something strange about it--a bit of the wood grain that wasn't quite right. Jon imagined old furniture with secret bottoms to the drawers and wondered if this was similar. With a bit of poking around he flexed a board just enough to reveal that a piece of wood slid back. Inside was an old piece of paper and a spool of wire.
The paper had a simple drawing or diagram, repeated in panels. The first panel showed two beds and a person sleeping on one. The beds were connected with a piece of wire. The next panel showed a thought balloon of the person in the big bed, imagining someone with long hair, and the panels after that showed the person in the other bed growing long hair.
The meaning was obvious: Connect the beds using the wire. Fall asleep in this bed and dream about the person in the other one. It will transform them.
Jon wasn't sure whether to believe it. On the other hand, the dream was very strange. He figured it couldn't hurt, anyway, and hooked a piece of wire to both beds. Then he tried to fall asleep again, thinking of the dream.
