[QCrit] Adult Contemporary Fantasy, A DOG'S DREAM AND A BROKEN PROPHECY, 91k, 3rd Attempt

Thank you to Agreeable_Result1396 and LorainJ for their feedback! Thank you to anyone who takes a look.

I am pleased to submit for your consideration A DOG’S DREAM AND A BROKEN PROPHECY, a 91k contemporary fantasy that combines the irreverent absurdity of John Scalzi’s Starter Villain with the genre-bending heart of Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, centered on a man whose bond with his dog may matter more than the prophecy demanding he save reality.

Twenty-something Carl Jefferson has spent his life feeling weak. His abusive father taught him that weakness makes a man unloveable, while his mother’s early-onset dementia showed him how the universe rewards altruism. Meanwhile, Carl’s “dream spills” keep dropping him into other lives he can’t explain. His one certainty is Lily, the dog his mother brought home after his father left. Lily loved him in all his weakness and stayed through every failure. She is proof that his father was wrong.

Then a pack of drunken, incompetent “greater spirits” announces that Carl is trapped in a prophecy. They rewrite his name to Jeff, dump one hundred million dollars in his bank account, and teleport him half-dressed to Peru. To get home to Lily, Jeff must follow the Weave—the cosmic script holding reality together—through lethal trials. Visions of Lily guide him through impossible landscapes, and he’s rewarded with the time-knife, an ostentatious blade that can freeze time.

The spirits order Jeff to “correct” corrupt billionaires without disturbing the Weave. Instead, newly intoxicated by power and desperate to prove he can be strong, Jeff terrorizes two tycoons and improvises a change the spirits explicitly forbade, causing reality to fray. His next assignment lands him inside a Saudi billionaire’s secret hunting preserve, where he frees imprisoned Australian operative Jack Blaster, only for both men to be captured, tortured, and trapped in a prison where time moves wrong.

As nearly a year passes at home, Lily keeps waiting for him. Jeff’s dream spills reveal an ancient Weak Child whose plan to destroy creation was stopped by the unconditional love of the celestial All-Dog. Jeff and Jack escape prison, but never find safety. When they’re trapped in an abandoned building with bullets flying, Lily miraculously appears to jolt Jeff out of surrender before disappearing. He reclaims the time-knife and survives, only to arrive in a Colorado city that has been torn from the earth. A new terror materializes as even the drunken spirits realize the prophecy is no longer controlling what happens next.