Life is a
dream, dreaming of your life
Genre & Author: A work of modern
Sydney fiction by Tobias Nixon
Warning: Novel contains use of profanities (swearing); 1337 words & TLAs
Rating: MA 15+
Warning: Novel contains use of profanities (swearing); 1337 words & TLAs
Rating: MA 15+
Act 1: The house of bits n’ pieces
Scene 1: A taste of the future
Life is a dream,
dreaming of your life.
Half asleep, moments earlier, that single sentence had held
so much truth. Now though it was like just another piece of cheap logic. Such a
richness and sense of purpose bereft of the sense of urgency and truth for
which my dream world empowered it.
I drowsily half roll over in bed. From my right eye I see yesterday’s
dead tree copy of SMH* lying crumpled on the floor, a photo of a crazed killer,
some guy the paper has labelled the city basher. The waking world is full of vileness;
I close my sleepy mind to it and think back to the dream.
A simple statement, a statement of life. My life. The life
of one introvert corporate programmer, Thomas Daniels. The one that happens whenever
I closed my eyes. The world so real and yet so imagined. A life without a life.
Truth takes its hand at the wheels of justice, but the law of life precludes
fools and cheats.
My imagination is my enemy. I love it so when I am asleep,
wrapped tightly within my dreams, yet blame my constant state of inertia on it when
waking to this “real world” every morn. The dreaming is so complete, mostly I
am in complete control, it is better in every respect I know.
Slow tender moments shattered. Bleak thoughts that will not
end. The snow of blissful ignorance, more often brought on by external
dependencies on drugs of choice and addiction. My world melts each night, a
place within a place for which I am reborn. I think back to the images of
collateral damage that linger. Chunks of dream rise bubbling from my shadow
mind.
A charnel house. A narrow corridor, forced ever onwards to
the end. To a sharp right corner. To a list of bins full of blood and horror.
The room of missing limbs, a place for all the ghosts that never felt peace in
death. Victims of war, victims of tragedy and natural destruction. The morbid scene
is truly graphic. Each bin is teaming with an endless array of arms, legs,
heads, and torsos.
The walls are red with a splash of white specks here and
there. I can hardly clamber past these tall overflowing bins, but that’s what I
do. To get to the end. The chopping table is a thing to disturb the mind with
f3ar. Horrible scythe like blades are set at regular intervals along its surface.
A power saw retracts within the wall at the far end of the table. Always the
palatable sense of urgency and fear that they
will return at any moment.
I am safe from the murderers that feed this place, it’s place within this reality only exists so long as the human scum feed it’s rubbish bins. No the things I fear are the keepers of this place. The bonders that live out of our reality but within it. There single dream sense is attuned to the smell of fear. Like sharks in a bay of blood, these creatures pack feed on those lost or drowned souls that of accident or wit end up within these lonely corridors. The smell of f3ar pervades each pool of shadow. Yet despite the environment you can NEVER show an ounce of the stuff.
I am safe from the murderers that feed this place, it’s place within this reality only exists so long as the human scum feed it’s rubbish bins. No the things I fear are the keepers of this place. The bonders that live out of our reality but within it. There single dream sense is attuned to the smell of fear. Like sharks in a bay of blood, these creatures pack feed on those lost or drowned souls that of accident or wit end up within these lonely corridors. The smell of f3ar pervades each pool of shadow. Yet despite the environment you can NEVER show an ounce of the stuff.
I am not innocent. I do not come here, through some accident
of imagination, or perhaps a stray spoke in the wheel of fate. One day it
occurred to me that if some ghosts were bound to places; houses, graveyards or
shipwrecks, perhaps some ghosts were bound within their own long dead dreams.
So I imagined a place like that. That night was the first time I saw the
charnel house within the realm of my dreams.
You will never see a human get chopped up in there. A fact
that should disturb you. How do they get there? Maybe you have inferred it from
what I have told you already, the living dead appear here whenever someone dies
in circumstances of the most horrific destruction. Plane and car crashes, train
and boat wrecks, war, assassination, genocide, earthquake, tsunami are all a
small subset of the completely valid ways you may take to end up here. But only
if you don’t want to let go.
Apart from never showing f3ar I had previously learnt the
symbol name of the shadow scourge. Unable to vocalise it (even had I known the
ancient tongue) I was however prepared to form it into a large burning symbol
that with practise I could hurl at the things whenever they arrived. It was
this symbol that kept me safe. It was the only thing they would not approach.
I had found it on a strange stone cube, soon after stumbling
into this place on my first visit. By accident I’d opened a door with a
person’s name scrawled and hacked with a fresh coat of blood into the door. The
name was written in modern Japanese kanji. I didn’t know Japanese but within
the dreaming that didn’t matter. Just tap the global dark pool of latent
subconscious talents. The language was in current use so the name conversion
was instantaneous.
Kenji Harido. Japanese central banker. Doyen of currency
appreciation. Victim of extortion. Noble warrior. Pride before dishonour. Where
blackmail fails death entails. Yakuza sword strokes decorated his otherwise
pristine naked ghost body as it lay on a large grey stone cube. It was the far side where the burning symbol
was written. All the other sides I would later discover contained things
relating to the victim. One side was this place (the underside); the four
“naked sides” told his story: his lifetime achievements, his disappointments,
his name and other personal details, and the way he died. The top was for the
victim. The back was for the collector. It was always the same.
Kenji was reported dead twenty four hours later, in the
exact way expressed on the stone cube. A proponent of banking reforms his death
sent a clear message to others trying to dismantle the centuries old corruption
endemic within Japanese financial markets. The only message that made sense to
me was someone had died in the same excruciating way I’d already witnessed.
Why were my dreams bringing me back to this place? It wasn’t
a place I wanted to visit very often. The images stayed with you for days
afterwards. The place was just too graphic. As I lay now in bed I remembered.
More shadow scourge than I’d seen. A new door coated in fresh blood, but the
name not yet scrawled. The scourge were preparing for a feast.
Tomorrow night would be the only chance to find out whoever
was due for the cold slab. I had to go back there, damn. First I had to get to
work. Jumping out of bed I started a day that would end like any other.
Scene 2: To find a killer
Another dream, another night. The coldness in the room was
not from some imaginary wind, but rather the chill that forms inside you when shit gets too real for
your rationality to control. Logic dictated that I run and never come
back. Logic be damned, if there was a
life to save then I would do it. I dreamed of the house of bits n’ pieces once
more.
Drifting through rooms, down corridors so narrow I felt I
should have to squeeze through. Looking for a door, freshly marked. Where was
the kill room? I looked around the hallway I was in, a ghost suddenly went
screaming past me, a human like cry of unholy pain. No doubt looking for the
exit I thought... sadness descended upon me, for there was nothing that could
be done for that one.
Let me tell you a story about being a ghost. Ghosts don’t
like to let go. Ghosts are only ghosts because they want to be. Huh? Who’d want
to be a disembodied entity forever doomed to traverse the waking world as a
wrath of fantasy. To watch as your world era is transformed, unable to help, the
ones you left, left to perish, knowing that you are trapped and that they are
already within the grasp of golden wonder, what some fools call paradise.
Ghosts are ghosts because they can’t let go. All humanity is
bombarded with one simple lesson, made complex by our natures and the incurable
condition of never learning from it until it’s far, far too late. Ghosts are
ghosts that were humans once. The great lesson of humanity is that stimuli
arise, muddy the mind with emotional attachment and must then be released. At
least that’s what is supposed to happen. Almost immediately upon growing up,
the human mind muddies itself with attachments and thoughts, emotions and the
general chains that make up humanities shittiness are not released. Like ever.
It just builds up.
Surprisingly while life deals almost every human being a
crippling blow that they are too ignorant to learn from, too stupid to do
anything about; when presented with their death, an entirely new experience
un-muddied by their minds web, the vast majority pass uneventfully into it’s
gaping black maw.
The only light I
have ever heard of from the few ghosts that talk is the one given off by the
soul reaper. It is visible so you don’t run into it by mistake presumably, if
your some higher level state of entity capable of riding the inter-dimensional
lines that run in a mobius strip beyond the edges of time.
And how do you escape these narrow suffocating corridors if
you ever trip within its bounds? What to do with the cursed shadow scourge that
haunt it’s walls? If they catch you they will kill you for real. Being human
there is no defence against them.
They are bilateral extensions within the dream realm of big
grim himself. Humanities death ripping in early. A few sharpened teeth from the
black maw that grew a bit longer than the rest. Those teeth are not waiting
after death, the mouth is just the front door to the realm beyond. Perhaps.
So that is the first chunk. A place of pain and torture,
built from emotions that have no place left within our reality to go. Perhaps
the original house was pulled down, maybe the war field has been reshaped with
concrete. Whatever. If you’re a ghost that’s not stuck to something on earth
your headed here. Built from souls whose destruction lingers. Defended by the
shadow scourge. A place to visit the day you are sure you wish to die. Your
friends or family will find you... later.
A sleeper who never wakes. A mind that drifts in a sea of fear, thoughts mere plankton for the shadow feast. In these days of life support what was probably intended to only be some minutes of misery, is variously lengthened to hours, days, weeks or even decades of the most indescribable mental torture known to man. Pray then that you’re well meaning family pull the plug on your harmless comatose body. Cos’ peaceful it ain’t. Scraping each thought from your brain. Taking it, repurposing it, changing it, and adding every sick, Freddy Krueger-esque fantasy you can’t try to imagine into it. Thoughts and emotions mere paint dye for a tapestry so vile, the devil has several on pre-order for his new residence. Of course that is a joke, there is no devil. Only a gaping maw that devours the life force lent out to you from the start.
A sleeper who never wakes. A mind that drifts in a sea of fear, thoughts mere plankton for the shadow feast. In these days of life support what was probably intended to only be some minutes of misery, is variously lengthened to hours, days, weeks or even decades of the most indescribable mental torture known to man. Pray then that you’re well meaning family pull the plug on your harmless comatose body. Cos’ peaceful it ain’t. Scraping each thought from your brain. Taking it, repurposing it, changing it, and adding every sick, Freddy Krueger-esque fantasy you can’t try to imagine into it. Thoughts and emotions mere paint dye for a tapestry so vile, the devil has several on pre-order for his new residence. Of course that is a joke, there is no devil. Only a gaping maw that devours the life force lent out to you from the start.
So that is the second bit; the sick twisted nature of the
place. A place made to create in a way that is completely beyond the typical
understanding of energy dependant organic beings; a complex tapestry of
suffering which the shadow scourge can use as a source of food. Food made from
the rarefied and disparate energies that exist between life and death.
Back to the dream last night. It had been strange for two
reasons. The dream had a room with a stone cube. The writing was in English,
not unusual in of itself, except that the cubes surfaces spoke of a young
Aussie, a brilliant musician slain by a serial killer in Sydney’s CBD. I kept thinking
back, scribbling madly on my pad. Basically writing down anything I could still
remember.
Finally exhausted by journaling my recollection of the dream
I get out of bed and head off to work.
As I sit down at my desk in the fishbowl, the IT hub of Techred, Coutil and Banks’ martin place
offices, I fire up the browser and check the news. Sure enough the breaking
news section is covering a story about a missing world class musician, by the
name of Samuel Matthews. The information on the cube matched! The poor man had
by my limited understanding of how the cubes worked probably no more than ten
or twelve hours remaining on this earth.
Could he be saved? Where the hell was he? There had been
more on the stone. Vital clues if I could only use them somehow.
His death was preceded by a long drawn out torture of peak
brutality. Given the length of time the killer would need a house. Hmmm that
didn’t exactly narrow things down. The stone tableau had spoken of achievements.
Oddly the last one had been a private performance of the entire Ring cycle to a
single individual, it even stated that this had been Samuel’s greatest ever
rendition. The man’s name was Frank Siccalori.
So, Samuel gave his greatest performance, less than twenty
four hours before he died. By which point he was already missing. Hadn’t there
been reports recently of a serial killer in Europe that had already wacked
several leading performers? The press were calling him the Virtuoso killer. Could
this be the Virtuoso killer? A globe trotting serial killer targeting the
artistic elite of our society. Social terrorism, bizarrely by someone that
apparently appreciated much of the beauty of a virtuoso.
All I had was a name. A name that had to be stopped. Faceless
in a sea of madness. His reign of terror in absolute terms, mean more than
mine. One life for a hundred. The killer was going exponential. Choice was just
the fear of a lesser man. It was time to turn to my other talent. Time to do a
spot of hacking.
Scene 3: Search & Rescue
I woke from the dream in a sweat. Beads of salty water
trickled down the contour of my chin, down my neck and onto my chest. I had a
hardened mind, trained by long hours of mediation. Right now a solid line of
fear vibrated like a galactic constant in the background. I’d been out for only
five minutes, but it had felt like an eternity.
The words that escaped my lips were unconscious, “No!! Don’t
kill him.”
The dream had been a vibrant re-run of what would happen if
I didn’t find Samuel Matthews. His body lay shattered on a stone tableau. His corpse
had been cut so many times that the parts lay in ruin. A room soaked in blood.
Nightmares like this reflected eerily against the sobering wall that was my
current emotional state of mind.
My face was mashed against a dell keyboard in need of a good
clean. The view of the desk was too close. I pulled back as my vision slowly
returned to normal. Ever so slowly the blurred outline of the LCD monitor
emerged from the square of light. My minds language centre switched to code.
I’d been running a couple of hacking programs non-stop from
my workstation for the last five hours. As the last of the analysis programs
had swung into action, there output was screaming down the screen matrix style
- I had modified the source code to do this, purely as it looked rather cool.
I had taken a quick power nap. I shouldn’t have. Replays in
your head of what would happen were unneeded motivation.
A quick message to a virtual friend and I had the
confirmation of a certain Mr Siccalori arriving weeks earlier in Sydney. On
this occasion my friend assured me, the immigration database apparently had
yielded no further secrets.
After several traces, I located a dormant Trojan virus lying
asleep within the Telstra network. Cracking its protection was a piece of cake.
The author hadn’t even changed the core source code released to the net. Fire
and forget by a script kiddie with more luck than sense? No matter it was an
asset ready to exploit. Activating it, I injected a self-destruct-on-completion
routine into its core assembly; I then set it the task of searching the
directory records for any instance of the name.
Sure enough the name came up exactly once, on an ISP
pre-paid wireless package. No address, no fixed IP to trace back from the
exchange. But I had the source IP last used to connect, not more than twenty
minutes ago.
With luck the murderer would still be online. Ping command. IP
reachable. This meant the IP address was active, his machine was on. Next came
the less certain part of the venture. Opening up a remote shell session,
executing the password cracking tool; I literally had no idea how long it would
take to brute force my way into this son of a bitch’s machine. For all I knew I
could be one attempt away and he could power down his machine. This was where
the bulk of the time today had been spent. Watching columns of failed attempts.
The process could be accelerated if you knew which words or
numbers the person liked. Luckily it appeared that the killer was still on
Windows XP, an older operating system, for which I had the necessary rainbow
tables required to drastically speed up the process. The rainbow tables
contained pre computed hashes of different passwords. The hashes could be used
to recognise patterns in the encrypted value on the disk.
It was as I awoke from the dream that I had a thought about
password cracking. Hoping the dream of Samuel was not just coincidence, I added
his full name to the search algorithm. The user had been online for over two
hours, this might be my only window of opportunity today. I crossed my fingers,
smiling, as, several minutes later the remote session at last reported
successful login with the user’s account, which he had stupidly given local admin
rights to.
A dramatic keyboard mashing of the ENTER key, and had I initiated
the final program; a file search that checked for files and emails with certain
types of information such as addresses. No address yet, but my algo** was a
1337 piece of code and had found an encrypted zip file marked leasing
agreement.
Another 50 minutes cracking the AES 256 bit standard
encryption on the zip package. Inside a Word file that also had a password.
Laughing I opened an Office specific cracking program. Ten seconds later the
word file was password free. Now to see what was inside.
Meanwhile another application was busy copying as much of
the user directory as it could before the connection went down. Another app was
silently installing an app that would prevent Windows from closing down. Of
course that wouldn’t stop someone from ripping the power or network cables out.
Just slow them down a bit. Bingo I now had an address in Sydney’s inner west.
I logged onto the companies server farm. The array was
normally used for extremely cpu intensive tasks that needed to be completed
within the same day to determine whether a particular transaction represented
good value according the companies complex financial modelling.
Here it was, there was no turning back now. If there really
was someone trapped about to die I had to do this. Even if there was I’d never
be able to explain why I diverted mission critical backend infrastructure
towards software cracking. There were ends to this story that had no beginning.
Well at least not without an ending that concluded with yours truly spending
most of his thirties in a psyche ward.
I punched in the password to my admin account launching the
master scheduling app. At a click existing jobs were paused, another couple of
clicks and small purpose built script I had written was launching my custom
decryption application and pointing it to the collection of files that I had
been harvesting from the targets desktop PC.
In some server backroom, the array
of multi cored servers started chewing through the datastream at 10 Terrabytes
per second. Even so it would be at least an hour before the application
finished, and resumed regular operations.
At least I could avoid cursory examination. I prayed there
were no large transactions planned for this afternoon. Another script was busy
deleting all the logs replacing them with faked ones that represented a
snapshot I’d taken before running any apps.
I set the app to send my HTC an email with the results when
it finished, then killed the remote session to the server array and logged off
my workstation. Grabbing my jacket from behind the chair, I headed towards the
lift, to the road below and a taxi that would take me a block or so from 15
Loftus Street, Rushcutters bay.
The taxi dropped me at the bottom of the street, when
perhaps in hindsight it should have dropped me at the top. The street is
probably the steepest in Sydney, if not Australia. Halfway up and I was
sweating, shaking as two lean runners raced by chatting happily as they loped
uphill.
The address was a luxurious studio filled with fine art.. I
knew this because the door was open. No killer leaves an open door. I wandered
around the place looking at the photos on the mantel piece. Family, friends,
achievements. All really normal stuff. The photos were of a happy looking...
musician. Oh shit. This wasn’t the killers house. This was probably his next
victim.
The killer must have at least some hacking skills. He was
tracing his victims through their real estate agents. Cunning bastard. The
agents probably had unencrypted networks, open offices, physical access and
completely comprising the network via injection of Trojans would be a cake walk
for a motivated individual. Meanwhile they were trusted with alot of customer
information. Just what scum like this needed.
I was stuck. My hacking, might be detected by the killer
(and there was every reason to believe that it would be, if he was even half
decent a simple network trace app setup with notifications would detect it). I
was going to have to wait for him to attack his next victim. That implied that
Samuel would already be dead. Sh1t.
The phone hummed in my pocket. I pulled it out and unlocked
it. The app had finished its decryption run and sent me the results. Two files
met the search criteria of the algo. The second on looked promising and I
opened the attachment. The file contained a list properties for lease.
Perhaps a list the old Frank had compiled when first
arriving in the city? The list was fairly long but consistent, in that all the
places had a cellar featured. Several were listed as sound proofed. Focusing on
those I picked the closest, most centrally located, a large terrace in
Paddington, and raced out to the road. By my own calculations I had about one
hour before things became irreversible.
I’d asked the taxi to wait and he had the car parked where
I’d left him at the bottom of Loftus. Running in giant leaps down the hill I
pulled up next to it jumped in, slammed the door hard and yelled at the driver
to step on it. To get him going I casually flicked a hundred dollar bill in his
direction. I’ve never seen a taxi driver break more traffic laws in my life. It
probably helped that the rest of his days wages had been promised on
arrival. A man’s life was at stake. Now
was no time to compromise.
I had the taxi pull over just short of the five ways
roundabout in Paddington. The terrace was metres away, yet the shops nearby
provided excellent cover. I had to assume the guy had setup surveillance on the
entrance.
I still had thirty minutes but no idea how to mount a rescue
operation. Guessing the guy would be keeping his victim in the basement and was
probably there right now torturing him was a safe bet.
I walked up to the front door, and jammed a metal wedge into
the hinge. Being a slightly built man with small arms I had to get this right
first time. The wedge should provide what my biceps couldn’t. I pulled the foot
long Steel mallet out of my jacket pocket. With a mighty swing I bashed it with
all the might I could muster against the wedge. It was a trick I’d seen on
YouTube.
Keeping the hammer tightly in my left hand as the door swung
open; I charged silently inside. The floor plan included in the Agency leasing document showed the cellar had a small
stairway in the narrow hallway directly to the left on entering the house. I
walked up and tried the closed door. It opened faintly with a smooth action
that scared me more than a creaky door ever could. For some reason it was just
like the motion of opening a door in the house of bits n’ pieces. Creepy
coincidences were awesome. Less so when serial killer lay waiting just beyond
your line of sight.
The staircase was well lit, the stairs carpeted. Noiselessly
I descended, just as well because my heart was beating at close to two hundred
beats a minute. The drum roll of blood and adrenaline, had me goosing at
shadows. God why couldn’t someone hardcore like my mate Davis Lockyer be here.
That guy probably did stuff like this for fun. I must be fucken stupid, why
hadn’t I asked him to come with me?
No time for backing out; men didn’t let other men die with
dishonour. Good men didn’t walk away from bad situations. I knew I was at a
crossroads, as I stood halfway on the stairwell, the last step before it was
too late to turn back.
I descended down to the cellar. As I approached the exit, I
crouched down low keeping to the side of the stairwell. Frank was there,
looking at his handy work. All I could see of Samuel was a man tied down to a
table, drenched in blood from cuts and wounds all over his body.
I felt Frank turning. He had to turn. Only he didn’t. His
movements were towards a table containing his tools of the trade. His hands
moved slowly guided by the eyes of his victim. He reached for a cruel looking serrated
scalpel. It looked wicked.
The victim moaned now. Uncontrollably. The moan became a
scream as Frank stepped in towards the table.
I walked ever so slowly towards him, every iota of my brain listening to
the sound of my footfalls. The journey seemed to take years. With five metres
still to go I stepped on a piece of rubbish left on the floor.
“Oh sh1t!” I said, as at that sound Frank then spun suddenly,
his dark eyes gleaming with a mixture of anger, hatred and fear.
Instinctively I threw the heavy steel in my hand. It spun
through the air, end on end towards Frank. He was slow to dodge. It was an all
or nothing throw (my only weapon) aimed straight for his head.
Even so he managed to move aside as it glanced him on the
temple, still knocking him from his feet. I ran over wondering what on earth I
would do next. I had never been in a single fight in my entire life, well not
counting the internet anyways.
Blood ran from the side of his head, he groggily tried to
rise. I grabbed the steel and bashed him over the back of the head again,
knocking him unconscious. His body slumped back down.
I moved over to the table and pulled Samuel from it. He
could hardly stand, but leaving him there on that platform of horrors was
hardly an option. Instead I held him close, hugging him. Blood soaked both of
us, but he seemed to relax. Compared to what I’d seen in my dreams, he was
positively healthy. I pulled the mobile and dialled the ambos, followed in
quick succession by the cops.
It was only as I put the mobile back in my pocket that the
tears began. His cheeks were drenched. His body wracked with shudders of
emotion.
“I couldn’t... Nothing would make him stop!”
Samuel looked into my eyes, pleading, demanding, frightened
and lost all at once.
“It’s over now, your safe.” I comforted him.
“Everything feels like an out of control dream.” He sighed, “I
hate him so much.”
“I know mate, I know.”
But I didn’t. No one did.
Scene 4: Beers @Chambers
Killer captured, victim saved. The dream faded as it had
begun, the inside of charnel house drawing the eye to fresh horror. The
killer’s body would never find its way here. They rarely saw themselves as
victims; they were too pathological to be ghosts.
That one was riding straight to hell. I had had my fill;
there was only so much even I could take of it. I had gone back one last time
out of curiosity, to check the room that the ghost of Sam should have found
himself in. Instead I found a door ajar, the stone cube within shattered. Oddly
the stone looked to have been shattered from within. A single large purple
tentacle, with thousands of small scythe like appendages grovelled from a small
circular hole in the centre of where the stone should have been.
That was enough of it for me, I left. I had a thought once
that being inside that house; it would be enough to make a serial killer
uneasy. Certainly there was ample content to make such an imagination run riot.
A place to check into from time to time, perhaps to find another “Sam”. I awoke
from the killing rooms feeling completely ruthless. It was a lasting effect of
spending time there.
I had a message waiting on the HTC. It was time to bounce.
The friends of Samuel Matthews wanted to catch up. It had
been a couple of days and he was ready to check out of St Vincent’s. There was
little the doctors could do for him anyway. In this age, wounds to the mind
were still very poorly understood.
Samuel would always be scarred now, but he was also one
tough hombre. Not the sort to let a beat down keep a good man down. His boys
were taking him for a drink at the Chambers bar in the city and wanted me to
come along. I messaged back that I’d see them after work.
When I pushed through the door at Chambers, they had
occupied the couches closest to the street window. Recessed down below street
level, the chambers was a ambient little bar running along the south side of
martin place.
They looked comfortable and relaxed. Lounging and chatting
like successful city suits. The boys roared upon spotting me, and several
called me over.
“Thomas! What are you drinking?” – “One Fifty lashes”
“Good man, so are we, here’s a spare schooner.” – “Thanks...
?”
“Sorry rude of me, I’m Nathaniel James. This is big Rusty
Greenheart, little Sam you have met”
At which point everyone raised their schooners to Samuel,
giving him a cheers. He looked to be at peak happiness, his smile was
contagious.
“And this is our resident Richie rich, Mr Angus Goodman.” Wooah,
I thought, I’d seen this guy in the social pages, he was all over the scene;
attending A-list parties and fucking the best socialites.
Nathaniel continues to chat along happily talking mainly about
himself, and some of the many adventures this tight krew have shared. I’m a listener,
and sit silently, happy to be part of their circle. The more I listen the more
relaxed I get. I slink back into the part of the couch I share with Samuel.
Suddenly the leader, Nathaniel jumps up from his couch to
the left of me. He steps into the open area in front of me, hands free he puts
tight hooks around my shirt ripping me from my seat. His giant chiselled six
foot four frame has no problems lifting me completely from my feet. All the
good humour of moments before is gone. The group sit silently staring at me,
all that is except Sam who sits sullenly looking at the others.
“I have one question for you. How the fuck did you know
where our buddy was?”
I knew straight away the story I had told the cops wouldn’t
wash with these guys. They had spoken with Sam, and probably didn’t understand
any of what I had told him.
“Look Nathaniel just leave him alone, he saved me.”
Nathaniel turns to Sam with savage lines of fury burning
across his nose, cheeks and neck.
“My friend, he told you he saw you in a dream, woke up then
went and saved you. He told the cops he had just happened to be going for a
morning walk and heard a scream. He’s lucky the cops are so stupid, they don’t
question why the guy lives 40 km from where he takes that stroll, or that the walls
to the dungeon that freak had were sound proof above street level. Yeah! I got
a couple of questions to ask this... Thomas. Starting with how the FUCK did you
know?”
I realise this is a water shed moment but their blood has
already boiled over. Tell the truth and get flogged or lie and walk away?
“I saw your friend in a dream. I can see fragments of
reality in my dream, Nathaniel.” There it was as simple as I could put it.
The punch when it came was stiff, strong and straight to the
gut. Oh and it really hurt. I double over and then come back up. Gasping.
“I told you guys. This scum is a mate of that bloke that did
Sam in. I say we run him down to the cop shop right now... After we take him
outside and teach him a lesson.”
“NO!!!” bellowed Sam. It didn’t matter I thought. The others had blood in their eyes. Red
rimmed with anger.
“Let me explain” I said weakly.
“Ok. Go for it shitbag.” This guy Nathaniel was really
getting worked up. Moments earlier when we sat down I’d actually thought this
guy is cool, he is the one out of the group I’d most likely be friends with.
Now though his eyes were focused on me. He looked really mean. As in scary
looking, drunk freak I’m going to fucken kill mean.
“I saw Sam lying on a stone cube in the House of Bits n’
pieces.” As openings go it probably wasn’t that intelligent.
I continued, “In my dreams I sometimes see I house. In that house are the
ghosts of people that have recently died. Every so often, in one of the rooms,
a new body will shimmer on a stone cube. The cube holds a person yet to die,
both on earth, and then in the house. It is a type of foretelling. This one
time I managed to read the symbols on the cube, they told me barely enough it
would seem, to save your friend in time.”
“Thankyou” whispered Sam, looking right at me for the first
time since I had entered.
The look of horror that the victim has; seemed for
one moment to recede almost completely from Sam’s face, except that it then returned
just as quickly.
“Man that is the craziest shit I have never heard of.”
Nathaniel said it, looking out the window at the street.
He had released me sat
back down on the couch with the others. But he didn’t look at me, and he looked
completely unconvinced.
“Seriously mate, what are you smoking?”
That guy Angus cut me down unimpressed.
“Yeah... wow.” A third echoed sarcastically. I was no longer
listening, lost thinking of how impossible it was to explain something that
seemed so simple to me.
This wasn’t working, these guys thoughts were solidifying
now around a single concept. How much damage to do before dumping me with the
police. Revenge spoiled with anger amongst their brows.
An empty schooner and a wild idea. Blood rushing through my
temples. I pick up the schooner and smash is dramatically with my left hand
against the table. Everyone focuses but no one moves, I’m one against many. Too
quickly for any reaction I draw the serrated edge down against my right wrist.
Estimated time to death by arterial exsanguination; approximately 1 hour. More
than enough time.
I had everyone’s attention now.
“I mean what I said, I don’t care if you believe it but its
the truth. Do you think any sane rational person would do this? I’ve run out of
ways to make you believe and I really don’t want to get set upon by a pack of
wild dogs.”
I reached out and grabbed a nearby couch cover, wrapping it
quickly and efficiently around the wound. They all stared at me now, like a
crazy person with a gun. You just give
respect.
I looked up and reached out a hand to Nathaniel.
I said “Will
you suspend your disbelief for 5 minutes? I will try and show you what I mean.”
He nodded so I said “Just relax, try and relax, and then to
go to sleep.”
He nodded again, this time lying right back into the couch
relaxing. I moved and sat down next to him lying back as well. I had never
tried this before. It was as impossible as seeing the future, but right now I
didn’t seem to have a lot of choice.
Before I fall asleep I need to scare the others. Help them
to understand their reality has changed, is changing, will change from here on
in.
“Everyone else needs to protect us. If we aren’t awake in
fifteen minutes you need to take both of us back to the hospital and ensure we
get a shot of adrenaline each. By no means allow us to be separated at any
point. In either case we could each face instant death.”
I didn’t tell them that as soon as I released Nathaniel he
would wake up. Or that I could control my dreamscape and wake up at any point.
I didn’t tell them because I wanted them scared, not as payback, but because it
was one of the rare human emotions that provided a gateway past the logic trap
directly to the unknown. Human beings were normally so sure of themselves. So
sure of the blindness they all shared, that new belief was easily negated,
especially in groups.
I placed my left hand above Nathaniel’s right and drifted
quickly into the dreaming void. I’d never tried it before but somehow I knew I
could do it. It was not the same as a dream, at least not for me. As soon as I
felt Nathaniel’s etheric shell next to me I latched onto it instinctively. The
feeling was like pulling a giant stone egg between my legs up a very, very
steep hill. It was almost impossible.
Eventually I felt the egg started to loosen, soften. I pushed it towards a room
I’d imagined, one with a wall that said in giant bright red neon letters “Hi
Nathaniel it’s your friend Thomas.” It was stupid, simple and effective. Once
Nathaniel the egg saw it, once he was pushed fully inside the room, he started
to melt even more.
I saw a loose golden outlined shape, vaguely human standing
next to me. Three white doves flew through the wall and perched on his
shoulders and his head. A pit of snakes opened up in front of him. Symbols
flashed across the wall, fighting with my self-imposed mental block on the
regular imagery of his dreamscape. His own dream mind was fighting the
temporary bounds that I had imposed via the dream bridge. The ancient Tibetans
had been right; you couldn’t share another’s dreams. They’d just failed to set
out the fact that you could influence them. Or perhaps they had deliberately left
that bit out.
While we were out a situation had developed amongst the
remaining trio. The security at Chambers had come over to investigate two guys
they had seen confronting each other. As soon as the thick burly black teed
roid munchers came over an air of menace began to permeate the zone.
“What the fuck your buddies doing asleep huh? Get them to
wake up now. No sleeping!” – said the burly looking white boy with the thick brown
beard.
“These guys are good friends, but they both suffer from epilepsy.
Right now their both fitting. We have to leave them where they are.” said
Angus.
The other bouncer was looking around distrustingly and
spotted the blood from the wrist cut and the broken schooner glass. He pointed
at it.
“What’s this? You boys been fighting? Let’s grab these two
vagrants Thommo”
The bouncer motions to his bouncer mate.
The trio stand shoulder to shoulder in front of the two
sleepers. Angus speaks again.
“Don’t take another step forward.”
“Or you’re going to do what champ?” The bouncer questions
menacingly.
Rusty folds his arms across a massive chest, his head never
moved. His eyes say volumes.
“How the fuck do you explain this mess champ?” The bouncer
was unmoved, itching now for violence.
Angus’s face muscles don’t move. He is world class when it comes
to board room antics.
“The glass was dropped; the one on the right accidentally made
the cut. The guys are brothers and started fitting at the sight of the blood.
If you move either of them there’s a fair chance you’ll kill one of them. Now
that I have warned you, if you still do it that’s premeditated manslaughter. Guys
sure that’s what you want to do?” answered Angus smoothly.
The two bouncers shared their single brain cell, deep in
conference for several seconds. Then reaching a mutual decision they retreated
not even looking at the krew. They could be seen calling in the paramedics.
Lost in the dream world with Nathaniel we whirled through a
rainbow kaleidoscope of tropically coloured clouds. When we finally drop out of
reality we are apparently in Angus’s luxurious city pad. The most beautiful
melody I have ever heard performed is echoing softly around the room. As I
squint my sleepy eyes I see Sam playing the piano.
His friends smile knowingly
at me,
“Samuel is world class virtuoso. Just relax and enjoy.”
The music is incredibly uplifting, drifting in on the warm soft Sydney
breeze that floated through the apartment.
*SMH: Sydney morning herald newspaper
**Algo: short for; Algorithm, a core piece of code within an application.