by Nick Salomon
Without warning, I reach for her dress. Some flimsy thing with floral patterns. Got to make herself look like an innocent little girl to the church people, I guess. I reach for it. I grab and pull. The thing easily tears off. There is no doubt in her mind any longer. She cries, terrified. She understands what’s about to happen.
The stupefying haze of full catch diorama mixes my memories and emotions with Topher’s. I reach for her bra and rip it off to get a good look at her exposed breasts, dimly but well enough lit by moonlight. Ollie and Todd giggle like hyenas and grab as much skin as they please. There is a part of me recoiling from knowing this is a point of no return. I’ll be changed forever and there is no going back after this. But then another looks forward to it in excitement. The animal part. The base instincts of a beast. I don’t know which one is mine and which one is Topher’s.
From my back pocket, I pull out a small knife. Son of a bitch. ToBogan, not a rapist, but a murderer? Disturbingly relieved that the lesser of two evils prevails, I see myself reach down to cut off and remove her underwear. The girl tries to scream but Todd covers her mouth, so strongly, I see her skin whiten around his hand. She has been struggling for several minutes and now seems out of stamina, just standing there, tears drying out from her face.
“This way,” I hear myself whisper.
The boys follow me away from the dirt trail. Not too far from it, we get to a small clearing. There are a couple sleeping bags on the ground. They toss her on them then quickly make sure she doesn’t escape by pinning her down.
This was planned in advance. Whatever drug they gave her, the hiding location, the sleeping bags. I know no one is being hurt for real and I know there will be no real consequences. I know that reasoning comes from my own mind, but in Topher’s I feel he is also not worried about consequences. I try to remember why and a memory comes to me. A memory about family. His uncle is a high-ranking politician. Someone with power. I can’t summon the title exactly, just the image in Topher’s head that he is powerful enough to make sure there are no consequences for Topher Bass. Rugby team captain. Prospective heir to a career politician’s post. Member of an affluent family. Yeah, the type of guy who never grows up mentally, with daddy and uncle always there to clean up after him. Rich and powerful enough to get away with rape, maybe even murder.
“No…” Chloe whimpers. “No…”
My childhood friends and now partners in crime each grab a leg to separate them and I kneel down and pull out my dick. In their rapey planning, the trio forgot to bring some form of lighting. Maybe for the best, they figured. Less of a chance of anyone catching them in the act. Casually, I pull Todd’s and Ollie’s hands out of the way. They’ve been fingering and pinching her genitals, the way a clumsy boy who’s only seen porn but never been in the same room with a naked girl would.
I get closer. Much closer. I can taste her ragged breathing. I catch a whiff of her perfume too. Something floral. Sweet. Inviting. Her rejection fucked with me more than it should. Me, I’m rich, I’m the captain of the rugby team. I’m 6.5 foot tall. The fuck else did she want? This could have been a much pleasant experience for her, had she not been a dumb airheaded bitch.
Closer. Much closer. I feel skin touching skin. Chloe trembles and whispers “no…”
No.
Rationality overpowers the animal and I take control of the diorama.
No.
This is a line I can’t cross. She’s not real. Nothing is real but it disturbs me to the core to even think about reliving ToBogan’s hurt ego revenge rape.
No.
I stand and pull my pants up. Ollie looks at me confused then goes “the fuck, bro?”
Todd realizes I’m not going to touch Chloe any further and acts quickly before Ollie beats him to it. He gets on top of her, as he struggles to undo his zipper. They struggle almost comically for a few seconds.
“No,” I say. Loudly. The way the rugby captain would. Ollie seems to react to the command and lets go of the girl then stands up, labored breathing and all. But not Todd. Todd is too far gone now. All he cares about is to get his dick wet, one way or another. I get closer and punch his back as hard as I can. Todd moans in pain then falls to the side to lie on his back. Chloe sees an opening and pulls herself up to run away from us, back to the small cluster of summer cabins by the lake. Last I see her, she’s running away, naked, crying in panic.
Todd is still on the ground, recoiling in pain. Ollie looks at me for a moment, furious, then charges at me but I’m in control of the diorama. I am Neo the God Damn One up in this bitch. I dodge easily then a shotgun materializes in my hands. I turn and blow Ollie’s fucking head off. Todd lies against the base of a tree and cries, as he pathetically shakes his head, peeing himself, begging for his life. Fuck it. Nothing is real anyway. I slowly walk up to him, gently place the end of the barrel in his mouth then pull the trigger. There’s blood and brain and skull pieces everywhere. Todd no longer has a head. Blood squirts up from his neck in a way that seems unrealistic.
I let go of the gun, which falls to the forest floor. I could materialize a spaceship or some other nonsensical object but my engineer mind takes over and instead, I settle for testing the limits of the diorama.
A typical passive diorama works much like a classic movie set. Objects, backgrounds and actors form from within the memory of the dreamer when the diorama is caught, but for lucid dioramas, I keep wondering what happens if I take control and move away from the scene captured in dreamer memory. Drenched in blood, little bits of Todd’s brain hanging from my shirt, I make my way to the group of cabins by the lake. I look up, down, left, right. Everything looks normal. I feel a gentle early evening breeze run by, fresh with the smells of the nearby lake. It’s nighttime but still warm.
As I reach one of the cabins, I notice it. The hole. An absence of… things. There is a void, away in the distance, on the right. I figured reaching the end of the ‘stage’ would be much like bugging one’s character out of map boundaries in a videogame. One would see the empty backs of building, cars and whatever objects seen from an angle not meant to be seen. But it is not the case for full catch diorama. It’s not even like a black hole. Doesn’t feel like the edge of an island. It’s more like a boundary where reality ends. I don’t even see it. It just feels wrong. Just looking in that direction causes discomfort in my eyes, a slight headache. It’s as if my mind struggles to interpret what my eyes are seeing and what I end up perceiving is a fog, extending from the ground up to the sky, as far as I can see.
I keep walking to the cabins. There are four of them, arranged so their doors all face the center of the clearing where there is a campfire. No one’s around that I can see or hear. Not even the panicked Chloe running here naked, escaping her would-be rapists. All by myself, I figure I’ll test if there is a time limit to the diorama. These are usually set in post-production, when unnecessary moments caught need to be removed so the experience falls within the comfortable half-hour block. I sit by the campfire and grab one of the sticks with a marshmallow on it I find lying around. I hold it close to the fire and it roasts immediately I’ve always found roasted marshmallows incredibly disgusting to smell or taste. I still don’t understand why people eat them. I catch a whiff of the smell and gag in disgust. I toss the thing away from me.
There is no rush. I sit there, reflecting on the fact ToBogan’s full catch diorama is probably going to make us very rich. There is virality potential here. A scandalous, embarrassing sexual thing from a somewhat established celebrity. Just have to find a way to publish it without his knowledge. Maybe we’ll tell him this catch failed and we need to get another one. We publish both under different merchant names in the darkweb. He’ll suspect but won’t be able to prove it was us.
Yeah the money will be good. Still bothers me, both times I took control of a full catch diorama ended up in a homicidal rampage. Maybe I do have some kind of serial killer thing inside of me. Maybe bringing it out safely in dreaming these lucid dioramas
is going to be therapeutic. Got to make sure we find a way to market them as therapy. ‘Face your demons and conquer them,’ or some similar bullshit tagline.
An hour or so goes by. Although the scene is frozen in time. The sun is still halfway visible over mountain ranges in the distance. The temperature hasn’t changed. Looks like the time of day will stay as it was in dreamer memory. I figure there is no point in staying here. But before I leave, I want to test the limits of the diorama stage again. I stand up and take a quick glance at the four cabins. By their doors, there are cute wooden signs with hand-painted lettering. One for boys, one for girls, one for counselors and the last, unmarked, maybe meant as a common hall of sorts. I walk towards the second one, its door tagged ‘Girls’. I doubt the Maximum Straya ever set foot inside. There is no way he knows what’s inside in his memories. I open the door and replacing it, blocking the way inside, there is a foggy wall, just like the one marking the border between the stage and the void.
I reach for it and my hand goes through but then hits a solid object beyond the fog where I can’t see. I try with my other hand, same results. I push with both, nothing happens. Screw it, what’s the worst that could happen? I simply walk through the fog and I feel a force pulling me inside suddenly, then the usual feeling of reality warping overwhelms my senses as I get ejected from full catch diorama.
The Dream Is Over
I wake up from dreaming the rapey teenage adventures of the Maximum Straya. There’s not much time to fully recover, as soon as I take off the Oneiros, I see Lucy standing next to me, arms crossed, her face indicating she’s about to break into tears.
“What’s going on?” I ask, voice slurred.
Without an answer, she points to her computer monitor where I see news helicopter footage of an expensive-looking condo building in… Santa Monica? The news alert on the bottom of the screen scrolls past, notifying me of the mysterious and sudden death of a certain Australian rama celebrity.
“Fuck,” I think out loud without noticing. “Just like the hobo.”
“What?” Lucy asks, half-screaming. “You knew this was going to happen?”
“Okay, calm down,” I say, focusing on her, as I stand up, stumbling about as I try to regain my balance.
“Don’t tell me to fucking calm down!” Oh yeah, not a good idea to suggest a near hysterical woman to calm down. “It’s your dreamcatcher, you killed them.”
“Look, it could be a coincidence. Have they announced the cause of death?”
“Coincidence? How stupid do you think I am?” she walks near her desk, tears flowing out of her eyes, pointing at the ‘Breaking News’ notice on it. It outlines early examination of ToBogan’s body exhibits sudden central nervous system failure. Cascading hemorrhages all over the brain. Some sort of massive brain-wide aneurysm. Medical examiners have no idea how it happened. “Is that good enough of a coincidence?”
“Listen, Lucy,” I say, making my voice a bit deeper than normal, maybe that will get my point across. “He was just some vapid celebrity from the bunch, who cares? The rama we caught from him, shows he gang-raped some girl that rejected him in high school, the guy was a fucking asshole.”
Lucy covers her mouth and tries to wipe tears at the same time. She looks at me like I’m sort of serial killer and she’s the next victim. “So that’s good enough excuse to kill him?” she asks, voice trembling.
“I didn’t know it was going to happen when we caught the diorama,” I defend myself. “I only found out about the hobo last night after I dropped off ToBogan.”
“His name was Topher,” she says, almost whispering.
I sigh and look down, massaging my temples. How can I make her understand the scandalous nature of the rama is going to go viral instantly, especially if he just died. This is the perfect storm of virality and she refuses to see it.
“Look, I’m very sorry he’s dead,” I say, lowering my voice. Must sound as non-threatening as possible. “You have to see what’s in the diorama. He was no Aussie angel. It will go viral very fast. This is the break we needed to get our company to stand out from the crowd.”
“Money really is all you care about.”
“No… well yes,” I say, at least I should be honest. “But there’s also us.” I approach and touch her shoulder. She flinches away like a scared kitten. “I’m hardware, you’re software remember? We’re going to make it big, remember?”
She sobs harder now. “Not like this,” she manages to mutter.
I don’t have time for pointless melodrama. She’ll see what I mean when she’s out of her hysterical fit. I gently push her aside and sit in her nerd throne. With a few clicks, the one and only full catch diorama of the now deceased Topher Bass goes out into the wild of the darknets. I turn the chair around. Lucy stands there, holding her smartphone so I can see the screen.
There is a connected call to 911.
Fuck. Me. I look her in the eyes and shake my head in disappointment, before I turn the chair back and type a new password for the admin portal of our diorama marketplace. My diorama marketplace. My idea. My genius. Fuck her, I don’t need her. I stand up from the chair. The 911 call has been going on for about 5 minutes and neither of us has spoken. The cops are probably on their way, if not already outside. I make for the door and hold it open, for a moment turning back to look at her. Lucy. Former girlfriend. Former fuck buddy. Former business partner. I feel like I should say something deep and grand to mark the end of our relationship, but nothing comes to mind. I sigh again and close the door behind me.
Sunlight burns my retinas and I close my eyes to block the onslaught. I’m outside of Lucy’s building. I stop myself before I walk back to my car. Built-in GPS and motion tracking will make it easy for them to find me. Fuck. I pull out my smartphone and turn it off. Maybe some latent GPS tracking remains even in power-saving mode. No electronic device is truly powered off ever nowadays. So, I say goodbye to my connection to the world and hurl it as hard as I can into the apartment building across the street. After a second, I hear a mild splash. It hit the pool. Lucky shot. Wait, never mind. The fucking thing is waterproof.
It’s going to be a long walk to my place. Better now than never. I check my wallet. I have a couple hundred bucks in cash. Somehow, I always knew there would be a point in my life where I wouldn’t be able to rely on credit cards or any other electronic forms of payment. Can’t pay for a ride without one though. Can’t flag down an Uber and just offer cash. Long walk it is.
*
The sun sets as I reach my neighborhood. Downtown LA. Once home and workplace to very wealthy, very powerful entertainment, sports, banking and industry captains, assorted celebrities and whoever else rich enough to pay $50k a month for a one bedroom cuck box. Nowadays a cesspool of bused-over homeless people. A huge mass of a mix of the economically disenfranchised, the mentally ill and the substance addicted. My plump physique is not built for this kind of commitment to walking. I can barely stand the rashes in between my fat folds. Makes me walk around like a penguin.
It’s been several hours now since I left Lucy’s place. ToBogan’s death is so high-profile they’re probably looking for me all over the place. I turn the corner towards my building, and just like I guessed, I see a black car parked a few spaces away from the door. Two occupants inside. Plain-clothes police. Away, towards the building across the street, I see a uniformed police walk away then turn the corner. Stationed there in case I run away, I guess.
Where to go? I look west towards Staples Center, then east. That’s it! The underground, multilevel tent city of Pershing Square. Takes me longer than it should to reach the rusted-shut escalators down to the first sublevel. Can barely walk now. The strong smell of fresh fecal matter hits me like a truck as I walk down the once-powered automatic escalators. Looking down to watch my step in the darkness underground, I find the source of the smell. Smeared shit on the steel walls of the narrow escalators. I climb down carefully. It’s my first night as a homeless person but I still
have my dignity, god damnit.
The ground level was little indicator of what was going on down here. The first sublevel, a former underground parking lot is now tightly packed with a fetid mass of unwashed humanity. Some small tents scattered here and there and blankets hanging from strings tied to concrete columns provide some degree of privacy for some of the occupants. Empty oil barrels here and there burn trash for light and heat. Makes me wonder how the lot of crazies and druggies hasn’t died from CO2 poisoning. Smoke probably exits out the passive vent system that back in the day extracted car emissions.
Should be close to midnight now, but there seems to be no ordinary day and night cycles in here. There is no sunlight making it down. No way to tell the passage of time. And the people down here are probably too far gone to care about a 24-hour schedule. I thought people would be asleep by now but instead, the place is lively with the grunts and moans and crying of the mentally fucked up. I walk the small walkways in between rows of stinky people. I see drug trades going on. I see prostitutes trading filled needles for blowjobs. Some of them young enough someone should be tucking them in bed for the night instead.
Several orange lunch boxes lie on the floor. I kick one of them and see the logo of one of the non-profits outside. There are no showers or bathrooms or much privacy down here but at least I’ll have something to eat in the morning. I’m exhausted. Lost count of how many miles I walked today. Should be safe here. Police can’t go near a hobo by law. They can’t come down here. Somehow, I manage to find a little space by the far wall. I sit down. I lie down. Wondering if a crazy hobo will slit my throat in my sleep for taking their spot, I doze off.
