Sweet Dreams

by Tricia Sullivan

  ‘Then you’re stupid, Chaz, because I’m going to win.’

  ‘Why is it always about winning?’ I flare. ‘Zero-sum games are so last century, mate.’

  ‘I’m repeating myself, but I’ll say it one more time like on Teletubbies. Again, again!’ And his voice rises to a falsetto, then drops to baritone. Dripping with irony. He says: ‘You’re stupid. Get it through your head – I’m in control here. You’re a talented dreamhacker, by all accounts. But you lack direction, you lack discipline, you’re afraid to hurt anyone. You’re a mess. And while I’m willing and able to get rid of you, you are not capable of getting rid of me. It’s not in you. People like you are a disgrace. You should just stay home because you don’t have what it takes. In a minute I’m going to get bored.’

  ‘And then what? You’re going to murder me with your bare hands?’

  ‘No. You’re going to fall asleep.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Yes, you are. You always fall asleep when things get hairy. Do you think I don’t know this? It’s perfectly obvious. Your narcolepsy is psychosomatic in the sense that when the going gets tough, you literally pass out. Classic.’

  I am not going to pass out. I’m not even a little bit sleepy, yay me! Yet I’m suddenly aware that I have no more O to run backup on me.

  ‘You can’t get out of this flat,’ Martin said. ‘I’ve secured it completely. At the moment, I’m the only one who can call out through the firewall.’

  I’m still scared, but now I’m also angry, in a rooted, unreasonable way that I know is not helpful because I can’t back up my anger with any kind of practical power. This is a time for me to be cold and to think really really fast but I’m not put together like that. He’s right: I’m all over the place, I’m a mess, and being threatened like this isn’t suddenly turning me into somebody more competent and quick-thinking like you always somehow hope it will. Like in the movies. No, I have no magic tricks.

  The neural gates that Martin manipulated to make Melodie sleepwalk. He can stop muscle atonia. If I fall asleep, he won’t have to murder me. He can come into my dream and trick me into sleepwalking to my own death. Just like what he tried to do when I was on my bike in traffic, in that dream that turned out not to be a dream.

  ‘It doesn’t have to happen now,’ he says. ‘It can happen whenever I choose. You can be taken out any night at all. Any afternoon nap.’

  He watches my face as the implications sink in. He can let me walk out of here and wait until I get home. Until I’m on the Tube. He can wait a year or a day or a month, and I’ll never have a moment’s peace. He has me on the run.

  Or does he? The Dream City is my town, too. Unlike London, where he’s powerful and I’m a prole, in the Dream City I’m strong. I have a hammer and stuff.

  ‘I’m not afraid of you,’ I say. ‘I’m afraid of a lot of things – not spiders, not rats, but a lot of other things, like sometimes even lint scares me if I see a big wodge of it in the wrong light. I’m pretty much a giant bundle of fear, but I’m not afraid of you. Go ahead and try to hack me again. See if you can do it. You’ve tried a couple of times now to get to me, but you haven’t succeeded.’

  ‘You can thank your defenders for that.’ He smiles warmly. Ooh, I hate him.

  ‘I can defend myself now. I know what you’re doing, how you’re killing people. I’m not afraid of you.’

  ‘You said that before. I don’t really care about you. But you keep getting in the way, despite all the extra clients and other incentives you have been given to mind your own business.’

  ‘Don’t you dare try to take credit for my new clients! People are coming to me because they need help, and they need help because the world is so fucked-up, and it’s fucked-up thanks to people like you!’

  ‘Me? I’m not the one living in a cupboard under the stairs. I’ve tried to give you every opportunity to better yourself, but you leave me very little choice. Everything that’s happening here comes down to your bad decisions, Chaz.’

  His voice is so deep, so well modulated, so convincing. I can feel how I’m conditioned to submit to that voice no matter what nonsense it’s spouting. He could do movie voice-overs and make a fortune and have a villa in Provence. I do have to wonder why he is he wasting his time litigating patents and killing people in their sleep.

  ‘The worst decision you made was to move in with Olivia. Now, I could tell you things about her that would curdle your blood. I manage certain delicate affairs on her behalf – hence the pigeons. So by now you must know she used her own sister as an experimental subject.’

  ‘She wanted to help her sister! But you, what you’re doing is worse. Convincing Daphne that she’s a secret agent and getting her to do your dirty work? That is low.’

  ‘Don’t kill the messenger, dear. I’m not the big boss. If you came here expecting to find poor, frail Olivia bound and gagged and held for ransom, then I guess there are a few things you don’t know. For example, who do you think made it look like Antonio was the mysterious “Russian patron” of poor dead Melodie? Who do you think manipulated him into bringing you Melodie’s case in the first place?’

  ‘I’m not listening to you,’ I say miserably. ‘You’re a murderer.’

  ‘I’m a problem-solver, Charlie. Let’s take your problem. Did you know Olivia stalked you after she found your name in Bernard Zborowski’s files of victims— I mean medical test subjects? What, you didn’t really think she was a member of the ASMR community? I wish you could see your face. The penny has finally dropped, hasn’t it? Didn’t you think it was rather strange that she invited you into her home, that she even offered to help you set up your business? Didn’t you wonder why a woman of her intellect would want anything to do with a little toerag like you?’

  ‘You’re a liar. We are friends.’

  He’s laughing and shaking his head. I feel weak and drowsy. I need to check out of this conversation. I can’t deal with it. Too much.

  ‘You’re such an utter fool, Charlotte. It’s almost refreshing, after all the liars and cheats I deal with on a daily basis. You aren’t pretending to be a fool. You are the real thing.’

  I am a fool. I am a fool. I am a fool and a toerag, and I can’t listen to this, I can’t take it, I can’t deal, I . . . don’t wanna be me any more.

  I’m slithering down the side of Martin Elstree’s kitchen cupboards to rest on his polished tile floor, because I literally cannot stay awake right now.

  I have to take the earring out. With every scrap of will I can muster, I force my hand up to my head, slip out the earring. He can’t make me sleepwalk if I’m not on Sweet Dreams.

  As I’m floating away, I feel him open my hand and take the earring.

  ‘Shh,’ he mocks. ‘That’s right, you rest now. We’ll look after you.’

  Secret Diary of a Prawn Star

  Entry #55

  Codename: Chaplin

  Date: 26 September 2027

  Client: Martin Elstree

  Payment in advance: N/A

  Session Goal: Survival

  Location: Martin’s flat at Convoys Wharf

  Narcolepsy status: Total collapse

  Nutrition/stimulants: Can’t remember

  Start time: 8.02 p.m.

  End time: ?

  Note: Not much point in keeping this, is there, now I know I’m being spied on. Fuck off, if you’re reading this!

  The weight on my chest is the worst this time. Like being buried alive. At first I think I can’t possibly ever move again. I think my eyes are open but I can’t seem to move the muscles that control them, and I can’t breathe.

  It’s very strange not to be able to move your eyes. I can’t even focus. I see a blob of black and grey shifting around like oil on water before the image resolves into the hooded Creeper with his white ‘The Scream’ face and dark slash of mouth. He is on top of me, pressing on my chest to stop me breathing, to stop my heart if he can.

  You’re not real. You’re just a re
presentation of sleep paralysis and it’s a good thing because I don’t want to get up and walk around when I’m asleep. You can’t hurt me. You’re not real.

  The face doesn’t change expression but it judders from side to side with the rapid, jerking kind of movements a wasp makes when it gets blocked by a windowpane. I find this super scary, maybe because it’s unnatural for anything that big to move that fast.

  The white face opens its mouth and bends towards me, as if to kiss me. No matter what I say to him, to myself, in this moment the Creeper is more real than anyone I’ve ever met. More real than I am. More real than the whole waking world. I feel its lips on mine. They are cold, not just physically but psychically freezing, and now it’s sucking the breath out of my lungs, draining the life out of me. I want to wake up now. I have to breathe. I want to wake up. I—

  The dream location is an octagonal room with no windows or doors. The floor is made of bones and the ceiling is made of eyes. The walls are made of fur. I am covered in fur instead of clothes, like an oversized Ewok. I search everywhere for doors. Under the bones I find bugs and under the bugs, slime. Gagging, I explore the walls. There has to be a way out. If I can’t find one, I’ll make one.

  I’m recording the session. Evidence. Roman can go over it after I’m dead. Because I’m so dead, now that I don’t have anyone to protect me. No O, no Muz. I don’t even have Shandy. There’s only me, and I’ve fallen asleep on the kitchen floor of a psycho killer. He’s obviously taken the earring out of my hand and slipped it back in again.

  Right. Well, I’m not dead yet, so better use my skills and do what I can to save myself from the inside.

  Once I get going, it’s not so bad. I turn the fur on my body into a fighter pilot suit and transform the walls to glass. I call my dream Thor-hammer and it appears in my hands. Here in my dreams, anyway, I’m not always a victim.

  I’m in a tower. I can see the luminous Dream City spread out below me with its lacework of canals, the Dream City’s veins that writhe in their age and darkness. I see the bridges and streets that I have walked in sleep, the cranes, the scaffolds. Everything under construction. Anything is possible here.

  I feel stronger now. It could be worse. For example, even though he covered it up, I’m pretty sure Martin Elstree was surprised to find me in his flat and I’m betting he hasn’t had time to make plans to kill me in real life. I doubt he has the stomach for it in real life, and he wouldn’t know how to dispose of my body without getting caught. I’m betting on him coming after me in the Dream City instead, try to make me kill myself. But I’ve got a head start on him, because he has to go to sleep first. Nobody can fall asleep as fast as I can. I should be able to spot him when he’s just arriving in my dream, before he gets his bearings. And then I can attack.

  Because wow, the more I think about the way I’ve been treated, the more furious I get.

  I heft my hammer and hit the glass. It splinters, tiny spider cracks running along it with the sound of lit kindling. I hit it again and there’s a hole. Third hit and I’m standing in the wind, what’s left of my hair flying back, my lungs filling with dream air, black and shocking. I could fly out across the city. I love dream-flying.

  Then I remember Mel. On second thought: no dream-flying for me tonight. Just in case he’s manipulating me and I’m standing on his balcony in real life. The truth is, I can’t trust anything I see; I have to assume I’m sleepwalking.

  I close my eyes in the dream. I drop to my hands and knees, and I crawl. Now that there’s no visual stimulation, I’m mostly aware of my own heartbeat and breathing. The fear. My link to Sweet Dreams tells me that I was only asleep for a few minutes when this dream started. My best hope is to get out of the flat to somewhere that there are people before he has time to enter the dream and mess with me too much.

  I feel a draught of warm air and crawl towards it. My left hand reaches out for purchase on the floor and finds air; I grope and find solid stone some ten centimetres down. It’s a step. I feel my way forward. Much harder to track with the tactile sense than the eye. I’m at the top of a staircase made of stone or maybe concrete. I start going down, dream-eyes clenched shut. I hear echoes of distant voices, footsteps, and then Martin Elstree’s voice says very clearly and calmly into my dream:

  ‘There’s nothing you can do. I need only say a few words, give a code, and you’ll be taken care of. Open your eyes and you’ll see what I mean.’

  My breath is coming in gasps. I count fourteen steps, then come to a landing. I can feel myself right on the edge of wakefulness; I could push through and surface if I really tried.

  ‘You can’t wake up. We can force you back into REM anytime. Insertions are also possible.’

  The sense of something following me is closer now, running up my spine and into my consciousness. I’m not alone and something is coming down those stairs after me, not someone but some thing. Before I can gather my thoughts, I find myself up on my feet, eyes closed, running down the steps, falling, rolling, getting up battered and running again. Down, down, down, with the conviction of an amorphous devouring Thing coming after me.

  I hit a door and open my eyes.

  The door is made of steel with an iron ring for a handle. I jerk it open and fall through onto a scrap of lawn cloaked in darkness. The wind is blowing strongly in my face and I can see a metal gangway leading across a canal to an island dominated by vegetation. Bruised and wobbling, I run across and the gangway deposits me in a hedge maze.

  I don’t want to go in there.

  Where am I really, in real life? I try to picture the layout of the lobby. I haven’t encountered anybody in the stairwell, but people probably take the lift. If I can manage to sleepwalk into the reception area, someone will see me and call the police.

  But if I’ve descended all the way to the basement, I could be fucked. It’s just impossible to tell. Is the wind in my dream also in reality, or am I just standing by a ventilator fan?

  ‘Martin Elstree, show yourself. You won’t, will you? You’re afraid to face me here because I’ll be just as strong as you are, if not stronger. You’re afraid.’

  No response.

  ‘Murder by remote control is for cowards,’ I say to the air. ‘Where are you? Give me the satisfaction of a fair fight.’

  Now the maze is all around me. No gangway, no island, no canals. Hedges, everywhere. They are privets, dense, impenetrable and trimmed to bonsai-standard precision. They look like Minecraft hedges, but they’re real.

  I wander through the stupid thing for a long time before I find my way to the centre. There’s a flagstone courtyard in the middle of which is a trapdoor that opens in a patch of blue sky. It’s painted white with the Creeper’s morphine symbol for decoration and another iron-ring handle. Being in the middle of the sky, it appears to go nowhere.

  This makes me suspicious. It’s too neat. Real dreams are messy and don’t make sense, they’re not paint-by-numbers. This is more like a VR game.

  I grab the iron ring and open the trapdoor to reveal a stone wall with a steel ladder fixed to it, ascending through into a tunnel of utter darkness embedded in the surface of blue sky. Cold wind blasts into my face and I hear gulls up there.

  I start up the ladder, all the while pressing mentally against the confines of the scenario. I need to turn this dream to my advantage. It’s not very sophisticated; I should be able to use it to punch through to Martin Elstree’s psyche and take control. The dream is weak; it’s not convincing. He’s got to be lurking around here somewhere, pulling the strings of my subconscious.

  ‘Come on, Martin,’ I call. ‘You’re not so scary now, are you? You want a fight, you got it. Stand and face me.’

  At the top of the ladder is a steel platform. Once I’ve climbed onto it, the platform itself becomes a grassy lawn that surrounds me. A starry sky vaults overhead. The only feature is a ginormous beech tree with low, spreading branches – a storybook tree. Its leaves make shuffling sounds in the gentle breeze.

/>   Still no sign of Martin Elstree. The only living creature I can see is a sparrow, hopping and fluttering in the grass.

  ‘Very funny,’ I say. ‘Little bird. Or should I say, Little Bird?’

  But Martin doesn’t answer. And the bird doesn’t feel like him. I almost . . . the bird isn’t very animalian. It’s almost . . . shit, is this a mechanical bird?

  The bird looks at me sideways, a knowing look, I think. It doesn’t answer, just flutters up into the lowest branch of the tree, and as it flies bits of metal fall out of it: a rivet, a washer, a spring. I reach up and pull myself into the tree. Its bark is smooth and cool, and it’s easy to climb.

  Up and up we go, the bird and I, and I’m surrounded by soft, whispering leaves until I can’t see the ground any more, just the muscular, twisting bole of the tree and the lacework of its branches. I’m as high as I can go; above me, the branches are too thin to hold my weight. The bird makes a series of trilling sounds, not quite a song, but almost as though it is trying to communicate with me.

  I move out along the branch towards the bird.

  ‘What did you say?’ I ask. I’m willing myself to understand the bird. The dream is trying to speak to me and I need to understand.

  I lean out as far as I dare and make a grab for the bird. It launches itself off the branch, but I catch it anyway.

  I notice two things at once: the bird is hard, lumpy, cold; also, the branch beneath me is moving. The tree is swaying rhythmically. I clench my fist in alarm and the bird shatters in my hand into a bunch of toy-robot parts. With my other hand, I grab a branch and press my body close to the cold bark, and that’s when I realise I’m no longer touching bark. I’m on a horse.

  How can I be on a horse?

  ‘Horse! Hold on, Horse!’

  Someone’s shouting at me. Someone very tiny, faintly audible. The horse I’m riding starts to buck. My hands on the reins are cold and stiff. Holding on hurts. What reins? Where the fuck am I?