by Taylor Kole
As Corey obeyed, the security guard took a position between the opened door to Walt’s room and the closing main door to the suite, inspecting each person. His thick body lent to the belief he pumped weights; his spare tire that he also enjoyed pizza and beer.
With the exit blocked, Cooper engaged the deadbolt while keeping his eyes on Corey. “Now you’re stuck with me.” Normally, a muscular man with an air of cruelty threatening him would intimidate Corey, but after being glared down by blank, ivory eyes, the human gaze brought comfort.
“Is everything okay in there?” The hotel security man asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Marci said as she exited the room, tucking her short black hair behind her ears.
Kendra and Walt’s voices slipped from the room. Urgent and low from Kendra, groggy and uncertain from Walt.
Kendra stormed out a half-minute later and glared at Marci. “What were you two yelling about?”
Marci shrugged. “We’re a married couple, sometimes we have spats, but Walt is fine. He’s in good hands.”
Cooper waited for eye contact from Corey and whispered, “Better hope you didn’t try nothing creepy with my employer.”
“A spat?” Kendra crossed her arms.
Marci held her gaze.
A minute later, Walt stepped into the heart of the suite, his eyes glossy from sleep and their concoction, a sloping grin stretched across his face.
“Is that healthy enough for you?” Corey asked Cooper.
Walt spread his arms and beamed. “That blew my greatest expectation out of the water!”
Hearing his voice tied Corey’s stomach in knots. He needed to create distance from this room. “So we’re free to go?”
“Free to go?” Walt dropped his arms. His smile faltered as he glanced from face to face. “Am I missing something here?”
“We are really thrilled to hear you’re satisfied,” Marci said.
“Satisfied? I’m exuberant.”
“Are you coming?” Corey asked Marci after taking three steps toward the door, which put him inside Cooper’s comfort zone.
“Wait a minute,” Walt said, staring at Kendra, then back to Corey. “Why would you leave? There’s so much I want to discuss. You’re looking at a happy man.”
As if sensing Corey’s determination, Marci moved next to her husband by the door. “Dream Riding can be stressful for us. We’re sorry. It’s emotionally engaging, and intense. And these disturbances,” she looked from Kendra to the portly security officer, “add to that. We will gladly talk tomorrow.”
“Disturbances?” Walt wiped sleep from his eyes, pointed at the hotel security. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m leaving.” Corey announced as he unlocked the door.
“I’m sorry, Walt, we’ll be in touch,” Marci said, and followed Corey out.
Racing to the closing door, Walt caught it before it sealed, stepped into the hall, and called out, “But I’ve had my world-altering epiphany.”
Join the club, Corey thought as he rounded the corner and increased his pace.
FOUR
It took traveling through the bright lights and wide downtown lanes of downtown Las Vegas for Corey to regain his composure. He was in a car. It was technically early morning, but still very dark. To help his mind calm—for eventually he’d have to do simple things, like brush his teeth and tell Janey the world was a good place—he stared at the dark, flat desert. He pictured coyotes and other dark things watching him beyond his limited sight.
He’d direct his mind to think normal thoughts and then see whorls travel across mucous-colored flesh. He avoided the side mirror or looking too far to either side, for fear he’d find the Being in their back seat.
Each pair of passing headlights felt like ivory orbs tracking him.
Arriving home, they found Lisa asleep. One of Corey’s books on Voltaire sat on the coffee table. Voltaire had been sentenced to prison, accumulated his immense wealth by decoding the lottery and winning repeatedly, and worked as a French spy. But right now, the sight of the philosophical work only added more anxiety. Corey’s decision to abandon the accumulation of esoteric knowledge gained through philosophy led him to entering Walt’s dream. Was this crazy gift an attempt by the universe to punish Corey for leaving a cushiony life and burden him with an awareness of things ten-fold stranger than any previously conceived?
Leaving Marci to deal with the young woman, Corey peeked in on Janey, who slept soundly with a watchful Smokey at her feet. At the medicine cabinet, he fished his recommended dose of Ativan and washed it down. Examining the bottle, he noticed their expiration date had lapsed six months ago. Still, they would do what anti-anxiety medication did: relax his mind, mellow his body, and give him a break from his troubles.
He stared into the mirror for ten minutes before a calm embraced him.
In the living room, he found Marci on the computer. She had received five dream interpretation requests and sat scribbling notes.
“You got a ninety-six dollar editing job,” she said, without looking up.
A ninety-six dollar payment normally called for delight, but right now he only felt cheated out of the blissful ignorance he had possessed before Walt’s ride.
Noticing Lisa’s absence, he said, “Did you pay her the full amount?”
“Of course not. She was only here half the night. I gave her twenty.”
Corey bit his bottom hip. Lisa wasn’t just any babysitter. She was an important piece to their new business venture. Marci could at least pay her for the full night. Inhaling deeply, he applied a wooden smile. She wasn’t the cause of his discomfort. Still, if they made Lisa feel undervalued, they’d have to hunt for another babysitter, and they didn’t need more on their plate.
“It must be a new job,” he said, referring to the ninety-six dollars.
She allowed him to verify the edit submission—a business plan for prefabricated homes. Apparently the industry was booming. Corey wasn’t sure cheaply manufactured homes selling in the millions boded well for America.
With Marci waiting beside him, he returned the mouse to her and watched her click the icon for Dreamriders.com.
First, she checked the comments. Nothing from Walt, but two new comments, pertaining to Mr. Labarge, waited. An anonymous comment asked how much the webmaster paid Mr. Labarge to leave such a great review. Corey hated the ever-cynical portion of the internet. Marci promptly removed it. The other comment was from Marty Carnes, a user connected to Dreamrider.com through Facebook. His two paragraph comment could be summed up as: very interested.
Marci investigated his Facebook page. The man appeared to be in his late thirties with thinning hair and a warm smile. He had the build of a high-school athlete who stayed active yet no longer trained eighteen hours a week. He lived in Reno, where he worked as a blackjack dealer at the Sands casino. That placed him roughly seven hours away from them by car. If they were compensated for the trip, Reno was in their range. If they were still offering Dream Rides, which Corey was not.
Marci returned to Dreamriders.com and refreshed the comments. If Walton Zimbardo left a positive comment through a verified Facebook account, that could jumpstart their business. Corey’s gut tightened as he remembered racing out of the hotel suite.
Finding nothing, she edited the cost banner to read, ‘$200 for your first ride!’ She then opened Microsoft Word and started on her interpretations.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She paused her typing momentarily and said, “I’m less than happy at the moment.”
“Less than happy with how things went, or with me?”
She moved the wireless keyboard from her lap to the coffee table, pinched her knees together, and faced him. “I’m not too happy with you. I can’t understand why you would put your opinions above the future of this family.”
“Opinions?” Even with the Ativan’s help, both arms flinched to ward off his irritation. “Some life form was in there with us. It had claws.�
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“Jesus, Corey. It wasn’t a life form.” She raised her hand, closed her eyes a moment, and patted the air as if calming herself. When she next spoke, she was more controlled. “What you saw could have been a `lifeform`,” she made quotations at the last word. “Sure. It could also be more realistic things: Walt’s ego manifested, one of our subconscious, a dream interference, your ego; mine. Are any of those possible?”
Corey sighed. “It’s possible.” He wanted to make his own air quotes, but her comment was reasonable. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t express himself properly. He saw how his actions, though justified, could have been seen as extreme.
“Good, because you have to remember, in less than one week, we’ve ridden with Janey, Mr. Labarge, and then Walt. Maybe there’s adverse side effects from lack of natural sleep, or doing too many Rides? The truth is, we don’t know. What upsets me is you were rude, and acted crazy in front of our best chance to upgrade the Dream Riding clientele and finally get some financial breathing room.”
“But you saw it? Shaped like a person, about as demonic as possible, cue ball eyes, yellow claws. You saw that?”
“I saw something like that, yeah,” she snapped the word, but then stiffened. She swallowed, wiped her mouth, and then her hands along her thighs. Finally composed, she said, “But who cares?”
“Who cares?”
“Yeah, who gives a rip what that was? Excluding the house and car, we have a hundred and thirty thousand dollars of debt. Do you understand that? We own nothing. Our savings is nil. We’re one accident, one multiple-week illness away from living in a homeless shelter. Do you want that?”
“No.” Corey looked in the direction of Janey’s room. She thought life was good because she was five and her parents told her it was, but she’d get older. Expectations increased with age.
“Without this business, we won’t be solvent by the time Janey is ready for college. She’ll graduate like us, buried in debt, and think that is a normal way to live. Constant money stress, pretending she’s totally content. We’ll still live in this house, if we’re lucky, still drive that car, and you risk throwing away our best chance at living content, over a scare.”
“There was something evil in that man. I had to get out,” Corey said.
She reached under the couch, scooped up the decade old laptop, her notes, and stood. “We’re in this together, Corey, but you need to step up and make this work. The next time you feel your sanity being tested, think about what we went through the last time you couldn’t handle a scare. And think about that little girl in there who worships you.” She marched to the bedroom.
Ten minutes passed. He needed to toughen up, of course, but in this instance that meant disputing his instincts. Easier said than done.
Deciding to focus on something he understood, he opened his editing assignment and printed it. The document remained in the printer tray and him on the couch until two hours later, when Marci exited their room and prepared breakfast. At six forty-five, she brewed coffee, signaling his time to wake Janey for Saturday morning cartoons, but he stayed in place. He needed more time to compose himself.
Ten minutes later, Smokey pranced into the living room. Janey followed behind, accepted her decaf, and moved to the table.
“Breakfast is ready, hun,” Marci called to him in a normal tone.
Gathering himself, Corey smiled at his two ladies. He pushed a portion of his worry to the side, but not enough to enjoy breakfast.
“So, how was work, Mommy?” Janey asked.
Corey found Marci’s eyes positioned above a tilted mug of coffee, staring at the fluid.
“It was fine, honey.” Marci rested the cup down and beamed. “And we have the whole weekend off. Do you have anything fun you want to do?”
“Buy Smokey some toys!” Janey yelled.
Janey had asked a dozen times over the past few months if they could buy the family pet some toys. Each one of Marci’s forced smiles had looked painful. Janey would ask for a windup mouse, for catnip, for a laser pointer. They’d never had the under ten dollars to spare.
“One book,” Marci said. “And one, maybe two toys for Smokey.”
“Awesome!”
“On the way home, we’ll stop for two mint-chocolate chip cones, too.”
As if picking up on two cones, not three, Janey looked at her dad, then back to her mom, “Aren’t we all going?”
A beat passed, and just before Corey could say, `of course we are`, Marci spoke: “Daddy needs to take a nap.”
Corey’s shoulders sagged with relief. The idea of zipping around a bright sunny day, ensconced in the mundane duties of life after the previous night, sounded absurd. He would nap until they left, but only to sell the fib.
“You tired, daddy?”
Drooping his eyes and slacking his jaw, he said, “I am, honey. But when you get home I’ll be fully rested and ready to play.”
Janey inspected her mother, “And you’re not sleepy?”
“No way, Jose,” she said, lifting her mug of coffee for emphasis.
Corey left the table without finishing, kissed his wife and daughter, and set the bedside alarm for ten thirty, despite knowing he’d hop out of bed the very second the house was empty.
FIVE
The soft click of the front door closing alerted Corey the time had come. Dashing to the front window, yet leaving the curtain undisturbed, he watched the black Jetta accelerate down the road. With the house to himself, he now had the privacy to investigate the Being without Marci’s skepticism. First, however, a thorough cleansing.
Under the warm shower stream, he wondered if Marci’s indifference to the Being had anything to do with her location in the dream setting. They were inside a mind—probably—perhaps him inhabiting the balcony gave them a different experience. That was something they needed to discuss.
Corey’s elevation definitely granted him a better view. Surely, if she saw whorls floating across vile flesh, or eyes that seemed to have multi-dimensional perspective, she would better align with his disgust.
And the emotions he sensed, if she had sensed those as strongly as him, she would have been disturbed, at the least.
There had been evidence that telepathy existed inside dreams between Marci and Corey. There was that same hint with him and the Being. He sensed its ancient roots and immense knowledge. A moment later, it proffered a chest that seemed to support his theory. Or—and he needed to bounce this worrisome idea off Marci—it had detected his thirst for greater knowledge and attempted to barter? Like it would give Corey what he wanted, but then through some old law he’d be indebted.
The smell of soap and shampoo helped wash away much of his tainted feeling. Out and dried off, he took another Ativan and counted out the remaining eleven pills. He had gone six months without needing one of those pills. What if he went back to needing two a day, or needed them and a beer each night, and eventually a pint of vodka to go with his smack addiction. I’ll only take one of these a day, max and no more once they’re gone.
Their insurance would cover a doctor’s visit, but the prescription would have a cost and the drive would take gas and time. Each of those expenses would give Marci greater leverage for more Dream Rides.
Tugging on sweatpants and staying shirtless, he ventured to the living room and lowered the air-conditioning by four degrees. He’d bump it back before Marci returned to avoid an argument.
Shaking the mouse activated the computer. A few clicks brought him to Google’s homepage. Now, where to start?
Dreamriders.com’s fact section, along with the two other dream fact sections on Marci’s other sites, might provide the most complete overview of dreams on the internet. She even had a potentially groundbreaking thesis on the psychological damage of false awakenings and their correlation with schizophrenia.
False awakenings were when a person dreamed they woke, but were actually still asleep, and still dreaming. This often multiplied the emotions of the dream and created a dis
sociation from reality when awake, even if only temporary.
Regardless, Marci’s comprehensive delves into multiple subjects didn’t cover uninvited dream guests.
If something dwelled in that dream, Corey needed to identify it.
Every major civilization, past and present, had sects of people who believed in all manner of dream significance. But had any of them witnessed anything like what he saw? Surely more people than he and Marci had meshed into another’s dream—though, factoring in how they acquired their talent, it was equally probable they were the first.
The Being was separate from Walt, its own lifeform. With that question solved for him, he now wondered what motivated the Being. It seemed to want to influence the dream, but to what end? To study humans, to supervise a life, to influence a person in their waking life? Each notion scared him in their own way.
He DuckDuckgoed “dream divination.” The first link was Marci’s oneiromancer website, which was good for them. Corey focused on a link further down, which mentioned the most famous dream oracle in history, Joseph, from the book of Genesis.
Apparently, Joseph’s first of many dream prophecies read:
“We were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf arose and stood upright, and behold, your sheaves gathered around it, bowed down to my sheaf… behold, the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
That dream of glory had so frightened Joseph’s eleven older brothers, who envied their father’s favorite son, they kidnapped Joseph and sold him into slavery, only to see the prediction come true when Joseph became the Pharaoh’s most trusted advisor.
Dream divination had its place in history, but after reading a dozen related articles, Corey discarded the notion as it applied to his quest. He sensed nothing prophetic in Walt’s egotistical, Being-sharing Ride. Choosing to search it first had simply been a defense mechanism against his true belief, which he typed next: demonic influence during dreams. He clicked search.
He saw the term Jinni and a chill raced down his spine. He said it aloud, “Jinni.” He immediately felt at risk. He leaned forward and searched the term. The first article was on the etymology of the word. It was Arabic and meant, “to hide” or “to conceal.” Goosebumps dimpled his flesh. Bad things focused on hiding and concealing. He tightened his stomach and read a different article:
