Dream Riders

by Taylor Kole

  Their many Rides had extracted every sentiment possible from both of them. Clients had dreamed of the purest love, skated on a razor’s edge of safety and sanity, relived the pain of losing loved ones, but Corey had never presumed he or Marci could affect the atmosphere like this.

  In an attempt to calm his wife, he pushed images of the family home to Marci, of them playing games, of Janey’s giggle.

  Marci faced him.

  Using the knowledge that they affected the atmosphere and could cause universal changes, he concentrated on feel-good emotions to counteract the churning tension coming from her. He strained to project a smile and radiate happiness. He needed her to relax so she didn’t do anything to jeopardize the deal they had waiting for them.

  While on the highest plane of the dream, he retained the greatest connection to the outside world, and often pondered mundane tasks. Standing in the mind of a man who had violated his family and inflicted the greatest pain and injury of his life, Corey’s attempt to alter the atmosphere with happiness ran out of steam fast. Once he thought about Walt, disgust and contempt spilled from him.

  Marci’s corona flared larger.

  Walt appeared on a stage. He navigated a ballroom lit by candle-laden chandeliers, soaking up the celebratory atmosphere. People wore audacious robes and dream masks: bone white with slender noses and elongated nostrils; dark cherry wood with red stripes and eyes made of glitter.

  Watching the scene, Corey sighed and shook his head. The vanity of wanting rich people to approve of him exposed Walt as a simpleton.

  The dream jumped. A jungle at night, snakes slithered in trees and insects the size of soft balls swirled and buzzed in the shadows, but Walt showed no fear. He stalked through the foliage seeking large, vicious prey he intended to tackle and kill with his bare hands.

  Before Corey rolled his eyes, the temperature cooled, pebbling him with goosebumps. He turned from the cacophony of jungle sounds as a presence manifested on his balcony.

  When the mist dissipated, the mucous-colored Jinni stood three feet away, watching him.

  With time having passed since their last meeting, and with having met this abomination’s counterpart, Corey sickened at the maroon whorls on its flesh, which spun like windmills staked on the lawn of a serial killer on a windless day.

  A folded sheet of paper materialized between them.

  Corey cringed, yet stepped closer. Even knowing the Jinni’s sole purpose was the corruption, and then annihilation of man, he wanted to connect with the missive. His next vision could alter his future. Undoubtedly, it would grant him unique knowledge.

  He swallowed and looked from the paper to the Jinni, who remained immobile. Touching the item had never harmed him; if it had, he would not connect with this one now. Since it hadn’t, he decided to take a peek.

  Feeling a pang of guilt as he lifted his arm—since he was now a soldier of good meant to reject the wicked—he checked on Marci.

  Her intense focus on the stage drew his interest. Her corona seemed wider, even darker, and more animated. Corey dropped his hand, pivoted, and studied the scene.

  Walt stood in a gladiator’s arena—nothing surprising there. However, Walt shuffled backwards, flailing his sword haphazardly, deflecting blows from a superior opponent. A wide-eyed look of horror etched his features.

  Was Marci toying with their client? Corey wanted to yell at her to stop. Walt wasn’t the type of man to stand for ill-treatment, particularly humiliation.

  Sweat matted Walt’s mane of dark hair. Nicks leaked blood on his arms, legs, and torso. His fear scented the air.

  Corey pushed his concern at Marci. She needed to quit before her childish payback cost them Janey.

  She ignored him. If anything, Walt’s fear intensified.

  Before he sent the sentiment a second time, Walt tripped and landed on his bum. With his sword out of reach and a killer approaching, he cried out for help, drawing mockery from the crowd. Despite the severity of Marci’s error, Corey smiled. Take that you piece of crap!

  Shaking off his grin, he regained control of his emotions. Enough was enough.

  The dream skipped, interrupting his enunciation.

  Walt raced down a dark alley in a metropolitan city. He wore a business suit. A winged creature hunted him from above.

  Walt’s terror rippled through the currents and exceeded mortal fright.

  Marci was amplifying Walt’s fear, compounding it with her position and ability.

  Turning right into an alley, Walt reached a dead end and yelped. Turning back to the way he came, he found a newly installed brick wall now sealed him in. The winged predator dove. Walt screamed as claws met his face. An instant prior to flesh rending, the setting jumped.

  A palpable relief, along with continued unease, emoted from Walt. He bobbed in an endless ocean. Alone; weighted by a sodden business suit.

  Convinced any more harassment would seal their fate, Corey gathered his worry and forced it at Marci. He pressed his opinions until they breached her wall of focus.

  Her glowing corona dimmed. He pushed harder until the wind slowed, and she faced him.

  “I understand what you’re doing. I want him to pay as well,” Corey emoted to his wife. “But we must give him his dream. It’s our only chance.”

  Walt searched the empty horizon, his panic easing.

  Marci’s emotional reply arrived with force: “If I break his mind, we’ll be free. And if he manages to hold on to his sanity, he’ll be so scared, he’ll leave us alone.”

  Corey didn’t believe that, but sensing Marci’s rage in the swirling darkness, he treaded lightly. Walt wouldn’t succumb to a good scare, not with a demon backing him. They needed to acquiesce, excel during the rest of the dream, and stay away from Walt forever.

  “He’ll own us,” Marci emoted. “All of us.”

  The thought of that man impacting Janey as much as he had her parents made Corey tremble with anger.

  Walt splashed in a circle, as if searching for land, a ship, or floating debris. Marci could send either to him with nothing more than a thought.

  In here, truth rang more clearly, and Corey sensed Marci’s. Surrendering to Walt assured them nothing.

  He felt Marci’s hesitancy to go through with this. If he pushed, she would follow his suggestion and give Walt the Ride he asked for, but Corey didn’t want to give this man anything. He wanted him to suffer.

  Marci returned her attention to the stage. The waves in the dream rolled from calm to choppy. The winds in the auditorium gained force. Thunder clapped on the stage. Marci’s hands remained out, her corona pulsed.

  Hurting Walt might backfire, but if they lived as his servants, this bit of rebellion would always be a point of pride.

  Nighttime fell on the sea. A full moon provided light. Cold rain fell. Walt’s buoyant body carried him to the tops of ten foot swells, where he searched, yet saw nothing but an infinity of black rolling waves. On the descent, his visibility dropped to nil. Salt water filled his mouth and nostrils. His heart pumped.

  A worm-like leviathan broke the surface. It screamed a hunter’s cry, crashed in front of Walt, and submerged. Fear crackled through the theater as Walt whimpered.

  Walt poked his head under the water and twisted in a series of side-paddles. A moment later, he swam broad and fast in the opposite direction.

  Corey was surprised by his growing excitement. A hardness formed in his chest. Seeing a person this distraught should disgust him. Instead, he wanted the monster to hit Walt from underneath like a great white shark, sever him at the waist, and swim around slurping up his intestines.

  Walt screamed as the beast brushed his leg.

  As the possibility of permanent, or temporary damage approached, Corey sensed Marci doubting this course of action. She was wondering if they had the right to pass judgement and enter a sentence.

  Corey pushed his resolve for her to keep going.

  Marci gathered herself and increased her effort.

&
nbsp; The bottom dropped from the stage, which morphed and solidified into a gigantic metal bowl. Walt was in the bottom off to one side. He had entered frantic, still fearing a sea creature. Assessing his new environment, he calmed, until he saw the spinning blades, which acted as an octopus mouth, at the center of the slippery bowl.

  A person across from him struggled along the smooth wall and, falling, slid into the metallic whirl. Limbs, bone, and flesh, exploded a chunky red mist in all directions.

  Walt scratched, clawed, and kicked against his nearest side.

  A threshold in Walt’s humanity was fraying, leaving him more carnal than civilized.

  The moment Corey considered their actions, movement in his peripheral turned him.

  The Jinni clung to the rail, shoulders forward, neck stretched toward the scene. Its face remained smooth, but sensing the same effect this night terror inflicted on Walt, perhaps with greater acuity, outrage expelled from its person.

  Shouldn’t a creature of evil enjoy such suffering?

  Inspecting further, the whirling storms on its body rotated and traveled with increased velocity. The mucous-colored flesh seemed to fluctuate from darker to lighter shades.

  A different type of fear emoted from the stage, and drew Corey’s attention. Walt lay supine, strapped to a table in a grey, dimly lit room. The mildew-lined walls held both sharp and blunt instruments. Resuscitation machines waited near his head, a moveable light was positioned over his chest.

  An obese woman with pigtails dragged a scalpel across his belly. Tossing the blade aside, she pushed her hands in his stomach and tugged out a wet intestine, pausing every so often to inspect the entrails as if reading a prescient text.

  Corey also recognized how hard he was straining to hold the dream together. There was an immense pressure to exit, coming from Walt. It felt similar to fingers stretching a plastic garbage bag in search of the tear point.

  Walt had been activating the safety valve available to all people approaching an overwhelming nightmare.

  Despite the ugliness, Corey held him in.

  Just to test the intensity, Corey lessened his hold on the dream.

  The Jinni jerked in his direction. From its place, leaning over the balcony rail, it emoted encouragement for Corey to evacuate the dream. It begged.

  Having a Being of hatred and disgust lend advice paused Corey.

  The Being pushed harder for Corey to end this

  Corey tightened his hold, and returned to watching the stage.

  Walt found himself in isolated space, eons away from Earth. No light, an unbearable cold; alone, except for vivid memories of all the wrongs he had committed in life; all the squandered or rejected opportunities to do good; the rippling butterfly effects his negative actions had placed on the world.

  The current haunting transcended the physical. It assaulted spirit and mind. Walt was glimpsing an eternity spent in regret. True Hell.

  The spinning air in the theater crackled with lightning strikes. Marci’s anger added an acidic heat to the room. The parallel sicknesses on the stage and in the swirling mass made Corey queasy, but he kept the dream together.

  The Jinni charged Corey, crashed into their invisible barrier, and pushed hard enough to vibrate both of their bodies.

  The environment carried a truth: Walton Zimbardo suffered like no living man before him.

  In emphasis, the stage splintered loud enough to stun. CRACK! A second explosion came from the dome of dark matter around the theater. Ebony shards crashed down. The twirling current captured the detritus halfway down its fall and sucked it into the spinning mass.

  Walt screamed as his human form splintered and cracked on stage. His skin peeled off and flew from his body. The winds absorbed his flakes as he screamed.

  A hissing sound on the balcony turned Corey.

  The Jinni had squared to him. Its jaw strained lower as if attempting speech. Boiling craters pebbled across its moon-colored orbs, as if they were experiencing an armada of meteor strikes.

  Corey grunted from the effort required to hold the dream together.

  The Jinni emitted a sound, like a long hissing, SSSSSSSSS. Intense to the ear, fluctuating in urgency.

  Marci amplified her interpretation of madness.

  Flesh peeled from Walt and was sucked into the twirling mass around them.

  A final pang of conscience hit Corey. If he released them now, he’d end the lobotomy. Walt would recover. With such an enormous fright, he might leave them alone. He might also become enraged, and visit similar treatment on all three Padeskys.

  Appearing to sense the indecision, a Jinni scroll popped in and out of existence like a strobe, right between their faces. The Jinni gestured to Marci, to Walt, to the high-velocity winds and the fracturing dream world.

  If the Jinni had hoped for Walt’s release, it should have stayed silent. Given the choice between supporting It, or his wife, Corey would choose Marci everytime. He reaffirmed his grip.

  The Jinni, still hissing, turned from Corey, and in a move shocking enough to stop a heart, it leapt over the balcony and landed near the podium.

  Marci startled. The pause stopped the breaking apart of Walt. It allowed Walt’s sanity to draw a breath, proving a release would save him.

  Ignoring the Jinni, Marci refocused.

  The Jinni moved again—from the podium to the stage.

  Standing beside a disintegrating Walt—whose face was half gone—the Jinni moved at a blinding speed and snatched Walt’s crackling flesh. Like a 3-D printer, it returned the material and reassembled Walt’s face.

  Wide-eyed, hair frizzled, cuts, burns, and boils marked Walt’s flesh.

  As the Jinni moved to rework an arm, it stayed in Walt’s sight until they locked eyes. A note appeared. The demon nodded for his host to touch the object.

  The moment Walt’s slow-moving arm made contact, a vision, visible to all, manifested on the stage. The tale showed Walt’s suffering nullified. The Jinni could save him, given Walt’s permission. The cost would be the permanent succession of Walt's mind, body, and soul.

  Grant the Jinni full rights over his vessel, and Walt would survive in a small section of his mind, aware of everything, yet have no influence, but this torture would stop.

  Corey sensed Marci pushing vile images against some barrier of protection cast by the Jinni. He also sensed that she was wearing it down.

  Walt would have to make his decision quickly.

  Corey prayed their cruelty hadn’t opened the door to an outcome worse than any previously conceived: them waking to a demon masquerading as a wealthy and powerful man.

  Vision ended, a new sheet of paper, pulsing with the power of its pledge, floated in Walt’s focus. This was the contract. If Walt touched it, he’d give himself to the Jinni.

  Like a drunkard pausing in recognition of some past friend in a dimly lit bar, Walt leaned closer, narrowed his eyes, and looked at the Jinni.

  It’s presence as a separate entity seemed a desecration to the sanctity of Walt’s mind. His head shook in rejection. He raised his lone arm above his head and babbled incoherently.

  Marci’s influence broke through the Jinni’s shield and slammed into Walt.

  His body broke apart in solid chunks as if flash frozen by ice and shattered with a hammer.

  The Jinni flailed at the parts as the powerful storm swallowed errand fragments.

  Facing Corey, the Jinni spread its arms and elongated its jaw until the green flesh around its mouth tore, emitting an ear splitting roar, “NNNNOOOOO!!!”

  The stage exploded. The force crashed into Marci, hit Corey like the spillage of a broken dam.

  The last thing he saw before losing his hold, was the Jinni shrinking down to a ball of red light. Yet instead of rocketing off, it stretched, split into fibrous threads, and joined the swirling madness of Walton Zimbardo’s broken mind.

  FORTY-FIVE

  Snapping awake in Walt’s guest room, Corey stumbled back and looked around. His heart
thumped, sweat speckled his upper body and coated his palms. An impulse to scatter tugged him in all directions.

  Marci strode across his field of vision. He kept his eyes on her to help orient himself.

  “Is it over?” a male said from his left.

  The taller, bald-headed doctor stood with his back to the wall. His eyes were wide with shock. “Is the Dream Ride complete?”

  “It’s done,” Marci said as she squatted over a sleeping Janey. “It’s finished.”

  “That was the most spectacular set of readings.” The short technician spoke while inspecting the computer screen atop the equipment. In a softer voice, he added, “We have so much to discuss.”

  “We have nothing to discuss right now,” Marci said. “Per Walt’s instructions, we’re going to reunite with our daughter, away from here.” She lifted a sleeping Janey, and tucked her head against her shoulder, “Perhaps you’re unaware she is a kidnapping victim, that Walt’s thugs beat a hundred and ten pound woman within an inch of her life.”

  The short doctor shook his head rapidly enough to warrant fears of a seizure. He scratched his nose, and frowned dismissively.

  Corey inhaled through his nostrils and exhaled slowly to alleviate his own internal tremors.

  “I’m not sure you understand,” the technician said. “There are some very alarming readouts coming from Mr. Zimbardo. Specifically his brain activity.”

  The taller partner peeled off the wall, seemed intent on exiting the room, until Marci stepped in his path. She addressed the short one. “Those readings are all normal, for this. Dream Riding is an evolutionary leap. The mind needs a moment to restart.” To the tall man, she said, “Go have a snack, but don’t sound the alarm just yet. In forty to eighty minutes, Walt will pop back, display normal activity and wake as healthy as ever.”

  “I’m just going to notify Ms. Houghton you’re finished.” the taller man said. He then pressed his lips together as if emphasizing he spoke truth, a slight nod, and he exited.

  “I can’t see how that’s possible,” the shorter man said, but he sounded uncertain.