by Gregor Xane
"Right. Have a good night, honey."
"OK, Selma. Good night."
"I wasn't talking to you."
"Sorry."
"You want to hear something funny?"
"I don't know."
"It's about your buddy."
"Brother."
"Right. He just walked out of here with a cigarette dangling from his mouth."
"Sorry about that."
"Don't be sorry. He wasn't smoking it or anything. It's just that it seems strange, considering he bought a box of nicotine patches on his way out. Maybe it was his last smoke, huh?"
"You're kidding?"
"Nope. People do some damn funny things."
"Yes, they do, Selma. Have good a night."
Steve hung up the phone, confused and worried. He didn't think for a moment that Frank was planning to quit smoking, and it was dangerous to smoke while wearing the patch. And he had no idea what could happen if someone wore the nicotine patch while wearing the Vril patch. It certainly couldn't be good for the heart. He'd have to look it up.
Steve finished out his shift and stopped by the front counter on his way out to the parking lot. He picked up a package of nicotine patches, sliced open the plastic with a fingernail, and removed the disclosure packet within. He scanned the pages until he found a consumer advisory that read: If you have vivid dreams, you may wish to remove this patch at bedtime.
Chapter 11
Steve folded the newspaper clipping into squares, stuffed it into his shirt pocket, and climbed out of his car. He walked up the gravel path to Frank's front porch and stood in a pile of newspapers still wrapped in plastic. He knocked on the screen door, waited, and then opened it to bang the knocker on the wooden door beyond. There was no answer. He tried the knob and found it unlocked. He turned it and opened the door, pushed his face through. The smell that met him was strong with sweat socks and the ghosts of greasy meals.
"Frank? Are you here?" said Steve as he pushed his way inside. He left the door open to allow some fresh air in.
The front room seemed oddly spare, but messy at the same time. The floor crawled with twisted socks, fast food bags, Chinese take-out cartons, beer and cola cans, and instant dinner tins.
Then Steve noticed a place by the stairs where the carpet was flattened and brighter than that in the rest of the room. An errant coaxial cable curled from the wall. Frank's television set was missing. Steve thought that Frank had been robbed. But then he noticed another clean spot in the carpet, a larger one, where Frank's beloved recliner once rested.
No, he's just done some rearranging of his furniture. He's probably just hauled everything he needs upstairs to make it easier for him to avoid visitors when they come to the door. Frank had done things like this before. When his last girlfriend left him, he had installed all black window treatments and low wattage bulbs.
Frank was probably sitting upstairs, drunk out of his mind, in front of the television set, feeling sorry for himself.
Steve started up the stairs, intent on slapping the man out of his self-pity, when a strange noise stopped him on the second step. It was a low whimpering noise, a cross between a frightened puppy and a muzzled monkey. Thoughts of robbery returned to Steve, and he pictured Frank locked in a closet upstairs, bound and gagged, duct tape wrapped around his skull.
Steve continued up the stairs with more caution, listening closely for footsteps, but all he heard was the whimpering sound growing more frenzied, more rhythmic.
The hall was dark at the top of the stairs. There were three doors. Two led to bedrooms, one led to the bathroom. All were left wide open. The last door on the right was Frank's room, and a flickering light escaped the doorway into the hall.
Frank's missing television set.
Steve approached the doorway and peered in. The room was too small for all the furniture now squeezed inside. The recliner was crammed between a dresser and the bed, so that Frank would have to crawl over his mattress in order to get to the door. The big screen TV rested on a second dresser too small to hold it. The TV almost completely covered an eastward window, blotting out the sun. When Steve saw what was displayed on its screen he almost turned around and left.
A woman's face filled the set's frame. Mascara poured down her cheeks. Smeared lipstick made her lips appear swollen and bruised. Her top row of teeth clamped down on her lower lip with intense concentration. Her eyes were closed. She whimpered as she was pushed forward toward the camera by the mechanical thrusts of a man positioned off-camera behind her.
The focus of the scene changed. Steve turned away, but not before catching a glimpse of a man's sweaty face, the gross detail captured in a way that only cheap video equipment can achieve. The man's skin was blotchy and scarred. His pores were large and dark. His mustached upper lip was turned up in a snarl to reveal yellow, crooked teeth. His eyes were half closed and his chin nodded with the rhythm of his thrusting torso.
Steve tried not to look back at the screen. His eyes combed the floor as the mustached man's growls filled the room. Steve found a stack of rented DVD cases next to Frank's recliner, along with a mangled box of Vril samples. Foil wrappers from both Vril and Nicotine transdermal patches littered the floor.
Steve sat down on the bed, peered around the back of the recliner, and found Frank asleep in his chair. His eyelids were flickering. A string of drool wound down through his unkempt beard and onto his naked chest. Frank's torso and arms were covered with plots of dried glue, where old transdermal patches had been torn away.
Steve noted two fresh patches, one Vril, one Nicotine, pasted just under Frank's right collarbone. The patches were transparent and Steve could see Frank's skin raised and red beneath them. Then he noticed that Frank was naked from the waist down.
Frank's erection looked worn, almost dark purple in this light. And it twisted up to the left. This glistening, misshapen thing reminded Steve of a gnarled yarrow root.
Steve looked back to the TV screen, at the woman's smeared face. Her hair stuck to her forehead and her eyes focused intently, threateningly, on the camera. Her mouth hung open, revealing a shimmering pink tongue.
Steve reached into his shirt pocket, touched the newspaper clipping, and considered just leaving it on Frank's bed for him to find when he finally woke up. But then another idea came to mind. He thought it might do Frank some good for him to know that someone else knew what he'd been up to these past few weeks. Maybe he could be shamed into getting his life back together again.
Steve left Frank, went to the kitchen, retrieved a glass of cold water, and returned to the bedroom. He held the glass over Frank and smiled, thinking back to his college days when a prank like this would have seemed hilarious. Now it just seemed strange and sad. He was filled with a feeling like remorse, a heaviness invaded his limbs, as he stood there looming over his brother with an empty prankster's grin spread across his face.
This ought to cool him down and wake him up.
Steve dumped the glass into Frank's lap. And found himself jumping back, almost falling backwards over the corner of the bed, when he saw that the cold water had exactly the opposite effect.
Frank came.
And when Steve regained his balance, he found the TV screen filled with a close-up of a man ejaculating toward the camera. He flinched when he heard someone off-camera, possibly the director, shout, "All right, there's our money sh—" And laughed when the voice was cut-off way too late through sloppy editing.
Frank somehow had fallen into a deeper sleep. His eyelids no longer moved. He was still erect, despite the cold water, and the fresh climax dribbling over his bare flesh onto the recliner's cushion.
The scene on the TV changed to the interior of an executive's "office," which was really just the same hotel room with the furniture rearranged. The writing desk was pulled away from the wall and two chairs were positioned in front of it. The room wasn't large enough for the cameraman to avoid getting the corner of the queen-size bed in the frame. A fat executive in a rumbled suit wa
s dictating to his secretary, who wore a mini-skirt, suit jacket, and tie. They spoke to each other in flat tones, barely audible under the too-loud soundtrack of drum machine and wah-wah guitar.
Steve turned off the TV and shook his head at his brother. He was now determined to wake him and instill a rehabilitating sense of shame in the man. He reached over, pinched his cheek and twisted it until Frank's eyes popped open.
"Holy shit," Frank said, in a tone that matched exactly the flat delivery of the actors in the films he'd been watching. The Serapuems were still thick in his blood. "Steve?"
Steve twisted Frank's cheek even harder. "Frank, wake up, Frank."
"I'm awake. Let go of my fucking face."
Steve let go, smiled down on his brother, and waited.
Frank's eyelids drooped, almost closed again, and tears welled in their corners. He reached up and rubbed his sore cheek, wiped his nose on his forearm, and looked thoroughly confused. "What the hell's going on?"
"You tell me."
Frank looked down and saw his exposed genitals. He groaned and pulled himself out of his chair with great effort. He bent over, presented his spread ass cheeks, and rummaged through a pile of laundry, wiped himself off with a dirty towel, and pulled on a pair of stained boxer shorts. He turned back around, glared at Steve, and sopped up the seat of his recliner with the towel. He spotted his remote control at the back of the chair, retrieved it, and slid it under his nose, sniffing with a disgusted look on his face. He flopped back into the chair, arms crossed over his chest, tapping a button on the remote on his way down.
The TV screen flashed on. The executive and his secretary were atop the desk now. Their movements were exaggerated and wild, fools joined in a slapstick pantomime rodeo.
"Turn that off," Steve said.
"You're right. It's not working anymore."
"What do you mean?"
"I can't blot it out with this anymore," Frank jabbed the remote at the set and an image of an open-handed slap to the secretary's posterior faded slowly away into blank screen. "It worked for a while. I was able to force myself to dream other dreams."
"Other dreams?"
Frank turned away from the blank screen, turned his glassy eyes on Steve. "I told you about the doll's arm. The crack in your living room."
Steve scratched behind his ear. "You're talking about the dream you saw Vo about?" He reached down and picked up a DVD case and read its title. Head Nurse 3. "You've been having it again?"
"I had that same dream every single night since my first visit with Dr. Vo."
Steve picked up another video. Eat it While It's Hot. He tapped it against his knee, threw it to the floor, and picked up another. Hardly Working. "You never told me that."
"It doesn't matter," Frank said, twirling the remote in his left hand, staring into the darkened television.
"You can go see him again, you know."
"My coverage ran out two months ago."
"No shit. I was offering to pay for it, asshole."
Frank threw the remote. It rattled behind the dresser. The battery panel snapped off and landed on the bed next to Steve.
"I don't need to see Vo. I can take care of this myself."
"How exactly have you been taking care of it?"
Frank looked at him with half-closed lids, smiled from the left side of his mouth. "I forced out an incubus by invoking the succubi."
Steve looked into Frank's eyes, searching deep for the clue, the twitch that would tell him that his brother was joking, putting him on. But Frank was serious, and seriously frightened.
"I decided that I'd rather have my soul stolen by a demoness," Frank said.
"Who wouldn't."
"I slap on a Vril and a Nicotine patch about four hours before I plan to go to bed. I've been watching these things to get in the mood." He picked up an empty DVD case and read the title, Chastity's Revenge. I fast-forwarded through most of this one. I guess I do with most of them. When I've seen enough of Chastity or Esther, or whoever, I take two Serapuems, and I'm actually with them. I've been with Chastity here a dozen times. Her and Kimba Lakes at the same time."
"In dreams?"
"Some of the best dreams I ever had. Sleeping on Nicotine makes them real."
"No. You just have less restful sleep. When you have less restful sleep, you have a tendency to remember more about your dreams."
"Fine, have it your way." Frank grimaced as he pinched the Vril patch from his skin. "All I know is that I've been through some pretty strange bedrooms lately. It was fun at first." He peeled off the Nicotine patch. "But, like I said, the incubus came back. The succubi just weren't strong enough."
"What is this incubus shit?"
"That's what I call the doll's arm."
"What's so scary about a fucking doll's arm?"
"It persists. Every night it made its appearance, and then the succubi came and blotted it out for a while. But now it's back. Not every night. But I know it will be. It's just a matter of time."
"Listen, Frank." Steve removed the folded newspaper clipping from his pocket. "I brought something for you."
Frank turned his attention to the glue splotches on his chest. He began picking at them, pouting. "I'll be getting a head job and I'll look down and see Harley Cheeks deep-throating the damn thing."
"The doll arm?"
"Yeah, the fucking arm. One night, Becky Highborn and Bambi Biggs burst through my back door with chainsaws, wearing strap-ons."
Steve laughed. "Terrifying."
"They tried to rape me."
Steve didn't stop laughing.
"They were baby-doll arm strap-ons, Steve."
"For some reason, that doesn't make it seem any less humorous."
"Give me a break."
Steve looked down at the newspaper clipping, handed it to Frank. "Here."
"What's this?"
"It's a break. It's a job."
Frank unfolded the clipping. "It's a classified ad."
"It's a job, Frank."
Frank read through the ad. "I don't know if I want to spend my days drawing hammers."
"Drawing toothpicks would be better than what you've been doing."
"Yeah, I need to shave." Frank folded the clipping into a little square. "Clean up the place a bit. I really need to go to the library."
"Do you want the job?"
"I do need a job. I mean, I'll apply for it."
"Would you do it?"
"If they hired me. Sure, I'd draw power tools for a little while."
"Good. That's what you'll be doing. You have an interview on Monday."
"What are you talking about?"
Steve slapped Frank on the knee and winked. "Don't worry, it's just a formality. You already got the job." He stood and scanned the bedroom with gloating eyes. "But you still might want to shower, clean yourself up a bit, before you go."
Chapter 12
Read this sentence. Now, look away from this book.
Stop!
Look all around you—really take it all in—before going on to the next sentence. We really mean it.
Frank read this passage twice, looked up at the bookshelves surrounding his reading nook in the local public library, and then returned to the pages of Control Your Dreams!: A Field Guide for Lucid Dreamers.
Now that you've looked away, re-read the five sentences above. Are they the same sentences you read just a second ago? If the answer is yes, you're awake. If the answer is no, you're dreaming. This very simple test is the first step in mastering the art of lucid dreaming. Make this little 'reality test' a habit in your daily life. It will soon become second nature, and you'll find yourself doing it in your dreams. No book, no label, no street sign, will read the same way twice in a dream. Knowing this, recognizing this—realizing that you're dreaming while you're dreaming!— is the key to controlling your dreams.
Frank closed the book, read its front cover, looked away, and then read it again. The title hadn't changed. He placed the book on a
stack of ten other dream reference books and headed up to the checkout counter.
Chapter 13
The wheels of three overflowing shopping carts rattled across the blacktop at the Old Grocer. A stock boy named Cliff followed a bagger named Charley, who followed a customer in a ragged overcoat. They traveled single file, pushing their carts toward a rusted-out vehicle. The car was in such an advanced state of disrepair that its make and model were no longer distinguishable.
Cliff had never seen anything like it in his entire career at the Old Grocer. Although, he'd only worked there a year, he'd never been asked to follow a customer around the store while he filled up three cartloads of cans and dried goods. He'd never seen a customer, whose appearance and smell seemed to indicate that he was homeless, spend so much money on groceries.
Cliff stopped behind the man's car and waited while he fumbled for his keys. He searched each coat pocket twice before searching his pants. He finally found them in the back pocket of his jeans and seemed quite surprised to find them there. Cliff figured the guy did his paint job about seventy-five dollars' worth of damage with those keys as he searched for the lock. The trunk was empty except for a worn golf bag and a few straggling clubs.
Cliff turned to Charley, poked him in the arm, and gave him a dirty look for staring. Charley was his cousin, and he'd been staring at people all his life. He nodded at him to begin helping the poor bum load his groceries into the trunk. Cliff stepped up after him, and soon the trunk was filled with overflowing bags, toilet paper bundles, and cases of beer and soda. Cliff noticed the strange customer taking sharp double-takes at any item which escaped the flimsy plastic bags, like he was taking a mental note for later, so that if he found anything missing he could place the blame on these boys.
No. Cliff didn't like this guy. This customer. The man's beard was speckled with food. His clothes were crumpled. His fingers were stained with smoke, his hair styled with ancient scalp oils. Cliff found himself disliking filthy people in general the longer he stood there. And Cliff had a tendency to lose his manners with those he didn't like. He reached over and opened the car door without asking permission and began hastily shoveling the bagged goods into the back seat.
