The Experiment of Dreams

by Brandon Zenner

  He parallel parked on his street, again not noticing that the dark Lincoln Town Car, which had tailed him the entire time Sophia visited, was now passing him as he walked toward his door. The delivery van he’d seen parked on the block dozens of times, for months now, was parked right before his apartment. Rose’s Roses, or something. Catchy. He didn’t give it a second thought.

  He climbed the stairs to his apartment and opened a bottle of whiskey once inside. That feeling arose in him, the numb pleasure that could only be achieved through alcohol and dwelling on the past. That feeling of both pleasure and pain that felt so damn good. Ben sipped the whiskey and his body flushed, sending warmth coursing through his veins, pulsating pleasure from his stomach to the corners of his body.

  No matter how detrimental this sort of behavior was, drinking and dwelling on the past was Ben’s way to relieve his immediate pain and suffering. He knew it was unhealthy and addictive, but it felt great to wallow and cry. It numbed the pain and made him feel both better and worse. Stopping the experience was unfathomable. No matter how many mornings he woke up hung-over, promising himself, No more booze. From here on out, I’ll never touch the stuff again. I’ll stop dwelling on Emily, he would only stay sober for a day, maybe two. He could not stop torturing himself with memories both real and imagined. It was a temporary cure for a long-term illness, and it prevented him from healing properly. It kept his wounds fresh and painful, and that was something Ben found hard to admit.

  In one gulp he finished the glass and poured another.

  After some time, he stood from the couch and walked to the painting. A light wind blew from the open window nearby, moving the thin curtains rhythmically. The breeze felt cool on his skin.

  There it was. The cabin. Same as the day it was painted. It would stand the test of time. It would exist longer than he, and perhaps one day end up in a yard sale—or maybe a dumpster—but it would still be intact long after he was dead.

  The breeze blew over Ben’s face, over the swirls of paint in the sky, the blues and oranges and yellows, the whites … and …

  Wait …

  The paint … it moved with the wind … the colors swayed and swirled with the breeze. The smoke from the chimney, brown and grey, rose in the sky to dissipate with the oranges and blues. The bushes and trees swayed, and the grass moved like waves in an ocean.

  The painting—it was different. How is it …? Ben looked away, blinking rapidly. His hand twitched and a significant wave of whiskey splashed over the rim of the glass, falling over his fingers to the floor.

  He looked back at the painting. The oils on the canvas swirled much faster now. The clouds rolled in the sky, bright and incredibly vibrant, as if he were watching a time-lapse video. Whites and blues swirled with oranges and reds. A turbulent world, despite the sunny blue sky. Ben stared, entranced, his mind becoming numb with radiant pleasure. His thoughts lost. He fixated as the swirling paint entranced him in hypnotic rapture …

  … and then …

  he …

  … touched the painting—the canvas—his face only inches away, his finger just gracing the swirling sky. It was cool along the surface, and soft. The top layer rebounded at his touch, resistant, like the skin on pudding. He pushed harder, and his finger penetrated the soft skin of the paint, popping through, sinking to the first knuckle and then to the second.

  The paint was warm underneath, another world entirely, and it swirled rhythmically over his hand, now up to the wrist and inching higher the more he pushed into it. His forearm, lost forever in the flowing sea of paint, his flesh and bones melting, becoming the paint, swaying and churning.

  His mind went blank, stopped processing basic thoughts—or any thoughts at all. He felt numb pleasure and nothing else. He wanted to be inside the painting, enveloped by the warmth. The paint moved outward from the wall like something alive, cupped over his shoulder in a warm embrace, and guided him in. His other hand grew weak, and the glass of whiskey fell to the ground, shattering silently in a circle around his feet.

  There was no noise.

  The room was a void of reality and time. The image of the cabin stayed on the painting all the while, enlarging, stretching and contorting to engulf his body. Sunlight and clouds swirled together against the canvas of blue sky: oranges, whites, blues—always swirling, always changing—as it enveloped him. The paint guided him in, gently, reassuringly. It crept over his shoulder blade, stretching toward the square of his back like something alive. His nose touched the cool outer layer, slightly resistant like the skin on pudding about to break …

  Wait …

  A voice spoke to him from somewhere else: This isn’t real, Ben. This isn’t real. Look around you.

  He pulled his nose off the warm outer layer of the paint and looked over his shoulder. The apartment was his, but the kitchen—it was larger than it should be … and the couch and lamps, they were different. Everything was hazy, as if a layer of steam sat heavy in the air.

  I’m dreaming.

  He looked back to the painting, next to his enveloped arm, the swirls so vivid and bright. The door of the cabin began to open an inch before the pupil of his right eye, making a creaking sound that broke the stillness of the room. He looked back and forth between the painting and the room, and each time the room behind him changed ever so slightly—the kitchen counter a different color and the walls shifting in size and proportion.

  Than all at once, everything changed. He felt like he was on a rollercoaster, his stomach fluttering, his head spinning, his body going a hundred miles an hour just standing there. Blurs of color streaked by in circular arrays. He clenched his eyes shut. He wanted to scream, but the only sound he made was a quiet, Hhhmphhh.

  And just as suddenly as it began, the sensation stopped. His mind and body went back to being stationary. He blinked his eyes open. The room was not his apartment anymore; it was the studio in his old house—Emily’s studio. He blinked several times, fluttering his eyelids. His eyes were wet. The room stayed physically the same, yet was becoming brighter, more vibrant, with each passing second. The film of haze over his vision cleared, the steam in the room dissipated, and he could see the room as it was—as it is. A drop-cloth spread over the floor like a carpet, with Emily’s easel at the very center. It was dark outside the wall-size windows, and the glass was black and reflective.

  The painting still embraced Ben’s arm, up to his shoulder, his hand departed to some other dimension. And then the world began to spin again in endless loops. His eyes fluttered closed, and when he opened them, he was laying on his back, the drop-cloth beneath him, and warm tears streaking down his face.

  A person sat on his chest, laughed a muffled laugh while pinning his arms to the ground. The face was blurred beyond recognition—blank, like a thumb smeared over wet ink. But he knew her voice, could hear Emily’s squeaky laughter behind her obscured words. The smudge of paint on his nose felt warm—hot even. He wanted to scream, “Emily! Emily!” But he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He felt his face contort unnaturally, the muscles twitching and flexing. My god, he thought, I’m having a stroke … am I having a stroke?

  The blurry face came down, smearing burning hot paint on his cheeks and chin, and laughing, and he felt warm lips touch his own. Fireworks went off in his body, and his blood thumped fierce in his veins. Where is my body, my real body? Am I twisted on the bed, choking on my blankets? Am I dying?

  Ben heard flowing water, then felt warm liquid on his feet, and then his legs, soaking through his pants, making his skin tingle. The liquid spread fast, covering his ears, creeping up his face.

  He couldn’t move.

  Emily was still on top of him, laughing, and talking, but the words were jumbled beyond recognition. Ben could not turn his head, but in the corner of his eye, he saw his grandmother looming large above him, shaking her head, standing shin deep in a tidal pool of red water. The warm liquid was over his neck, over his stomach, up to his chin. It was touchi
ng his lips, tickling his nose.

  “G-g-grandma!”

  The liquid covered his lips, and his breathing became fast, nearing panic levels. It splashed in his nostrils and he huffed it out in horror. It covered his eyes, red as blood, and then it covered his face entirely. All Ben could see through the red haze was the outline of Emily, still playing around on top of him, still laughing and mumbling words. And then he couldn’t see or hear anything at all. He held his breath, with his heart thrashing against his ribcage.

  It might have been an eternity that he was submerged, drowning, and he could only hold his breath a second more. His lungs and head felt ready to burst.

  Then he opened his mouth and the fluid raced down his throat, shooting down his esophagus. It was like breathing in broken glass.

  Ben began twitching his head like he taught himself to do, and immediately the room around him vanished to absolute darkness, as if sucked away by a vacuum. He was still deep down, lost somewhere inside himself, and he continued to twitch his head. The horizon quickly became brighter, like a train coming out of a tunnel.

  His eyes darted open. He was staring up at the slow moving ceiling fan blades going around and around above his bed.

  Holy hell.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. It was still dark, but the appearance of blue out the window suggested morning was near. His mattress was soaked with sweat, and the air was thick with the pungent smell of sleep.

  Ben shuffled to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and urinated for a long time. Thick waves of delta were still being produced in Ben’s brain, and he felt wobbly, almost hallucinatory. He stood over the sink and splashed handfuls of cold water over his face. His mind throbbed.

  Jesus … what a dream.

  The best thing to do, he thought, would be to go back to sleep. His eyes were so heavy that he saw floaters in his vision—little blue spots, sometimes white, that suddenly appeared, moved around, and then fizzled into thin air. The sun was nearly up, and the sweet morning air came filtering in through the blinds. Instead of going back to sleep, he made coffee. He walked over to the painting. He was afraid to look at it, but he did anyway. And there it was: the cabin in the woods. Snow was on the ground, and the paint remained solid and dry on the canvas, cracked in spots. Just like it should.

  Relief washed over him; obviously, the painting was not going to come to life before his very eyes as it had in his dream.

  The painting looked the same as always … except, Ben squinted, moving his face closer. He knew every square inch of that painting by heart—by memory; he could read it with his fingers like brail. That little white spot should not be there.

  “Sophia, you better not have smudged—”

  Then there was another white spot and another, and they floated down the canvas. It must be the floaters, he thought, and closed his eyes. Occasionally—and especially when he was very tired—Ben got white floaters in his vision that streaked across his eyes, from the top going down, like bright shooting stars. Dr. Stuart Wright told him they were nothing to worry about, as long as they did not happen very often. It was not a torn retina or anything serious. This time, as he closed his eyes, they disappeared. But when he opened his eyes again, the white spots were still on the canvas.

  It was snowing.

  A wind blew. Ben could feel it against his face, but not from the window. It came from the painting. The air was frigid. His breath clouded as it neared the canvas, and little white flecks came trickling over the frame, blowing outward onto his face and skin, and melting away to little wet dots. The painting came fully to life before his eyes: the dry paints were now fluid and wet, swirling among each other to form a three-dimensional reality, just as in the dream.

  I’m dreaming. It’s happening again. Jesus, help me.

  Ben twitched the back of his neck.

  Nothing happened.

  He did it again, harder, and it hurt. The painting still moved; the clouds passed in the sky, the smoke rose to the heavens from the chimney, grey and brown, with white and orange and blue and red and—

  “Hello, Ben.”

  Ben startled, his nerves struck like lightning. The coffee spilled over the mug and burned his hand. The mug fell to the floor and shattered violently. He turned toward the voice. There was a person sitting comfortably on the couch with legs crossed high.

  Chapter 16

  Dr. Peter Wulfric sat at his desk until the evening turned to night. A small light illuminated the stacks of files piled in great heaps around him. He would soon put them all in cardboard boxes, and they would never be seen again.

  However, at that moment, he did not feel like doing anything.

  He needed some time to think.

  His forehead throbbed as he massaged the bridge of his nose. This project—this experiment—that had consumed years of his life, was almost over. Soon Lucy would be complete, and he would reap the fame and wealth that accompanied a breakthrough of this magnitude.

  He pictured himself several years younger, his beard just as long, but not quite as grey, working on this experiment that would grow to consume his entire life. It was then that Mr. Timothy Kalispell approached him, in his office at Johns Hopkins. The research Mr. Kalispell had done on him and his work was impressive. Mr. Kalispell knew all about Lucy, back when in it was still in its infancy, and the concept of tapping into a dream was just a hypothesis. He knew things very few people knew, and he understood the principles behind them well. The man was smart; there was no doubting that.

  Not only did he know about the project, but he also knew that the university recently canceled its funding, deeming the project too risky. Johns Hopkins claimed that the serum, Nano in its early stages, was possibly hazardous and potentially lethal. Pure rubbish. They feared the project was crossing the line from science to fringe, and any misfortunes, injuries, or hazards, would affect the university’s reputation. The official report stated that the project was canceled due to recent financial hardships, but everyone at the hospital, including Dr. Wulfric, knew the reasons were far different.

  The board treated Dr. Wulfric as something of an eccentric. They viewed his ideas as far-fetched, dangerous, and perhaps immoral. Rumors spread through the university among the students, and Dr. Wulfric became known as the reclusive mad scientist. His long beard and ever-whitening hair only fed the stereotype, making him something of a legend on campus. Stories about him abounded. The most infamous, and ridiculous, rumor was that he lobotomized students while they were still alive and had a machine that could read the removed brain like a book.

  The stories spread from student to student and class to class. The freshmen classes found the doctor particularly fascinating and could not wait to see the crazy scientist for themselves. To this day, a rumor remains that Dr. Wulfric still wanders the halls to carry out his cruel and fascinating experiments on randomly selected students in some forgotten wing of the school, unknown to the rest of the staff.

  The university not only canceled the research, but also disassembled the Lucy team, reassigning everyone to various positions throughout the hospital and university. Dr. Wulfric was offered a lucrative, and as some would consider, an agreeable, position away from the laboratories. He was delegated the life of a professor, teaching Advanced Cognitive Sciences. It was at that very time, before he accepted this new job proposition, that Mr. Kalispell came into his life, offering him a way to continue research on Lucy, but this time with unrestricted support and nearly unlimited finances.

  For many days, Dr. Wulfric contemplated the offer before making a decision. The board at Johns Hopkins left a rather unpleasant taste in his mouth. After years of developing a solid proposal, they finally accepted the project—only to shut it down when it was still in its infancy. Not only that, but Dr. Wulfric knew about the many rumors and the constant talk behind his back, not only by students but by the faculty as well. He left Johns Hopkins to disappear from the scientific community for good. The official record stated an early retiremen
t.

  Mr. Kalispell’s first lab was much like the one Dr. Wulfric worked in now in the Hamptons, only the first lab was smaller. Now, years later, and in a different lab, he found himself in the same predicament he’d faced back then: sitting in front of a desk with piles of folders ready to be destroyed—countless hours of research and study, all to be thrown in the incinerator.

  His personal anguish was beyond despair. There had to be another way. This could not have happened again. How could he fail? If only Mr. Kalispell would listen to reason. All he needed was another day, maybe two. He could fix this. At least, he thought he could, and if he couldn’t, it was still worth a try. It was worth the risk, especially for Ben’s sake.

  There was no use arguing with Iain. When he came into the lab with orders to eradicate all research done over the last six months, Dr. Wulfric was devastated. He didn’t speak, only nodded his head that he understood, and sat heavy in his chair. There was nothing he could do. Now, with all the piles of folders gathered on his desk there was only one thing left to do—burn it all.

  Leave no trace … just as before.

  He failed. He had failed himself, and he had failed Ben.

  The glow from the singular light on the desk cast shadows from the stacks of papers in long dark columns across the floor. He stared at the shadows for a while, working up the strength and courage to do what needed to be done. He rubbed the bridge of his nose as tears slowly fell from his eyes, one at a time, leaving dark splotches on the manila folder on the desk before him. The folder contained recent blood tests of Benjamin Walker, taken only a day ago. Dr. Wulfric wiped his eyes and found his reading glasses on his forehead. He opened the folder and looked over the pages. There was not much time before Iain, or even worse, Mr. Kalispell, would call to make sure the research was destroyed. No, there wasn’t much time at all. But with the little time that he did have, Dr. Wulfric would have to focus, and look for something—anything—that would help him to dissuade these men from doing what they were about to do.