The Experiment of Dreams

by Brandon Zenner

  “When did you talk to Dr. Wulfric?”

  “Over the last few days, and just now back at the car. He called when you left to check this place out.”

  Iain’s stare was unflinching, like stone, but Michael knew the man well enough to decipher the tiny nuances in his persona: the veins pulsing in his neck, the glazed look in his eyes—genuine, unadulterated, anger.

  “Dr. Wulfric has a solution. He can make a serum that will flush the Nano out of his body for good. A cure. It will be gone forever. There’s still hope for Ben; he can have a new life, a fresh start.”

  “We tried that already with Ethan, and look how that turned out.”

  Michael didn’t say anything.

  “Jesus, man.” Iain scoffed. “Do you think I don’t know? Do you think Mr. Kalispell doesn’t know?”

  “What—”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Iain swung a heavy right hook, cracking Michael square in the jaw. Michael’s knees buckled, and the pistol he was carrying slipped from his hand. He dropped to the floor and his head bounced on the ground.

  ***

  Ben sat hunched over, looking up at Emily. The air in the room was becoming still, the roaring flames in the fireplace slowing to a fraction of their speed, and then the flames froze in motion, like a snapshot. Emily stared at him—into him.

  Then he blinked and the room wasn’t there anymore.

  He was on his feet, standing in a … a … cave? A breeze and plenty of sunlight came in through an open passageway leading outside the mountain, infiltrating the cave with dry cool air. The ground and walls were solid rock, and the cavity was spacious. A battered man sat before him in a chair, wearing tattered cloth robes. He was screaming and crying out long words in a language Ben couldn’t understand. Next to the man was a pile of bloody hair. The man’s scalp and face looked as if fistfuls had been cut away with a blade.

  Another man stood with his back to him, an assault rifle slung over his shoulder and a sidearm attached to his belt. The man wore a mixture of military fatigues and dust-covered robes and scarves. He turned.

  “Michael, are you sure you—”

  Ben looked down, rather his head moved without his control, and he saw his thick hands—hands that were not his own—covered in tight, fingerless gloves, resting on an automatic rifle slung over his chest.

  His body moved fast. He felt the cold metal of a knife handle on his fingers as his other hand gripped the little hair left on the man’s head. The man cried out in a squeal, and the blade of the knife sunk deep and sliced from one side of the man’s throat to the other. The cut was calculated and precise, and hot blood sprayed over Ben’s hand and forearm. Ben stared, watching the man gurgle and foam at the mouth. A few moments went by and the man no longer moved. Red saliva dripped from his lips and trickled down to form pools in the hollows of the rock floor. Ben tore a piece of cloth from the man’s robe and turned his back while cleaning the blade of his knife.

  He walked to the opening of the cave, scanning the clear blue horizon cut jagged along the mountain range far in the distance. Down at the base of the cave opening, the rest of the team had finished searching the slaughtered guards and were busy disposing of their bodies. They buried the corpses under rocks and stuffed them into crevices, where they would decompose to dry bones among the dust and sand and sunbaked reptiles, never to be seen again. The desert was a thirsty beast, never satiated over the blood of men.

  The soldier in the cave with him, a young Iain Marcus, gathered his equipment and joined him at the mouth of the cave. “Let’s roll,” he said, and just as Ben’s assumed body began to move out of the cave, everything changed.

  He was no longer in the mountains; he was in an operating room. There was a person strapped to a gurney before him, and two men wearing white lab coats stared intently at a computer monitor beside the bed. His body felt different, not as spry as before. Ben tried to move but couldn’t. He was not in control of this body. He stood behind the two doctors.

  His mouth opened and spoke, “How is he?”

  One of them answered. “Hear those beeps?” Ben could hear beeping coming from the heart monitor. “That means he’s alive,” the tired voice said.

  “BENJAMIN!”

  He was back in the cabin, his hands clawing at his ears. Time had not changed, had not moved on in his absence.

  “What … what’s happening! Oh Christ, what do you want? Who are you?” Ben yelled at the back of the man’s head.

  “Don’t talk to him, Ben! Don’t listen to a word he says! He’s a liar if he speaks!”

  There were other sounds in the room now, mumbled words and shoes dragging over the plank floor. Ben looked about, but saw no one. The voices were far off, muffled shouting; a scuffle had broken out.

  “SHE’S GOING TO KILL YOU BEN! SHE WANT’S TO KILL US BOTH!”

  “Ahhh, fuck!”

  The whole room vibrated and shook. One of the blue bottles on the windowsill fell to the ground and shattered. Ben leaned over, gagging, swallowing back stale bile. “Who—who are you?” He jumped to his feet, moving fast to the man in the chair.

  “SHE’S GOING TO KILL YOU BEN.”

  His body trembled with the words, electrified, the force of the reverberation moving him backward, but he pushed through the pain and moved one foot in front of the other.

  “No, Ben!” Emily shouted.

  Ben braced himself and ran to face the man, only the man’s body did not move or change as Ben circled about him, and somehow his legs turned without moving. Ben still faced the back of the man’s head no matter where he stood.

  “No!” Ben shouted, circling the man. “Who are you? Who are you?” No matter where Ben stood the man’s back remained before him, his legs stretched out away from him, his palms resting on his knees. It was as if the man were spinning in the chair, only he never moved an inch. It was impossible; an optical illusion that the human mind was not able to comprehend. It belonged to some other dimension, another world.

  Ben reached out to touch him, but his hands disappeared through the man as if he were made out of air. “No! No, no-no—NO!”

  He spun around and around, stumbling over his own two feet.

  “What are you? Leave me alone!”

  He saw flashes of Emily standing by the door as he spun in circles. “Yes, Ben, yes! Make him leave. Make him go away!”

  Ben collapsed on a wide cushion on the window seat beside the man’s chair. He was out of breath, wheezing. Strings of saliva dripped over his lips as he sucked in air. His head went down to his knees.

  A voice next to him spoke. “He’s gone.”

  He jumped to see Emily sitting beside him. He looked to the chair. It was facing him, and it was empty. He looked back at Emily, who was smiling with the radiance of pure sunshine. She cupped his cheek in her palm. His face contorted and quivered as tears streamed down his cheeks and dropped off his chin.

  “You did it, Ben. You did it.”

  “I … can’t … do this anymore …,” his voice croaked. Somewhere in the room, or from the room itself, muffled noises resumed: low-pitched commotion, hazy crashing and yelling sounds. The ground was creaking and things were shaking. The vases trembled on the tables, and some fell to the floor, crashing on the ground in broken splinters of glass and spilled water, sending the flowers bouncing across the floor.

  “Rest now, my Bennie. You can finally rest.”

  “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.” He was bawling. She pulled him close, and he rested his head on her lap. His vision was fading into an all-encompassing and pulsing aura.

  “I’m so tired … Emily …”

  “Close your eyes.”

  “But—”

  “Shhh.”

  She held him tight, stroking his hair and humming a tune he recognized as an old lullaby his mom used to sing to him, only Emily wasn’t singing the words, just humming the melody.

  She’s trying to kill you, Ben.

  The words we
ren’t loud; they were soft and calm. They spoke to him from deep inside his own mind, and yet it wasn’t he who spoke them. It was the voice of the man.

  Ben, wake up.

  Why would she want to kill me? Ben asked in reply.

  Emily was humming and caressing his hair. Each stroke of her hand drove him further down into the pits of darkness.

  Because she believes it’s the only way to save you.

  I don’t want to … live anymore. It’s so … very hard …

  You’re sick, Ben; you’ve been sick for a long time. But you don’t have to be sick anymore. There are things that you don’t remember, things deep down inside of you. A portion of your mind has been corrupted, turned to darkness. Reclaiming your brain as a whole will help you fight away this poison that’s coursing through your veins. You can remember if you try—if you want to try. Together, we can flush away the serum that Lucy has poisoned you with. We can remember the things from your past, and we can do it together, but you have to want to try. You can’t give up.

  I … don’t know how.

  Somewhere, very far away, Ben could feel Emily caress the hair on his head and hear her melodic hum.

  Yes, you can, Ben. The first part is going to be the hardest … you have to say goodbye, Ben … you have to let Emily go.

  No, I can’t do that! She’s just come back to me after all of these years—these years filled with torture and anguish! I can’t go back to the pain of not having her. It’s too much to bear. I’m finally happy.

  You’re not happy, Ben; you’re dying. She’s not real, but the grip she has on you is. You have to let her go. Not just this projection of Emily that your mind created—the Emily that brought you to this cabin—but the real Emily. The Emily you hold in your heart, the one you fell in love with and married. The one you miss more than anything in the world. You have to let her go.

  How do I do that?

  Accept the fact that she’s dead. Realize that you can’t move on with your life until you accept that she’s gone. Put behind you the nights of drunken debauchery, the nights of wallowing and crying to the heavens for her to come back to you. You gave up on everything—your life, your career, everything. You’ve been unable and unwilling to accept her loss, and this is where your attachment has brought you. You’re dying, Ben. Let her go. Remember that there is another person in your life who can make you whole again. You will never be able to love this person if you don’t deal with your crippling attachment to Emily.

  I …

  Reality was fading before his eyes, the colorful aura becoming incredibly white, and the feeling of Emily’s hand on his head was only a tickle.

  Sophia Lorenz, the voice said.

  Sophia’s a ghost—she doesn’t exist.

  It’s this memory of Emily you’re clawing at that doesn’t exist. You don’t know for sure if Sophia exists or not. You have to search yourself—your heart and mind. The truth is inside you.

  Sophia … Ben tried to come out of the fog, but his mind was lost. How do I remember?

  Your brain thinks the only way to stop this disease—the Nano particles inside your body that are destroying your mind—is to kill you. Your body is confused. Your mind is jumbled. You’ve been taking too many drugs for too many years; you’ve spent too many nights connected to electrodes, depriving yourself of sleep and medicating yourself on alcohol and despair. Your mind created this image of Emily to help you kill the disease, and the method it has selected is to kill the host—which is you.

  There is a glitch somewhere in the fabric of your very being—death goes against the very nature of survival. You have the power to kill off the Nano yourself, and I can help you do it. There are parts of your brain that were corrupted a long time ago—made void—and the disease is using these dark areas to operate without your knowledge. Your body doesn’t know how to respond.

  These Nano particles are weak. All you have to do is remember. Fill in the areas of your brain that aren’t functioning, and your body will do the work for you. We can get this disease out of your body. But first, the only way to make your mind right and remember the past is to deal with the present.

  How do you know all of this? Ben was so confused.

  I’ve been through this before, and I’ve been following your life very closely.

  Drapery Falls suddenly flashed across his mind. The dream played out in choppy increments, and the man on the ground … his face, it was blurry, but …

  The man in my dreams, the man Iain killed … that was you.

  Yes, Ben. That was me. It’s time to say goodbye to Emily, Ben. It’s time …

  I … don’t know if I can … Emily, my Emma …

  Like small bubbles coming to the surface of water and popping, Ben’s mind saw snippets of Sophia, and he felt emotion—real emotion—and felt a sense of sanity. It was far away, but it was there. His dates with Sophia: they felt so real. They had to be real; he had to believe that they were real. Did he really want to die? Or was the poison speaking for him—was it the poison that made him give up? He suddenly wanted to see Sophia again more than anything, feel her hand, touch her skin, kiss her mouth …

  … but there was also Emily.

  Please, God, don’t make me leave her!

  It was his own voice that answered, But she’s not even here. She’s dead, Ben, and you have to move on.

  As the blackness in his mind became all-encompassing, he pictured Emily alive. The real Emily; not this projection of her that his mind had created.

  He saw her when they got married by the town mayor, her in the wedding dress that she bought second hand and sewed herself to fit. Her young face was radiant and scared as they exchanged solemn vows in shaky voices, her nervous smile and blue eyes framed by her bouncing curls. He saw her walking into their bar for the very first time, terrified, with the keys still fresh in her hand.

  He saw her taking forever to put on makeup in front of the bathroom mirror while he waited patiently on the sofa, the air growing fragrant of Dolce and Gabanna, and him looking at his watch every five minutes.

  He saw them arguing over where to put the sofa and TV while moving into their new home. Both of them were exhausted from moving boxes and hungry waiting for the deliveryman to bring them the Chinese they ordered. They would eat that night sitting on the floor with a box as a table, tired, dirty, and miserable. The handkerchief she’d tied over her hair wet with perspiration. And yet they were happy—happy beyond what words could describe.

  He saw her smearing paint on his face from her nose when they kissed, then hugging him tight, laughing so hard, and the two of them rolling on the floor with laughter.

  He saw her in the studio standing before the easel, her reflection in the glass window, face stern, deep in thought, forehead crinkled, freckled with paint …

  Emily, my love, my beautiful girl … I have to let you rest now, Emma … I have to say goodbye …

  He heard her humming in the distance.

  And then the humming stopped.

  His head fell to the cushion and his eyes darted open. The darkness in his mind cleared. He sat up, rigid. The cushion next to him was empty. He looked at the chair. The man sat quietly, watching, their knees almost touching. Ben didn’t startle, didn’t flinch. The room was still—dust motes didn’t move from where they hovered in the air, the flames in the fire were frozen in place. His brain was fizzing and buzzing in his skull. He thought he could hear it coming to life again, flushing new blood into the folds and grooves, fixing itself like the cracking of knuckles.

  “Hello, Ben.”

  “Hello, Ethan.”

  “I’ve been waiting a very long time to see you again. So very long. Do you remember me?”

  Ben nodded.

  The man across was young, maybe twenty. Ben could see his face clear as day.

  “Ben, do you know what’s going on?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You are not Ethan Moore. I am Ethan Moore.”

  The man nodded. “We h
ave so much to catch up on.”

  ***

  Michael’s eyes darted open and he stared, disoriented, at an old wooden ceiling. He was on his back and his jaw was killing him. The confusion cleared and he remembered where he was and what just happened. He jumped to his feet, still limber for an old man. Seeing that Iain was still standing only a foot away made Michael realize he’d only blacked out momentarily. The fact that he was still alive meant he was either lucky or Iain wasn’t done with him yet.

  “You still have a wicked right hook, Iain.”

  “And you still have a glass jaw, Michael.

  Michael rubbed his chin. Iain was wearing those damn leather ‘sap’ gloves, with lead powder sewn in the knuckles. His jaw hurt like hell, but pain was something he could tolerate.

  “So, it’s come to this,” Michael said. “Our true feelings are out in the open. You need to come to terms, Iain. There was hope for Ethan Moore back then, and you failed to give him a chance. You wanted to kill him.”

  “Bullshit,” Iain said. “I was following orders. You should have been doing the same.” Iain began pacing to Michael’s side, circling. “Since we’re putting everything on the table here; I’ve known all along that it was you who helped save Ethan. He obviously didn’t wake up and crawl to safety that night in Drapery Falls all by himself, high on heroin. I’m well aware that Dr. Wulfric was in the vacant room across the hall, and you helped him save the boy. I know you switched the needle in the bag with a lower dose and a concoction of tranquilizers that the doctor whipped up. I know Dr. Wulfric broke into the room to save the boy and nearly killed himself dragging him through the flames. All of this I already know. Mr. Kalispell had a separate comms team stationed across the street. They saw everything. But hey, that’s what you do for family, right?”

  Michael didn’t know this, but he kept his expression stoic. “We gave the boy a fresh start. Dr. Wright wiped his memories clean, let him begin a new life with a new name and no memories of Lucy or any of us. We even forged him a birth certificate. He met Emily, and even she never suspected a thing. The doctors did a flawless job of transplanting memories, both real and fake. Ben had no memory of living in Drapery Falls after his grandmother died; he thought he moved straight to Sutton Lake.”