The First Principles of Dreaming

by Beth Goobie

  Someone turned up the volume and “Child in Time” began eating up the floorboards. Partway through Ian Gillan’s screaming chorus, the streaker entered the room, his head tilted back in a parallel shriek as he zoomed through the crowd and took his personal nightmare back out the door. Closing over his wake, several guys surged toward Dee and hoisted her onto a nearby table. Whistles erupted and the horde pressed close, circling the table and banging it with their fists. Someone began clapping, and others eagerly picked up the rhythm. Clearly visible above everyone’s heads stood Dee, her eyes half-closed and arms outstretched as if surfing the group’s energy, reading its intent. Abruptly, her head came up, her nostrils flared, and she began gyrating in quick, sleek movements.

  The zipper was at the back of her skirt. She made a slow job of it, laughing through the hair she let fall across her face, the story of her hips telling itself forever as the miniskirt dropped to her ankles, leaving her ass-naked with a tiny black thong outlining her crotch. Mouth agape, Jez stared, her heart in a stereo beat as she finally realized why Dee was on the table—what she was about to do. Across the room, the horde let loose with a roar as several girls were lifted up to join Dee. Others began climbing onto various chairs, collecting their own spectators and leaving Jez enough room to wedge her way through to the central table and break out into the front line.

  Five girls had joined Dee on the table; already they were bare-breasted. But the focus of attention remained on Dee—her heels, nylons, and garters now discarded, her hands sliding languorously under her thong. As Jez watched, swallowing and swallowing her panic, she knew she had never seen Dee this beautiful—an exquisite scattering of butterflies rising along the arched arc of her spine, spilling over the heartache of her breasts and into the proud thrust of her hips. Slowly, the thong began its downward slide, and the air shredded into wolf whistles and cheers. Tears running down her face, Jez reached out and grasped Dee’s ankle, seeking some kind of contact, something known, knowable in this utterly incomprehensible scene. Instantly, Dee’s eyes flicked toward her, their bright glaze dissipating as she took in Jez’s shattered face, and then something entirely alien twisted through her expression—a brief awareness, equally feral but savage and trapped…an animal backed into a corner, hissing and choking on fear.

  Startled, Jez released her ankle just as the bearded guy moved in, wrapped his arms around Dee’s legs, and carried her out of the room. Behind him he left a crowd actively fermenting—girls being pulled off the table and chairs, the orgy in full swing. Ducking the hands that reached for her, Jez dove toward the nearest possible sanctuary—under Dee’s dancing table. Out of sight she was out of mind, and the first thing she did was ditch the high heels Dee had given her to wear. Between the table legs stretched a vision of undulating bodies and throbbing red floor-lights; anything she had ever wondered about was describing itself in full detail for her now. On all sides, cries of ecstasy mingled with cries of pain. Somewhere out there, thought Jez, was Dee, stoned out of her mind and rotating on the axis of abomination: Pin-the-Bitch. Double Whammy. Open Sucker. The possibilities were endless; she agonized through each one.

  Like a message from God, a butterfly flit-flitting into her mind, a voice came to her then—Dee’s voice, asking, Would you use it?

  If I had the guts, her own voice replied, mocking her now, taunting. Helpless, Jez stared at her empty, useless hands. Where was the knife she had vowed to carry at all times? she thought bitterly. What was she good for except shredding Farrah Fawcett’s paper neck and cutting the tip of her own tongue? With a cry, she shot out from under the table, lifted off everything she knew, and flew over the room’s moaning, heaving panorama. At the doorway, she turned left, darted around a few more whimpering bodies, and headed toward the kitchen. To her relief it was empty, no one having submitted to the urge to copulate on its cold, cracked linoleum, and she was free to yank open each and every cupboard drawer until she had found a bread knife with a blade large enough to reflect an entire string of winking blinking Christmas lights—a knife Abraham could have used to kill Isaac, a knife with which Solomon could easily have sliced a baby in two. In short, a knife that would merit The Chosen Ones’ approval.

  As Jez headed back along the hallway, no one paid her any notice; she was no more than a foreign brain wave tripping through their skulls. Oblivious to the bread knife in her hand, couples traded off against the walls, and several giggling guys coordinated a collective piss over the stairwell railing. Giving them a broad berth, Jez started up the steps. All she could think was that Dee had to be on the second floor—it wasn’t likely the bearded guy had carried her out of Deep Purple to have his way with her in AC/DC. At the top of the stairs, Jez found herself standing at one end of a hallway of closed doors; doggedly, she opened each one and switched on the lights, flinching at yells of protest as she scanned the unfamiliar faces in the beds. At the far end of the hall stood a single door with a large crack near the top, carrying the message of someone’s fist. It was the last unopened door in the house; either Dee was in there, Jez thought grimly, or she had been taken out of the building. Without pausing, she tried the knob, but the door was locked. Rattling the knob, she threw her hip against the door and called Dee’s name; no response came back to her.

  “Hey!” called a voice behind her. “What ya doin’ at Dinky’s door?”

  Turning toward the sound, Jez saw a guy approaching. Mustached, long-haired, and wearing a M*A*S*H T-shirt, he looked like something that could have risen directly out of the blue and orange psychedelic carpet under her feet. Bread knife clutched to her thigh, Jez backed in against the locked door. In spite of all the other doors she had opened in this hallway, none of the various rooms’ occupants had come out after her, and she and the stranger were alone in the corridor. Lean and lithe, the guy looked as predatory as a hunting cat. Sweat trickled into Jez’s eyes, blurring her vision; as she raised the bread knife and pointed it at the M*A*S*H T-shirt, her arm felt sluggish, a dead weight.

  “Whoa!” said the guy, his eyebrows taking a hike. “Where’d you come from, chickie?”

  Gripping the knife tightly, Jez felt her fingers slip on the sweaty handle. “Do not come near!” she ordered, forcing the words past the quaver in her throat. Once upon a time, long ago, Sodom and Gomorrah had received fair warning—this abomination deserved one too. “Do not come near and you will be spared!”

  “Oh man!” groaned the guy, his eyes traveling carefully between the knife and her face. “You sound like my mom. This is God stuff, right? We don’t usually let God in here, babe.”

  Quickly, he shifted to the right and Jez shifted with him, following his movements with the knife. In the pause that followed, she could feel him poised on the tip of an edgy silence, assessing her. When he spoke next, his voice was quieter, more conciliatory. “What’s that you got in your other hand?” he asked.

  Glancing at her left hand, Jez saw Dee’s thong dangling from her wrist. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember picking it up. “It’s not mine,” she said.

  “Too bad,” said the guy. “But you gotta go home now, chickie. Dinky don’t like no Jesus-freaks hanging around his door.”

  Jesus-freak! thought Jez, staring at him in amazement. Fine, let that be my disguise. “Does this Dinky have a beard?” she asked cautiously.

  “He does indeed,” confirmed the guy.

  “Dark and closely clipped?” pressed Jez.

  “Dark, and indeed closely clipped,” agreed the guy.

  “Is he in this room?” she asked, turning slightly and pointing the knife at the locked door.

  “Try the secret knock,” the guy said immediately. “Three quickies, two longies, and one scratch straight up. If Dink’s in there, he’ll open to that knock.”

  A secret knock! thought Jez. Codes of the ages—they never seemed to wear out. Keeping the knife tip trained on the guy’s chest, she raised her other hand to knoc
k on the locked door. Instantly, the guy ducked to one side, wrenched the bread knife from her hand, and lobbed it down the hall. Then he lunged at her, carrying her body into the locked door with a resounding thud. Trapped by his weight, Jez punched; she kicked and bit, but was forced to the floor and her legs shoved apart, Open Sucker. Still she fought, arcing her spine and thrusting her body upward, but in one swift motion the guy grabbed her head with both hands and slammed it against the floor. A wave of dark-light shot through Jez’s brain and she was useless, rolling with the pain in her head. Vaguely, she felt the skirt of her dress pushed up and her panties torn off—all of it happening as if from a great distance, on the other side of far, far away.

  Out of that distance then, traveling toward her like a tendril of smoke, came a vision of a scarlet shape radiating pain. Difficult to define within form, the image flowed in and out of itself like a gaseous cloud, though it seemed to have a core—a long, narrow face that jutted like a ferret’s. Because of its color, the apparition looked to have been skinned alive, and it was sniffing the air like one of Tolkien’s Dark Riders, its eyes fixed directly on her.

  At the same time, a voice above her grunted, “Come on, chickie. Come on.” Though she clenched herself against it, pain erupted between her legs and rolled through her—cataclysmic, catastrophic; choking on her sobs, Jez thought she could actually see the fear-lit fibers of her flesh splinter and begin to disintegrate. Then, as pain continued, huge, unboundaried, she found herself lifting up and away from it, through what appeared to be a network of veined neuronal light—a membrane of molecules that stretched like a radiant onionskin across the outer edge of consciousness. Finally, with a roar of white light, that onionskin split open, and she was rising directly out of its gaping wound, spilling out of the trapped and choking body beneath her like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.

  Somewhere beneath and yet also above her, a heavy weight rolled aside and the brilliant pain started to recede. Half in, half out of her body, Jez hovered uncertainly, then sank back into her sweaty, stinking flesh, the gutted hole between her legs.

  “Jez?” whispered a voice. Gently, a hand touched Jez’s face and she cringed. More pain, she thought. Not more pain. No, no more.

  “Shh, baby, it’s me,” continued the voice—Dee’s voice, Jez realized. But when she opened her eyes, she was met with the sight of the blood-red ferret’s face directly over her own, still sniffing as it shifted in and out of its gaseous cloud. Terror ripped through Jez and she screamed, the fear pouring from her in raw gushes of sound.

  “Shh, Jezzie, cool it. Cool it, okay?” pleaded Dee, using the full length of her body to keep Jez down. “Come on, it’s me. You’re okay now, you’re okay.”

  Slowly, Jez’s fear began to dissipate, leaving her with a sharp pain tunneling her gut. “Watch out,” she whimpered, hot tears slipping from the outer corners of her eyes. “There’s a guy, he’s bad. He’ll hurt—”

  “Jezzie, it’s all right,” said Dee, pressing her hand lightly over Jez’s mouth. “I knocked him out with a brick from Dink’s bookcase. He’s out cold.”

  “Cold?” whispered Jez. “You mean dead?”

  “Just out of it,” said Dee. “You want him dead?”

  Jez flinched. “I was looking for you,” she moaned. “Trying to—”

  “I saw, Jezzie,” Dee assured her. “I’m here now, aren’t I?” As she hovered over Jez, her face continued to shift in and out of itself—sometimes human, sometimes narrow and jutting, a skinned bloody ferret’s. “Shh,” she said softly, her face peeled and bleeding. “Shh.”

  “Dee,” quavered Jez, staring. “You’re red—”

  “Baby, it’s my demon,” said Dee, kissing her nose. “My guardian demon, that’s all you’re seeing. Don’t be scared.”

  Guardian demon—the word roared through Jez’s mind and once again she was split wide open, reality spinning on itself like a child’s toy. Demons were the ultimate unholy whited sepulchers, the stench that rose from rotted flesh. Closing her eyes to escape the tortured shifting of Dee’s face, Jez discovered the same apparition filling the inside of her head, its blood-red face turning to look at her dead on.

  “Dee, it’s looking at me!” she shrieked, slamming the back of her head against the floor in an attempt to force the demon out. “Sniffing at me like the Dark Riders. It’ll smell my evil and pull me into Hell. I’ll be stuck down there for—”

  Grabbing Jez’s head, Dee kissed her hard, sealing her mouth and closing her into a small wet cave of tongues, whimpers, and sucking flesh. Head rocked with pain, the absolute crescendo and crash of it, Jez fixed on the second tongue in her mouth and sucked, sucked, sucked it.

  “Okay,” she sighed, releasing it as the apparition faded from her mind. “But I can’t…I can’t…”

  “Can’t what?” asked Dee, her face now fully human but intent, watchful.

  “…can’t be like you, Dee,” confessed Jez, keeping her gaze lowered. “I keep trying, but it’s too hard. I’m not…”

  Dee waited her out, tense and still, and Jez shifted under the heavy weight of her silence. “…like you,” she repeated finally, the words desperate and true.

  Breath harsh, Dee pushed up and away, and Jez saw she was naked. “Yeah, well, fuck you,” Dee snapped, then broke off and picked up Jez’s hand. “What are you holding?” she demanded. “My thong? Why are you holding my thong?”

  “I was looking for you,” mumbled Jez. “I had a knife. I was—”

  “A knife?” said Dee, staring at her. “Where’d you get that?”

  Jez was crying freely now, the tears a gushing stream. “The kitchen,” she gulped.

  “Did you use it?” demanded Dee, bug-eyed.

  “That guy threw it somewhere,” said Jez.

  Lifting her head, Dee peered intently down the hall. “Jesus!” she said softly. “It’s a bloody ax!”

  A groan sounded and Jez turned her head to see the M*A*S*H rapist splayed next to her, pants down to the knees, shrunken rubbery dick resting on one thigh. Wincing, she reached for the skirt of her dress, but Dee pushed her hands away and gently worked it down over her hips. For a moment then, the two girls paused, looking away from each other as if anything more would be too much, even the air rubbed raw. Downstairs, it was quiet—the music turned low, a few voices talking. The party seemed to be over.

  “How far did he get?” asked Dee.

  “Pretty far,” mumbled Jez.

  “Can I look?” asked Dee.

  “No!” cried Jez, cringing back from her.

  “To see if there’s damage,” explained Dee. “Mom’s a nurse. If you need help, she could—”

  “Your mother’s not looking at me!” shouted Jez, covering her groin with both hands.

  “Fuck, Jez! Stop yelling, would ya?” said Dee, stroking the hair awkwardly from Jez’s forehead. “I’ll get my clothes and we’re outta here, okay? Don’t worry about that asshole—he’s passed out bad as Dink.”

  Disappearing into the room with the punch mark on the door, Dee left Jez huddled with her back to the wall, staring at the carpet’s blue and orange paisley pattern. Paisley is sperm, she remembered. Christ, you’re a sperm whale. Listless, almost without intent, her gaze drifted from the prone shape of her attacker to the bread knife, its tip stuck in a baseboard fifteen feet down the hall. Curiously light-headed, she got to her feet, walked over to it, and picked it up.

  “What the—?” said Dee, coming through Dinky’s doorway.

  On her knees beside the M*A*S*H rapist, Jez had pulled out the neck of his T-shirt and was shoving the tip of the bread knife through the cloth and into the floor, embedding it so the blade rested against the skin of the exposed neck. “Don’t move, baby. Don’t move,” she rasped directly into the sagging, oblivious face.

  Beside her, Dee clutched herself, choking on awed giggles. “Jezzie, come on,�
�� she gasped. “We’ve got to get out of here before someone sees this.”

  “Okay,” said Jez, wincing as she got to her feet. For a moment, she stood staring at the splayed figure on the floor. “One good kick,” she murmured. “I’ll dream about it for years.”

  They came gingerly down the stairs, Jez hanging onto Dee’s arm and hissing whenever a sharp tearing sensation told her to slow down. Once they reached the first floor, she started crying again, tears pouring from her eyes like an upended box of Smarties. Cautiously, she stepped over the bodies sleeping off chemicals in the hallway, cringing when her foot touched a naked arm or thigh. As she limped through the front door, cold air came at her like a slap of consciousness, pulling her out of a muffled, shattered haze. Arms wrapped tightly around herself, she waited, shivering, at the curb as Dee ran off to fetch the Bug, then crawled warily into the front seat, pain sideswiping her each time she moved.

  Reaching into the back, Dee picked up her red and white checked midi and draped it across her lap. “Need some help?” she asked.

  “No,” said Jez, blowing her nose into the midi’s skirt. “I’ll do it.”

  As she changed, Dee drove in silence, her eyes fixed on the street ahead. “Look,” she said hesitantly as Jez struggled, hissing with pain, to do up the midi’s back zipper.

  “Yeah, I know,” said Jez, cutting her off. The shakes had really taken over now, her thighs giving off quick, ugly shudders, throbs of self-contempt. There simply was no escaping the overwhelmingly obvious—she had been a complete and utter fool; Dee had never been in danger; there had been no apocalypse, and all she had managed to do was get herself raped. No one in her right mind would want to hang around with someone that dense. On top of everything else that had gone wrong tonight, this was kiss-off time for Jezebel—return to Mary-Eve, exile.