Lucid Dreaming

by Lisa Morton

  I was more cautious after that, and I searched the rest of my new house carefully. It was huge, two stories, and it took a while.

  There was a dead man in an upstairs bedroom. A dead man with a bullet hole centered in his forehead. He looked like a male version of her, with steel gray hair that had once been perfectly styled (before it was caked with blood, that is), and a toned and artificially-tanned body.

  I wondered which one of them had been dreaming when she’d shot him. I thought maybe neither of them had been.

  I debated what to do with the corpse. I tested his weight, tugging on his arms, but could barely budge him. I’m pretty strong for my size (5’4”), but I wasn’t strong enough to drag him out of there.

  Fuck it. The house had a pool, a tennis court, and six bedrooms. So we just wouldn’t use this one. I found a workshop area in the garage, got some boards, nails, and a hammer, and just nailed that fucking room shut.

  We settled in.

  The last thing I did before the sun set was take a quick inventory. I found a nice supply of candles in a pantry off the kitchen (which was bigger than my old apartment), and I hauled some tables and chairs over to bar the broken front door. I swept up the dangerous shards of ceramic left over from the urn the crazy woman had shot up, and I checked to make sure all other possible entrances to the house were secure.

  I was lighting some candles when I heard a noise in the kitchen, and realized I’d forgotten to watch Teddy for a while. I ran into the kitchen, my heart pounding in dread…

  …and instead I broke into laughter when I saw Teddy sitting on the floor, smearing a can of chocolate frosting on his face just like a little kid.

  I decided Teddy could use some cleaning up, so I filled some pans with water, lit up a downstairs bathroom with candles, and got Teddy’s clothes off. He let me lower him gently into the tub, and I started sponging him off with the water from pans.

  He got turned on by it and pulled me into a kiss.

  Now don’t go thinking I was like some schoolgirl virgin, because I wasn’t. I’d been with a couple of guys while I was working at the record store. One I’d even gone out with for a few months, until he got mad when I wouldn’t do meth with him and dumped me.

  I’d even had one man at the institution—a pimply-faced orderly who did it with me in a linen closet, but insisted on me facing away from him, and he was really clumsy and I was sorry I’d ever thought it sounded like a good idea. But aside from that regrettable act, there’d been no one in months, and besides, nobody had ever kissed me like this. It was slow, and sweet, just the right amount of insistence; he used his tongue like a poet uses a pen, gently but with great art.

  I lit up inside like a Christmas tree. I swear, I was just about to take off my own clothes and climb into that tub with him…

  …when he finished without me. He just suddenly gasped, shook, and came against the side of the tub.

  I was disappointed, but really didn’t mind just being able to look at him, with his flawless, dark brown skin and cut body. I’d never had a man like Teddy. Fuck, I’d never have been able to have had a Teddy, back before all this.

  Over the next few days, as I got to know him some more, I discovered that he was as perfect on the inside as he was on the outside. Teddy’s dreams weren’t violent or sick, they were sweet, occasionally kind of cosmic. Sometimes he’d talk softly during his dreams, using words like “karmic” and “tantric” and “complete.” I loved listening to him, to the deep purr of his voice.

  I did have to strap him down, though, if I was going to do anything away from him. He didn’t seem to mind. He let me lead him around, feed him, dress him…and undress him. Which I probably did more often than I should have.

  On the second day we’d been there, I was in the kitchen heating up some soup over cans of sterno I’d found (probably for their fondue set—fondue! Christ, can you believe it? Oh, yeah, you probably can). I had Teddy sprawled on the floor, and was just kind of humming to myself when I suddenly heard:

  “What is this place?”

  I dropped the spoon I’d been stirring with, and forgot about the soup. When I turned, he was looking around, his eyes clear— and scared.

  “Oh my god—you’re awake, aren’t you?”

  He nodded, and slowly got to his feet. He was wobbly, and I ran to his side to help him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Spike” just wasn’t a name that would sound right coming from Teddy, so I told him the truth. “Ashley.”

  “Ashley. That’s pretty.” Then he looked at me, long and hard.

  “You’ve been taking care of me, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I told him. Suddenly my heart was dancing the pogo in my chest, and my stomach was flooded with adrenaline. How long would this lucidity last? Would he still like me? Would he want to dump the stupid, spike-haired girl and split?

  Right now he just seemed kind of overwhelmed. He grabbed a chair from the small table in the kitchen nook and lowered himself into it, his gaze turning inward.

  I heard the soup bubbling over, and ran back to throw the lid on the sterno. Then I turned back to ask, and saw he’d picked up the can and was staring at the label.

  “This is beef barley. I’m a vegetarian.”

  I’d been feeding him meat stuff for two days, but decided not to mention that. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t know.”

  He put the can down. “It’s okay.”

  “So…how much do you know about what’s going on? What do you remember?”

  He thought a while, then said, “What I remember is…kind of like when you wake up right after a really vivid dream, and you can still remember a lot of it. I know you found me, and brought me to this house, and we’ve been here for…how long now?”

  “Only two days,” I told him.

  Suddenly a smile spread across his gorgeous face. “I remember a kiss. You gave me a kiss…in the bathtub, right?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “It was nice.”

  I gulped hard and said, “Would you do it again, now?”

  He got up again, and reached for me.

  The kiss was even better when he was awake. And I didn’t have to consider pulling off my own clothes, because he did it for me.

  There was one bedroom downstairs—probably a maid’s quarters, because the room was small and very simply decorated—but it felt just right for us. The bed was soft and clean, and the sex was slow and kind of timeless. Afterwards, I realized we hadn’t used any protection, and then I laughed at myself, thinking it might be up to me to repopulate the world anyway.

  When we were finished, Teddy held me and we talked.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Do you mean just now?” I giggled, and Teddy tickled me.

  “No, I mean…”

  He never finished the question. When I rolled over to look at him, I saw his eyes were half-lidded and moving slightly. “Blue fields,” he muttered.

  He’d drifted away again. It saved me having to answer his question, because truthfully I thought that what had happened was that my luck had finally changed for the better.

  I’d find out later how wrong I was.

  Chapter 4

  It seemed like paradise for a few days. The rich people had plenty of food and bottled water stocked up, there were books and the pool and even a handheld videogame that still ran on batteries. We ate and played and I swam and danced to CDs played on a battery-powered boombox and drank the good liquor.

  And of course there was Teddy.

  I should probably have been thinking about what to do when all that food finally ran out, but I didn’t plan or worry. All I thought about was whether I wanted pasta or vegetables for lunch, and reaching the next level on the game, and kissing Teddy. I took my Prolixin like a good girl, and I even made a fire in the huge old fireplace. It was completely silent outside, but I didn’t mind.

  I even liked it.

  The fifth night
of our stay there, I’d pulled apart some furniture from a neighbor’s house, built a nice fire from it, and was sitting by the flames reading some trippy book I’d found in an upstairs bedroom. It was called Ubik, and in it a lot of weird shit was happening, and it was kind of freaking me out. I was just getting seriously creeped out by a chapter where the hero had to climb some stairs so he could crawl off into a corner to die alone—

  —when I heard something outside.

  It wasn’t a big sound—just some bushes rustling—but I’d become so attuned to silence by then that it sounded like a Fear concert. I set the book down and listened.

  I didn’t have to listen very hard, because suddenly there was a slap on the windows behind me.

  I spun around, and saw a man staring in, wide-eyed, frantic, bleeding. He was drumming his hands on the glass, looking at me, obviously completely conscious.

  “Help!” he screamed. “Please, help me—you’ve got to let me in, they’re after me—”

  I revised my thinking; he obviously wasn’t so lucid after all.

  I just kept looking at him, and I suddenly wished I hadn’t lit that fucking fire. He was maybe forty, had been dressed in a button-down shirt that had once been clean, but was now covered with bloodstains, some fresh. There was more blood on his neck and head, and when I looked closer I saw the source of it:

  He was missing one ear.

  He ran for the front door, which thankfully was barricaded, then he ran back to the window, looking around desperately.

  “C’mon, help me out here, they’ll be after you next—”

  And then I saw that he really wasn’t dreaming.

  A man loped up behind him. This man was big, built like a wrestler, huge figure a combination of solid muscle and fat. His face was wide, his expression vicious, and his mouth and chin were covered in blood.

  I guessed it wasn’t his.

  The guy at the window turned, screaming, holding up his hands in a useless attempt to ward off his attacker.

  Then, as I watched, the fat man tore him apart.

  He grabbed the screamer with hands the size of king crabs, and bent down as if to kiss his victim—then he came away with a chunk of flesh. The first man’s screams changed, becoming choked and burbling. His knees began to buckle, and the fat man went down with him.

  I ran for where I’d left the gun in the kitchen.

  By the time I got back the screamer was dead, or at least he wasn’t moving any more.

  One leg had been mostly torn off.

  The fat man saw me, and lumbered to his feet again. He kept looking at me, and I honestly couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or awake.

  Then he started pounding on the glass.

  There was no question that he was going to shatter it. The glass cracked on his second pound. It shattered on his third. I put a bullet into his ugly fat head as his fists caught on some glass shards, and then he fell over dead.

  I think I was saying “Oh shit” over and over, and I finally made myself stop. I was shaking so much it was a wonder that I’d actually hit the guy, and poor Teddy was huddled in a corner, murmuring unhappily. I ran to him and cradled him and told him (and me) that it was all right, we were safe now, nobody would hurt us, it was okay.

  Except it wasn’t.

  By morning I knew we couldn’t stay there any longer. Our sanctuary had been violated, the city was running out of food, we were almost out of candles, and truthfully I’d been starting to get restless. These rich places had turned other decent people into assholes, and I didn’t intend to become one of them. I was beginning to realize certain things I had always wanted were now within my grasp. Teddy was one of those things, but not the only one. I wanted to go for it all. I had a definite goal. I was readying a plan. It involved traveling.

  It was time to go.

  Chapter 5

  First things first:

  I cleared space off a table in the living room, and spread out a pad of paper, a couple of pencils, and a phone book.

  The list I made:

  Food (vegetarian)

  Water Prolixin

  Extra clothes

  Soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste, towels

  Ammo for gun

  Rifle (and ammo)

  First aid kit

  Tent

  2 sleeping bags

  2 Gas cans

  Tubing (for siphoning)

  Tools (hammer, screwdriver, axe, saw)

  Flashlights, batteries, candles

  Road Atlas

  There were other things I would’ve liked to have brought— a portable generator might come in handy, for example, or a dog —but I knew I wouldn’t have much more room in the car. I’d gone over the SUV I’d arrived here in, and decided to keep it; it was only a year old, didn’t have many miles on it, got pretty decent mileage, and had plenty of room behind the seats.

  Then I went through the phone book, and tore out pages with the addresses of nearby sporting goods stores, gun shops, and booksellers.

  I strapped Teddy into the passenger seat, and we went shopping.

  I hadn’t been out of the house for the better part of a week, and the city had changed yet again during that time. Now L.A. was looking more and more like a ghost town. The people that I’d seen everywhere on the streets a week ago were mostly gone now.

  A lot of them were dead. I saw corpses in cars, in the streets, sprawled in open doorways.

  Garbage was collecting on the streets and in the doorways of buildings. Desperate, hungry cats and dogs fought over the fresher carcasses. Somewhere off to the south a big fire was burning, and the sky was half-gray from it.

  Definitely time to ditch this town.

  The first stop was Bullets (only in Beverly Hills would a fucking gun store have such a retarded name). I found the shop easily enough, and pulled up before it.

  “Stay here,” I told Teddy, although he was probably too out of it to undo his seat harness anyway.

  “Dancing in rainbow grass,” he murmured.

  Hmm…the shop was closed. And barred.

  This would be interesting.

  I could probably have gone to another gun shop, but I decided it would be more fun to try to get into this one.

  My SUV (for it was mine now, damn it) had one of those tow things built onto its back bumper, and had probably been designed to drag along a boat or another vehicle. There’d even been a tow cable in the back. I hooked one end of the cable around the bars, and the other end onto the tow bar. I remembered a story I’d once read about some douchebags who’d tried to do this to an ATM, but had just succeeded in pulling the bumper off their car. Of course it didn’t really matter if I pulled the bumper off the SUV, but I preferred not to.

  So I got in, gave the engine a couple of revs, inched forward slowly, giving it a little more power, a little more—

  And suddenly there was a huge CLANG! The bars had pulled right out.

  Chalk up another point for cheap construction.

  I unhooked the tow cable and stashed it back into the SUV, then put on a heavy jacket, wrapped a towel around my head, and got out a baseball bat.

  SMASH! The front door glass shattered inward. A few more careful swings, and I was able to step through.

  Then I stopped and stared, realizing I had almost no idea what I was looking for.

  I was surrounded by pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Boxes of bullets, shells, and little paper targets.

  Fuck if I even knew how to load any of these things, let alone shoot them. Not skills they normally taught at the state mental facilities.

  I pulled out my own gun, and fiddled with it until the clip suddenly fell out of the bottom. I had no idea what size of bullet it held, so I just compared it to others, opening box after box until I found a match. I took half-a-dozen boxes of the same size, and loaded them into a bag, then took another gun for good measure, this one a revolver that looked like something a cowboy would carry. I was kind of a cowboy, right? About to head into the Wild West. I
managed to figure out how to pull the cylinder out, and then I found bullets that fit into the little holes.

  By the time I left the gun shop, I had two pistols, a rifle for good measure, over a dozen boxes of bullets, and even a gun belt that I took just because it looked good on me.

  A girl has her priorities, you know.

  The rest of the shopping was easy.

  A tent, sleeping bags, a little propane lantern, flashlights, and some powdered rations from a sporting goods store. An auto supply store yielded gas cans and some tools. Aquarium tubing from a pet store. A road atlas and some more reading material from a bookstore.

  It was getting close to sunset by the time I was done. We were used to our mansion, and so I drove us back there. I wouldn’t exactly say I drove us “home”, because any place with three corpses in or around it can’t really be a home. In fact, it’s a place you need to leave behind.

  One more night. I’d spend tonight studying the road atlas, making our travel plans, packing the SUV. Tomorrow we’d leave as soon as we got up.

  I made some dinner for us (canned peaches, crackers, instant mashed potatoes, vodka), then sat down by the fireplace a last time while Teddy sat next to me, murmuring contentedly.

  That was when I heard the dogs.

  It was far away at first, but came nearer—dog barks, at least four or five different canine voices. Some were baying excitedly, some yipping, some howling. They approached quickly, until I heard them right outside. I walked up to the window, to a point where I could see past the SUV and the driveway down to the street beyond. As I watched, a large, tan-colored dog ran into view, and then turned to face its pursuers. The other dogs appeared in seconds, and they were a motley conglomeration of former pets—a big shepherd, a poodle whose fluffy fur had grown out of its trim, a little Yorkshire terrier whose matted fur still held the remains of a pink ribbon.

  Then I realized the dog they’d cornered was no dog at all, but a coyote.

  The dogs, abandoned and neglected by their dreaming human owners, had turned feral and were attacking a coyote. The golden-eyed coyote snarled at them, baring its glistening teeth, and for a moment the domestic animals fell back, uncertainly. In that brief instant the coyote turned and sped off again. After a few seconds the dogs followed, barking and baying again. I listened until the sounds vanished into the north, where the foothills began.