by Ryan Schow
“I know things, Netty,” I tell her, my full attention now on the girl who was once my best friend. “I know things the same way I know you.”
With every fiber of my being, I am DYING to tell her who I am, but that would only hurt her more. That would only complicate things. So I say: “I’m another one of Gerhard’s dolls, but you already know that, don’t you?”
She nods her head. “I wasn’t sure, at first. I’m still not sure how you…levitated him.”
“There are things neither of us know about. Things that defy logic. And science. Truths that make this life look like one gigantic misunderstanding.”
“Are you even…human?”
“Um,” I say, “can I get back to you on that one?”
4
I never do tell her who I am, and she stops asking. Sensei waits for Netty and me to say good-bye, then he returns to his body, back into consciousness. He stands, revived, but still unsteady.
“You’re the dream I’ve never dreamt,” he says. “Thank you.”
“You’re thanking me?” I ask.
“A true warrior dreams of a battle he cannot win. He fears it, yet he can do nothing but fantasize about the fight, searching for his weaknesses, polishing all his strengths. He fears the fight, yet he craves it. You’ve shown me that fight.”
“That wasn’t my intention.”
“At first, were you trying to win by fighting me my way?” he asks.
He wants to know if he legitimately got through my psychic defenses when he kicked me in the head. If I say yes, he will rest on the merit of his skills; if I say no, insecurity will creep its way inside him, with doubt on its heels. This truth, however, will lead him to sharpen his skills like nothing else can.
“Yes,” I answer. “I was trying to win the fight by fighting your way.”
At this point, my mind is so used to trolling the minds of others I’m just there. In the one place I said I wouldn’t go: his head. I’m unable to stop. Before his body responds to the truth by sagging in defeat, I feel it. It is an ugly, self-loathing feeling he feels. Then it is the unanswered question. He wants to know how I did what I did.
“You will never understand,” I say. Opening a telepathic link—words moving from my mind into his—I say, “Can you live with that, Sensei? The not knowing? Or will it drive you to madness?”
“I suppose I will have to live with it, won’t I?” he says out loud. I nod. Then I bow long and deep, and in the most respectful manner possible for a person of my training. When we both straighten, when our eyes meet, he says, “You are always welcome here.”
“I know it’s not our way,” I say, and then I step in and hug him. He tenses a second, then he puts his arms around me and I can tell this is a big thing for him.
Back at the hotel I pack my things, pay my final bill, then head to my car, which has two boys with skateboards hovering around it, talking about it.
“What is that?” the older of the two asks me. He’s got a head of uncut hair and the start of a mustache. Not a seventies porn-star mustache, more like an adolescent’s fuzzy shadow of a mustache. He’s got to be thirteen, maybe fourteen.
“An Audi RS5.”
“How fast does it go?” the other kid asks. His head is buzzed and there’s the shiny white line of scar tissue tracing the front of his scalp. Brain surgery?
“It’ll blow your fucking skirts off,” I say and they nod in unison, their dirty faces wound with admiration.
When I get in the car and start it up, both boys step back, but they don’t skate off just yet. Apparently I’m leaving first. My foot steps on the gas and the engine roars like the nastiest cat in the jungle. Four-hundred and fifty horse power.
The dreams of boys.
When I take off, the tires dig in and tear up the road. That sound alone could bring a girl to orgasm. Going slow, that wouldn’t have been right for two boys rearing for a show.
On the highway heading back to Astor, I find an EDM station playing Get Up by Bingo Players. Before I know it, I’m doing one-ten and grooving to the beat. Music and speed—what a deadly, natural fit. A righteous order. The perfect compliment to an adrenaline junkie like me.
Oh, and by the way, anyone who says the RS line of Audi isn’t the absolute shit can French-kiss my sexy white butt. Period, dot, end of freaking story.
The Weakness in Obsession
1
When Orianna left town, she did so in the middle of the night. Christian got her text. Paris. For a long time he didn’t know how to feel about her leaving. He wanted her to hurt like he hurt. He needed her to feel that gut-wrenching, soul-swallowing agony before they got back together. She couldn’t do that to him again. He wouldn’t survive.
Christian hadn’t known he would get the upper hand, or that she would break so quickly. Then again, her entire life was different. Made fresh into something else. Something he wanted more than her. And when he saw her in her newly designed body, she was flawless. Everything about her was literally perfect.
This terrified him.
Like a first crush, he obsessed. In obsession there was weakness. Powerlessness. If she were allowed to have that kind of hold on him again, he’d be blind to her whims. Well, not fully blind. Still, he knew he might never be enough for her. Margaret was always wanting more than she had. More than the things he could give her. More than him. She was practically manic for that one thing to fill all the holes inside her. But that proverbial hole was a bottomless pit. Her new face and body wasn’t the answer. Their wealth and opulent lifestyle couldn’t fill the holes inside her. Not the novelist, not all the drinking or drugs she could manage, and not her fifteen minutes of fame. Nothing.
Would Orianna be different? Was Margaret truly gone?
One night, while he was on his third glass of wine, he texted her. He assumed she was in Paris. He asked when she was coming home. The second he sent it, he regretted it. The return text came back hours later.
I DON’T KNOW, it read.
She didn’t know. Glass three became glass four and next thing he knew, Bethany was knocking on his door. He had texted her. Said she should come over, if she had nothing else going on. When she showed up, no words were shared between them. Her gorgeous eyes saw the look in his eyes and her mouth found his instantly. Rebecca was in bed by this time. The clock said one-thirty. Bethany was a night owl, like him.
When he finished her, they talked for a bit, and then she went for round two and finished him proper. She stayed the night. Left by six the next morning. Rebecca never even knew she was there. She showed back up at eleven dressed to the nines, glowing with a radiant energy he couldn’t dismiss, her makeup and hair done perfect.
She was all smiles and joy. He didn’t feel the same. He would feel better if he was run over by a bus. At least he wouldn’t be second-guessing his actions, unable to face such an eager young girl knowing he was going to break her heart.
“Hi,” he said.
“Good morning,” she replied.
His first sight of her: massive, massive guilt. His second sight, the moment she smiled at him with that easy smile and that infectious grin: lust. Something deeply carnal. Bethany let her hand graze by his privates when she walked by and said hello to Rebecca. A couple of times he checked in on them (he came to think of them as his girls) and something in him shifted. Like he could feel them becoming a part of his life.
A part of him.
When Bethany turned and looked at him, that thing between them, that thing with weight and knowledge, that thing with space and emotion, it seemed reborn between them again. This incontrovertible connection. Had he ever felt that with Margaret?
Yes.
Orianna?
Oh, God, he wanted so desperately to. He felt lust for her, yes, but there was also a deep sadness between them. Not life, history. To become this ideal woman, Margaret had to forsake her former self, and she was just starting to come to a point of honesty. To make such progress after climbing through an Everest
sized mountain of her own garbage just to see daylight, killing herself seemed unwarranted, masochistic, downright dangerous.
But she’d done it.
All God’s children eventually fall from grace. Orianna would be no different. The snap came sooner than he expected. And now Paris. His previous two texts to her went unanswered. So he took it out on Bethany night after night. And now, in the fertile soil of her youth and his need to belong to someone, something more permanent between them was taking shape.
After three weeks, it was dinner every night, and when Rebecca turned in early, he called Bethany who showed up swimming with want. He’d never known what it was like to be wanted so badly. It was thrilling. Unexpected. It was the dream he dared not dream.
Exactly one month to the day, Orianna returned from Paris.
Christian walked Bethany to her car one morning around five-thirty, and Orianna’s S550 coupe was parked along the sidewalk. Christian’s heart stammered then stopped. She looked so exquisite, with her eyes and her intent hidden behind her big Prada sunglasses, and he felt guilty.
He shouldn’t, but he did.
Bethany said, “What’s she doing here?” She didn’t ask it like a jealous teenager. It was more a question she asked but didn’t want to know the answer to.
“I don’t know. She’s been gone a month, and now…I don’t know. You’d better go.”
“Call me?” she asked. The question in her eyes was not whether or not he’d call, but whether or not he would still have her after Orianna got her teeth into him.
“Definitely,” he said. She took his hand, and the concern lay bare in her eyes. They were fearful, delicate eyes, and gazing into them, he knew if Orianna would have him, he was going to break Bethany’s heart. She’d be yet another casualty in the struggle between him and his now former wife.
Bethany drove off and Christian walked to Orianna’s car. He was wearing jeans only, the top button open. He knew he looked good, but he also felt cold, naked, and tense. She rolled the window down. He leaned in.
“Hi,” he said. By then he felt woozy, nervous to see her. To have to answer for himself.
“What are you doing?” she asked. The question she was really asking was what was he doing with Bethany?
“Filling the void,” he said. “Waiting for you to call, which you never did. Why are you up this early?”
“Just got home. Slept all day, woke up at eleven last night ready to go.”
“You’re still on Paris time.”
“I went to Italy and Portugal, too.”
He nodded his head, like he was contemplating the things she was saying, and waiting for those things unsaid between them to come up.
“What are you doing with the tutor?” she asked from behind her glasses.
“Getting back at you,” he said, “in my own way. Maybe discovering things inside myself I didn’t know were there.”
She remained quiet for a long time. He couldn’t look at her. He got in her car, sat in the passenger seat and stared forward. He remained silent. It was like that when he learned she was having an affair with the novelist. You could feel things dying. You could hear the death of life between them. He crossed his arms over his naked torso. Wished he would have grabbed a shirt before walking Bethany out front.
“You and I, we’re not together,” she finally said in a choked voice. “So technically you aren’t cheating.”
“I only love you.”
She looked at him. “I know.”
“I thought if I fall in love with someone else, if I break your heart and you still want me the same way you broke my heart and I still want you, then we’d be even and I could stop hating you.”
“Do you?” she asked, taking off her sunglasses. “I mean, have you stopped hating me?”
Her eyes were wet, brilliant and shiny, made new by science. The regret that followed her into this body, the part of her that was still Margaret, it sat like cold stones in those eyes.
“No.”
“How much longer are you going to be with…that child?”
“Not one more minute. Or maybe forever,” he said. “I guess it depends on you.”
An athletic couple in designer jogging attire ran by. A cat loped across the street. In the sky there were no clouds, not even the fake ones left by jet planes meant to curb global warming, or whatever. Orianna slipped her hand into Christian’s. After so much distance between them, this small connection, the warm touch of her skin against his, it felt familiar, sad.
He turned to her and said, “I miss you.”
She started to cry.
More silence. The damage two people can do to one another in their marriage, it’s a kind of torture some don’t survive. And divorce? It’s not the end. It’s just the start of you realizing all that bad is just going to sit inside you and fester without the chance of ever making any more good memories. Between them, there was so much bad. Only the rot of so much mental abuse.
“I’m sorry,” she said, sobbing. “For everything.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I realize no matter how much I try to undo the aching inside of me, nothing will suffice.”
“But you still love me,” she said.
“I still love you.”
The Locked Room in the Cube
1
The dream keeps coming. Parts of it anyway. Some of it is familiar to me; other parts of it swim and bleed and happen in a sort of restless, disjointed haze. What I remember most is how much I love the man in the dream. I’m convinced it’s Jake. Even though he was so angry with me after we made love, after I left and told him I’m a freak of science and I’m not coming back, I think he still might be in love with me. Then again, he could very well loathe me.
If I really want the answers to the mysteries of Jake Teller, I suppose I could tap into him at any point in time, but I don’t. I won’t. When you’re so desperate to be loved, sometimes you don’t want all the answers because the idea of that terrifies you. Rejection is still a very real fear for me. It could very well be my life’s burden. Which is why these dreams of mine feel so damn delicious: I am loved, wanted, taken, and at no point am I rejected.
After my fight with Sensei, after confronting Netty about her unborn baby and Brayden being the father—a horrifying truth that still sits like concrete in my gut—I drive to Sacramento and check into the Marriot downtown. It’s only a half an hour from home, but I guess I’m not ready to go home quite yet. How can I look at Brayden knowing what I know? Knowing what he doesn’t know? And then there’s Abby. She is a constant reminder of who I was, what I’ve lost, that I am no one.
That night, exhausted, emotionally wasted, I crawl into bed, turn on the TV but mute it, then fall fast asleep and roll right into the dream.
2
I am with the boy, the man, and we are in the same dream bedroom we’re always in. The lights have that dusty, low lighting feel; the air is warm and dreamy. Lounge music moves me, makes my body move against his. It’s the same wistful song every time. The same yummy ambiance. Everything in the dream remains unchanged.
I’m drawn with need into his arms; I cling to him for dear life. This mystery man. My love. This person I would forsake everyone and everything for. I’ve never felt these kinds of cravings before. Our mouths meet. I surrender. Clothes are torn off in a rush. Bodies fall all over each other. My dream man, he’s strength against my frailty, confidence in the face of my uncertainty, my innocence, this unrelenting need to be his, to have him inside me. His will to take me every bit as strong as my will to be taken by him.
That’s when the dream descends into a grainy, stagnant fog. My lover, he’s gone. It’s just me and this…this thing that feels lost. My soul wants to cry out. Life is being plucked from me. The song changes, a sort of psychedelic haze washes over me as the dream falls apart in my head. I am alone, haunted, sickened. That’s when the pain in my head starts. It rips through the layers of my brain with force. The agony of it literally aborts me into
the waking world where I sit up in the darkness, hands to my skull with the kind of headache you’d think of as live wires being touched to the metal fillings in your teeth.
There’s a glass of water on the nightstand. My hand tries to find it in the dark amidst the searing pain. Nothing. It’s not there. My fingers spider crawl up the lamp stand, find the ON switch, twist it. My head sits in an electric chair of excruciating pain and I don’t know what to do. A syrupy wetness leaks from my nose onto my upper lip. I’m swiping away viscous blood. The smear of red on my hand has me panicking.
That’s when I look up and scream.
He’s standing in my hotel room, five feet from my bed. Tall as hell. Palm out, automatic now, my hand shoots out and I thrust so much energy at him with such relentless force he should have bent to my will. But the doctor from Dulce who is neither man nor alien, he merely stands there unaffected.
Amused even.
Man hand returns to the throbbing in my head. The pain has me swimming. Suffering.
“Better,” he muses.
He is inhuman. Seven feet tall, at least. All lean muscle. The splitting headache isn’t a product of the dream, it’s the result of him. Queasiness powers through me, chills and pales my skin. “If you are feeling sick, shield yourself from me, child. You can do that now.”
“How?” I ask through clenched, gritting teeth. At this point I’m pretty sure I’m going to puke until everything in me comes roaring out endless.
“Create your shields. Use them to drive my energy out of your personal head space.” It takes me a minute because the strain in my eyeballs has me feeling like his fingers are clawing their way through my brain, mashing apart my thoughts, razing my focus. When at last I’m able to raise my shields, the pain comes to a sharp stop. Like a switched-off light.