“Oh, geez! I’m sorry! I forgot you were here,” Genesis said to Aislen. Then she noticed Troy leaning forward on the kitchen counter. “Holy crap! Hey there, Troy...” She stopped, obviously noticing the body posture, the mood, and put two and two together. “Uhhhh...I can go back in my room if you want.”
“No! Not at all. It was nothing.” Aislen jumped up, vertigo almost knocking her off her feet.
Troy shook his head and rolled his eyes at Genesis. “Yeah, she just had something in her eye and I was helping her get it out.”
“Oh, I see,” Genesis said, smiling back at him, totally in on the joke.
“We were going to make some kind of soup to help you feel better,” Aislen added, trying to brush the awkward away.
“Au contraire, mon amour,” Troy protested. “I was going to make soup for Aislen, but it appears she made it through the evening unscathed. You on the other hand, look a little emo right now. I’d be glad to whip it up for you.”
“I am willing to try anything if it will take this headache away.” Genesis sat down in the stool Aislen vacated, holding her head in her hands.
“Great! An appreciative and willing patient!” Troy found a pot and began his kitchen wizardry, opening cans, adding water, mixing in lemon juice, and cracking and separating eggs. He whipped up the yolks in a bowl and then poured them slowly into the soup. In less than ten minutes, a steaming bowl sat before each of them.
Aislen looked down at it. It was the most unappealing meal she had ever seen: a bowl of thick, bright yellow liquid with floating chunks of mystery meat. She grudgingly picked up her spoon and took a tentative taste.
Genesis had no qualms about it. She plunged in heartily. “Wow! This is delicious,” Gen said between spoonfuls.
She was right. It was pretty damn tasty for looking so...yellow. And with each spoonful, Gen seemed to get more of her sparkle back. Near the end, she drained the rest, drinking it straight from the bowl. She pushed her empty bowl toward Troy, “More, please.”
After she finished devouring her second serving, she appeared fully recovered.
“You got to be kidding me,” Aislen said to both of them.
“Told you so,” Troy responded.
“So Ais...” Gen turned to Aislen, back to her normal bright-eyed and bushy-tailed self. “How’d you sleep? Any more wild dreams to share?”
Aislen blanched. She glared at Genesis, mortified that she mentioned her dreams in front of Troy.
“What dreams?” Troy asked, looking over at Aislen.
Her stomach flipped over. “Nothing. Nevermind.” Her tone had an edge to it, sharp as a razor. She threw another evil eye at Gen.
“It’s not a big deal, Ais,” Gen defended herself. “I had some humdingers last night myself.”
“Could we talk about this later?” There should have been no mistaking the hiss that issued from her lips, but Gen continued.
“No, because I had this one with you in it and I want to tell you before I forget.” Genesis rattled on without taking a breath. “There was this older man in my room and he was talking with you. I couldn’t make out anything he was saying, but I could see him clearly. He was blond, with green eyes and he was showing you how to make these balls of light. Then you both jumped into them and disappeared from my room. It was amazing!”
Aislen nearly choked. It couldn’t be! That was exactly what Aislen had done with her father, but how was it possible that Genesis would see what Aislen had been doing in her dream?
“Whoa! That is really wild,” Troy said with a chuckle.
“Yep. That sounds pretty crazy to me, too,” Aislen said through gritted teeth.
“Really, Aislen? That’s the last thing I expected to hear outta you. With all you told me about yesterday,” Genesis rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Not everybody thinks dreaming is crazy, Aislen—only you. You think that everything is always physiology, chemistry, and neurology. You ignore all other possibilities, because you can’t ‘prove’ them. And you have proof, Aislen, try to say that you don’t.”
Aislen had never been so mad in all their years of friendship. Maybe she did have proof—especially now. And maybe she wanted to share this with Genesis—alone. But that Gen would bring this up in front of Troy was unforgivable. “I don’t want to talk about this right now, Gen.”
“So...let me get this straight.” It was Genesis who was angry now. “You dream about a boy shooting a man in the head...and then you see that same boy yesterday, and he may have shot his father and—”
“Shut! Up!” Aislen yelled, slapping the palm of her hand down so hard on the counter the spoons rattled in their bowls. It took everything in her power not to knock Genesis off her chair.
Genesis was stunned to silence and then a slow shame began dawning on her face as she realized that she had betrayed Aislen’s confidence.
Aislen turned to Troy. He was looking at her with a flat, steely intensity, a mixture of disdain and confusion. She couldn’t see which one was winning, but the “really into her” one was not playing there anymore.
“Is that true, Aislen?” he asked her, his voice tight and devoid of its usual warmth.
Aislen was speechless. She wanted to deny Gen’s claims, to call her an outright liar. But the words wouldn’t pass across her lips. Her heart seized up in her chest.
“Yes,” she confessed.
“You had a dream about Blake? And he shot a man in the head in it?” Disdain took the lead, but disgust was fast on its heels.
Agony ripping at her heart, but she couldn’t lie. She nodded.
“Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
“I couldn’t. I’ve never had anything like this happen before—I don’t have dreams that I usually remember—or that seem so real—or that are actually true! I thought I was going crazy.”
“And you don’t feel that way now?” he asked, venom spit in every word. Disgust was going for the win.
They stared at each other in silence. He gripped the counter, waiting for her to answer. Tears welled up in her eyes and looked at Genesis, who was awash in remorse.
Aislen couldn’t be mad at her. She had told the truth. She was nothing but honest and good, a true friend who would accept and believe in Aislen no matter what. She looked back at Troy, directly. If he couldn’t accept the truth—so be it.
“I do. I do feel it’s crazy.” She felt a calm descend over her. “And I don’t. I can’t explain it, but it happened. And,” she looked at Genesis and put her hand on top of her friend’s, “I had a dream like yours, Gen. Exactly what you saw—was exactly what I did. It scares the hell out of me, and I know I may be insane, but I can’t lie about it, anymore. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“No. I’m sorry, Aislen. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
They both looked at Troy again.
He was fuming, leaning on the counter, looking at Aislen, his knuckles white. Aislen knew exactly what he was thinking now. He was thinking she was a complete and utter nutcase.
“Why don’t you go in and take a shower, so I can clean up in here,” he said at last as he turned his back on her and went about gathering the dishes.
Aislen watched his back for a while, thinking about how, just a few moments ago, he had confessed to having feelings for her. He definitely still had feelings for her, but they appeared to be quite opposite now.
She got up and walked out of the room. She knew he would be gone when she came back.
CHAPTER 24
Mathis had been at it for hours. Empties lined the coffee table and a crushed bag of Ruffles lay on the floor at his feet. So far he could find nothing unusual about the game—nothing that would inspire a twelve-year-old to murder his own father—and nothing that would validate his burning need to commit a felony to obtain the damn thing.
It was obvious, even at the beginning level, the game was addicting. Before Mathis realized it, it was after two in the afternoon and he had been playing for four hours.
; After the first player had walked up to him from out of nowhere and shot him in the head, other players in the base camp started doing the same, apparently just for fun. Mathis felt a competitive urge just to learn how to walk like a human, so he could blend into the crowd and avoid getting knocked off every five minutes. Once he mastered walking competently, his next challenge was figuring out how to use the sword and the handgun controllers with a certain degree of adequacy. That was actually a lot easier and didn’t take as long.
The next step was joining a clan, or rather, being accepted and initiated into a clan, so you could move together as a group to a different level of the game. The game didn’t allow you to go at it alone; you had to develop an alliance or you went nowhere.
Mathis wasn’t the friendly type and would have preferred the lone ranger route, but if he was going to stay out of prison he needed to get out of the first level and find out if his hunch was accurate.
He wandered around the base camp trolling for “friends.” A group of young lads was standing at a column of light getting ready to change levels. Mathis sauntered up to them.
Me go with you, he pantomimed, pointing to his own chest, then pointing at the group, then pointing to the apparent elevator contraption. They laughed at him, got into the glowing tube, and vanished.
He tried another group, using the same sign language, only this time pounding on his chest forcefully as more of a demand than a request. Well, that went over like a fart in church. The alpha male of the clan walked over and kicked him in the chest, knocking him down into the dirt, a blessing, because if he had shot him in the head, Mathis would have had to start the game over from scratch. Again.
Maybe this was like high school and trying to join an established clique wasn’t the best idea. Mathis decided to build his own team and approached a solo player wandering in the street.
He raised his palm up to the fellow. Hi.
The player turned and walked the opposite direction.
Mathis did this several times, with the same effect. Finally, one of them stopped. His head bobbed at Mathis, like he was trying to tell him something, but Mathis didn’t understand. He tried his “me go with you,” gesture again. The player jiggled his head again. Mathis tried the chest-pounding act. The player threw up his hands and walked away.
“What the fuck,” he said out loud. He stood in the middle of the street, turning himself in circles, looking as lost on the screen as he felt in his own living room.
Then Mathis spotted another player standing in the doorway of a futuristic tavern, smoking a cigarette and watching him. He was an incredible game specimen with massive ripped arms, a barrel chest, and chiseled abs that could be seen rippling beneath his uniform. His stance was self-assured and intimidating. He wasn’t about to risk his current status in the game by trying to make an alliance with this menace, so Mathis continued to stand in the street, waiting for a more approachable character.
The goad kept a steady gaze on him. Mathis watched as the streets slowly emptied and players moved inside buildings and other out-of-sight destinations. It was like they all knew this guy was bad news and didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire. Soon Mathis stood alone in the street, feeling very exposed. He looked back at the doorway. The creep flicked his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it with his boot, then marched into the street directly up to Mathis. Mathis braced himself to be shot in the head again.
A black bubble popped up on the screen between them and neon green letters typed quickly across it.
“Put the visor on, N00b.”
The visor? Shit! He had forgotten about the visor! He turned his back on the monster and went over to where it was sitting on the floor. It had stopped flashing its red light at some point; maybe that was why he’d forgotten about it. He put them over his eyes. The room became extremely dark and he could barely see.
“How in the hell am I supposed to play when I can’t see?”
Something blipped on the television. He lifted the shades. Another dialog box was on the screen.
“Turn them on, dumbass.”
Mathis pulled them off, located the only button on them, and pushed it. They turned on with a purple pulse and an earpiece released down from the frame. Genius!
He slid them back on. The living room became even darker, but the television sprang to new life. The colors on the screen popped with intense vibrancy and elements on the screen had dimension to them. A 3D bubble popped up on the screen.
“Uh...the ear piece...?”
Mathis slid the earpiece in his ear.
“Jesus Christ, it’s about time! I was about to shoot you in the head,” a derisive and raspy voice spoke, a cross between Simon Cowell and Clint Eastwood.
“How do I talk?” Mathis asked.
“Like that, dipshit.”
“Oh! Neat.”
“Yeah, real neat...neato skeeto. Fuck, why did I even bother?”
“Sorry. I’ve never done this before.”
“Gee. No one could tell.”
Mathis decided to keep his mouth shut. Now that he could talk, and see clearly, maybe he could make a friend. “Well, thanks for the help. I really appreciate it,” he said to his minacious savior.
The mercenary continued to stand in front of him, sizing him up and down and lighting another cancer stick. Mathis wondered if there were cigarette controllers available to buy for kids to use in the game. He wouldn’t put it past Big Tobacco to capitalize on such a thing.
The street was still desolate, not another player in sight for Mathis to engage.
“So? Do you want to get out of this joint?” the beast asked. “You could tag along with me to a couple of other Octaves if you want.”
Mathis almost gushed. A friend! Yay! He could get into the elevator thingy now! But he played it cool, shuffling his feet in the dirt and shrugging his shoulders casually. “Yeah, sure. That would be, uh...cool, I guess.”
The mercenary stared at him blankly. Mathis thought he was going to change his mind.
“Follow me.” He turned on his heel and walked toward the column of light. Mathis followed.
CHAPTER 25
Aislen stood in the shower, allowing the scalding water to flagellate her back until it ran cold. The past two days had been a downhill roller coaster ride to hell, from nightmare to nightmare with rarely a knoll of peace.
She got out of the shower, toweled off, and took her time getting ready, giving Troy plenty of time to clean up and beat feet out of the apartment. Aislen couldn’t bear to remember the rush of passion that had coursed through her body when Troy had confessed he was interested in her or the blazing fire that had ignited her lips when he kissed her. But her revelation had dampened that flame, as was evident in the scornful haze that had clouded his face and extinguished the light of affection that had just been there.
She sat down naked on the bed, combing her hair. Rather than torturing it straight with a blow dryer or forcing it into her usual severe ponytail, she scrunched it dry into loose ringlets. It was time to try something different, time to be someone different. She pulled on her favorite pair of Sunday jeans and a soft, chenille sweater, then went through Gen’s make up. She’d never spent any time pampering herself before. It felt good. She massaged moisturizer into her skin, brushed her face with pale shades of blush, and her lips with creamy lipstick.
Underneath the crushing sadness she felt about Troy—and what could have been—there was a steady calm. She was relieved the cat was out of the bag. It had been unbearable hiding and repressing it, pretending to be something that she wasn’t. She gazed at herself in the mirror. She looked how she felt, serene and etheric, like she finally fit together. How strange, to feel more real now than she ever had before.
If Troy or the rest the world thought she was certifiable, so be it. Gen didn’t see the world the way that everyone else did and she seemed to be doing fine. Maybe there was a life for Aislen that wasn’t mapped out precisely.
She gathered her
things into her bag and went back out into the living room. Genesis was sitting on the couch, looking utterly miserable, and Troy was nowhere to be found, just as Aislen had expected.
“I don’t even know how to tell you how sorry I am,” Gen said. “You have every reason to hate me for the rest of your life.”
Aislen sat down beside her. “I don’t hate you, Gen. I could never hate you. It all had to come out sometime. What happened isn’t going away. It could possibly get worse. So I have to come to grips with it now, try to understand it, and learn to live with it.”
“I think you’re perfect, Aislen. You know that. And I think eventually you’ll see that your dreams aren’t a curse, they are a gift.” Genesis leaned over and gave her a hug.
Aislen returned the embrace. “I think you are perfect, too,” she said.
“Fo’real?”
“Fo’real—fo’real.”
After they said their goodbyes and made promises to get together again soon, Aislen walked down to the parking lot and put her bags in the trunk of the car. When she turned around Troy was standing behind her.
“What do you want now?” She was immediately angry and defensive. “You know, there is nothing you can say or do that could make me feel any worse.”
“You lied to me.”
“Of course I did.”
“I told you...you could trust me and you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t. Good judgment on my part, don’t you think?”
His eyes narrowed. “I want you to take me to the garden.”
“Really? Gen told you about that, too?”
“She was under duress.”
“How so?”
“I told her I would never speak to you again unless I knew everything that was going on.” He stepped closer and leveled his eyes with hers. “We need to talk. I want to know about the dreams.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Oh, yes. You most definitely do.”
“Well, how about I save that for my therapist—or psychiatrist—or whatever it is that I need? But not you.”
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