by Paul Haines
Monika turned my cheek gently with her hand, soft skin, warm, and kissed me gently on the mouth. She kissed me again, and our lips parted slightly, wet, searching, and I kissed her back, her taste intense. My lips burned as we pulled apart.
'Wow. That's like when I was fifteen.'
'Fifteen?' Monika grinned. 'You were slow, weren't you?' I pulled her closer and as we kissed, her hand slid down my pants, and curled around my erection. I hoisted her skirt, rubbing my hand against her, hot and yielding, moist. She moaned gently as my fingers kneaded her, at first slowly, and then with more urgency. She pulled down my pants and as I kicked my way out of them, she thrust her hips against mine. I pushed back, feeling her groove, sliding, hot and wet. I cupped one of her breasts, small and firm, the nipple long and hard, fingers squeezing harder, harder.
'Fuck me,' Monika whispered, dragging us down, kissing, stroking. 'Here. Now.'
Her thighs wrapped around my waist and I slid into her, soft, hot, wet, her hands gripped my buttocks, trying to push me in deeper and deeper. I was a virgin again.
We made love in front of timed exposures and popping flashes, in the water gardens amongst the fountains that led to the monument.
We met once a week thereafter. We'd swap photos of places we'd never been; the ruined rock city of Petra, the stucco mosques of Timbuktu, the ancient Persian mud city of Bam, Babylon, Kakadu, Mecca, Kathmandu. We visited them all. I even walked on the moon.
I gradually became aware of other travellers, at first indistinct and distant; eventually shapes became people and people became faces and the faces became familiar: Asians, Indians, Africans, Europeans. I formed friendships and took lovers, I assumed Monika did the same, though I never mentioned it.
I never got sick from the food or water, no diseases, no malaria or yellow fever, no herpes, crabs, warts, no AIDS. My life, as shallow as it may seem, was fantastic. I felt complete, I wanted nothing more than I had. I would have happily stayed there in the dream world if my subconscious had allowed me to. But the door, ever the door, always came rushing to meet me, swallowing me and shutting me off from where I'd been. I would awake almost instantly, in a sleeping bag on an old mattress I'd picked up outside the Salvo's, in a room devoid of possessions and decoration. My flatmates didn't mind; Dave was a junkie, and I didn't know what Stacey did. The place was cheap and I didn't need much besides food and water. Like I said, my life was complete.
#
Halcyon days, where confidence can turn easily into arrogance, and you don't realise until you've stepped from one to the other. I took that step. I took many of them.
Karma comes back. It's what karma is. I have to sleep soon, I must sleep.
Richard? Are you ready?
I think I'm about to pay the price for those steps ...
#
It started, as always, with Monika. By telephone. It was generally faster and more immediate than setting up a sleep time convenient to us both.
'Do you ever think of other places to go, Richard?'
'Yeah, sure, all the time. I'm thinking about seeing some of my own country again, maybe Fiordland, or the Sounds ...'
'No, that's not what I mean. Other places.'
'What do you mean?'
'Turn on your computer.'
She sent through a picture of Tolkien's Middle-Earth, a terraformed Mars, a lost world teeming with dinosaurs. It had never occurred to me.
'These places aren't real,' I said.
'Aren't they?' She also had the Koran, the Ramayana, and the Bible. 'There's more. Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism. What if we can find them?' I realised then that Monika had never stopped searching.
'They're stories, Monika. Stories, that at their best explain away our fears and tell us how to live our life. Give meaning to our world.'
'How can you think that? What have you been doing for the past couple of years, Richard? Was it just a story the sadhu told me? That I told you? You of all people should realise that there is more to believe in. Has everything that mankind has lived by for thousands of years been just stories? I don't think so.'
'Do you know anybody who's done this sort of thing?'
'No, but I've heard of people who have. We can arrange a meeting with one of them. His name is Dariq.'
It wouldn't have surprised me if Monika had already had contact with Dariq. Her accent thickened the more she became excited. She knew I would follow.
'How do we get hold of him? Do you have his number?'
'We can only meet him in the dream,' she said quickly. 'He's funny like that.'
'Fine. When do we do it?' I asked. I should have done some asking around of my own, but I didn't.
#
We were told to meet Dariq in the rock-cut houses in Göreme, somewhere neutral he had suggested. Neutral? I'd never been there before; I'd thought it was the name of a pizza shop back home. We sat huddled in the darkness of what appeared to be a cave, overlooking a valley. My door shone behind me, casting no light upon the cave's interior. I couldn't see Monika's but then she couldn't see mine.
'Where is this?' I asked. 'Cappadocia,' Monika replied. 'I think Dariq may be Turkish and that's why he chose here. He's supposed to be very old.'
As if that made any difference. He was late. We sat here for almost half an hour. Monika had initially been excited and talked of the places she had in mind, particular versions of what she thought were true, as far as heaven or hell was concerned. I felt uneasy, and didn't talk much. Occasionally something hairy crawled over my skin and I'd brush at it frantically only to find nothing there. Eventually Monika also sat in silence. Every now and then I saw her brush her arms, or shake her leg.
'It's almost like when you first feel the contact of another traveller, before you're made aware,' I said. 'Though this isn't pleasant, is it? It's not like tickling or a light caress. It's like ...'
'Something's in here with us,' Monika whispered.
Her hand fumbled for mine, finding my fingers and grasping hard. Her fingers were icy. I reached out and touched her face. She flinched away, but not before I felt cold, clammy skin.
'Monika, what's ...' And then something damp and freezing wafted against my face, the last expulsion of breath from the lungs of something long dead. I reeled, my stomach turned, and the world around me wavered.
'Oh, Jesus,' Monika sobbed quietly. 'Oh, Jesus.' Her body trembled against mine.
In the dream world you can see things, hear things and smell things. The only thing I had ever physically felt here were other travellers. Something in this cave, hidden in the darkness, thrust ice into my veins and muddied my insides. I could hear laughter echoing in the back of my skull, coarse and venomous.
'Begone!' A rasping voice commanded and the cave flooded with light and warmth, and then back to darkness.
Candles flickered alight around the perimeter and a soft glow spread over the cave. Ancient crosses had been carved into the ceiling and walls. In the shadows before us sat a dark-skinned man clothed in grey robes. His hair was thick and dreaded, and woven into his long beard. Candlelight glinted off his pitch-black eyes and his lips peeled back from long, yellow teeth as he smiled at us.
'I am Dariq. I have been searching for you.' A voice of sandpaper, coarse with disuse. He stared alternately between us, and finally his gaze lingered on Monika. 'You seek guidance, yes?' He hissed his esses.
'Yes,' said Monika. She unfolded her hand from mine, and shifted her body, minutely, away from me. Her hand was warm again.
Dariq nodded and drew a circular symbol in the dirt on the ground.
'This is a mandala,' he said, swallowing her with those dark eyes of his. He leaned forward and smiled. 'I will help you focus on it. It will become your doorway to many doorways.'
'Yes,' said Monika.
'But we haven't chosen where we want to go,' I interrupted.
'You choose after you step through this doorway,' Dariq said, dismissing me.
He swirled his finger through the dirt in the
circle and it turned opaque.
'Oh my God, it's beautiful ...'
'What is, Monika? I can't see anything.'
Her body spasmed and her head lolled back on her shoulders, her throat upturned, artery pulsing. Monika swayed forward, her head swinging toward the circle, her eyes rolled over, white. She moaned low and her body shuddered. I had felt her beneath me when she moved like that. I had been inside her. She was orgasming. Dariq leaned closer, and his tongue flicked once over his thin lips.
'Yeesss,' he urged.
I still couldn't see anything in the circle. Monika began to keen and I reached out to touch her. Dariq's hand closed around my wrist, shooting pain up my arm, wrenching my body by the shoulder, twisting me off my feet.
'No,' he said without taking his eyes off her. Something moved beneath the skin of his face, another skull, another being. 'I do not need you yet.'
Monika's body began to twist and screw, as if giant unseen hands wrung her like a dishcloth, and her image wavered, flickered, and began to flow into the circle inscribed upon the floor of the ancient cave. The laughing in my skull intensified, and hundreds of whispering voices chattered unintelligibly beneath that laughter.
I writhed in the dirt, my free arm clawing toward the circle on the floor. 'Monika! Monika!' I wanted to scream, to cry, to break Dariq apart, but I couldn't move. I lay helpless, my stomach roiling and watched Monika disappear.
Dariq still held me in his grip and he turned to stare at me. He laughed, and it was the same laughter in my head. Wet tendrils sprouted from his hand and wrapped themselves around my arm, creeping up toward my neck. Their touch burnt.
'Your doorway is closing,' he rasped.
One of the whispers in my head called to me. 'Wake up.'
'I will keep you here in case. Look,' Dariq pointed toward my doorway. 'It begins to close.'
I struggled to turn my head. The door began to fade.
'No! You can't ...'
'Wake up.' Whispers. Louder. 'Richard.'
My feet swung toward the doorway, but Dariq kept me pinned to the ground.
'Not for you,' he said. His eyes were yellow, each slashed with black.
'Wake up, Richard.'
My body shook. I had to get to the door.
'WAKE UP, RICHARD!' my flatmate Stacey screamed as she shook me.
I shot up off the bed, staggered around the room, arms flailing, and crashed into the door.
Stacey grabbed me again, still screaming, her eyes red, her face wet with tears. 'He's fucking dying!' She beat her fists on my chest. 'Fucking help me!'
At first, I thought she meant Dariq, but I couldn't see him in my room. I was back, here in my room, my world, so he couldn't be here. My mind slowly came back to be my own.
'Calm down, Stacey,' I said taking hold of her arms. 'What's happened?' She pulled me down the hallway into Dave's room. He lay sprawled on the floor amongst his gear.
'Shit, shit, shit. Have you called an ambulance?'
'Of course I fucking haven't,' she cried. 'Do you think I'm fucking stupid? Do something, Richard.'
Stacey helped me drag Dave out onto the road where we left him, hoping someone would stop and phone the cops. That day, I found out that Dave wasn't just a junkie, he was a dealer, too, and Stacey and her friends who worked the streets got their hits from him. Dave's habit probably saved my life—it definitely changed it. It was the day I left my first door open.
And the last time I ever heard from Monika.
#
It took until the early hours of the morning before sleep finally overcame my fears, and I fell into a broken, haunted slumber, where things unbidden crept into my normal, everyday dreams. Things whose faces melted, and insidious whispering frayed the mind, where talons clawed faces, and shifting shapes fought for control. Creatures, like Dariq, who could maintain physical contact with the dream world, who could see others' doorways, and enter them. Curious creatures, hungry, envious.
#
You can achieve many things when you are driven, focused, searching. I phoned Monika, I emailed, I wrote to her, I visited her house in dreams. I managed to contact the landlord and discovered that Monika was behind on her rent. The landlord discovered the apartment empty save for most of Monika's possessions. Dishes had grown mould and fused themselves with the dishwasher. Clothes sat damp and musty in the washing basket. No one had been there in weeks. I left the landlord my contact details in case Monika returned.
Reluctant travels took me back into the dream world, searching for Monika. I formed doors within doors, frantically jumping from place to place, hoping to find her. Many times I woke prematurely, soaked in sweat, still shaking from things I couldn't remember, leaving door after door open behind me. Monika had not been seen or heard from. Dariq was a subject of myth, everyone knew of him, but no one knew him and no one wanted to. Monika had described him as 'very old.' He wasn't; he was ancient. Dariq was one of the Dispossessed. A man who had been to heaven and hell, or at least somewhere not of this world. Two rumours abounded. The first was that on his return, he had found his body possessed by someone else. The second was that he had consumed his body in the real world. The result was the same; Dariq preyed upon those in the dream world, burning lives out as he lived in them, passing from one to another as he needed, doing as he pleased.
I discovered that there were many of these so-called Dispossessed, travelling the world of dreams, taking what they wanted, being who they wanted, experiencing the real world through the bodies of the unsuspecting and vulnerable. And finally one who could teach me what I needed crawled into my mind through one of the many doors I had left open. Zaehner.
#
I visited Monika a month ago. The landlord notified me that she had been deported back to Romania, her home, after the Spanish authorities realised they didn't need to foot the bill. A dirty shell of a building housing empty husks that resembled people. A thick-set orderly, who spoke little English, escorted me to a room with large windows that several people sat staring out of. One of them was Monika. Her skin was pale and what was left of her hair was thin and greasy. Her face was pulled tight over her skull, any excess flesh burnt away.
I sat next to her holding her hand like we used to. I could barely feel the beat of her pulse in the small bundle of bones that built her wrist. Her eyes stared vacantly, nowhere outwards, and when I spoke she appeared not to hear me. Her eyes were empty; vacant, oily, black pools. Once they had been the green of the ocean in sunlight. Now they were like Dariq's. He had taken what he needed.
Across her cheeks, the blood vessels had burst into myriad tiny, red stars. The universe had made its mark on her. There was nothing here for me. Maybe she didn't want to return to her body, to this world. Maybe she couldn't. I hoped she had found what she was looking for. I made the deal shortly after.
Courage can be hard to find. I've used up my pills, my amphetamines, the speed. Zaehner is insistent now, demanding I relinquish. I can hear it inside my skull, every second of every day, excited, urgent, insane. It's managed to destroy the others that were competing for me.
Now. The time is now. You must sleep.
Its voice is clear now, thick and heavy with lust.
The pact has been made. You would not cheat me, would you?
I don't think I can. I'm not strong enough yet. But I will be. Zaehner has taught me much. I now have the ability to manipulate the matter that exists within the dream world. I can do what Dariq did, I can move objects, I can draw in the dirt, I can summon candles and demons and light. I can see others' doorways, and step through those left open.
I can cause pain. I can kill. I don't need my body to do this.
Zaehner told me of a room, a hallway, with a hundred doors. A hundred heaven and hells to choose from. One of these doors leads to Zaehner's world, its plane of existence. It tells me that this hallway is the starting point for those called the Dispossessed.
She will be there. You will find her. It must be now, Richard, I
will wait no longer.
It claws at the back of my eyes, pulling me under.
Sleep.
I lie on my stomach on the mattress, exhaustion rolling over me. This is the last time I'll see this world with my eyes. The paint is yellow and peeling. Ants make their way across the wall from the ceiling duct to the window to the rubbish bin outside. From where I lie I can see blood seeping into the stained mattress. It trickles from my ear lobe where fishing wire has been freshly threaded. When Zaehner awakes in my body it will want to turn its head away from the wall. It will want to see my world. The last thing it will hear is the roar of the shotgun suspended above the bed as the fishing wire pulls the trigger. I hope it feels my body shredding.
This is not a suicide note. I'm going to close them all.
Sleep, Richard, sleep and dream.
***
Afterword: Doorways for the Dispossessed
While travelling long and distant, I met a girl called Monica who told me she was practising a form of dream travelling that a sadhu in India had taught her. The process, which she attempted to teach me, is described in this story. I remember being struck with both awe and cynicism. Awe in that she had had personal contact with a sadhu—I had been more than intimated by the crazy-looking dreadlocked, pot-smoking seers wandering through the streets—and cynicism in that she believed that this could be done. That in itself led me back to awe, in that she was so open to the other side of the world, and in some way, I wished, too, for that innocence and naivety, that sense of child-like belief she possessed. Yet she was neither innocent nor naïve, and I was simply cynical.
Monica said it was very important that you close the doors before you wake up. When I questioned why, she didn't know. This is my why. As far as I know, the real Monica had never managed to form a door in her version of transcendental meditation. I never managed to even form a hand. I did try but just not for long enough.