Dreamland

“So… Do you actually know whether or not it happened?” Arthur gazes through me as if I’m an idiot. That kind of patronizing gaze I’ve become used to over the years.

“Well…” I respond, describing it to make me not seem so stupid. “I think that it was real. But I don’t know. I’m not sure any more; I could be schizophrenic, I could be a confused madman. I simply don’t know if…  if it actually happened or not.”

Fancy that: my most vividly horrific memory could simply have been just an illusion in my mind’s eye.

“I think that... that it was real.” He has that kind of pondering gaze, with his eyes focused vaguely into the air, somewhere between us. Should I trust him? Or is he just another one of them?

“You think so?”

“I know that they’ve experimented on the lower class, inmates, and so on... Bloody government.” A frustrated chuckle drips out, more angered than pleasant. “Our rights disrespectfully ripped off us, these days. Frankly, what we need is freedom. Free will. The light at the end of the tunnel.” Is he even real? He doesn’t seem like an illusion. Regardless, he raises a good point. “Whilst you were once a bank robber, they have no right to do this kind of thing to anyone.”

Looking around, it’s hard to imagine that any of this could just be creations of the mind, but I really can’t tell what is real from what isn’t. The smooth hardness of the wooden table, the sharp angularity of the chair cutting into my back, the snippets of other people’s conversations over cups of aromatic, bitter nectar of soy milk coffees, the hostile hiss of percolators tended to by barpeople with their trendy haircuts and leather coats. “… Franklin?” Arthur’s voice tugs me back to reality.

“What?”

“While you want a cure for your hallucinations, he can fix them, but he can’t fix you. The governing classes had no right to do this to you, to anyone. All these years wasted living in your dreamworlds. You’re a broken man and forever will be. Except for one thing that can fix you.”

He builds up to the word with a sly smile, like an antagonist in a corny TV show. “Revenge.” I open my mouth to argue, but I begin to see his point.

I query, “Anything else on offer?”

“Suicide?”

Revenge seems the more enticing of the two.

 

I stand on a porch, anticipating an answer to my knocks. The decrepit old house has crashed and burned long ago, with a creaking rot of floorboards and a maze of cobwebs that I had to fight my way through. Behind the boarded-up windows I can imagine someone not daring to face reality, refusing to go out onto the complex mess of our world. A voice speaks, a nervous, depressed sound. “Come in.” I hesitate, then gently wrap my fingers around the door knob. It groans in pain as I push it inwards, and begin creaky steps into the dusty darkness.

“Hello?” Silence. He must be here somewhere; I just heard his voice. Or did I?

I take another step forward, but there seems to be nobody here. Maybe I should just leave and forget about all this, but where would that leave me? My feet are compelled to stay rooted on the dusty floorboards, half of me screaming turn back, just turn back, and the other half egging me on. As always, curiosity wins the coin toss and my feet pick themselves forward once, twice, three times, and then place me in a kitchen-like thing of a room. I see him. And I’ve seen him before.

 

The first thing I notice is the gun, but then his twisted, horrific contortion of an evil smile protrudes out of the darkness. I turn, and in a flurry of panic, run, run, run. I burst through the front door and sunlight blinding my eyes, I sprint blindly through the grimy alleys of the city. I keep seeing him toting his gun at every corner, coming for me. Screaming, I dash away towards a river in a fury of panic. I collapse, dizzy. My head sinks into my hands. I squeeze my hands over my ears to avoid his twisted, sinister speech, but it forces its way through, and I’m on the ground, pleading no more, no more, no more...