After James // phan

confidential pt. 15

My head had never spun so fast, not when I redocumented, not when I relocated, not when I saw Charlie and his two goons planning their attack. My head was swimming with everything that was going wrong already, and the kiss just made it worse.

I hated myself for it, but I stumbled into the only place I've felt actually safe in the past six months. Phil's room. It smelled like Phil, like a hug, like a kiss from my neighbor, the stranger, but it was a room where Charlie hadn't been and a room with a door with a lock and a room where I could be alone with the flurry of the furious thoughts that chipped away at the insides of my head like ice picks.

His bedsheets were warm and rough like his hands and his pillow was soft and consuming like his chest. I sank into his bed like it was quicksand, and soon, the waves of a dream overcame me. I didn't mean to fall asleep. I didn't even remember falling asleep. The exhaustion of the already long day caught up with me, and I just wanted to turn off my brain for a moment, give myself a minute to drift. But the garish pang of a nightmare overtook my brief moment of nothing, and I couldn't stop myself from reliving my worst memory.

I'd been working for Charlie for a few weeks at that point and all I knew was that it was easy money. Charlie and I hadn't known each other great back in uni, but we were never on bad terms, and we would speak every so often in class, nod to each other in the hallways, discuss assignments over IM every so often. It wasn't strange at all to me when he offered me the job of being his assistant, in charge of things like coffee runs and various grocery shopping trips and so, so many stops at the drycleaners. I was paid way more than an assistant should be paid, but I never said anything.

I did my job, didn't ask any questions, kept my face down, and went home at the end of the day. That's exactly how Charlie liked it.

In the dream, he was a hundred feet tall. His eyes glowed red like embers and his teeth grew long and sharp behind his grotesquely stretched lips. He smiled but it didn't reach his eyes; it didn't feel friendly, it was even worse than cold. It was the way an animal may look at its dinner.

Dream Dan made the same stupid mistakes that Real Dan had. He glanced down the hallway where the crash had sounded nearly half an hour after his shift was over. His footfalls were near silent on the linoleum floors of the building where Charlie ran his bicycle repair shop. What about the crash had attracted Dream Dan? Even Real Dan didn't know. Something just didn't quite add up about all of this, everything seemed too good to be true. The voices drew him closer when the crash's noise echoed to a stop. Loud angry, almost terrified voices compelled Dream Dan closer and closer...

Shadows on the wall just through the doorway flickered like they were cast by candlelight, which, even in the dream, I knew was wrong. The room had been so bright there was nowhere for a shadow to even fall. Mistakes could exist within shadows, and Charlie could not have mistakes.

Charlie's demon-shadow flicked a snake-like tongue at the other silhouettes, hissing and spitting.

"You idiotssssssssssss."

A few more steps and Dream Dan was at the doorway. He knew he should leave but he stayed anyway: the ground had melted and taken ahold of his shoes, black pitch tarring the brown leather. As Dream Dan looked, it climbed slowly up his shoe until it was halfway up his shin, and it kept climbing, climbing, slithering its way up my dreamed body.

"One wrong move and we all explode." The shadows on the wall shifted out of Dream Dan's sight, so he dared a lean forward, the contents of the room barely visible behind the wooden doorframe. This door had never been opened before, and was always promised to be locked. I assumed it was where Charlie kept his tools or his porn. Tools or porn didn't explode after one wrong move, and Dream Dan thought what I had thought too, though neither of us wanted to admit it. There were very few things that exploded with one wrong move, and Dream Dan doubted they were making a paper maché volcano.

Dream Dan leaned farther until he could see the backs of three men at a table, and a large dent in the ground surrounded by bits and pieces of a machine of some kind, nuts and bolts and screws. The scene of the crash. The source of the noise that drew Dream Dan and Real Dan to the secret office now 45 minutes after our shift was over.

I need to go. The thought chased its tail in my head, over and over and over. I need to go I need to go I need to get out of here NOW.

But the pitch on Dream Dan's shoes and utter horror in Real Dan's brain kept us anchored to our spots.

The three men moved and there it was. Just like every movie I'd ever seen, like every picture on the news, every video game I payed. There it was. The bomb.

It was huge, too huge, the kind of huge that kills hundreds, maybe thousands of people. It was the kind of huge that would take out a city block, a whole small town. The kind of huge that would end a life in a flash.

Dream Dan could finally take one step backward, which became two, which became a thousand. Dream Dan didn't care about making noise, didn't care about attracting attention, as long as he got the fuck away from the bomb and the men that were making it.

"What the fuck? Get him!"

A gunshot. Then two. A sharp, sharp ringing in my ears and bright white light. The wall by Dream Dan's head exploded into dust and scraps of floral wallpaper, sprinkling him with drywall. He coughed but kept running, running, running.....

Before Dream Dan knew what was happening, a phone was in his hand and he was still running, running, dialing 999 and panting, hard, into the microphone as it rang, rang.

"There's a bomb at Skies Bike Repair and Restore!" Dream Dan screamed, his voice hoarse.

Sirens, water, blankets. Flashes of light, of colours. Something was wrong, there was no more sound, just dull throbbing. It was night? When did the sun set? I was sitting on something cold and hard, the bed of a truck? No, the back of an ambulance. I blinked.

"James?" a man in white asked. No, not white, dusty. "Dan?" In the memory he asked me questions, told me that no one was at the shop but there was a bomb, a big one, and maps of exactly where in Trafalgar Square it was going to end up. But in the dream, he said my name, over and over...

"Dan?" I sat up so quickly my vision spun, my head swam. Phil was inches from my face but didn't back up. The room was still light, but a darker light than before. It felt like maybe years had passed. It was probably hours. Maybe just one.

"What?"

"James, there's someone here for you."