Dream Walker (25 page)

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.”

“You haven’t given me a chance, Aislen.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but had nothing to say to that. Had she really given him a chance? She realized she hadn’t. She hadn’t been open or honest. She had never given him anything of herself that he could use to earn her trust. Until she gave him something, she wouldn’t know if she could trust him.

He held up his hand. The keys to his car dangled from his fingertips. “Take me to the garden.”

She contemplated the keys, then his face again. The anger that was so evident earlier wasn’t there, just an earnest plea. She snatched the keys from his hand and walked over to his car.

“Do you know how to drive a stick, young lady?”

“Guess you’ll have to wait and see,” she said as she slid into the driver’s seat.

They drove in the requisite silence, Aislen whipping down the city side streets, toward the perimeter of town, taking the long way so she could open the Mustang up and let her fly. She’d never driven a car with more than four cylinders or 140 horsepower. It was invigorating. She glanced at Troy a couple of times to see if she could catch him white-knuckling it, but he was as chill as a dill pickle on the Fourth of July.

When they arrived at the gate, Aislen shifted the Mustang into neutral and let it coast into the dirt lot as quietly as possible, not wanting to disturb the serenity of the gardens with the roar of the monster.

She got out of the car and tossed Troy the keys with a defiant grin. He caught them and slipped them into his pocket.

She paused for a moment. Why she had decided to bring him here, she didn’t really know. This was her special sanctuary, where she came alone to think things through. She didn’t know how to have defenses here; it was only a space where she could let everything go—where she didn’t have to hide.

Troy stood there, patiently watching her, waiting for her next move.

This is his chance to prove himself,
she thought again and she started walking down into the garden, leaving him to follow.

She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want to diminish the space by playing tour guide. Although it was much more spectacular in the full flush of summer, the sedate quality of it now, in its desolate dormancy, was equally special and deserved reverence as well.

She followed the pathway, taking her time strolling past the ponds, stopping every so often to glance back at Troy. He was taking his time as well, keeping his distance, kneeling beside the pond to engage a small turtle, and stopping to watch a great heron trying to play statue in the tall grass.