Dream

Patrick was already inside the dream, waiting for her. Sorcha gave him a sharp nudge with the point of her elbow to make him move the dead weight of his head from her shoulder and he sighed and rolled his head away so that it sagged against the back of the sofa. In the deep red crack between his lips was the slick shine of drool. The buzz coming from the unit tucked just behind his ear was muted, like traffic heard through layers of glass but it still irritated like a wasp grizzling around her head. Patrick had said that they would meet up in the dream, but the truth was you never knew quite where you would end up until you opened your eyes and were staring at the weirdness around you like a newborn.

She shoved aside her dark hair and fastened her own unit behind her right ear, pressing the single button to activate it. She had described the effects of the unit to her friend Joni - likened this part of the experience to stepping down into a sunken bath. As each part of you disappeared into the warmth of the dream, it was like water lapping over your skin. Sorcha took this part slowly on purpose, resisting the pull of the dream until she was completely ready to give in to it. In the past, when this was all still so new, she had dived into the dream and spent too long whimpering from the shock. Now she took it slowly and slid into her experience with care.

When she opened her eyes, Patrick was still beside her on the sofa, but this sofa was in the dream and they grinned at one another. Anything could happen here. Whatever your imagination could think of could be brought to life and bent to your desires. They got up from the sofa together.
“Have fun,” Sorcha said, tapping Patrick on the arse gently as he walked away from the sofa to a pale green door on the right side of the square room.
“You too,” he said, over his shoulder. He sounded distracted; as though he were already on the other side of the door in the first room of a mansion of infinite possibilities. In his head he already was.

The first door she tried had a young blond man stretched out on a bed, wearing jeans but chest bared, drinking idly from a bottle of beer. His dark eyes flashed sin up at her as she closed the door and leant against it. She tilted her head to one side, considering her choice.
“Too obvious,” she murmured. “Sorry,” she apologised to the stud on the bed, picking up the remote control and pressing a button at random. It worked like that in the dream, a snap of the fingers, a press of a button, a flick of a switch and everything could change. This time, the man the dream brought her was older - dark, dark hair just beginning to turn grey and pale blue eyes. A cigarette hung from his fingertips, the smoke a still column drifting up to the ceiling. He had a hard face and he watched her as though she had been brought into his dream, for his amusement.
“Don’t think so,” she said, holding out the control and meeting his stare with one just as cold. She touched another button at random, but the older man stayed just as he was. Sorcha frowned; this was not how it worked. Another button, but he still did not change and now he had stubbed out the cigarette and was coming towards her, blowing a stream of greying smoke before him. She pressed the third button just before he reached out and took hold of the control.
“My dream,” he said coldly, turning the remote over in his hand. “My rules.”
His voice was cold as frost on a pavement. Sorcha frowned but then shrugged and relaxed into it. The unit was there to feed on unconscious desires, after all. Maybe she secretly wanted to be dominated by an older guy. “Your rules,” she said softly, running a finger down the sandpaper skin of his cheek.
He tossed the control behind him onto the bed without breaking the cold contact of his eyes on her face. He jerked his head away from her hand. “I really didn’t need your agreement. Get on the bed.”

Sorcha took a few steps backwards and felt for the doorknob that was digging into her back. She had changed her mind. Another room would be more fun than this guy. He was too intense and his pale eyes had an eager shine in them that she didn’t like. The stranger reached out for her even as the door gave way at her back and she fell into another bedroom. Sprawled on her back, she saw that the door was still open and he was still standing there, as though he was waiting for her, sure that she would come back. She grinned and shook her head at him, reaching out with the toe of her boot to kick the door all the way shut. And as she got to her feet, trying to work out where she was, the door opened behind her and the cold man stepped out into her dream again.

There was a flash of silver light – sunlight from the window behind her catching on something just behind his right ear. He turned his head a little as he walked and she saw the unit, a twin to the one she herself wore. Except her fingers only brushed against tight skin when she reached up to find her own unit. Sorcha’s mind rebelled against what could not be – the unit was always there – even in the dream, it still existed; a reminder of the world you eventually had to return to. Patrick had told her of the first dream stations that had had to be recalled because the clients couldn’t distinguish between their dream selves and the body that sat on the sofa at home, drooling and smiling at nothing.

The cold man smiled and came towards her again.
“My dream,” he repeated, as though she hadn’t understood his first warning. “My rules.”
Sorcha saw the thin length of leather he pulled out of his trouser pocket and she waited long enough to see him snap it taut just once, before she bolted. On the other side of the room – the size of every standard hotel double bedroom you’ve ever been in - was a plain white door with a gold Victorian-style handle. A gold Victorian-style handle which stubbornly refused to co-operate and open the door for her. The cold man didn’t hurry - just walked smoothly to her side. He was about to take hold of her wrists when she found and turned the heavy key in the lock and fell through the doorway onto her knees. She had the impression of his hands only a second away, before she pushed herself to her feet and began to run.

The doorway she had fallen through led to what looked like the well-manicured garden of some stately home. Box and yew hedges penned her in and the yew arches she ran through led into gradually smaller and smaller garden rooms, all empty apart from perfect expanses of lawn, sometimes striped and sometimes spiralling in towards the centre of the rounded spaces. The smallest and last of the rooms had barely enough room for the delicate white-painted pergola in the centre of the circle of spiral-decorated lawn. There was nowhere to hide and she saw now that she had let herself be backed into a corner.

She tried to make her breathing calm and quiet, to listen out for the cold man, but the air was so cold and dry here, wherever here was, that just taking a breath was like forcing glass into her lungs and every breath pushed its’ way out on a gasp. There had to be a way out – this was not her fucking fantasy! Anger cleared her head and suddenly, in the nearest wall of solid yew, she saw a door. It wasn’t really there, but then if you were going to approach this in a purely linear fashion, none of this shit was really there. If you wanted to be strictly accurate, the real Sorcha was safely back in Patrick’s flat, with her friend’s head no doubt collapsed onto her shoulder again whilst he dreamt of all the models he could fit in one bed. She needed a door so she convinced herself that there was a door. And a hand caught hold of her hair just as the doorknob began to feel real and solid in her palm.

“There is no door, Sorcha.”

She tried to ignore the pain of her hair being twisted out by the roots and brought back the sensation of a cool metal doorknob in her hand. It felt like a solid ball of brushed aluminium, the kind of thing people who design modern houses call ‘door furniture’.

“There is no door.”

The sensation of the aluminium doorknob faded and her hand closed shut around nothing until she felt the pressure of her nails digging into the skin of her palm. The cold man used his grip on her hair to turn her around, slowly as though he was in no rush, as though he had all the time in the world to spend on tormenting her.
“What is your name?” he whispered, bending down a little so that the breath of his question puffed straight into her ear.

She frowned, still trying to wriggle free, until his hand tightening on her hair convinced her to stand still. He had spoken her name himself, hadn’t he? The hand tightened in her hair until she was standing on tiptoe trying to stop her scalp being torn free of her skull. Her hands were on his shoulders, desperately searching for leverage to relieve the pressure. She opened her mouth to answer, if that was what it took to make him release her – and stood gaping at the cold man, still on tiptoe, unable to answer him because suddenly, she could not remember. Her own name. Erased as easily as pushing a button or flicking a switch. Threads were beginning to unravel in her mind. The sense of who she was melting away like fog under sunlight.
“Your name?” He was insistent, but still calm and polite. She felt the anger of earlier resurface.
“Fuck you!”

The cold man reached out a hand and in the hedge there appeared a door with a twisted lump of green glass in the shape of the letter ‘S’ for a handle. He turned the handle and shoved her into the new room ahead of him. At least he had let go of her hair. Her eyes searched out each wall and corner for a door, but there were none, not even the door they had come in through still existed. Maybe if she could get the unit the cold man was wearing? Panic bubbled up in the girl, possible explanations as to why she had no unit buzzing behind her ear and why she couldn’t remember who she was and then the cold man’s hands were resting on her shoulders and all of her tension seemed to evaporate.

The cold man’s hands smoothed over her shoulders again and again, tracing a path to soothe and reassure. There was a padded, dark blue velvet chair in the centre of the room with a little square wooden table standing beside it; just large enough to support the bottle of champagne and one glass placed there. She turned back to look at him and time slipped forward suddenly as though the dream had become something else – a film maybe, with scenes that could be replayed or omitted as he chose. When time stopped again there was a jolt like being slapped awake from a deep sleep. Dizziness rolled over her as she realised she was now sitting contentedly on the cold man’s lap while he pulled on her hair, but gently this time, to tilt her head so that he could pour sips of champagne into her mouth.

“Do you know how lonely I’ve been, waiting for you?”

Time had jumped forward a second time and the girl shook her head a little to clear it. The man seemed to take this as her answer.

“No? I’ve been very patient. Don’t you think I deserve my reward?”

His voice was rougher now, his pretence at gentleness barely maintained. He nuzzled kisses on her shoulder and his fingers tightened on her thigh. With a jolt of surprise, the girl realised that she was naked. She tried to slide from the cold man’s lap and he tightened his grip on her for a moment before letting go so abruptly that she tumbled onto the carpet at his feet.

The cold man drew a sharp breath, staring down at her. “Oh, I like that,” he said softly.

Time slid again - to the moment just before his hand was about to swing down to strike her face. She was aware of the tears on her face, but also, and more frighteningly, aware of a desperate desire to please him and an eagerness for the pain to continue.

It jumped again, forward to her lying on cold, fresh sheets while the dark-haired man lifted her wrists to secure them to the bedframe. To her asking him to tie her. His fingers traced the patterns of bruises he’d left on her skin once she was fastened, fitting his hands to the dark shapes and pressing down until she squirmed in remembered pain. She bit at the tender inside of her mouth to stop the moans that wanted to escape – she’d learned that much by now. He was laughing down into her face as time jumped again.

Into a room where there were people everywhere – sprawled on the floor, sitting with legs tossed over the side of expensive chairs, leaning against the mantelshelf, drink in hand, cuddled together on the deep window seat, busy hands involved in one another as they watched her. She was in the centre of the floor, naked and kneeling on soft carpet with a collar and leash around her throat, the other end of which was held loosely in the cold man’s right hand. His left held a chunky tumbler of what looked like whisky and he sipped from it occasionally while he stared down adoringly on her. The light from the log fire sparked on something silver behind his right ear, like a strange piece of jewellery. He saw her eyes fix on the silver and smiled.
“Do you like it?”
When she didn’t answer, the man tugged at the silver thing until it came free and lay in his palm. He crouched beside her on the carpet and pressed the silver something into her hand. Her fingers closed reflexively around it and the heat from his skin bled into her. It was only then that she realised she was cold.
“What is it?”
The cold man smiled as though her question delighted him. He tucked a few loose strands of dark hair behind her ear and pressed the whisky glass against her mouth, allowing her to drink.
“Nothing important,” he replied, taking the silver out of her hand and tossing it carelessly into the fire behind him.