Peripheral Visions: Halloween Chills Double Bill

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

See You on the Flipside

Martin knew exactly why he was there, in the room with the dim lighting and the blue walls. A few sconces shed light, giving the room a sense of peace. Between the lights and the color of the walls he almost felt like he was sitting outside someplace, waiting for sunrise.

Martin looked at his hands, shifted on the couch. The way the upholstery creaked around him, he knew it must be real leather. He spared the occasional glance across the room at the desk and the man sitting behind it – a man he could barely see, except in silhouette against the blue walls.

"It's all so blurry," he said to the man sitting across the room – the therapist. No, the counselor. That's what they called people who helped men like him overcome addiction. "I don't even remember them taking me to the hospital. I don't even remember if I intended to overdose. I think maybe I did. Because what do I have to live for?"

The man seemed to be taking notes. Martin reconsidered his words.

"I mean, what did I think I had to live for? It's different now. Almost dying has a way of clarifying things, changing your perspective."

The man didn't say anything. He seemed to be listening. Martin got a sense of careful attention from him that somehow communicated itself from his stillness.

"But at the time... I mean, that's what I was thinking. 'What do I have to live for?' They took what little I had left. They took it all away from me. I mean, I guess I would have had money to live in retirement. They didn't take my pension... not yet, anyway. But when the governor took over the university system and replaced our board with his lackeys, the first thing they did... after they gutted the curriculum and purged the library and had a big book burning on the quad, I mean... the first thing they did was expel all the 'undesirable' students and either fire all the 'undesirable' staff, or else force us into retirement. Which is what they did to me. One day I'm preparing the syllabi for the new academic year, I'm a professor of history... and the next day I'm persona non grata on the campus and my office has been emptied out, ransacked."

Martin took a trembling breath, exhaled slowly, sought to calm himself.

"I'm basically on house arrest," he resumed. "Oh, they haven't passed the new 'sexual predator' laws yet, but they will soon, and then everyone who once lived openly, everyone who dared to tell the truth, will find themselves listed on a state-run website filled with lies. The dean of our own department called me into her office and called me a 'groomer' to my face. She didn't even look me in the eye. She knew she was perpetrating a lie. Such a good Christian all of a sudden, and yet here she was breaking the ninth commandment... bearing false witness. She knew my conduct had been impeccable. She knew she was a collaborator – but I don't blame her. Would I have been able to stand up against Kirsch and his henchmen?"

Martin sighed. The man behind the desk seemed to take a few more notes. It was hard to tell in the semi-darkness. There was complete silence in the room. The man's note taking was remarkably quiet: No sound of pen scratching on paper came to Martin's ears. Was he really writing things down? Martin gave another look but felt shy about it. He felt like the man could see him perfectly, while all he could discern was a smudge in the shadows.

A deliberate ploy, he thought. A way to remind him of who was in charge.

"It's all coming true," Martin said, his voice hoarse. "My husband said these things would happen. People didn't listen. People laughed. People told him he needed to see a shrink. 'No,' they said, 'no, nothing will happen. It will all level out, worse won't come to worst.' We wouldn't lose our rights! It was unthinkable, they said. It was still America, after all. And anyway, we'd come too far, we'd made too much progress, there were too many people who weren't the lily-white and brutishly straight troublemakers, we were a diverse nation..." Martin laughed, a bitter, brief yelp of pain. "But here we are. Burning books. Closing libraries. Tearing down museums, selling their collections and handing the proceeds to the rich, who are behind it all anyway..." Martin caught his breath. Would he be punished for saying these things? He waited a moment to find out, watched anxiously to see if the man at the desk would start writing again.

Stillness.

The man was listening – not writing, not interrupting. Was that a good sign? Or did that mean Martin really was in danger?

No, Martin told himself. If they had brought him back from the overdose, if they had brought him here to the counselor, they must be sincere in wanting to help.

But what form would that "help" take? Forcing him to bear false witness against himself? Electroshock? A lobotomy?

"Okay," Martin resumed, with a short, awkward laugh. "Okay. Sorry. As I was saying... all of a sudden, I had nothing, I was nobody. I had no job, no purpose. And no husband. He died before the Faith and Family Laws were passed, but he said it would happen – our marriage would be legally dissolved, we'd lose our rights to be together, to love each other, to speak out. I was with him in those last moments of his life, I was at his bedside, and do you know what his last words were? 'I'm sorry.' He was dying, and he was sorry – sorry to be leaving me alone to deal with this shit, sorry to see the world slipping from light into darkness, sorry to see freedoms gained snatched back and replaced with shackles."

Silence met his words.

"I wasn't sorry he was dying," Martin said, and hesitated. "What I mean is, by that point it was clear to me, too, where it was we were heading. I didn't want him to have to suffer the times to come.

"But I still took some hope in my work, in teaching students the truths of the past. Not just what happened, but why things happened. Not just what happened, but what it meant. Why it's important. Why we need to remember. The fact that our past mistakes bring a responsibility with them to remember, and to do better.

"And now, history... the simple facts of what people did, and when, and how their actions affected the world... it's been lumped together with all the other 'divisive concepts' that Kirsch and his cronies say they are going to protect us from. Divisive concepts! Just another way of saying they're mandating agreement, and they choose the story we all have to tell. Because, of course, if we all agree – if we're given no choice but to parrot the party line – then we're united, not divided. What happens in that case? Do we just repeat every word we're given to say? Do we accept it as gospel? Even when we know better?"

Silence. The man at the desk didn't stir, didn't answer.

"Well, you see, though... I can't help this treasonous belief that truth is real, and facts matter," Martin said. "And the funny part is, what I think doesn't matter. I'm just some university professor. What do I know? Any home-schooled nineteen-year-old can cite his religious beliefs as an excuse to deny that there was ever something called 'The Constitution,' or insist that that two and two don't actually equal four. It's his absolute God-given right to have his opinions and have those opinions received as truth. God-given right. As in, God Himself handed down permission to ignore the universe as it really is – history as it really happened – the lives of people who really lived. And if I say there is no God? That's not protected speech, now, is it? That's 'insulting religious sentiment,' or 'being divisive,' or otherwise engaging in 'felonious expression.' Like all those painters whose works were destroyed... Picasso, Brach, Kandinsky, Tintoretto, Rafael, Chagall.

"But, whatever," Martin waved a hand. "I lost faith a long time ago. Not just in God, you understand, but man as well. We're animals, you know? We like to think we're animals that can plot and plan for a better future, but we're like any other mindless species. We exploit our habitat until we perish from the consequences of our own thoughtless actions."

Martin stared across the darkness. There was no movement, no sound. Was the man at the desk breathing? Was he even there?

"I... I just don't know if I'm alone, or if anyone cares," Martin said. "But I guess all you all care, right? That's why I'm here?"

It was hard to be certain, but Martin thought he saw the man nod – just once, but decisively.

"Okay, then," Martin sighed. "Yes, I was using drugs. I had some unhealthy habits when I was younger – before Dima. My husband. Dmitri. He never judged me or took me to task, but somehow he made me want to get clean and live healthfully. He made me want to go back to school, get a degree, start writing and publishing, pursue a professorship. He was my rock, my anchor... my strength. Of course, all I hear now is that he was a sin. Our life together was a sin. All that commitment, compromise, devotion... love... was nothing but an egregious crime against God and nature. And yet, I know there is no God. And I know that nature isn't whatever happens to be convenient to the people in charge at any given time. But it doesn't matter what I know. Not anymore. That's the point, isn't it? Not that I was a 'groomer,' because I never was. No, I was an educator – something even worse, in the eyes of the people who took over."

Silence.

Martin had no idea what to say. Then, he did.

"All right," he said. "That's not why we're here, is it? We're here to talk about drugs. I mean, religion is an opiate for the masses. Someone said that once. I'm pretty sure he was right. But religion was never my drug of choice. I guess in the back of my mind when I lost my job and heard all the hints and insinuations about why it might be unhealthy for people like me to leave their houses, to gather together, to try to be part of a community again... I guess at that point those old escape routes seemed attractive. A pill. A needle. A joint. One thing led to another. We couldn't go order a drink in a bar – a cop would have beaten and busted us right away if we tried. But buying drugs in some back alley? That was never a problem. I never once saw a cop while I was doing a deal. I'm sure the governor would tell you it's because I've got a talent for such things. 'Natural criminality,' wasn't that what he said about people like me?"

Silence.

"Okay, so here's what else," Martine said reluctantly. "After he died, I... I started seeing him. My husband. Dimi. I'd see him as if he was sitting under a light. He'd be at the kitchen table, glowing. He'd be... I don't know... what do ghost do? How do hallucinations keep themselves busy? He'd be eating, I guess, or doing a crossword puzzle. He'd be..." Martin hesitated. "I don't know. Following the old patterns of his life. But it made no sense. Why does a ghost need to do anything we living people do? What good does it do them?"

Martin stared across the darkness and waited for an answer. None came.

"Okay," Martin sighed, throwing up his hands. "So, here's the rest of it. Hear, diagnose, tell me how crazy I am. I'd see him in other places around the house. I'd see him in the shower – from the corner of my eye. Then I'd turn, and... nothing. Nobody there. I'd see him in the hallway, poking around in the linen closet... just for a moment, then I'd snap out of it. There was no one there; of course not. The linen closet was closed. Of course it was. No one had opened it. Or, I'd see him next to the bed... not in the bed, which is strange, don't you think? I'd wake up in the middle of the night and see him sitting next to the bed. And there's not even a chair there. He'd be looking at me, he'd be stroking my arm or holding my hand. It was his touch that woke me up – you understand? Or maybe it was a dream. Or a memory. Or the drugs." Martin shrugged. "The more I used the drugs, the more often and more clearly I saw him. I used the drugs more and more despite that. Or, I guess, if I'm going to tell you the truth – because of that. Because I wanted to see him.

"And there's the thing: Here and there, for a moment, he'd see me. He wasn't just retracing old moments from his life. He was in the moment, he was with me. Our eyes would meet. He'd smile. He'd... I don't know. It looked sometimes like he was speaking. Maybe his lips were saying 'I miss you,' or, 'I'm still here,' or, 'I love you.' I couldn't hear his voice. Sometimes I'd hear a watery rumbling from a long way away, like a vibration – a trembling in my bones. Traffic noise? Thunder? A jet flying overhead? I don't know. I wanted it to be his voice. I wanted to hear his words.

"So..." Martin shrugged. "Well, that's as good a reason for self-medicating as any, isn't it? Don't they give you drugs to take the pain away? Getting high, flying out of my mind, it eased the pain of missing him. Don't they give you drugs to make your craziness settle and subside, to keep imagined terrors at bay? I was crazy – crazy with grief. For my husband, yes, but also for my country, which was being murdered before my eyes on a daily basis. Maybe seeing things isn't a mark of insanity after all. Maybe it's how you hold on to your sense of yourself and your sense of reason when everyone around you is falling into mindless uniformity, surrendering to mob morality and committee consciousness, being absorbed by a slithering monster with monolithic, monomaniac ideas. When you're the last one asking questions, maybe so-called 'insanity' is the answer. Was I self-medicating? You bet I was! But was I also inching toward escape of a sort – was I working my way toward suicide? Maybe. Yeah. Maybe I was."

Martin stared defiantly at the shadow of the man across the room, as if daring him to say something – anything – to contradict or correct him.

Nothing.

Martin's defiance ebbed. He put his head in his hands.

"Silence is the most effective torture," he said. "Dimi said that to me once. He thought I was punishing him for something... I wasn't. I just didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to communicate to him that I had no interest in punishing him, no matter what he did. So, I just held him. And I felt him understand. That's what we were like together. Some couples finish each other's sentences... we finished each other's thoughts, soothed each other's fears. And that, somehow, was an 'offense to God.' More like an offense to the people who think they can simply wish for the reality they prefer and have it delivered up to them. The whole world is not some control freak's simplistic vision, a vision of how the universe can best service him. Others count, too. We count, too. It's a crime to come out and say so, but it's the truth. The truth is a crime these days, have you noticed?"

Silence. Stillness.

"And so I saw him, even though he was dead and I knew it," Martin continued. "But I accepted what I knew was impossible: He was there, before me. Still with me. Seeing him gave me comfort. He was always my purpose – more than being a teacher, more than writing books about history and what it means and why we should care. He was my purpose, and he became my purpose again. My Dimi.

"But you know something... I started wondering if I was being selfish. If I was the one who wanted the universe to bend to my convenience. Why was Dimi there? Wasn't he dead? If he has a living consciousness apart from the body... which I doubt, but if he does... was I holding him back? Was I the nail driven through his soul that kept him in this world, or between worlds, when he probably had some other place to go? Even if he had no place to go... no place but nothingness, no place but oblivion, which is what I always thought death should be... then was I keeping him from that? Was he suffering because of me? Our moments together... when I'd see him, when he'd see me... we both felt the joy of our reunions, but was it costing him something? I mean, doesn't that make sense? Why stay in this world, this world made ugly and terrifying by hate and cruelty, if there were any other world, or even sheer, steep nothingness, as an alternative? Why stick around here and have to see these ugly displays of subjugation and torture?

"I wanted to tell him. I wanted to give permission... I wanted to say, 'You can leave me. Or you can wait someplace else for me. It will be okay, I'll manage.' But I didn't, because when I'd see him working in the garden or standing over the kitchen sink it felt like we were together in happier times. Back when the world made sense, when we were all citizens of the world, citizens of life. Before the congressional resolution that some people don't count, their lives don't matter, they are 'expendable.' I didn't want Dimi to go, I didn't want to release him, and I hated myself for it.

"So, what to do?"

Martin sat in silence, no longer hoping for the man at the desk to say anything.

"The flipside," he said. "It was a joke we used to have. You know how people will say, 'See you on the flipside?' And you know how people talk about death, or rather life afterwards as 'the other side?' Somehow the two got mixed into one thing for us. He says it to me when he visits me in those daydreams or those hallucinations... or whatever they are. That grin will come over his face – oh, that grin; oh, that face; how it transforms his face, it makes him the most handsome man you ever saw! And he'll say that to me: 'See you on the flipside' – just before I come out of it, before I snap back to my senses and find myself in the real world, the empty, angry world we live in now. It makes me happy to see him smile, but sad to know we're going to be apart until... until whenever we're together again..." Martin nodded. "Yes," he said, "and so I probably did mean to overdose. Is that what you're wanting to hear? A confession? I don't remember it, but I believe it. I probably did mean to kill myself. I could be with Dimi... whether that means in some other world, some other kind of existence... or I could join him by dissolving into nothingness, if that's where he went, too. It was fine with me either way. But..."

The room was growing less dark. The lights on the walls were brightening.

"But I could..." Martin lost his train of thought, looking around as the darkness melted away. "I guess those were magic words after all," he said, half meaning it as a joke.

Even now, the man at the desk didn't say anything.

But Martin could see him. The man wasn't sitting at a desk, but rather a wooden table. He wasn't looking at Martin after all. That piercing, rapt attention... it was there, but...

But the man was looking at some kind of drawings. Plans, or diagrams...

Schematics. That's what they were. Martin recognized them; he'd seen many like them over the years. They were Dimi's work, after all. Dmitri had been an electronics engineer.

Then Martin realized with a shock that the man at the desk wasn't a counselor. He was... he was Dimi.

"Wait," Martin said. "Wait, wait..."

But there was no waiting. The room grew lighter still. The blue walls seemed to brighten into... no, out of existence. The blue was the color of the sky, and the sky was everywhere; far overhead, wrapped all around in every direction, stretching off beyond the horizon... perfect blue; no clouds, no sun...

No sun, and yet everything was brilliantly lit.

Martin got off the couch, which seemed to melt away as he stood. He walked toward Dmitri, who was studying the schematics with a look Martin knew well – a look of complete absorption, as though Dmitri were in the diagrams, not apart from them, assessing them...

"The way I've been in this... place?" Martin wondered aloud. "Watching... watching him..."

Watching him. Dmitiri was sitting at their kitchen table. Martin knew it well – its shape and the grain of its wood, its dents and scratches. Dmitri was sitting at home, alive and well, and Martin...

"I remember you looking into my eyes, smiling, holding my hand... sitting at the side if the bed... and we were waiting, waiting for..."

Whoever answered emergency calls these days, now that the fire department had ben defunded. Probably a private ambulance service – overworked, overpriced, overwhelmed...

"And it took them a long time to get there. Or maybe they never came at all," Martin murmured.

Memory returned, flooding him like the light that had opened up the room.

"I'm sorry," Dmitry had said as Martin felt himself slipping away. Martin had heard it in his voice: Grief, despair, the conviction that they had been abandoned. No help was coming, because there was no help to be had...

"I died," Martin said to Dmitri, who kept on studying the schematics. "It was me. My memories have been scrambled... I've got everything turned around, transposed..."

Martin looked down at himself. He seemed real. But he also didn't quite seem to be himself. His body felt disconnected. It was like being in a dream.

"Am I dying right now? Has all of this only happened in the last few seconds? Or... or is there some other world, some other mode of existence...?"

The room – the world – Martin's mind brightened toward an oblivion of light, as if he were being swallowed by the sun.

Radiance washed through him. Memory melted. Fear and anger vanished.

But still... Martin turned back toward Dmitri, who seemed to look up just then – look up and catch sight of him. Dmitri's face registered astonishment, disbelief, then... joy...

"See you on the flipside," Martin said to his husband, wondering if his voice would carry across the distance, from one world to the next.

###

Where Have You Been All My Nightmare?

It wasn't the typical bad dream. For one thing, I knew I was dreaming – and I knew exactly when the dream had begun.

I had used an expired coupon by mistake at the surveillomarket, and the Unicops had come running from every direction to apprehend me. A bewildering series of events took place that involved being strip-searched several times, shown gay porn with electrodes taped to my nads, my ocular enhancements being forcibly hacked and their internet records downloaded, and finally, in what I was informed was "standard procedure," I was tied and wired into something called a Thought Interrogator.

"We are going to extract every name of every socialist club you belong to, every gay hookup you've ever had, and every library book you ever checked out," the processing officer had snarled into my face as he pulled the lever that launched me into this hallucinatory hellscape.

But knowing how I got here doesn't mean I know how long it's been since I arrived. Dream time, like dream logic, has no meaning that's recognizable to the higher cortical functions – and I'm afraid that although I'm stuck in this fucking fantasy, which unfolds with all the random weirdness of any dream, I can't reason the place into any semblance of order. It's a wild ride, and it's been frequently terrifying

Tall mannequins with blank white faces shambling after me.

Dirigibles high overhead dropping volley after volley of needle-sharp spears that stab into the ground all around, spines sticking out the skin of the world, gleaming with the promise that the next falling spear might pierce me.

Rose bushes that suddenly blossom into flame – fragrant flame, a stifling perfume that grows more cloying until I think I will suffocate.

I never used to have any sense of smell or touch in my dreams, but now I feel the heat of the burring roses and I smell the heavy rose scent with its underlying stench that the perfume cannot cover up: A stench or rot, of death, of brutality.

Staggering from a replica of my own childhood home – now converted into a charnel house of horrors, my decapitated third-grade teacher slumped at our dining room table and a neighbor's dog that used to terrify me lying on an enormous platter, a serving fork stuck deep into its head – I make my way across a vast gray plain underneath darkening clouds. It seems like hours go by as violent lighting races across the sky and thunder made of voices fills the air. Distant spurts of bright orange flame blast from the ground. I'm treated to more smells and sensations: The ground vibrating under my feet, the odor of sulfur.

There's something towering above me in the smoke and mist from distant volcanoes. It's greenish and indistinct... a light? A radiance? The greenish blob glows brighter, and the features of a face resolve. I'm staring at the Statue of Liberty, which has grown to gargantuan proportions, standing a mile high but now bending to bring its gigantic face toward me. Looking at me with impossible cartoon eyes, the once-great lady proclaims: "Hell has arrived!" She brings her torch – now an actual flame, searing and white, crackling with both fire and electricity – toward me.

I'm running. I find myself in a forest where grey shreds of some kind seem to flit and race around me. "Who's there?" I cry out.

A specter in a ragged gray shirt pauses before me. His face is half ripped away. He grins with exposed teeth and his rotting eyes seem to stare at me with malicious intensity. "Partisans!" he declares, before he seems to become a gray blur that rockets away, a contrail of mist stretching behind him.

I try standing perfectly still, an experiment in centering my thoughts. I'm hoping that the dreamscape around me becomes tranquil. It doesn't seem to be working.

Another figure approaches. He's handsome, red-haired, with living eyes and a serious, concerned expression. He looks at me – at me, not through me – as he draws closer. I wait for him to turn into a skeleton or suddenly grow claws and attack, but instead he calmly addresses me, saying, "I didn't know I'd have company."

It takes me a moment to formulate a response, and when I reply it's to say: "Are you real?"

"I think so," he tells me. "I'm not sure about much, right now, but I think so. And you?"

"I'm sure of it," I tell him. Then, surprising myself with the force of my own emotions, I ask him: "Where have you been all my nightmare?"

He laughs, which seems incongruous in this setting. "Are you sure you're not another one of my dreams? Because that was a random-ass thing to say."

***

He says he's not sure, but he thinks his named is Brian. Or, it might be Russell.

"My name is Danny," I tell him. I know exactly who I am and how I got here. I explain it to him.

"So maybe..." He squints at me. "Maybe I'm here to rescue you?"

"Really? Is that possible? I mean... this is all in my mind. How could you possibly be a real person, but still be in my dreams with me?" Maybe it's another aspect of the dreaming mind, but I find myself saying: "And here's the thing: You're a dream come true for me. You're what I would want in a man if having a man was safe. If anything was safe."

He smiles. "I'm certain that I'm real. Although that's not much of an assurance for you, is it? You don't know that I'm real. You only have my word for it. And if I'm a figment of your imagination, in a sense, I am real. I'm just you in another form. But," he adds, before I can interrupt his train of freshman dorm philosophizing, "I know I am, or used to be, part of the Liberators."

"The which?"

"We free political prisoners."

Now I know he must be a dream. "The Liberators?" Such a thing is surely not possible – not in a country where every move is observed by ubiquitous cameras and gauged by suspicious, hate-filled Unicops.

As if divining my thoughts – maybe that's possible in this vicious dreamland? Or maybe my skepticism shows on my face? – he tells me, "Yes, we're real. We exist. And, you see, we have nothing to lose. In a world so polluted that virtually everyone dies of one horrible disease or another by the time they reach forty, why not fight? Why not scheme and sabotage and try to bring down the machine? What consequences are left? I mean, what are they going to do... put us to death for it? They're killing us anyway."

We don't have much time to discuss the philosophical ramifications of existence or the ethical obligations that come with being terrorized by our own government, because the contortions of this dreaming reality start up again. The great flat plains and cloud-filled sky seem to shrink into themselves and we're abruptly in a room with brown walls... smooth walls... not, not brown, but rather deep rust red. And not walls, exactly... they seem moist, soft; there are dark striations running through the walls. They look like...

"This is muscle," I say. "We're inside some sort of organism." The belly of the whale, I think. It's a phrase I heard in a song. I think it's from the Bible. "I think we've been... swallowed by something..."

"I don't remember being eaten," Brian tells me. "Though, of course, my memory isn't so good now. I think they put me through the same sort of mind probe they put you under."

"Well, I remember everything," I tell him, "and no, we weren't eaten. This room... or stomach, whatever... it just appeared around us."

Brian studies the walls, then flinches back. The smooth striations have begun to undulate... and to sprout. "What the hell is this?" Brian yelps. "Tentacles?"

Stalks reach from the wall, whipping and writhing. Looking across to the opposite wall to see if more extrusions have appeared there, I am startled to see deep recesses have appeared.

Brian follows my gaze. "Punctures?" he asks.

I look from one wall to the other. "The tentacles are moving toward the pockets," I say. "No... not the tentacles. The walls are moving."

"What?!

"This room is closing in on itself."

"How do we get out?" Brian cries,

The room started out square; now it's more of a long tube. I glance one way, then the other. "There..." I point at a jagged seam of white laced against the dark red. Light? Glittering mineral? We hurry to the seam and see that it is two rows of tightly-knit, serrated teeth.

"Kick it!" Brian screams.

"Cool down," I say. "Remember, none of this is real. We just have to press forward, and ..."

Somehow, as I push into them, the teeth yield, splinter into soft bristles. They are like curtains... bead curtains, was that actually a thing in the waking world?... and I pass through the seam, Brian close behind me. A blinding light fills my eyes.

We stand in bright sunlight on a beach. Stark white sand, rolling green water, the soothing sound of surf. It seems so real, so stable and present, that I think I have awoken. But if this is a real place, how did we get here? Where are the government goons? We must still be dreaming. To verify, I look upwards, and it's as I suspect: Despite the bright sunlight falling on sea and sand, there's no sun in the sky, only a deep and featureless blue.

We turn to look behind us. Nothing but more beach, curving into the distance. Looking out to sea, it's water all the way to the far horizon. Looking inland, it's sand... all sand, the detail of its sparkling grains and its undulations lost with distance and glare until the sand seems to lift up in a haze.

"Dream logic," I murmur.

"What?"

I turn back to Brian. "Shifts from place to place; unrelated actions stringing together. It's the basic architecture of dreams. And the things we're seeing reflect basic drives and fears. A terror of being eaten; a stomach and teeth. But a muscular stomach, more like a womb... and, again, a womb with teeth. A metaphor about sexual anxiety. Also, a birth metaphor; passage into bright light, and now... I don't know."

"Some damn peace at last," Brian says.

"Life originated in the sea," I muse. "The salinity of the ocean is the salinity of our blood. The sea is a symbol of origin, of life.... but also eternity. Death."

"So are we about to die?"

"I don't think so. Listen to the waves...." The rumbling crash of the water has a soothing, repetitious rhythm. Within it, somehow, is another sound, equally steady; equally primal. "Doesn't that sound, in a way, like a heartbeat?"

Brian listens, looks at me, doesn't seem impressed.

"All of this is dream symbolism, following the structure of dreams," I reiterate. "One situation melting into the next. Nothing actually happens, even though there's a continuous series of events."

"Thanks for the lecture, Dr. Freud," Brian says. "But how does this help us?"

"They put us into this state using some sort of mind-reading machine," I reason. "Maybe the human mind only has two essential states – waking and dreaming. If their machine has put us into a state of dreaming, maybe we can still take control over the situation. Maybe we can wake ourselves up."

"And then what? Back to whatever tortures they've prepared?"

"I don't know. But at least we'll have managed some measure of self-determination."

"And how do we wake ourselves up? We can't control the dream. How can we control whether we're in the dream?"

"People can train themselves to guide their dreams and even get out of them. We have an advantage – we may be dreaming, experiencing irrational things, but we're thinking rationally."

"Rational people stuck in a crazy nightmare," Brian said. "That in itself is like an anxiety dream about our existence, the world we live in."

I try to get him focused on the task at hand. "Didn't your parents ever tell you how to wake up from a bad dream? Pinch yourself, or stand still and count to one hundred, or scream as loudly as you can?"

"This isn't natural sleep," Brian says, "and it's not a real dream; it's their goddamned machine."

"Which causes me to wonder how it is that you're here." I study his face, his cinnamon eyes. "To rescue me, you said?"

"Maybe. I don't know. But maybe."

"But how are you part of my nightmare?"

"How are you part of mine?"

I give it some thought. My mind is leaping in all directions at once. Snatches and flashes of half-remembered things I've read long ago flash through my mind... things I read or seen in movies in my teens, as a child... before books were banned, before movies were censored into mindless prattle and endless strings of meaningless action – rather like this dream. Brian called our predicament a metaphor for real life in the United States these days, but I wonder if it doesn't reflect the lack of imagination the people in charge exhibit in every aspect of their efforts to control our bodies, our minds, and our lives.

I think again of the primal symbolism we've seen.

"They put us here, but this place... this mental place... isn't something they created," I offer. "They tapped into it, or..."

"Tapped into it?" Brian asks.

I pace up and down the beach, getting excited. "You know... I think we are beyond mere sleep or mere dreams. I think we're in the collective unconscious."

"Isn't that some sort of pseudoscientific headshrinker theory?"

"You see? That's the government talking," I tell him. "The idea that psychology is a conspiracy. The claim that the very idea of a common psychological structure for human consciousness is fake news. But the mind is real... my mind is real. How about yours?"

"I think, therefore I am, I guess," Brian says.

"And what is 'we?' What is 'self,' or 'I?' It's not physical... not the part of it that exists in a conceptual space," I say, thinking out loud. "Even so, can't that psychological, conceptual self have an anatomy of sorts? Can't it also have health... or sickness... or injury?"

Brian shrugs. "I don't know. I'm just a soldier. I was a welder before, and now I fight with the Liberators. I've got a neuroblastoma, and I have about three weeks to live... or so they tell me. I want my life to mean something in the end. But maybe their mind control machine plus my brain tumor equals this fantasy."

"Well, I'm not your fantasy," I say.

The beach is gone. We are sitting in a fine restaurant: Dark wood paneling, soft light from chandeliers. What were we talking about? I struggle to hold onto my train of thought. Something about dreams. Yes, we're in a dream. But something about guiding dreams...

It all comes back to me, and I grip the edges of the table with my hands, trying to nail myself down.

"You all right?"

I look up Brian. He is dressed in a fine suit. I realize my own clothes are soft and supple and well-cut. I look down at myself, then look around the room, noting the absence of other diners. The clothes move across my body, feeling like water in their softness.

If Brian is still here with me, while everything else is shifting, then maybe he is real.

Brian is smiling at me. "This is like tripping," he says.

"It's what?"

"Never mind," he told me. "I guess you're not old enough to know what that was."

That makes me wonder how old Brian is. He looks... well, not young; not old; not like a person, in some ways; a little cartoonish, maybe. Certainly handsome. My own words come back to me: He's my dream of a man. One dream, anyway. So, maybe he's not real.

My thoughts, convictions, perspectives seem to be wrapping around each other, uncoiling from the inside out, flipping around. I shake my head and fight off a sense of nausea.

Tripping, Brian said? The word sounds familiar; I have a sense that it means something subversive, something dangerous and thrilling, but I can't quite pin it down.

"The world is either a jumble of chaos or it's beautifully orchestrated, depending on how your thoughts are ordered," Brian says, his words seeming to echo and jibe with my thoughts. "Your perception..." For a moment my perception is his perception. I glimpse myself through his eyes. I seem to see the world as he sees it, and it's different. And the same. And... different.

I struggle to set my own boundaries, have my own thoughts, be my own person. "No," I say, "the world is definitely a jumble of chaos. But the elements it's made from... locales, symbols... they seem stable, at least for a while. Like when a child builds a wall from wooden blocks, then knocks it down, then builds something else. The basic constituents remain the same even while the things they form are changing.

"And they have meaning," I add, referring to the wooden blocks... the basic symbols of a dream, I mean. "They have meaning. Animal, atavistic meaning. They're symbols to the waking mind, but to the unconscious mind... and the collective unconscious... they're how the oldest, most basic part of us thinks and speaks, the part without words."

"How do you speak without words?" Brian asks.

"Imagery. Concrete things like storms and caves, the closest the primitive mind comes to abstractions like 'safety' or 'danger.' "

"We're two rational people," Brian says, and again I have a sense of an echo running through me. Did he say that, or did I? Was it something we said before, at some point? He looks down, and smiled. A lovely dinner has appeared on his plate: A steak, mashed potatoes, green peas...

I looked down and see my own plate is similarly loaded.

"Wine?" Brian asks, holding up a glass.

I start to reach for it.

"No, this is mine," Brian says. "You have your own."

I do. It's in my hand.

We raise our glasses. The room is full of conversation and laughter and soft music. I don't even think to look around at whoever else is there; I know they must exist, because I can hear them...

"I've wanted to ask you this for a long time," Brian is saying. He's smiling... a soft smile, out of focus somehow, luminous and tentative all at once. More echoes pass through me; images of us over a number of years, past and future...

"Brian," I start.

"Let me say it," Brian says, a tender expression on his face, his eyes luminous. "Ever since that first day, I've known..."

"Brian..."

"No, let me tell you how I feel. How I've always felt."

"Brian!" I shout. "We just met! What do you think our story is?"

"I – but – " He frowns, then set his wine glass down. "I'm sorry," he says. "For a moment I was in some other life, with some other past. There was a whole universe of other associations, a whole mental catalogue of experiences I never had, a whole history that... that I guess I imagined. It's gone now. I just remember a feeling that we..."

I can grasp what he means. Some other lifetime flashes around the edges of my consciousness, around the periphery of my sight. This isn't Brian, a stranger I have only just encountered in a virtual reality space that technology has spit our minds into. This is Russel, my husband, my lover, my mate... This is a whole life, a natural life, a life in a kinder reality.

Well, of course. It seems obvious. He's my life partner, after all. He's been...

"No," I say, getting to my feet. The table has vanished. The restaurant has vanished. Now we seem to be standing in some sort of corridor. There's a sense of bleak lighting, but no light source. There's never a light source: Never a sun or a light bulb. That's how I know we're in a dream. And yet, there is light, and it shows the corridor stretching off into a remote distance. A battle must have taken place: There are bodies stacked to the sides, propped against the walls. There's an aftersense of ugly noise, the din of battle and suffering that seems to hang in the air. Death cries; gunshots; all of it felt rather than heard; all of it rippling silently through an aftermath of violence; an icy psychogenic shock, a spiritual sundering...

"We should go," Brian says, shaking me out of it. He seems vital now in a way he hasn't been; he seems energetic and determined. "We have a mission. We need to get into that interrogation room and get whomever they're torturing free from their diabolical machine!"

"Right," I say. Yes, that makes sense. We are Liberators...

No! This is just another side draft in a hurricane of random imagery and notions. "Brian!" I cry. He flinches. "Remember where we are!"

Standing in a black space; that's where we are. Brian looks around. I look around. It's a summer night, a deep night. It carries the feel of a time... I was sixteen. I remember that June. Out late, smoking, drinking... discovering the pleasures of our almost-adult bodies...

The light from a streetlamp pools around us. I look around: We are standing beside a split-rail fence. There are weeds, straggly grass, and gravel. It's a roadside or the edge of a parking lot. Maybe a field of some kind. There is no streetlamp in sight, but the light is still there, unmistakable, a round expanse of stark, stunned light that shouldn't be awake this time of night...

I shake my head, determined to stay with this vision, this line of thought.

The light is bright where we're standing in its center. It grows dim toward the edges. Is it a streetlamp, standing guard over a summer night? Or is it a spotlight, promising to wake us into the joys and excesses of a sordid neverworld, a nocturnal inferno...?

Is a show about to begin? Are we the show? Where is the audience?

Beyond the light is...

I stare hard, looking for vague outlines, glints thrown back from eyes or pallid blurs.

Nothingness. – Nothingness?

Nothingness. No room, no onlookers. No road, no city, no world. There is a hint of a breeze, there is a sound of night-singing insects, but... but somehow they only exist here, in this small patch of light.

Brian clutches the fence. "I'm scared," he says, sounding like a child.

"Of what?" I ask him gruffly. It's all a colossal joke after all, isn't it? Why be afraid of it? What's to hope for, what's to fear? This is all that ever was: A spotlight in the darkness, him and me. Or maybe just me. "There's nothing out there. We're all alone."

"That's what scares me," Brian whimpers. "Black nothing, all around. No time, except for here. No light, except for here. No air, no thought, no existence!" He's starting to panic. "I'm claustrophobic!"

"And we're absolutely not confined! It's mere openness all around," I point out.

My words make no difference. He's consumed by fear. "I don't want to be shut up here!" he cries. "Tightly wound! Folded like a seed with no germination!" He can't be real, I think. He makes no sense. He's even starting to sound like a dream.

But, wait. Of course he's real. And he needs my help... "Brian?" I ask. "Are you with me? Are you gonna rescue me? Aren't you a Liberator?"

He stares at me with wild eyes and then his face loses its fearful expression. He seems dull, lethargic. "I don't think so," he says distantly.

"You're not gonna liberate me?"

"I don't think so. I think I'm..." His face changes expression again, becoming that of a trickster – a laughing devil. "I think I'm you!" he exclaims, his voice changing, slanting into something different: Crazy, nasty, vicious. "Isn't that what they say? Everyone you meet in your dreams is you?"

"This isn't a dream," I tell him. "This is..."

"Yes, yes, the 'collective unconscious!' Which is exactly what I mean," Brian snarls. "Isn't this the bare essential truth of existence? That it's only you and me and this tiny patch, this brief moment? That this is how it is... forever?"

I stare at him, his panic from a moment ago now flooding me. "No," I say. "No, no..."

"Am I not your own shadow self? Are you not mine?" Brian leers at me. "Are we not all the life that ever lived? Do we not conjure multitudes?"

"Stop, Brian! That can't be real – that's just the dream, it's not reality..."

"Don't they say that life is but a dream?" Brian is not laughing, and the malice is gone from his face, his air of vicious chaos reduced to gentle resignation. "Don't we say it? Is that why it's real? So say we all? So say we... none?"

There is an echo of far-off voices: "...psychogenic shock..." "...his EEG is all over the place, his mind is literally disintegrating..." "...neurological instability..." "...could go into a coma and never..." "...terrorists pre-programmed for self-destruction, this is an example of..." ...ham-handed fools!..."

"You hear them?" I ask Brian. "You hear them arguing? Talking about us... me? Just me? Or you, too?"

Brian shrugs, and starts laughing.

"What's funny?" I asked.

"It's how all conversations end," he says. "In laughter, the laughter of madness. And then silence."

A seam of glittering white stretches across the sky above us, in the endless nothing.

"You see?" I point. "We're waking up..."

"No," Brian says. "No. Because, why should we? I came to save you. And I will – from their questions, their contempt, their fantasies of who we are and what we want. Fuck them! Without us, they are nothing. They will simply cease to exist if we..."

He steps forward, toward me, and suddenly, certainly, I know what he intends.

Did he come from out there or in here? Is he a brave fighter with nothing to lose, or is he my own primal death wish – or my own rage, so blind and furious I don't worry about whether I will survive, I only focus on depriving the tormentors of what they want – ?

I step back, then step back again. The limit of the light, the vague edge of night is at my back. I can feel it. Beyond it... nothing.

"Brian!" I cry.

"If we cease to exist," he says.

"Brian..."

"That will show them," he says. "And I will have done what I set out to do. This is why I exist. This has become my life... and my death..."

Then he lunges, his arms wrapping around me, his momentum... or maybe his intention... propelling us into the darkness.

And an echo shivers through me: Something he said? Something I said?

"Where have you been all my nightmare?"

Next week we watch along with the rest of the world as Prof. Todd Quivey seeks to answer imponderable questions with nothing but observations, reason, and a respect for facts. Namely: What is that object from space that landed in South Dakota, and what does it want? Could it be a special delivery from "Friends We'll Never Meet" – ?