The Experiment of Dreams Read online

  “Goodnight, Doctor.”

  The two men left and Ben sat on the edge of the bed, observing the machine and letting his mind unwind.

  What a day.

  Checking out the books on the bookshelf sounded appealing, but he was too exhausted to read. He clicked on the TV and flipped through the channels, but there was nothing on that he found appealing. He washed his face, brushed his teeth, and put his dirty clothes in the hamper, then put the hamper outside the door as he was instructed. The dresser drawers were full of clothing, including several sets of pajamas, along with a drawer full of brand new underwear and socks, still in their original plastic packaging and in all different colors and sizes.

  Spare no expense, Mr. Kalispell.

  Ben tore off two small squares of toilet paper and fashioned them into earplugs. He found several folded handkerchiefs in the dresser and rolled one up to use as an eye mask. He was surprised there wasn’t a sleep mask available, but he preferred to use a handkerchief anyway. The rolled up cloth covered his ears and kept the earplugs from falling out.

  What a day.

  Ben lay in bed under the canopy Lucy created over his head. Slowly, lying flat on his back under the blanket and sheet, he began the breathing exercises he used to calm his mind, relax his body, and prepare his brain for a lucid dream state. Through the makeshift earplugs, he could hear a gentle humming and metal ticking … louder than before, and different.

  He opened his eyes and lifted his head so his ear was pressed against Lucy. The sound was not coming from the machine. He removed his earplugs, stood up, and pressed his head against the wall. The sound was louder with his ear to the wall, yet muffled. The noise was coming from another room. It sounded like the ticking of a taxicab meter, along with a sporadic humming and grinding, like machinery.

  Whatever.

  He put the earplugs back in and pulled the blanket up to his chin.

  Hell of a day, he thought, and let his mind go dark.

  Chapter 6

  When Ben checked the laundry basket outside the door, his clothes were cleaned, folded, and placed gently back inside, just as Dr. Wulfric said.

  What crazy hours these housekeepers must work, he thought as he got dressed.

  He went to the break room where he smelled fresh-brewed coffee. A moment later, Dr. Wulfric appeared at the doorway to the stairs.

  “Ah, Ben! You’re up!”

  Ben was sipping at a steaming cup of coffee.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “Good; slept good.”

  In the past, Ben participated in tests where he had slept on nothing more than an examination table with a thin white sheet. The room he slept in the night before was luxurious in comparison. He slept like a baby until this morning when the mechanical noises from the wall behind his room grew louder—much louder than previously.

  “I would like you to know,” Dr. Wulfric said, pulling up a chair across the table from Ben, “that everything went exceedingly well. We just started analyzing the results, and they’re proving to be quite extraordinary.” The doctor smiled from behind his thick beard, gleaming like a little boy. “Do you remember your dreams from last night?”

  “Sure I do.” Within the first several minutes of waking, Ben could remember his conscious and subconscious dreams very clearly. Typically, the images would fade throughout the day, unless the dream had some significance or effect on him. In a case like this, when he was truly focused, Ben could remember the dream as long as he liked. “I viewed the pictures just as you asked,” he said. “First I looked at them from far away, passively. Then I scanned them up close as best as I could.”

  “Yes, yes,” Dr. Wulfric nodded.

  Ben smirked. He hoped he gave them a good show. In between his assignment, he took his dream on a little thrill ride. First, he flew into the sky like a bird, soaring over the tops of trees and sweeping down close to the ground, speeding down streets and alleyways inches above the pavement. He flew to the tops of skyscrapers to perch for a moment, only to dive back down, head first and recklessly fast.

  Next, he swam—or more accurately, he walked—into a large body of water. His feet mired in the thick sandy bottom as he walked. He felt the tides pull and sway his legs. The water was warm, tropically warm. He looked at fish, coral, and an oddly fluorescent eel. His subconscious conjured up the details: the fish, the sand, the coral, the sky, and the climate—everything, really. All he had to do was think beach, and there it was.

  Doing these things, like breathing underwater and flying, took years of practice, and he was no master. His initial response when presented with these impossible feats was fear and panic. It was difficult for Ben to separate reality from what was happening in his subconscious world, the land of his dreams.

  Many dreams end abruptly with Ben waking in a state of near panic. He would hyperventilate while dreaming of drowning underwater. Or, his heart would practically beat through his chest after taking a sudden nosedive back to Earth on one of his high-altitude flights. While he is dreaming, he has to remind himself that in real life, he is lying in bed breathing fresh air, and that the water in his thoughts can’t hurt him.

  Breathing underwater was a difficult feat to master. Flying, on the other hand, was not as challenging. The flying part was easy; controlling where he went and how fast he wanted to go was another story. A person does not fly naturally, so there is no logical way to know how to direct and control the ability of personal flight.

  Even after years of practice there were times when Ben would spiral out of control and shoot up into the air past the highest trees and tallest buildings, his body tumbling uncontrollably upward, his heart pounding wildly. The laws of gravity felt completely unreal. His mind and body responded to these events with the natural panic a person would experience if these things were really happening. Sensations felt during sleep—hot, cold, pain, and pleasure—were all just as vivid as in real life, and sometimes even more realistic and exaggerated.

  He had developed a failsafe mechanism to get himself out of these predicaments—a last-ditch technique when a good dream went sour. It had started with a particularly frightening and frustrating dream he had one night. He was sleeping, completely lucid, then suddenly woke up. His room looked different. Things were not right. His bed was a twin, not a queen. The floor was carpeted, not hard wood, and the shape of the room was oddly rectangular. There was a poster on the wall so blurry he could not read whatever was written on it—and when was the last time he even owned a poster?

  He realized he was still dreaming; he was dreaming that he had awakened from his sleep. This pattern repeated itself, perhaps a dozen times, and each time he was fooled into believing he was really waking up, only to find out he was not. Panic set in. Time had no precedent—perhaps hours went by, days even, or just minutes.

  Am I stuck here? Are the sheets wrapped around my throat, cutting off the oxygen to my brain? Am I dying? Am I dead?

  Suddenly his head began to spasm and twitch, the muscles in the back of his neck shaking, and he awoke to the real world. He was fine and safe, yet his head was sore, his brain overworked. After that dream, he could consciously do that “neck twitch” whenever he wanted, and it saved him from all sorts of dream-induced panic states and near-death experiences.

  Dr. Wulfric cleared his throat, and continued speaking, “Ben, we would like to continue with the study, with you.”

  Ben laughed. “And I would very much like for you to proceed adding funds to my bank account.” He had some money left from the sale of his old house and the bar, but not much. The bar’s popularity plummeted after the incident that left his wife dead, and he barely made ends meet.

  “Ha! That’s excellent, excellent,” Dr. Wulfric went on. “I have to call Mr. Kalispell this afternoon. He is anxious to hear the results. Feel free to make yourself some breakfast, and come down when you’re finished. Mr. Marcus will be here soon to deliver the rest of your pay. We can schedule another appointment when he arriv
es. I’ll call the driver to take you home whenever you’re ready.”

  Dr. Wulfric stood from the table and walked to the stairway.

  “Doctor?”

  “Yes?” He turned at the top of the stairs.

  “I was just wondering … is it possible to see my dream, what you recorded?”

  There was a pause. “We’re still going through the data, cleaning things up. Let’s wait until I speak to Mr. Kalispell.” The doctor smiled widely. “I’m glad you’re interested in the work we’re doing. Mr. Kalispell will be pleased. Now, Ben, make sure you eat something.”

  Dr. Wulfric disappeared through the door. Ben thought about eating, but his stomach suddenly felt sour and his head had that far-away feeling.

  A nap in the limo would be nice, he laughed to himself. The limo! Emily, if you could see me now! Ha!

  Chapter 7

  Ben pushed the front door open with his foot, careful not to squash the bags of groceries he held in his arms. The door to his apartment had a strong self-closing hinge that ensured that the door would always shut unless held open by something heavy. The door annoyed the shit out of Ben. The hinge violently slammed the door shut when he didn’t want it to. He kept a brick nearby—that some kid had thrown though his window a couple months ago—to keep the door propped open, and he hopelessly searched for it now in the dark. He quickly released his foot and raced to the counter as the last ray of light shrank and disappeared with the slamming of the door. He felt for the edge of the wall with his foot and put the groceries down on the counter, then turned back to find the light switch.

  In the living room sat a brand new forty-six-inch Samsung flat screen TV. It stood on the same stand as his old TV—the boxy old Hitachi with fake wood paneling that he’d bought as a teenager and somehow managed to keep working. At least he thought it might still work, it had been years since he had even tried.

  With money coming in, Ben decided to splurge a little. He went home after his first visit to the lab with two thousand dollars, and three additional sessions scheduled—each at one thousand dollars. In a little over a month, Ben took home five thousand dollars, with the promise of more sessions to come. With that kind of income, Ben was able to tell the bar manager that he wasn’t available to fill in any shifts that week.

  He bought the Samsung on a whim after a drunken night of staring at the old Hitachi, gathering dust in the corner. That night, like many before, his gaze absentmindedly switched to his wife’s painting on the wall. It was a pattern he’d grown familiar with over the years.

  Thinking about the past was an obsession. Images swam through his mind, overwhelmed by Emily and his old house: she with paint on her cheek and forehead, standing before a canvas in the room with the large windows; he at the doorway looking in. He recalled the small bar they owned. He remembered the look of genuine joy and total fear on Emily’s face as they signed the last of the papers, received the keys, and opened the door as bar owners for the very first time. That bar was their dream, their future. It was a place for their children to work and to learn the ropes of the business as they grew up. He imagined arguing with his kids as they grew from children to adults, they insisting the interior was outdated and drab and the menu in need of urgent updating.

  He saw himself and Emily in their senior years—aged and stubborn—refusing to make changes to the decor or food, despite their children probably being right. Then, when they reached those final years—when it was time to view the world from rocking chairs on the front porch with thick blankets draping their legs as they sipped glasses of red wine—they would let their children run the place. Their children would hand the business down to their grandchildren, and one day to their great-grandchildren, and they would stay on that front porch for as many years as their bodies would allow, hand in hand, watching the sun set and rise.

  Ben’s mind created these warped thoughts and images, these events that would now never happen, as he stared at the painting of the cabin in the woods. He sipped from his glass of whiskey, taking slugs straight from the bottle between sips from the glass.

  He saw his wife as she died, the shock and horror on the patrons’ faces, the monsters pinned face down on the ground as the police tightened cuffs around their wrists. The blood, all the blood. Ben’s own tears falling into the pools of that blood. The look in her eyes, the look in the eyes of the monsters on the ground craning their neck to see what was going on, the knife laying there in a puddle of warm blood, the hands of the medics ripping her away from him—swarming around her with respirators, gauze, needles, a neck brace.

  They let him stay by her side holding her hand because he wouldn’t let go—he would tear his own arm off before letting go. He stayed by her side in utter shock and solace for hours that felt like days. When he finally let go—had to let go—a huge amount of him died along with her.

  He has tried his best to leave that world behind.

  Then there was the painting of the cabin in the woods. Just glancing at it made everything come rushing back.

  After these drunk and tormenting nights, he would wake up in the morning with his head on fire and his mouth stale and dry. Sometimes he would awake with the painting of the cabin locked in his clenched fingers like a vice. Other times it was thrown in the corner of the room—nearly destroyed in a rage of drunken delirium. However, the painting always made it back on the wall.

  There was an odd and perverse sense of pleasure in his self-torment, an unwillingness to forget the past and erase Emily from his life and memory. There was pleasure in the pain, a pleasure in remembering Emily: her touch, her scent of jasmine, her warm embrace, her smile, her words, her skin, the way she was so suddenly taken out of his life.

  His memories and the painting were all that was left to remember her by, and he refused to get rid of them—it wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair … he couldn’t forget her, couldn’t let her go, it was just so … unfair ….

  The new television was a step in the right direction—a way to divert his thoughts from Emily and the past and steal his attention away from the painting. Only the day he bought it, he hung up after twenty minutes on hold with the cable company. Standing around his apartment listening to elevator music was maddening. He made a promise to try again later, when the line wasn’t as busy. It would be stupid having a brand new piece of technology collecting dust in the corner of the room with the cord wrapped around the base, right next to the Hitachi. But he hadn’t called back. And the TV still wasn’t plugged in.

  Earlier, as he was walking home from Whole Foods, he felt his phone vibrate in his front pocket. He adjusted the bags of groceries in his arms and pulled the phone out with two free fingers. There was a missed call from Iain Marcus on the screen. Back in the apartment, as he was putting the groceries away, he put his phone on speaker and listened to the voicemail. A recorded voice rang out: You have one new message—pause—First voice-message.

  “Hello, Mr. Walker, this is Iain Marcus. This is just a reminder that we’re scheduled to meet tomorrow afternoon, at the Still Life Roast coffee house. We’ll be arriving at eleven. Please call me if there are any problems. We look forward to seeing you again.”

  This was the third time Iain Marcus had about the same meeting, since Ben finished his third session at the lab the week before. Ben held the phone, about to return Iain’s call, but changed his mind and put the phone back in his pocket. The message clearly said, ‘Call me if there are any problems,’ and there weren’t any problems. There wasn’t a problem the first time Iain called, or the second, and there surely wasn’t one now. “This Iain Marcus guy has to chill out,” Ben told himself, alone in the room.

  With the groceries put away, Ben found himself sitting on the couch with a bottle of Jameson in one hand and his usual glass in the other. He poured the whiskey and sipped it. Then he swallowed it all. He closed his eyes as the warmth spread from his stomach to his head, giving him that ‘Ahhh’ moment, like a mother pulling the blanket up to her child's chin. E
verything’s all right now. Shhh, relax. He stared at the television thinking that maybe the cable company would still be open. Another shot of whiskey appeared in the glass.

  Then the painting grabbed his attention, stole his eyes, flashed out from the other side of the room. He stared at it.

  His emotions began swirling like the paint on the canvas, like the whiskey in the glass.

  He looked at the Jameson; it was amber and beautiful. He screwed the cap on and stood up from the couch.

  Not tonight, Ben. Not tonight.

  He polished the remainder of the glass in one swig. Leaving it and the bottle on the kitchen counter, he walked to the bedroom, deciding to call Iain back after all. The cable company could wait.

  ***

  The flimsy metal table wasn’t large enough for the two doctors, Iain, and Ben to sit around comfortably. The legs wobbled on the cement sidewalk, even after Dr. Egan found a pack of matches to level the table out.

  They talked about how beautiful the day was, the current Yankees lineup, and all sorts of things that didn’t really concern Ben whatsoever.

  The same waitress from his first meeting with Dr. Wulfric was working now, and she delivered four coffees on porcelain saucers. It still impressed Ben that a skilled waitress could deliver so many full cups—beer, martinis, coffee, whatever—on large platters without spilling a drop. After all of his years in the hospitality business, balancing a tray was not something he could do well.

  “Anything else, guys?” she asked.

  The four men shook their heads.

  “No, thank you,” Dr. Egan answered.

  She left on quick feet.