Nightmare Market

I hate dreams. Every detail, every nuance, every fucked up possible variation of my life. And for me, dreams are easier to remember than my university law classes. I’ve often wondered if I’ve lived a thousand lives. Or are the dreams telling me something? I’ve killed, been killed, flown through the skies and crawled in the dirt.

“Are you okay?” Nancy asked, her hand resting on my chest, her nails trailing along the contours of my ribs. If she drew blood, I’d know I was in another dream. If the moment lingered without passion or violence, I was awake. Pinching myself never worked—old folks’ tale.

“Yeah, I’m good.” The funny thing about dreaming vividly was that I woke up tired every day. That REM shit the doctor talks about? Doesn’t apply to me. So I searched for a pill to prevent dreaming. I tried sedatives, antihistamines, melatonin and antidepressants—still dreamed.

“You were twitching in your sleep.”

“Yeah, it happens.”

She pulled her hand away from my chest and groaned. “I should get to work. If I don’t leave soon, I’ll be late.”

“Yeah.”

She kicked the sheets off, gathered her clothes from the floor, and walked out. “Thanks for the stimulating conversation. I like you better when you’re drunk.”

I liked myself better when I was drunk, too. About the only time I didn’t think about my dreams. I waved goodbye. She’d thank me later. The last serious girl I had, I put in the hospital thanks to a nightmare I’d woken from, but hadn’t realized I’d woken up. Don’t think I ever forgave myself. If I close my eyes I still see the bruises on her face and the cuts along her leg from the broken bottle I’d smashed. Landed myself in prison for a while, too. Thirteen years ago, and since then I’ve avoided having women over. Thing is, I’m weak when I’m drunk and need to get some release. That’s how I met a lot of girls—Nancy included.

“You’re an asshole,” I heard her shout from the hallway. My neighbours would ask about that later—I’ll figure something out. I needed to start work, too.

I rolled over and pulled my laptop into my lap and checked my e-mail. Logging into the system was how my boss logged my time. He didn’t care much, as long as I got the story ideas to him so he could get rich from them. Outlook loaded nineteen unread e-mails since yesterday. All from my boss, Justin D. MacDonald. The subject lines read: You’re fucked up. How could you do this to me? I swear I’ll tell the police. I grabbed my phone to call him and let him know someone hacked his system. He’d sent me some messed up things before, but nothing like this. Usually it was about my dreams: ‘Need more details about the knife scene.’ ‘What color was the blood exactly?’ ‘Did she scream?’ Justin usually gave me space with the most violent dreams. But lately, he’d been pushing for more specifics, wanting to know every detail about the kills. Even called me at 3:00 AM last week asking about a victim’s eye color.

Answering Machine. “Yeah, Justin, It’s Reve. You got hacked. Got a dozen spam e-mails from you. Change your password. Call me when you get this.”

Couldn’t complain about work—it was a sweet gig. Justin published short story collections based on the dreams that I had. He didn’t pay well, but I couldn’t expect much more from a guy that paid me to sleep and summarize my nightmares. Once in a while, he even published a happy dream. Although that had nothing to do with me.

By mid-afternoon, Justin hadn’t called back. I phoned him twice more and hung up when the voicemail kicked in. Shit, I hoped he didn’t get his identity stolen. E-mail, phone, maybe even lost all his cash?

My phone vibrated. The caller ID said unknown. I let the voicemail get it, but checked it the moment it pinged through.

“Reve, it’s Justin.” He sounded like he was in pain. “I need to meet with you. I’ll text you the address. Get here soon, okay?” After a pause, he added, “I got a bonus for you. Get here soon.”

Ever had the feeling the good news you just heard meant something really fucked up was going on? Justin rarely asked me to meet him anywhere. He had reached out to me online back when I was blogging my dreams and said they read like horror thrillers. Wanted to write about them. He had offered to pay for the details if I stopped posting. “Fuck yeah,” I said, thinking I might be giving ideas to the next Stephen King, and the paychecks would start rolling in. Back then I might have believed in a bonus. But now? He wouldn’t buy me a coffee when we met at the coffee shop unless his accountant said he could write it off. And trips to the coffee shop were downright creepy. Justin was always hunched over his laptop like a vulture, thin fingers tapping away, making notes about my dreams with this weird intensity in his watery eyes. Guy had a way of leaning forward that made me feel like he was trying to crawl inside my head.

I threw on my pants and scanned my apartment for anything out of place that might indicate I was dreaming. Nope. All here. The address popped up on my phone—a building downtown, listed as Cardonia Capital Investments. A quick Google search didn’t help at all. The website was vague and wordpressy, promising to save my future by investing in their company. Was Justin investing? I knew he liked to gamble, but not on the stock exchange. He was more of a casino guy. And this site didn’t look professional, it looked like someone spent twenty hours working from a template.

Whatever. I couldn’t say no to Justin. I needed to get paid and if I even had a shot at a bonus, I’d be on it like a demon on a Protestant.

I took an Uber to the address and nearly hurt my neck looking up at the tinted glass building. What was it, fifty stories high? It looked too expensive for Justin to have an office inside. I sauntered through a large empty lobby to a security desk with two beefy security guards clacking away on keyboards. Their sausage fingers looked too big to hit a single key at a time.

“Can I help you?” one guard said. He eyeballed me like he wanted to know how much I bench pressed—maybe I could push one of his legs off me.

“I’m here to see my boss. Justin MacDonald.”

“You think I know your boss? What agency is he with?”

“I don’t know. He phoned me and told me to come down.”

The phone rang. The guard exchanged a few words, then hung up. “Seventeenth floor,” he said. “Good luck.”

“Luck? Why would I need luck?”

“You know,” the guard laughed, pointed at me with a finger gun and dropped his thumb. Pew Pew.

“What’s on the seventeenth floor?” I must have been in a dream. Only I couldn’t remember when I might have passed out since leaving my apartment. Was I still in an Uber? That was going to be embarrassing to explain.

“I can’t divulge the name of agencies that use our firm. Have. Fun. Elevators are over there.” His beefy finger barely made it above his hip before he dropped it again. The guy’s eyes found his partners and they both shook their heads like two village people about to watch a showdown, only I’d brought a notebook to a gunfight.

I followed the instructions to the elevator and up to the seventeenth floor. A tall dude in a black suit blocked my path. “Follow me, sir.” He reminded me of Will Smith in Men in Black. This -had- to be a dream. I followed him, knowing the theatrics of the dream should start any minute. Justin was going to love this one. Hopefully I got to use the noisy cricket before I got blasted by alien goop.

Smith left me in an empty boardroom. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead like angry wasps, casting flickering shadows in the corners. The TV screen was black and the whiteboard was clean. I smelled industrial cleaner and stale coffee, along with that metallic tang you only get in offices with recycled air. No mementos to clue me into what agency my dream had picked out. It was so dull I started worrying that maybe I wasn’t in a dream. Maybe whoever got ahold of Justin’s email accounts had done a number on the guy and they wanted to clear me of being involved. Well I didn’t have shit to do with it. And when they cleared me, I better have a bonus waiting for me after going through these hoops.

Smith finally walked into the room maybe ten minutes later with another suit. The second guy looked like Danny DeVito in Get Shorty. This was a genre screw-up of epic proportions.

“Where’s Justin?” I asked.

“I have some questions for you, Mr…”

“Reve.”

“Right. Have you read Mr. MacDonald’s stories?”

DeVito sat opposite me, and Smith hovered behind me. I braced for some actual violence, disappointed that the scenario was so ridiculous Justin could never use it for a story. How long I stayed in a nightmare during a beat-down depended on how bad the pain got. One nightmare turned so bad I woke up with kidney stones. I’m honestly not sure which came first. “Yes, I’ve read them all.”

“Do you know what inspired the stories?”

My brain searched for a reason they would want me to state what they obviously knew. Since I didn’t do anything wrong, I figured the truth was the safest for now. “My dreams.”

Smith threw a folder on the table. “Open it.”

I turned the first page, the glossy photo paper sticking to my sweaty fingers. The air conditioning kicked in with a wheeze, raising goosebumps on my arms. “Why are you showing me this?” A woman cut from groin to chin stared back at me in the photo. Sick fucks went out of their way to Photoshop a scene from one of my nightmares—it was one that stuck with me. I spent a week debating on sharing it with Justin to use in his story collection. Turned out to be one of his most popular. I’d never met the woman in the nightmare before and figured I must have seen her in a mall without noticing and she popped into my subconscious and got herself into a world of dream-torture for the trouble.