Only A Dream? (July/August 2012)

Reality, Based On Assumptions

---

     Vincent awoke in a dream; he realized promptly that he was dreaming when he opened his eyes and found himself staring at a prosaic white ceiling, soft with the dim glow of morning light. He habitually glanced to his left and at the alarm clock. Little green numbers told him it was 7am, and Vincent wondered what rate dream-time passed at compared to real-time, as the former was always distorted. He left that thought a moment later, though, to glance around the familiar room and recall the time he spent in it during his first few weeks in Long Beach. For a long time the man had been trailing his sister—or so he hoped—by following homicide cases south from San Francisco like a trail of breadcrumbs. In Long Beach the trail seemed to end, but the killings didn’t. Vincent had hoped, and somehow he knew in his bones, that it meant Vespyr was here. He had no practical method of tracking her down so he spent days and nights wandering through the city, keeping a sharp eye out for someone he hadn’t seen in over ten years. In the end, luck was on his side.
     But this wasn’t the end; it was only somewhere near to it. Vincent got out of bed and walked around the small motel room with the feeling of some imminent revelation struggling to come to fruition. He rummaged through the clothes he possessed and slipped into a casual black suit and tie, strange nostalgia halting him for a moment in front of the mirror. With slightly shorter hair and some nice clothes on, he felt almost like his old self...
     It wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling, but he could allow it in a dream. Vincent regarded himself gravely in the glass reflection and then turned away, back to the bedroom, to rummage through his small stash of belongings. His hands delved carefully into the suitcase, searching for the one thing he knew he could always count on finding to assure himself that he was asleep. Vincent’s fingertips brushed against cold metal hidden beneath layers of clothing and he pulled out his gun, gazing down at it gravely. It was not just any gun. But Vincent did the same thing he always did when he found it again in his dreams, and he threw it out the window.
     After preparing a small pot of coffee and drinking it in contemplative silence, the man took his sunglasses and advanced to the door. It was bright and tepid outside; summer in Southern California, thoroughly enjoying its stay. Vincent winced in the light and donned his shades, wondering where to go. It didn’t take him long to decide that he might as well find his sister, now that he knew where she was. But if this was his dream, would she be there?
     Curiosity motivated his footsteps, and soon he found himself passing by familiar streets, his pace increasing. He jogged down the shaded path toward the parking garage and carefully slipped by the fence, disappearing into familiar darkness. Finally, he found himself at the door of the Officer’s Building— no, it was still just her home at the point. Rogues didn’t come about until after...
     For the first time, it occurred to Vincent that the world hadn’t ended yet. His hand lingered on the door handle, feeling the weight of the past catching up to him, pushing him forward. The door was unlocked.
     ”Vespyr?”
     Vincent’s eyes adjusted to the darkness and he walked toward her room. To his surprise and dismay, the room was empty. The entire building was barren, a habitat for shadows and nothing more. He promptly left and shut the door behind him, heart beating uncomfortably in his chest, although he was still aware he was only dreaming. Unsettling nonetheless, Vespyr’s absence compelled him even more to find someone he knew.
     Having only been there once, Vincent got lost on his way to “Unfettered”’s apartment and found himself wandering aimlessly until he passed by the cafe where he and the German had initially met. He curiously peered through the window, hoping to catch a glimpse...
     But he saw nothing but faceless people, anonymous dream-folk that his brain so kindly substituted in the place of the people he longed to see. Still, Vincent went inside and sat down on the couch. He felt vaguely tired.
     “Yer an odd person t’be in a dream of mine.”
Vincent raised his head abruptly and furrowed his brow at the sudden presence of Leech across the table.
     “...I could say the same for you,” Vincent replied, suddenly uncomfortable. He stood up and casually walked toward the door, regarding the instance as uncanny but negligible. He would move on, maybe keep looking for his sister... and wait to wake up. The door jingled behind him again.
     “Wait up, princess.”
     Vincent’s hackles raised and he turned around again, glaring at the man.
     “...What do you want?”
     “Oh I dunno, I guess t’find out what yer in my dream for.”
     “...It’s not your dream, it’s mine.”
     Leech paused for a moment and then narrowed his eyes suspiciously, grinning.
     “I guess that’s the kind of thing people say in dreams, ain’t it.” Vincent straightened his tie and gave the man a cautious once-over. There was something odd about him; something out of the ordinary, that Vincent couldn’t quite identify at first. Leech was wearing his ordinary attire—that was to say, what he ordinarily wore when he was wearing anything at all—and his black hair looked about the same, perhaps a little bit spikier than usual. Then Vincent noticed that Leech had horns protruding from the sides of his skull.
     “...Why do you have horns?” Vincent asked. Leech shrugged and reached up to stroke one of them, still grinning.
     “I dunno, I like ‘em I guess.”
     “But I don’t really think you’re the devil or anything, i just...”
     “Eh?”
     Vincent coughed nervously. “Nevermind, doesn’t matter. Dreams are fucking weird.”
     A gravelly noise like laughter leapt from Leech’s throat and he presumably chuckled for a few moments, then reached into the pocket of his leather jacket for his cigarettes. “Tell me ‘bout it,” he said with the filter of a Marlboro between his lips, dabbing the tip with the flame from a Zippo.
     “Anyway I don’t know why you’re here but you gotta quit starin’ at me like that.”
     “Sorry. It’s the horns.” Vincent leaned against the side of the building and awkwardly averted his gaze, going for his own cigarettes as a distraction. An instant after he remembered he left them at the motel, he found them in his pocket along with his lighter. Dreams, right.
     “Anyway I’m looking for Gunner. Seen ‘im?”
     “No. I thought this was supposed to be your dream, shouldn’t you know?” Vincent humored the man with cold sarcasm, still skeptical. Leech threw him a look and raised his brow.
     “Yeah, it’s my dream, shouldn’t you be sucking my dick?”
     Vincent stuttered mid-inhale and coughed up smoke. He glared incredulously at the other man for a moment before he had to look away, a rush of warmth flushing his face. Leech cackled nefariously, apparently enjoying himself. When Vincent glanced over at him again he wasn’t wearing a shirt anymore.
     “Jesus fucking christ I’d like to wake up already.”
     “What’s the rush, princess? Hey, let’s go for a walk.”
     The white-haired man gave him an unamused look, to which Leech responded with a loud scoff.
     “Relax sweetheart, if I wanted to jump you in a dream I’da done it already. Let’s go.” Vincent narrowed his eyes and pushed himself away from the wall, following the spiky-haired man. “Don’t call me sweetheart.”
     After a few minutes, or a few seconds, or an eternity—it really didn’t matter—Vincent realized he no longer recognized his surroundings and wondered if they were even in Long Beach anymore. Although it seemed to Vincent like Leech was walking in whichever arbitrary direction his boots took him in, there was the vague sense that they were on their way to someplace specific.
     “...Where are we going?”
     “Mom’s house.” Vincent stared ahead of him, slightly confused; the word ‘mom’ was not something he could ever have imagined coming from Leech’s tongue. It just didn’t seem... right.
     ...What for?”
     “Figure Gunner might be there. Need t’ask him where he left the key to th’goddamn booze locker.”
     Vincent’s gaze dropped to the sidewalk. “This is a stupid dream.”
     “I’ve had better.” The shirtless man began to whistle as he walked, stuffing his hands in his pockets, smiling at everything. Vincent began to understand Leech less than he ever did before when he was awake. He shrugged it off and followed anyhow, beginning to sweat a little under the sun, unsure whether to curse or admire the other man’s eternally upbeat attitude. Then he decided that it was still a dream and he still didn’t give a shit, no matter how weird it was. Vincent focused his attention instead on his surroundings, appreciating the pleasantness of a city that hadn’t yet been fragmented and decayed by Barker’s war. He wondered how soon it was to come, how soon the missiles would scream and fall. His pensive gaze fell to the ground in front of his feet as he paced methodically along behind Leech. The sidewalk was a little cracked here and there, but that was just fine. After what felt like a long time in dream-time, Vincent nearly forgot Leech was there altogether until the man prodded his shoulder.
     Somewhat startled, Vincent snapped his attention back up; the man had turned and was regarding him with a curious glint in his red eyes and arched eyebrows. They were standing on a porch.
     “Welcome.”
     “...Is this your... mom’s house?”
     “Yes it is. Come on in,” the ruby-eyed man grinned and pushed open the screen door. It was then that Vincent noticed, as he stepped through the doorway and a streak of sunlight fell on his white hair, that there was a gaping hole in the roof, rubble on the floor beneath. The small one-story house had a generally disheveled appearance, almost as if it had been... bombed out. Vincent’s brow furrowed and he looked behind him, out the window. The rest of the neighborhood seemed fine. Was this... Leech’s memory?
     No, that would be impossible. This was Vincent’s dream, after all. The man turned and kept following Leech, into the kitchen. His violet gaze flickered over pictures hanging on the wall: pictures of a woman and two young boys, presumably Leech’s mother and the two sons themselves. He leaned in toward one of the frames, his brow furrowed—a chill seized his chest for a moment—as he took a second curious glance at the woman’s face. Her pale complexion and silken black hair struck in him an unprecedented chord of familiarity. Stirred but not yet shaken, Vincent turned away from the wall and realized that Leech was staring at him.
     “...So where’s... your mom?”
     The other man simply shrugged and pulled open the door of the fridge.
     “Eh, she’s dead,” Leech replied, pointing at the hole in the ceiling. “One a’those damn bombs.”
     Vincent crossed his arms and leaned against the wall in a blank spot where one of the frames had crashed to the floor. He didn’t make any remark on the subject; he had no sympathy for the man and no empathy for a fellow orphan. While technically Vincent himself might not have been an orphan if his parents were still alive, he had no way of knowing and preferred to assume they had been dead for a long time. His slightly embittered gaze panned across the floor and halted on the fallen picture frame. It was a small one, but he could make it out just fine from where he stood, and another wave of cold dread—stronger than before—coursed through his bones. Vincent clenched his jaw and crouched to pick the broken thing up from the ground.
     The same woman, fair-skinned and raven-haired, perhaps in her younger days at some sort of concert stared out from the broken glass with her tongue stuck out and her middle finger directed at the camera, but what piqued Vincent’s attention more was the other female who stood beside her with a cup of beer in her hand and a languid, subtly hopeless soul showing through her wanly smiling visage. If the first woman had seemed familiar to Vincent, he had definitely seen her presumably genetic counterpart before. But where?
     Vincent dropped the photo with a haunted feeling rising in his chest, and straightened up.
     “...Who was that other woman in the picture?” he asked as casually as he could, pointing at the photo on the ground. He tilted his head a little in feigned curiosity, trying to hide his trepidation. Leech cracked open a beer and glanced down as directed.
     “Ah, that’s my aunt Dagmar.”
     “...Mm...” Vincent hummed thoughtfully, still staring at the picture, transfixed by the young woman’s face. “...Where, uh... does she live?”
     “Used t’live down here but she ran off up north aways with some guy when I was a lil’ kid. Never saw ‘er after that,” the man with the devilish red eyes and horns explained, leaning against the counter, suddenly in nothing but his boxers. Vincent stared hard at him, rather disconcerted about something, but awfully silent.
     “God damn you are boring, kid.” Leech muttered and took a swig of beer. “Never had a dream this boring before until you were in it. Fuckin‘ do something if yer gonna be invadin‘ my privacy.”
     Vincent’s mouth opened, but the words evaded him, shutting his jaw again tightly. He swallowed.
     “...I don’t understand... what any of this is supposed to mean.”
     “Doesn’t mean anything, s’just a dream. Sometimes they’re boring. Sometimes kinda hot. Sometimes it’s just remembering.”
     “A-are you remembering this?”
     “Everythin’ except your pale ass standing there.” Leech set the beer down and sighed impatiently. He reached up to stroke one of his horns and gazed almost pensively at the floor. A small grin, perhaps something nostalgic, pulled at the corners of his lips. “Came home that day after it seemed safe ‘nuff to walk in the streets. Mom’s dead in the living room. Gunner’s upstairs crying. We stick around for awhile, put her away in the backyard, then split. Better opportunities, y’know? Then we found you guys.”
     Vincent leaned on his shoulder against the wall, quite uncomfortably. His eyes were closed.
     “...but this is my... dream...”
     Leech stared at him, a bored look in his red eyes.
     “Sure, sweetheart. Whatever you say.”

     Vincent opened his eyes and stared hard into the embers of the dying fire in the Officer’s Building. He sat up and ran a hand nervously through his hair. The fire was still warm, but there was a cold feeling in his stomach that refused to thaw.