Welcome back to The Listening Room for the next installment of “Hypnotic”. If you’re just joining, we met David Fuller, a man being housed in a sleep research facility while Dr. Vincent Vogel and his assistant Molly Fitzgerald, examine David’s dreams. Tobias Mancuso sits at the helm recording those dreams and monitoring David during test runs.
In chapter six, we pick up with an Atlantic City, NJ mission, when David meets his target Gamal, his most formidable target yet. And a startling truth is revealed.
6.
Gamal stood with both hands raised. He breathed heavily against David’s cupped hand. After an awkward moment, still exposed, Gamal emptied the rest of his bladder. He gestured toward his open fly. David moved his hand off the man’s mouth and motioned for Gamal to finish. He zipped up and started backing away from the urinal. David moved with him, keeping the blade against his flank. He glanced over his shoulder to size David up, then turned back to face the wall.
David shook with his attention focused on keeping the knife steady. It made him nervous and sick inside to think this man would die at his hands. It seemed wrong somehow, but then again he had never asked why. David was too preoccupied to notice Gamal’s hand balling into a fist. With a quick motion, he shifted left away from the blade and struck David in the stomach. The wind rushed out of David’s lungs and he stumbled back into the stall door, catching himself before falling onto the toilet. He hoisted himself up and looked out just to see Gamal turn to escape.
Carmine emerged from a bank of stalls and blocked Gamal’s dash, knocking him to the floor. He was momentarily stunned but sprang to his feet. David caught up and wrapped his arms around Gamal in a bear hug and they collided into the wall. He held the knife firm and the two wrestled on their feet while Carmine rounded them to assist.
In the frenzy, David made contact and plunged the knife deep. Carmine’s face blanched before a twisted scowl showed the betrayal. He stepped back and a bright red spot widened on his shirt.
Gamal spotted the gap and pushed past the two, sprinting toward the exit through the men’s sitting room. His wide stride slowed like he crossed from air to amber before stopping completely.
David stood panting and bewildered at the scene. Carmine was a leaning tower in mid collapse with a mask of surprise. David opened Carmine’s shirt and saw the gaping wound he created. He pressed it together with his thumb and forefinger until it sealed, then swiped down with his palm to remove the blood. Good as new. At least he hoped so.
Gamal’s was in a photo finish stride as if crossing a checkered portion of track. His head was turned back to check on the competition.
He pulled Carmine upright from his freeze frame.
“What happened?” Carmine asked.
“I made a mistake. Trying to salvage things,” David said, swiping a hand over his sweaty brow.
David walked in front of Gamal and positioned the knife dead center in his chest and braced with both hands.
He pressed play.
“Sam, who is this guy?”
Sam gripped the steering wheel and pressed his lips into a line.
“Sam!”
He didn’t startle easily, but hopped a little in his seat.
“He’s an Egyptian ambassador to the UK,” Sam said quietly
“Are you fucking kidding? A whole nation will come looking for him. This is insane!” David groaned.
“Lower your fucking voice when you talk to me.” Sam whipped his head toward the passenger side and his handsome, smooth face was coarse and shrouded in shadows under the moonlight. He turned back to the road. David kept his mouth shut for the moment.
“This needed to be done. He was using diplomatic immunity for all sorts of shit. We don’t know everything because that’s not our business, but he was—”
“You and Carmine always say that. The people we kill are the worst of the worst,” David said shaking his head.
David thought of how badly this mission had gone. When he pressed play, Gamal’s sternum was crushed against the knife and Carmine had been knocked back by the force. He slid on his back into the doorway of the men’s sitting room. There, Carmine came face to sole with the shiny leather loafers of a shocked patron.
Without a moment’s thought, he grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled him down. While Carmine pounded his fists into the helpless man’s face, David tried to steady himself on the rapidly spreading pool of blood under his feet. He slipped and the two men crumpled to the floor in an inelegant heap. The force of the blow caved the center of Gamal’s chest inward. David panted as he looked into the man’s glossed over gaze. He laid his head on Gamal’s shoulder to catch his breath.
David took tentative steps toward the doorway and saw another man laid on his back with a bloodied face. He’s dead, David thought. Carmine emerged from the main doorway with bloodied knuckles and a wild look in his eyes. His shirt was pulled from his pants, revealing remnants of his stab wound stain but also a fine mist on his chest and face.
David’s face must have registered his disappointment, because Carmine put his hands on his hips and lowered his head in apology. Then a coded knock came on the bathroom door. He gestured for David to join him. Sam was at the door with the bin.
Sam and David wheeled the two bodies into the panel truck then took off into the night. Carmine stayed behind. Getting rid of blood was not as simple as wiping it away. It quickly coagulated to a stubborn jelly. Before David left, he created a drain in the floor to ease the gruesome task. The newly christened Alchemist would have to do the rest.
David leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He hoped Carmine would manage alone and that his stab repair had held. Sam seemed to read his thoughts.
“Carmine can take care of himself.”
Sam raked his fingers over his mouth. Even he didn’t believe that. He suddenly jammed on the brakes and the car skidded in the dirt.
“It’s better if you don’t know where the bodies are,” Sam said looking around in the dark, almost as if he expected to see someone emerge from the shadows.
“It’s never good for a conspiracy of men to stay together once the job is done. Better to scatter.”
David looked out the passenger window into a swampy bank only lit by the fading rays of casino marquees.
“Where should I go?” David asked.
“I don’t know. This is fucked right now,” Sam said.
Then a thought crept up and out into the open: Carmine told me where we should meet. It was a certainty.
“Nevermind. I know where to go.”
Color rose into Sam’s cheeks and he let some burden he was carrying go. Getting rid of the bodies seemed the easier part.
“It wasn’t your fault. Shit happens,” Sam said.
He turned and held out his hand for a shake. David grasped it tightly.
“I’ll see you around,” David said.
Sam nodded.
David got out of the car and watched the taillights disappear around a bend bordered with reeds. When Sam was out of sight, he ran.
The sun was rising over the Atlantic Ocean. David sat beside Carmine on a bench overlooking the gently lapping water. The metal was cold in the early morning with a biting chill that made David think it was late November. Carmine sat to his right, looking pale and haggard.
“Did you know Gotham City in Batman was originally in New Jersey?” Carmine asked.
“I didn’t,” David replied.
“Never looked it up. Might be bullshit but it sounds nice. We need to be on the map for something other than being New York’s punk kid brother.”
He stifled a cough and brought his arm up to let it out into the crux of his elbow. Bright red blood sprayed onto his white shirt. He shivered. He turned to David. His face was pale and almost chalky with all the color drained out. His lips were peeling.
“I have a son. 15 years old and taller than me. Better than me. No one else knows that.”
Carmine reached into his breast pocket with a grimace and pulled out a shiny metal key. He held it out in his open palm.
“Take it, you bastard,” he said coughing again.
David took the key and held it a moment to feel the warmth left from Carmine’s hand. He stuffed it deep in his pants pocket.
“Storage space in Hackettstown. Once you get inside, another key will open a locker at a gun shop in town. Only one. Phil will help you.”
He held Carmine’s hand.
“Mother will take you out of here. Not sure if I’ll see you again, but take care. Pleasure working with you, buddy,” Carmine said.
David started to cry and a his chest tightened with the pain of welling grief. This could not be it for them. He was sure he’d spin up another dream and Carmine’s smiling, round face would be there. The finality of the moment was crushing.
Mother stood behind the bench. David turned around to see a woman in a dark gray wool coat buttoned up the neck and black leather gloves. She had a bun of intricately woven braids against a high forehead. Her eyes were a sparkling amethyst. He braced himself against the back of the bench and stood up. She looked up at him with a warm and reassuring face.
“We have to go, David,” she said softly. Her voice barely rose above the sound of the waves.
They walked away and David looked back to see that Carmine’s hand was still planted on the bench and his body was eerily still.
They disappeared into tall pines and trudged through the thick wood. He didn’t question, only followed the slight, statuesque woman whose wingtip heels stepped easily over gnarled roots and small sinkholes. David’s body ached trudging the path behind her.
It picked at him, the pull toward the dear friends, two men he had conjured from his imagination that were so real they took on an existence of their own. His history with them felt like it stretched back through ages, though he knew it wasn’t true. Sam said she was the unseen hand. Maybe she knew.
“Sam and Carmine: Will I see them again? And who are they? To me, I mean.”
The crunch of leaves was from David’s feet. Mother’s heels struck noiselessly against pockets of air. She glanced over her shoulder but kept walking. David scurried beside her.
“They’re not real, but you already knew that. They’re what’s called composites.” She bowed her head, almost sorry to break the news
“What?”
“Composites. Bits of people you know put together, they don’t actually exist. It’s why you feel like you know them, why you’re drawn to them so strongly. You know them well, just not in these forms. One benefit is they can’t be found.”
The revelation stung.
“You created them? Why would you do that?”
She stopped and faced him. Her amethyst eyes gleamed.
“You needed people you could trust to help you complete the training.”
“What training?”
“The test runs! Did you think you were just going on spy missions? That it was going to cure your insomnia or help you with your Daddy issues? This is not some fucking choose your adventure. It’s all part of a plan.”
David was reeling. She knew about the waking world. Early on, Carmine had showed him how to create doors in his dreams to escape. Even after their countless dream hours together, there was never a suggestion that he knew anything outside of their experience.
“What’s the point?” he asked.
“To make you a drone. To give you a target to hit. Once you were ready, they’d send you out to do exactly what you tonight: murder someone you don’t even know, but for a good cause, of course.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is.” she said. “You won’t know the difference.”
A laughed rattled in her throat with a knowing sense of doom. It chilled him. He had been trained to have his own will broken down with a look, trained his mind to conjure worlds and people in lucid dreams, and soon he would exit the dream world to get real blood on his hands.
“Mother. Mother…” David said with rising panic. “What’s happening to you?!”
Mother looked down at her hands which were blowing away like dust in the wind. “Oh no.”
She fell apart piece by piece like clumps of sand that wisped up among falling leaves.
“David,” someone called behind him.
He whipped around to find Vincent standing amidst the pines. Mother was gone.
The forest melted like watercolors revealing a stark white canvas underneath. Chains rose up from the floor and clamped on his wrists. He writhed and tugged at the chains. His old exam chair rose up from the floor right underneath him.
A metal restraint clamped across his neck.
“I call this The Chamber. You are in a sleep state where you are not easily roused but can be influenced by what’s outside. I’ve gotten the balance just right so I can speak to you in a dream and your mind will fill in what it needs to. I can implant sounds, smells, and images while you’re here and you will believe it’s real.
“I really have to credit Molly with this. She gave me that little nugget. God! It unlocked the entire thing!”
Vincent loomed as tall as a pine, falling over David like a shadow with eyes just as black and empty.
“David, you’re going to do what I tell you. You’ll follow my instructions to the letter and carry out what I need you to do. Then you will simply forget.”
“No. You can’t do that. People don’t forget, they bury things. You’re just putting a sheet over it but I’ll remember.” He struggled against the restraints.
Vincent chuckled. “You won’t. I’m smart, David, so I’m not just going to bury it, I’m going to corrupt it, so that when you find whatever it is you’re looking for, it’ll be nonsense. You won’t trust it. The truth will be in shards staring right at you, but you won’t be able to put it together. That’s because you’re not smart, David.”
“Where is Mother?” he asked.
“Mother? Who the hell—“, he trailed off and his pupils darted from side to side as if he were processing something.
“Vincent, please—“
“I’ll get away with it!” he interrupted. “I will get away with it David because I am smart and you are stupid! I want you to remember that when you’re brushing your teeth or paying a parking ticket. I am smarter than you! And I am ahead. Far ahead.”
He trailed off again, spiraling through rapid thoughts. The plot behind his eyes was intricate and expanding with the pieces laying together as he envisioned they would. Perfection. Brilliance. And none but he could see the magnificent landscape for miles and miles.
Wait. A small snag. He drifted out of his mind and whispered aloud to himself.
“I need to do something about her. She’s the only one who can operate this equipment. Single point of failure. That’s my fault,” he said raising his hand. His tapped his chin and paced. He mulled over his next move, oblivious to the man laying as helpless as ever with both his mind and body trapped.
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