Welcome back to The Listening Room for chapter three of Hypnotic. In chapter two, we learned that David volunteered for the sleep study, but not yet why. We resume with a new dreamscape.
3.
“We’re going to send you into the next test run,” Vincent said. He was standing next to a reclined David in the dream room. He put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. David nodded and turned up the corner of his mouth into a half smile.
“Look at the yellow square. You’re going to descend smoothly and identify your target. You will be given information about how to accomplish the mission. You will not leave until it is done. Do you understand?”
His glazed eyes fixated on the yellow square as his body relaxed and his eyelids drooped. Vincent held up his index finger to the control room and the induction started. It was more fluid now which made his subject more compliant. That was the important part. No one could be thrust in while in a state of panic. You had to work twice as hard to undo the damage.
Vincent cocked his head at the now sedated subject and could hardly believe his luck. Of all the subjects tested, David was the only one so far to incorporate advanced dream control. It would not be long before he was ready for what came next.
He left and did not bother standing by in the control room. There was no telling how long the run would take andhe had other experiments to consider. The woman in wing F was interesting. Her dreams were like watching a video streaming service. A man in wing Y had particularly strong senses of taste and smell. Back in his office, Vincent swiveled in his high back chair to face color monitors of six other subjects in identical rooms to David. Each had a talent and would be knit together to complete the project. All the pieces would come together perfectly.
David materialized in front of a glass door overlaid with wood slats. The word “Marcel’s” was etched in gold on the display window. He looked down at his outfit. Navy blue slacks, a cream and blue striped shirt, and heather gray waistcoat. His shoes were black and dull. He rocked forward and back on them. Comfortable. It made him think he had to look good from the waist up. He glanced at himself in the glass. He had a tapered fade with twisted coils at the top. His beard was gone.
“Are you coming in?” He looked at the lithe woman who had stepped out of the door with one foot on the sidewalk. Her hair was jet black and bone straight, cutting across the breast of a black dress that looked like a suit jacket.
“David! Hello?!” She impatiently waved him in. “It’s Friday, so I need you focused. We’re booked solid.”
David glanced around at the restaurant. There was a long wood bar neatly lined with stools. Small tables peppered the remaining space. Behind the bar was frosted glass illuminated from above and below by light strips. He note the time on a clock opposite the bar. 3:00pm.
“Do you need me to tell you where to go to?”
“If you could? I… uh, I didn’t look at the schedule.”
“You’re downstairs with Sam and Amir.”
He looked back at the clock. It was 3:01. The big hand moved. He sighed and looked back at the woman. At the hostess post was a stack of business cards and tablet with seating arrangements. The screen was surprisingly vivid and he could easily read the names on each reservation. He knitted his brow. This was an exciting, albeit disorienting amount of realism.
He turned left down a steep set of stairs into a lower level with brick walls and stone floors just outside the bank of guest tables. At the end of a rectangular room was a short bar and two men prepping for service.
Sam, he mouthed.
“I saw you at the bus stop. You were a typical space cadet and didn’t even see me wave,” Sam said as David approached.
He shook his head as if he glitched. “Did you?”
“Yeah, by the mall.”
David had begun to call them certainties, the things he knew to be true without asking. The information was preloaded. Sam was making reference to an event that occurred in 1997 in a previous dream, but now it was 2024. And this bar was in New York City. He knew this as he knew his own name.
He looked at Amir and knew he had an Iranian mother and French father. He grew up in Lebanon for six years before a regional conflict forced the family to move to France. They eventually settled in Maryland before he moved to New York in his early 20s.
David looked at Sam and drew a blank. File not found. Instead he was drawn in by the graceful movements of his hands during the bar prep. He could work in a 3 foot space with ease by just pivoting on a heel. Everything was laid out within reach and his hands glided where they needed to without even looking. Light blue shirt. Suspenders. Tasteful mustache. Easy smile.
“Can I help you?” Sam asked. “You’re staring.”
He cast his eyes down but David could tell he was amused, if not flattered.
“What do you think people will order tonight?”
“Probably the apple pie martini.”
At another time, the flirtatious look would have drawn David in completely, but he was preoccupied with the feeling there was something he needed to do, something he had forgotten.
A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder. David whipped his head around to see the man he spoke to at the bagel shop.
“Carmine Delavecchio,” David said automatically.
“Yeah. Don’t you fucking forget it.” Carmine cackled. “You ready for tonight? This is the big test.”
“I’m pretty sure I got this. No big deal.”
He looked into Carmine’s plump and friendly face. His bald head was shaved smooth and under thick but trimmed eyebrows, his eyes were a forest green that glimmered like the surface of a pearl. That’s the detail.
He wore a crisp white shirt with a double breasted black jacket that draped on him like jewelry. In the dim light of the bar, he was more sultan than server.
“I’m glad you’re here, Carmine.” His chest tightened. He was grateful.
Carmine’s lips were curled into a playful grin. “You’re too fucking sentimental sometimes. It’s alright. Nice to be needed.”
In the dream room a tear streamed back into his hair.
“Holy shit,” Toby whispered. “Look at this.”
Molly scooted beside her and watched David’s changing hormone levels.
“Dopamine and oxytocin are up. Cortisol is down.”
“He’s emotional. Push a tiny bit of sedative to calm him. I don’t want him to wake up.”
“He won’t,” Toby said firmly.
“How do you know?”
“Watch.”
“You see that lady by the bar? Red sweater?”
“With the highball glass.”
“Yeah. She’s the target. Sam is going to make her a drink but the guy next to her is one of her bodyguards. He’ll be watching Sam very closely. You need to sneak beside her and drop in this pill.
Carmine opened his hand to reveal a small metal box with a nondescript white pill inside. There was no inscription.
“Carmine, we’re going to roofie this woman?” David groaned.
“Whoa, whoa. The dossier I gave you was not there for leisurely reading. She’s a human trafficker. Lowest of the low. This is a tender mercy.”
“Your buddy Sam will recommend the apple martini and some concoction with bourbon. She hates bourbon. But she likes a dirty blonde,” he said elbowing David.
Then his smile dropped as he handed David the pillbox. David slipped it into his suit jacket pocket.
“The pill is a delayed release cardiotoxic agent. Very dangerous and very effective. You’ll take this pill and drop it into her drink. It’ll be a cloudy drink with lots of foam and bits of apple on the bottom. Should dissolve unnoticed. It’s also tasteless.”
David nodded and rubbed his hands together nervously. This was it.
“Samuel Verdan is your partner on this who will save the operation if it starts going sideways. We call him The Magician. You have to trust him. If this all work out, the coroner will think she had heart failure.”
David nodded again and Carmine gripped his arm. “Be cool. You can do this.”
He stared over at the woman, who was laughing loudly with a companion at the bar. Sam was right behind her, cleaning a long stem glass and looking out onto the steady stream of patrons.
David walked to the bar as if he were the one facing death, with a stiff and awkward gait. He sat beside the target. Bangles tinkled and rattled on her delicate wrist as she held her fresh apple martini.
Sam tipped his head to David and set down a round cocktail napkin. “What can I get you, tonight?”
David fidgeted on the stool beside the woman. She was facing another patron with her back to David.
“Recommendations?” he asked shakily, peering up over his listless hands.
“We could keep it simple. Whisky soda.”
“Sounds good. Thank you.”
Sam winked, then pivoted on his foot to grab a seltzer out of the fridge behind him. He decanted it into a chilled glass, then grabbed a bottle from under the bar and poured it into a jigger. He emptied it slowly onto the rising bubbles.
David looked around and was thankfully near the corner of the bar with no one beside him. He looked over to see a tiny place card that said “reserved”. A detail. No one reserves a bar stool, but if you don’t want a drunk patron knocking a deadly and probably hard to come by drug out of your untrained hands, this was the way to do it.
David leaned over to see the bodyguard seated one stool over. He was scanning the room and looking the target’s companion up and down, more out of suspicion than interest. David turned away just as the man looked over at him. He could feel the man’s stare setting him ablaze and broke out into a sweat. He feigned a sip of his drink, then set it down, and rubbed the tops of his thighs. Sam was busy making one more of the night’s very popular apple pie martinis.
They locked eyes and Sam’s glare told David to use the moment to his advantage. The sound of the cocktail shaker masked the pop of the metal container with the pill. David removed it and placed it onto the bar with his hand over it.
He inched closer and lifted his hand slowly to drop in the pill. The bodyguard had turned around completely to speak with someone beside him. David shifted to block the view of people behind him and was nearly at the rim of the glass, feeling the heat rise from his collar but not wanting to move any faster. A sudden crash in the kitchen made him jump and he fingers snapped open, dropping the pill. It rolled toward the woman’s glass and he smacked the bar top over the pill. She whipped her head around, glaring at David with disgust.
Just then Sam called, “There it is!”
He pointed at a large fly buzzing just out of sight. The target, her companion, and the bodyguard all looked at it flying away. Sam cut his eyes at David, who slipped the pill into the glass. It disappeared into the foam.
“Can’t catch them all,” Sam said jovially.
“Thanks for trying,” she said over her shoulder at David.
“Sorry for the commotion.” He waved a hand, then slipped off the stool dazed and stumbled into the bathroom. He gripped the sides of the pedestal sink and looked into the mirror. There was nothing there.
The video feed crackled and faded out.
“He fucking did it,” Molly said.
“He fucking did it,” Toby repeated.
“How did you know?”
“You get by with friends,” she said with a satisfied look.
Molly rapped on Vincent’s office door and called for him to open it. She was practically hopping up and down with the news of David’s success. The last few weeks had been sedating to say the least, watching monitors and writing reports. It was the boring but necessary part of research.
For those weeks, she had reluctantly trusted Toby and they started David on a regimen of twiddling his thumbs. He would wander in versions of his childhood home meeting absurd characters or doing mundane tasks. All part of getting him comfortable, she assured. Credit where it was due, but Molly was eager to stay on track. Toby had no investment in the enterprise, just an annoying curiosity.
Toby had worked on getting the resolution issues solved but this had been the first time she flipped the switch. It made a world of difference watching David move through a 4K world where he carried himself with a casual swagger worthy of a man far more refined that the scruffy dream room captive.
His little friends would work to their advantage, too. David trusted them and would follow them anywhere. They needed one more major test run with all modifications in place. Then David would be ready.
There was still one thing that lingered in the corner of her mind. She hadn’t pressed, but Toby didn’t tell her if she found out who Sam was. They knew David’s story from top to bottom, down to the movies he’d seen. It could not have taken that long to find the man. It bothered her.
Vincent threw open the door and glared at her.
“He got the target!” she said with her hands clasped at her mouth.
It took a few moments for the information to register. He gaped and still made no response.
“He finally did it!” She shook his shoulders and stepped past him into the office. She sunk into a chair a sighed slowly.
He shut the door and leaned against it. He shook both fists in the air.
“I knew he could do it. He was the only one who could have.”
They sat across from each other beaming. From inception to execution took years under this partnership of equals and they could finally enjoy this breakthrough. They chatted excitedly about the early days and how they would proceed from here.
A sandwich lay half eaten in crumbled paper. He picked it up from the side of his desk and sniffed it. The pesto was fragrant and earthy.
“Scent is... an overlooked ally. You know, I unknowingly performed a double-blind experiment on a good friend in college.”
“Really.”
“Yup. I’d been gifted a scented thing for my car and didn’t really need it. I tossed it on a bookshelf and it slipped behind some textbook. My roommate sat at his desk for hours in front of that bookcase. He was a very analytic, very stoic, and sort of guarded person who you had to peel the layers off. So he’s sitting there day after day and neither of us realize this scented thing is there. We go out one night and he orders a piña colada. My word!” Vincent clapped, laughing and highly amused.
“‘You?! That’s hardly your speed.’ And he says ‘I know! I just have this hankering!’ So here’s this whiskey in the jar type of guy having this fruity concoction at our local spot. He was so pleased with this drink! Anyway, maybe six months later, I’m cleaning out this bookcase in our office. We’d graduated and didn’t need all these texts. We were going to sell some, toss the rest. Anyway, as I pull out a book, this scented thing falls out. Ha! Guess what the scent was?”
Molly shook her head. She was genuinely at a loss as to the answer.
“Piña colada.” Vincent rocketed from his chair.
“Do you see?! That little experiment changed my life. Set me on the course to this very moment. Here was a man who was virtually stone, a perfect subject. A skeptic and a curmudgeon. Embarrassed every corner hustler with a card game.” Vincent clasped his hands in a praying position around his mouth, deep in the memory.
“I guarantee you would never be able to fool that man, hypnotize him, get him to believe in magic or anything! But I changed him in the tiniest way. Implanted a preference from something so minute and imperceptible. To this day, decades later, he still orders that drink.”
Vincent fell silent, enraptured by his own accidental genius.
“I never told him what I found on that shelf and in his mind, he just tried something spontaneous and liked it. At the time, it did make him more open, a bit less difficult of a nut to crack.”
“Vincent, that’s extraordinary,” said Molly.
Folding his arms in front of him and vigorously nodding, he sat back down, staring at nothing in particular.
“We’re going to move forward. We already have powerful tools. His routine helps. Now we have to amp him up.”
Molly smiled widely.
“You know, I had something like that happen to me.”
Vincent was still absorbed in his thoughts.
“I woke up one morning from this really vivid dream that I was in a band and we’d wrote this smash hit called ‘Primetime’. I flew out of bed to get the lyrics down along with the melody. It wasn’t the type of music I would’ve made if I had any say, but it was this catchy pop hit.”
Vincent swiveled around and narrowed his eyes at her.
“Anyway. I was so excited about it! I had written a song or at least part of one, in a dream. This is the type of shit you see on some musician’s interview.”
“But…” Vincent countered.
“I forget where I even was, but that song came on. I remember a bottle slipped out of my hand and I didn’t even hear it crash. I just heard my song over loudspeakers. How? I’d never heard that song before so how did it get in my head?
“I went home and turned on the radio set with my alarm. I listened to that radio station for days straight before the song came on again. Primetime,” she said pensively. “I’ve been an unwitting subject too.”
“The alarm went off and you were in the right stage of sleep for it to be implanted without waking you,” Vincent concluded.
“Until I heard that song, I would have sworn that I came up with it by myself.”
“The important part of that story is the absolute conviction. I think this will work with one of the other subjects. But you’ve also given me a possible solution in case I have a problem.”
Toby waited for the click of the lock as the control room swung shut, then counted to ten. Molly would probably be celebrating this win with Vincent for a while. She turned to her console and keys clacked quickly under her fingers. There were mere moments to spare before the dream file was fully uploaded.
She could not have imagined this mad dash on her first day in Vogel Laboratories. She was fresh off an academic position doing research statistics when she took a chance at working in a sleep lab at a nearby hospital. There, she monitored patients overnight watching as charts spit out heart rates, incidences of impaired breathing, and brain activity. It was interesting work and she liked working with patients. More than anything, it was comfortable and she needed that. Academia could be a place where all the cracks in the walls and in people were only visible from the inside.
One night she wondered if there was a position that married what she’d learned thus far. Having a satisfying career was always about integrating skills and applying them to the next venture. Eventually, you could find a job that didn’t feel like work. She liked the idea of that.
When the position for a sleep tech with a statistics and psychology background opened, she jumped at it. Wowed by her spunk and unconventional thinking, she was hired on the spot. What good fortune! But it was confidential research project and after signing a non-disclosure agreement, she was presented with a cover job to tell anyone if they asked. It should have given her pause at that moment, but making another leap seemed like trusting her intuition and going where the road bent.
Once employed, Dr. Vincent Vogel, a disgraced and ostracized academic she later found out, started introducing bits of the experiments at a time, but of course, never the whole picture. Then again, no one really did, because a consultant wouldn’t understand the implications of the study anyway. What he was clear about was creating a software package and acquiring equipment to record dreams and imprint information into the brain. Toby could figure out how to do that too. Her teenage years were spent building servers and coding with her older brother in her parent’s basement. She was also a science major in college.
Vincent was stubborn and despite the input of Molly, who was actually trained in neuropsychology, he wouldn’t budge on his methods. Little by little, Toby started suggesting changes to Molly and those got through to Vincent. The study finally gained steam and Toby was proud of that.
She stopped typing and in that moment realized why she was there: she was supposed to be. Her work demanded the sharpest tools she had and during this project, she used them all. Only what she was about to do was try to save someone. And she wasn’t sure how to do that yet.
David was blinking away waves of vertigo when Carmine came into the bathroom. Without a word, he put a maintenance sign on the door, locked it, and popped open the two bathroom stalls to be sure no one was there.
“She’s going to be here for another 20 minutes before we have to close out her tab. You did it, Dave.”
David looked over at him, still in a cold sweat with knees on the verge of buckling. He rubbed his face with both hands and when he looked up at the mirror again, he could see his reflection.
“I have to talk quickly,“ Carmine said with his hands in his pockets. He looked back at the locked door.
“I’m going to teach you how to make exits.”
David shook his head in confusion. “I can just go right through the door.”
“That may not always be possible, so you have to be able to get out of here,” Carmine said gesturing up and around him. David turned to him and instantly knew what he meant.
“Imagine a door. Really concentrate on it. You don’t need to create a lot of details. In fact, it’s better if you don’t. Imagine that on the other side is the waking world. Turn the handle, walk through the door, and you’ll wake up.”
David chuckled bitterly. “I make a door and walk through it.”
“Yes. If you ever need to get out. Imagine a door.”
“Jesus, should I carry a purple crayon?”
“Shut your fucking mouth and listen. One of these days, Vogel won’t let you out.”
The words gripped him and wrung him loose. His knees finally buckled and he slid down onto the floor.
“You know—”
“Yes. Someone helping you does. Now imagine the door. Do it.”
David sat in a stupor, unfocused and struck with this knowledge that two existences were intersecting. Carmine crouched down and moved in close.
“Do it now before we’re found out,” he said in a low growl.
David turned toward a blank wall with a framed poster of a lavender field near sunset. He let his eyes relax as he traced rolling hills and an orange-red sky. The stalks began to sway and in the silence of the men’s room emerged the sound of crickets. Carmine held back his alarm at hearing them too.
The picture frame elongated and met the floor tiles below. The beating stalks of lavender blew away like dust and wood paneling replaced it. A crystal doorknob appeared.
“Talent,” Carmine said plainly. “Now get out of here.”
He helped David to his feet and patted his back. David turned the knob and opened the door to a void with in bright orb in the distance. He turned back to Carmine, who nodded to urge him on. David took off running and braced again the rapidly expanding light.
He jerked awake. He was in the dream room.
Share this post