The N-trance by Adam Parry.
The dream therapist led him to a room with a yellow door
that he hadn’t been through before. She smiled at him as he crossed over the
door’s threshold. He had always thought she was pretty-not film star or advert pretty-she
was too old for that kind of prettiness, but the way her hennaed hair framed
her face brought a replica of her smile onto his lips.
Narelle said:
‘I’ve got to go now,’ she turned to move away.
‘Wait,’ Alan demanded, but she didn’t wait for him, she was
gone through another door and Alan was alone.
He stepped into the darkness of the room with the yellow
door that shut behind him.
A Daliesque melted clock told him in High German that it was
two o’clock . And amazed at some implausible coincidence thought it was always
two o’clock.
When he had been in Narelle’s office the grandmother clock
had told him with gold-plated, intricate hands that it was always two o’clock.
‘Well’, said Narelle in a low voice. ‘Look I don’t know
what’s stopping you dream, but I’ve read a BMJ article about past life
regression and the author e-posted me a basic technique. They’re pretty routine
and I’m sure you could pick up the techniques yourself’ – but you’re too far up
your own arse to try, she thought to herself meekly. – ‘If you’re willing we
should give it go.’
‘How much will it cost me?’
‘If you smile I’ll throw it in for free.’
‘Oh how generous of you.’
‘Alan I feel I’ve come to know you, that we’ve become
friends and…’
‘And when was the last time we drank a bottle of wine
together and I didn’t have to put up with your hand in my pocket…?
‘Oh shut up Alan do you want me to do this or not?’
‘Yes. Alright then.’
Thank the Goddess, she whispered, yet not loud enough for
Alan to hear, because he was too busy adjusting the change in his pocket.
‘What do I do?’
‘Nothing’ she did. Narelle touched a finger to his brow and
he fell fast asleep.
In the room with the yellow door in a hallucinogenic green
haze sat The Members of The Order at their consoles. Alan with the knowledge
that dreams gave knew they were The Members of The Order, but of which order he
hadn’t a clue. He presumed after a while everything would become clear.
Some sat at organic consoles, their human fingers dancing
over pulsating keys, or nodes, that wavered and sang in a high pitch each time
they were touched. Others with human-like faces talked into hanging
microphones, yet not in any human tongue:
‘Garan van nolixicanta baragze.’ It was incomprehensible to Alan who sometimes
had problems with English. The music of the consoles held more meaning for him,
it was if The Members sitting there were playing musical instruments-yet he
knew instinctively that the meaning of the consoles ran deeper than that.
Then as he listened, and the music of the consoles and the
strange language mingled and overlapped in his mind like a piece of blue in a 1000-piece
jigsaw, and like the unlocking of a door a figure appeared as entirely him as
human as himself.
‘Do you want to stay Alan? You can see what we do here,
can’t you…?’ and Alan did, this was where, or one of the places, dreams were
made. Were they really being giving an invitation to sit here at one of the
consoles-how beautiful they seemed-the figure pointed to an empty stool.
But, then a thought crept into his mind: they want you be a
tool on their stool. Fool. Fool. He couldn’t keep the thought out of his mind
like a desire suicide that wouldn’t go away. And he called out Narelle’s name,
but it seemed no-one could hear him, or if they did, no-one could understand
him.
As if reading his thoughts The Translator frowned and turned
into a very white cat. This is getting weird, Alan thought, having completely
forgotten that he was in the dream therapist’s office. She, beside him in the
office was slightly concerned by his manic, mischievous grin. (She had never
seen Alan so relaxed, so happy, and she had seen him drunk, stoned, sexually
sated and psychotic. He seemed as if he were about to levitate and a little
concerned wondered if she should bring him out of it. Then, however, she
smiled. Let him have his fun.)
The cat led Alan up the escalator from the Underground
station where The Order was housed. Alan presumed it was morning here, there
was no-one about, yet it was chilly as most mornings can be. Far from it, yet
the light, for there was no sun, seemed to come from the Underground station
and the escalator was taking him up and away from it.
The very white cat ran on ahead then stopped on the pavement
just before a bridge and the Translator’s frown appeared on the cat’s face.
Alan wasn’t sure if he should go across the bridge and before he could decide
the cat ran passed him back down the escalator. Even though Alan called the cat
back, he never did.
Alan walked in the mist that came from the river and covered
the bridge. The mist was cold on his brow(as far away Narelle kissed him on the
same place she had touched him only minutes earlier.) With the mist came a cold
wind that swept a newspaper into his face-he awoke.
For a moment he couldn’t speak, couldn’t understand where he
was and he wanted to back where he had been. In waking up he felt such a
loss-because all at once the world with Narelle and her desk, her couch and her
grandmother clock sitting around like stern chaperones (he could see in an
unused segment of his dream their atoms collide and dance) all seemed small and
insignificant to what he had lost and left behind.
As the days wore on The Dream by increments drove him mad.
He saw it’s aspects mirrored in everything, yet to him unobtainable. So, in his
greed for the lost power of The Dream, he lost all interest in life except for
what he could obtain for others. He lived in a ridiculous parody of his Dream,
and because it was only a parody and empty, it ate him alive with yearning.
As the years passed and madness turned to forgetfulness and
medicated silence one day he found himself once more back into The Dream. And
it was real, as real as any TV hallucination. Alan found himself back in the
Control Room of the Council(of Peace, this time instinctively he knew) and the
Translator appeared amidst the music and the gobbledegook.
‘Why am I here? I thought I could never return,’ his voice
as forlorn as the silence he had lived with for so long.
The Translator replied with a grin like a cat’s:
‘We’ve come to offer you one last chance.’
‘Do you mean I can stay here?’ And he stared about him at
all the wonders of The Dream, amazed once again with the Councillors with their
consoles whom he knew were as human as he, Alan. ‘Can I stay?’
‘No, not anymore Alan. You’ve stayed here too long. It is
time we set you free.’
‘Why?’ Alan said, not understanding and almost bursting into
tears like a child that never gets his own way. ‘Why?’
‘Because we love you.’
And the Translator kissed him twice on his cheeks with his
catlike grin and vanished.
With him went The Dream and from without, about him in its
place came the dream therapist’s office with Narelle holding his hand and the
grandmother clock told him it five past two already.
