The game ended with a score of 79-64 in the Ollenville Otters’s favor. The atmosphere for the game was so dead that people started walking out halfway through the last quarter. Morale had been completely drained after Ben got benched, and the rest of the team’s scorers couldn’t fill the hole he left. Homecoming was ruined, and it was all my fault.
It was already dark out when Gwen and I stood outside, leaning against her car in the outside parking lot. Besides the music being played in the auditorium for the school dance, our evening together outside was completely silent. She was smoking a cigarette while staring out at cars driving by the street. Despite our success, her expression didn’t carry all that much joy.
“Why did you come to school dressed like that?” she said it after taking another puff. She never took her eyes off the zooming of the cars on the road.
“I’m suspended. This is a disguise.”
“You look like a douche bag.”
“Thanks.”
She sighed. I didn’t blame her for feeling that way. Here she was, wearing a gorgeous black dress to the homecoming dance that her parents probably paid a fortune for, and I was just standing there besides her dressed like an honest-to-God homeless person.
As I was beginning to think that I should have just left her alone, she held her cigarette out to me.
“Wanna try it?”
Admittedly, though I ordinarily would have said no, I did feel something of a desire to try it. It might be because I was inside of Gwen and Ben earlier. It’s no secret that they’re both addicted to the stuff.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.”
She pulled her arm back. As bad as it was to offer a non-smoker a cigarette, I did appreciate her friendly demeanor. It was a side of her I hadn’t seen before, and it made me more appreciative of the person she was outside of all the drama she was involved in.
“Hey… what do you guys see in Zoey?” Her question caught me off-guard.
“Huh?”
“What do you mean huh? You heard what I said.”
“No, I just… I don’t know? What do you dislike about her?”
“What do I dislike? Like, everything? She just feels fake to me. It’s like I’m talking to a machine that was programmed to be perfect in every possible way. Which is fine, being perfect is probably good, but… it also doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a real person.”
“Maybe us guys just don’t see women as human beings then.”
“Maybe not. It’s easy to project whatever you want onto a perfect girl, I guess. Maybe you think she’s into whatever nasty sexual fantasies you’re into.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Zoey’s kinks were far more depraved than whatever she was imagining.
“So what about Ben? What do you see in him? Especially after, you know…”
“Why does everyone always bring that up? It wasn’t his fault. I’m the one who was at fault back then.”
“So like what, you grabbed his arm and forced him to hit you?”
“No, smartass. It’s complicated.”
“Oh, okay. I guess as long as his hands are clean before he hits you then it’s fine, right?”
“Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“I’m just trying to understand your thought process here.”
“Well, I don’t feel like talking about it with you.”
“Fine.”
The two of us stood in silence for another minute. It wasn’t as cold as it had been earlier that week, but it wasn’t entirely pleasant either. But even the cold was much preferable to the stifling atmosphere of the homecoming dance inside the auditorium.
“He taught me to love myself.” She finally answered, as if I had been pestering her the entire time.
“Really? That guy did that?”
“See? This is why I didn’t wanna bring it up. You have your own like, dumb ideas of who Ben is even though you’ve never had a real conversation with him before. It’s dumb. People are so judgmental and dumb.”
“No, I’m not doubting you. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”
“I see.”
She dropped it surprisingly easily. Her thoughts must have been going back to her relationship with Ben. Even if there were bad times, they couldn’t stop a smile from forming on her face. It was soft and vulnerable, almost in stark contrast with Zoey’s cool and calculated armor. When she wasn’t being aggressive or vulgar, even I had to admit that she was cute.
“I love Ben. I don’t care what anyone else thinks about us. I’d never hung out with a guy and thought that he genuinely cares about me until I met him. You wouldn’t know about love like that though, would you?”
“Do you really think you know the first thing about my feelings?”
“I know that wanting to fuck someone isn’t the same as loving them. It’s just sad and empty.”
“No, there’s something emptier than that.”
“Yeah? And what’s that?”
“Just being friends with them.” My comment threw Gwen for a loop.
“Uh… why are the only options sex and friendship? Do guys even know what love is?”
“You just called her a machine, and you somehow still think she’s capable of something like love?” Gwen bit her tongue. She couldn’t argue with my logic. “Besides, you don’t even know if Ben’s ever going to love you again.”
“He will.”
“But if he doesn’t, which one would you choose?”
“I would…” She paused for a second. It seemed like she knew the answer, but she was double checking whether it was the right one or not. And after that brief pause, she spoke up again. “Do you really think I want to live in either of those worlds?”
She met my gaze resolutely. Her determination ran through my body like a jolt of lightning. “If I can’t have his love, then there’s no point. I want to go back to the days we spent together as a couple. Anything less would be the same as forfeiting everything I’ve ever wanted in life.”
She turned back to face the roads.
“I’m sorry that you were dumb enough to fall in love with a machine, but I’m not going to compromise on my love just because you chose to.”
“If I’m dumb, then so is Ben. He loves her too, you know.”
“Yeah. Both of you are dumb. I don’t know what either of you see in her.”
She pouted, and I grabbed her cigarette from her and took a puff. The feeling of smoke searing my lungs caused me to break out into a coughing fit.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“You pissed me off, so I wanted to try it. Here, take it back.”
“No, it’s got your germs on it now. Gross.”
“What? Didn’t you just offer it to me a minute ago?”
“Well, no one usually says yes when I offer them.”
“Jesus Christ. I don’t want any more of this shit in my lungs.” I tossed the cigarette to the parking lot concrete and crushed it under my foot.
“What a waste…”
“Shut up. You didn’t even take my money.”
“Your shitty bathroom floor money? Are you for real? Forget Zoey, no girl’s ever gonna talk to you if this is how you treat them.”
“Lucky for me I’m not trying to go out with a second-rate cheerleader who can’t get over her ex.”
“Well, I’d rather be a second-rate cheerleader than a third-rate nobody. What the hell even is a Tristan? I’ve barely even heard of you before this week. What, you hang out with Naomi sometimes? That’s your claim to fame? Really?”
“Yeah, for now. But being a second-rate cheerleader back when you were in high school is going to be your claim to fame for the rest of your life.“
“Yeah? Are you gonna be a rock star or a rapper or something? Yeah, right. You have the charisma of doorknob. It’s no wonder Zoey doesn’t love you. You’re fucking pathetic.”
“Oh. Oh. Are you really going to go there? Really? You, the loser who had to spend the past week watching your boyfriend froth at the mouth over some girl who has absolutely zero interest in him? Actually, screw it.” I pushed myself off the car and turned to face her. “Do you know why I went this far today? Do you know why I made you spike his drink with melatonin so that they’d lose the game? Do you know what set me off so bad that I went and got fucking suspended today of all days? It’s because he was bragging to me about how happy he was that he’d get to fuck Zoey. Yeah, that’s right. You think I’M the empty one? Well guess what, Ben is TEN TIMES worse than I am. He’s willing to ruin the lives of everyone around him just to get his dick wet. And you’re going to go hard on ME? You’re going to say you’d rather die than live without him? Who’s really pathetic here, Gwen?”
I let out all the emotions I had bottled up within me and said something I shouldn’t have said. It all came out at last. It was probably insensitive to say something like that about the person she loved so dearly, but if she was going to talk down to me like I was some kind of joke, then of course I’d tell her the truth.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
But for some reason, nothing I said seemed to get under her skin. She simply kept staring out at the street with her usual bored expression.
“You don’t know the first thing about Ben, Tristan. And apparently, you don’t know the first thing about Zoey either.”
My mind went back to her conversation with Ben earlier that day.
You don’t understand what things used to be like between me and her.
Did the two of them have some kind of previous relationship? I tried my best to interpret her words, but they made no sense to me. Zoey was definitely disgusted with Ben as a person. I felt it when I hacked her that first night. Plus, her text history with him backed that perception of their relationship up. So then what?
“Hey, Gwen-”
Before I could even get my question out, the sound of heels clicking against the concrete of the parking lot began approaching the two of us. Of course, I didn’t even need to guess who they belonged to. Before us was none other than Zoey Brahm. She was wearing a beautiful, red cocktail dress that highlighted her feminine beauty far more than the layered clothing she usually wore to school. She was making a neutral expression much like the one she had worn when Ben glanced at her earlier during the basketball game. I would have guessed that she was happy about how things had turned out, but it looked like there was something else on her mind.
“I need to borrow him for a minute.” She gestured to Gwen that she should leave with a quick movement of her head. The demanding nature of Zoey’s request seemed to bother her, but she let out an exasperated sigh as if it wasn’t worth it.
“Ugh, whatever. You two have fun or something.” Gwen pushed herself off the car and walked back over to the direction auditorium. “Oh.” She turned back to face me before she was too far off. “Thanks for everything today, Tristan. You were a huge help.”
I smiled and waved at her. It was a side of her that I hadn’t seen before, and it helped me appreciate her as a person more than before. For all her attitude problems, I don’t know if I could’ve pulled it off as covertly as I did without the drug setting the tone for the game in the way that it did. Once she disappeared, Zoey leaned against the car in the spot that Gwen was just in moments ago.
“Has it been following you around nonstop since then?”
“Hasn’t left my side.”
The creature from before was towering over the both of us from behind the car. Part of the reason I spoke to Gwen was to test if she could see it. After all, she had also been hacked by me earlier that day. But for whatever reason, she didn’t seem to notice anything at all. Not the sound of crunching metal, nor its larger-than-life figure.
“It must be because you hacked me more than anyone else.”
“That’s what I was thinking. It might be more attuned to your senses than Gwen or Ben’s.”
“Has it done anything other than follow you around, though?”
“No, it’s like a zombie. It has no mind of its own. It has no goals or purpose besides trailing me wherever I go.”
“Hmmm.” She turned around to lean over her car, and reached out slowly to touch the monster.
“H-hey, that’s dangerous.” Much to our surprise, her hands phased through the creature’s black coat.
“Good boy, good boy.“
She waved her hands around as if she were petting the creature.
“You’re such a good boy...”
She treated it as if she were just playing with Mao at home. Her calm disposition was a little unnerving. No, she wasn’t the only one who was unnaturally cool about the situation. Sure, I was terrified of the creature initially, just as she was, but I had grown to accept its presence rather quickly after realizing how passively it was behaving. I wasn’t sure if it was because of all the crazy things that had happened in the past week, or because Zoey was influencing my personality in that direction.
“Good boy, Castro.”
“Castro?”
“It’s a cute name, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know about that…”
She was weird, but I admired how free she was. How cute was it that she was so willing to pet a terrifying creature that she knew absolutely nothing about? It just made me realize that there are so little things that I know about her.
“Hmmm. Do you know what I think, Tristan?” she asked, as she turned to face me. “This is just a theory, but I think that your hacking is creating this creature.”
“What do you mean, creating it…? Like, I wanted to make this?”
“No, I don’t think it’s intentional. If I had to guess, it’s related to the mystery of your power. It’s like you’re using the data you gathered during your hacks to make a copy. Considering the fact that it’s so lifeless, and the fact that you, the person with the power of Dream Paralysis, and me, the person who’s been a victim of it the most, are the only two people who can perceive it, then it’s possible that its existence might be a product of our merged consciousnesses.”
It was hard to refute. What she said was complete conjecture on her part, but as a working theory, it did make sense. It’s entirely possible that if I hacked Gwen three or so more times then she might be able to see it too. Not only that, but the possibility that it would show signs of life in the future were very real.
“Well regardless of what it is, I think it’d be safe to avoid using Dream Paralysis for now. There’s no telling what’ll happen if you feed it more data.”
“Yeah…”
The two of us stood in silence. The sound of music coming from the auditorium still set the mood for our meeting. And unlike with Gwen, it got my heart beating like crazy.
“I’m proud of what you did today, you know.”
“Proud…?”
“You don’t think you should be too? You got Ben to throw the match without revealing your powers. No one’s going to know how hard you worked to make it happen, but I think you should take pride in how amazing that is.”
She was right. Though I hadn’t done it for praise, no one will understand the amount of work that went into getting things to go the way they did today. No one except for her.
But as I was thinking that, the upbeat song ended, and on came a slower, more intimate piece of music came on. Zoey seemed to have noticed it too, and she tucked her hair behind her ear.
“So how about it? Would you like your reward now?”
“What? Out here?”
“Well, we could go inside. But I think you’d get in trouble if we did that.”
“Oh, right.” I laughed nervously. Taking it as a sign, she grabbed my hand and gently pulled me towards her. Our bodies were close. Her face was right in front of me.
“What, you single-handedly planned everything that happened today to perfection, and yet you somehow forgot that you were suspended?”
“My mind went blank, okay? I just really wanted to dance with you.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Don’t act all mushy. You don’t really love me, remember? This is purely physical for you.”
“No, it’s deeper than than. It’s more like, being with you makes me want to be a better person.”
“You don’t know me.”
“Do you need to know someone to know that you’re in love with them?”
“Of course you do. You’re going to find things out about me that’ll make you hate me.”
“It’s the wanting to learn about you that means that I love you.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“It does. The good things and the bad, I want to know everything about you. I want to know about your favorite food, your taste in movies, I want you to talk to me about cameras. I want you to tell me who you hate, your most embarrassing secrets, celebrity crushes, everything. That’s what it means for me to love you.“
“Is this how you sweet-talked Gwen into helping you?”
“Did it make you jealous?”
“Hmmm, and if it did? What would you say to console me?” She grinned, as if testing me.
“I’d tell you that I only have eyes for Zoey Brahm.” She hesitated for a moment. It was brief, but I could tell that she was taken off-guard by that one. A rare win for me. But as soon as I noticed that hesitation, her confident smile returned as if it were never gone at all.
“Really? Even though you pointed your invisible gun at me last night? Is that how you treat the only girl you have eyes for?”
“That was…”
It was true, I had no excuse. She made me promise. I wasn’t supposed to use my power against her anymore. That was the agreement we made after she dropped me off yesterday. And yet, not even a full day later, I broke our agreement. I used dream paralysis on her.
“I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
She went quiet for a moment. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, or whether she decided that she would forgive me or not. However, one thing was for sure, and it was that her next words were being considered very carefully. And after that brief pause, she finally spoke up.
“I made the bet to force you into using your powers again. I knew that Ben, who had developed a complex about your possible relationship with me, would tell you about the bet and rub it in your face. I knew you’d find some way to stop it using your powers. I manipulated you. I did it because I knew that you’d be able to throw your morals away and justify using them for your own gain in that situation.” She admitted it to me with her usual neutral expression. As if she hadn’t felt an ounce of guilt about it. “Can you really love a girl like that, Tristan? A girl who’s so openly willing to manipulate you to get what she wants? A girl who can only feel anything at all from staring at other people from afar?”
It was a good question. Couldn’t I find someone who would treat me better than this? Someone who would respect me and, more importantly, love me more as a human being than as a tool to reach her own goals? No, none of that really mattered. Being together with her like this, our bodies and souls joining together as we danced to cheesy homecoming music, it all felt like nothing else in the world mattered. As long as I could be with her like this forever, then I didn’t mind being a tool.
“I love every single inch of you,” I said it plainly, and she smiled. It was an ominous smile whose meaning I couldn’t yet deduce. But it was fine. As long as I could be with Zoey forever, then being used by her would be fine. The large black creature looked down on us as if it were our guardian angel, just staring down with those empty black eyes.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight with that thing watching over me.”
“He seems harmless, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Her eyes focused on it as we continued dancing.
“You know Zoey, I actually… I think I’ve seen it before. No, I know I have.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I think it was this one summer camp I went to before our first year in high school. It must have come to me in a dream or something, but it was there. It was in the forest near the cabins, and I dreamt that it kept following me around into the forest no matter how far I went. And then…”
“Oh.” Zoey interrupted me. It seemed like I had said something surprising.
“Oh? Oh what?”
“I was just wondering when you’d finally bring it up, that’s all.”
“Bring it… what are you talking about?”
“Hmm, how to put it… do you remember what the passcode to my phone is?”
“Your passcode?”
“I’m not upset, don’t worry. Can you say it aloud?”
“Your passcode? Uhm… 190803?”
“That’s correct. Now, if we were to assume that this was a date in the format of year, month, day, what would that come up to?”
“What would it… that would be August 3rd 2019… wait.”
I paused. That date, it was when that had happened. It was something only my parents, the camp counsellors and I should be uniquely familiar with. So why did she know it? And why was she so gleefully basking in my shock?
“You really don’t remember then? I went to the same summer camp as you did. It’s near both our houses, you know? It’s not surprising.”
“Yeah, but… huh?”
“On the night of the 3rd, I went out to use the bathroom and saw you walking into the forest. I didn’t know who you were at the time, but I was curious about what you were getting up to when we were all supposed to be asleep. So, in my usual fashion, I decided to trail you to satisfy my curiosity.”
“Uhuh…”
“And well, after a while, you came to this small clearing in the forest. There was a large stump from a tree that must’ve been cut down some time in the past. And, sleeping at the roots of that stump, was this menacingly large grizzly bear. And you were just standing there, staring at it from about eight feet away.”
It was the same as my dream.
“You stood there for what felt like an eternity. I genuinely couldn’t tell what you were thinking while you stared at that sleeping bear. I don’t know if I was more worried for you than curious about what it was that you were about to do, but I couldn’t stop watching. And you know, you surprised me. I thought you would maybe take a picture or just head back, but you walked right up to it. Your pace was steady, and your feet were crunching the leaves and grass underneath your feet. It was like you didn’t care at all about waking it up.”
I was petrified. It was all the same as my dream.
“And then, once you got in close, you reached out to lay your palm on its forehead. Yes, you did that. It was pure insanity. I wanted to call out to you then. I wanted to tell you that you were being an idiot. But the truth is, I was scared. I was scared of being noticed by the bear. Would you have reacted if I called out to you, I wonder? Would you have been saved? I still think about it to this day. Because when you touched the bear, that’s when it happened.”
“It pushed me down.”
“Yeah. Only, it didn’t look like a bear once it woke up. Its coat was much darker, and, I couldn’t see very well, but it’s head looked like a skull. I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on, but I remember thinking that it was wrestling you to the ground. I thought you were for sure going to die, so I ran back off to the camp while screaming as loudly as I could. I screamed and screamed. And eventually, once I got back, an adult came up to me and asked me what was wrong. I told them what I had seen, and they ran up with me back to that clearing. There, we found you lying barely conscious next to the stump. You were scratched up, sure, but it wasn’t anything brutal at all. When we finally ran up to you, your still half-opened eyes were focused on me. It was like I was the only thing you could recognize in a world of insanity. And I stared back into yours. And we just stayed like that for a while as the counselors tried to get you to stay awake.”
I remembered it all. After it pushed me down, it was like that creature, the one looming above us at that moment, had left the bear’s body and had jumped down my throat. It was like I was swallowing gallons upon gallons of some thick, heavy liquid. And of course, I remembered Zoey. It was my first dream about her. At least, that’s what I had thought at the time. But I was suddenly forced to face the truth that it wasn’t actually a dream at all.
“The counselors said it was probably just a bear,” Zoey continued. “But I knew something was wrong. I looked it up on the internet for weeks after it happened, but I couldn’t find anything that accurately described what it was that I had witnessed. I eventually convinced myself that I was just seeing things. I didn’t even bother approaching you to ask about it when I found out that we were in the same year. I decided to maintain a healthy distance from you and say hello to you in the halls. It just felt like something that should have stayed locked away forever.”
“That is, until I hacked you,” I said.
“That’s it. I wouldn’t put any stake in some kind of supernatural conclusion like that normally, but after seeing what happened to you that night, I couldn’t toss anything aside. It was like you knew what happened in my dream. No, more than that, it was like you felt responsible for it. But how could you? I saw that dream. I texted it myself. How could you have known what I did in my dreams? Only, what if it wasn’t me? What if it was someone who gained access to my body while I was sleeping?”
The music finally stopped. Her footsteps ended, and mine followed, and she pulled herself away from me.
“Do you know what I think? I think that bear was using Dream Paralysis to lure prey into the woods. I think that demonic creature that’s standing behind you is the source of that power. And I think, when it attacked you, that demon detached itself from the bear and chose to latch onto you instead. I can’t imagine why, though. The bear was so skillfully using the power that it must have done it plenty of times before, so I’m not sure why the power was suddenly transferred.
It was more conjecture. A bear using this power to hack a human being? What kind of conclusion is that? It certainly does match everything that happened, but was something like that really possible? But one thing’s for sure. It was a theory that had more merit than anything I could ever come up with.
“I would like you to think about my offer again, Tristan. I think that it would benefit you to spend the next year with me learning about this power of yours here at school. After what you did today, don’t you think it’s the perfect sandbox to test yourself? And of course, I want you to consider using them with me after you graduate, too.”
Of course, she was referring to her desire to use Dream Paralysis to rule the world. I had no idea if something that grand was possible for an underachiever like me. I could barely get through my high school classes without pulling my hair out, so to imagine myself as the ruler of the world was a bit far-fetched.
But…
For that smile, I would gladly risk everything I had.
I held her hand up to my face and leaned in to gently kiss it.
And with a gentle smile, I stared back up at her face, as if resolutely submitting myself.
“I’m yours.”