Chapter 3 - LOOCH

I consider myself a criminal genius instead of a bottom feeder. I had stolen this girl without notice. No Amber Alert necessary. No thought trace available for evidence. A simple abduction, but with no criminal trail. I had violated so many Suspension of Disbelief laws with this one act. But who would dare pursue me? Who enforced the Suspension of Disbelief laws anyways in the Dreamscapes? Contrary to the law abiding propaganda circulating with product placement in each of our Dreamscapes, we are absolutely free to exist a we please. Come on! Who are they fooling. This is Looch and I wasn’t born last night.

If anything, we hold absolute freedom, enough of it to say words, or do things that can break feelings. We can even commit acts that steal someone else’s freedom away. Abducting the girl from a Fantasy Scape was easy for me. Her name is Vivi. I had found her first by mind trespassing upon her Scape, the most common crime in the Dreamscape universe. Everyone is doing it. I just mastered it. Because I can be patient, and patience is the virtue of every great criminal mind.

I stalked Vivi first. Reconnaissance, or so the word seems to surface whenever I plan to commit a crime. A grown woman by mindset, Vivi likes to become an innocent child in each of the Scapes she chooses to visit or spend time within. Which set her apart from my other victims. Her pattern was predictable but still interesting because there was obsession there, and I love obsessive behaviour. So, I wanted to steal her for my collection of victims. Just as it is possible to trespass onto another’s mindscape, it is just as possible to confine them to yours.

I created my mental prison by accident, or by chance, if you want to call it that way. I was traversing an Abuse Scape. I suppose you can say I am a glutton for punishment, or pain. In the midst of my torture, I believe the abuser was lashing my back with a belt without mercy, I concentrated all of my mental power on one thought, the peace of absolute darkness. It appealed to me in the moment, escaping into the tranquility of nothingness. But when I thought upon it, the thought itself transformed into a mental space. A space separate from the Dreamscapes. It was like an “in-between” state of mind. Nothing could penetrate it either because it was so dark. But I could come and go as I pleased. And only I could enter it, or guide someone to be trapped there. To this virtual day, it remains unlicenced, unregistered, unknown to any of the Dreamscape versions. This is where I kept Vivi. And I enjoyed experiencing the depths of her panic. Her screams resembled a music melody from my past lifetime, when a crime was equitable to a life sentence.

But let me to return to my abduction of Vivi. When Vivi entered her Fantasy Scapes, she elected to do so as her younger self, which made her so vulnerable to predators like me. Nothing sparked my interest more than innocent vulnerable thoughts. It was like sifting out gold pieces from pure water, untarnished by time.

I had followed her to an Emerald city, along a yellow brick road. Green and gold and sparkly skies. A storybook Scape was her fantasy every time. She wished to escape into a fantasy story, as one of its characters. She must have enjoyed the art of storytelling in a previous lifetime, probably as a young girl, who once listened to an adult dramatizing the characters in an illustrated tale. As she role played as Dorothy in this Wizard of Oz rip-off, cheapened further by vintage colours instead of high definition applications, I prepared myself to disrupt its fictional structure.

Instead of entering as a scarecrow, or a lion, or a tin man, and avoiding the disguise of green witches and fairies, I crossed the yellow brick road disguised as her father. By trespassing onto her Fantasy scape, I was also trespassing onto her mindscape, which made me privy to her private thoughts and memories. So I disguised himself as her father. Her companions on the yellow brick road were confused by my presence.

“Why is there a man dressed like a school teacher in the middle of the yellow brick road,” asked the Scarecrow, pretending to be dumb again.

“Daddy?”

I removed my eye glasses and flattened out my buttoned cardigan.

“Hello, sweetie.”

“What are you doing here, Daddy?”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Waiting for you.”

“You are alive?”

I nodded yes.

“No one dies anymore. At least for real. You know that, Vivian.”

“My name is Dorothy, here.”

“No it isn’t. It is always Vivian to me.”

“You never liked it shortened, not even as a nickname.”

“Because I named you.”

“Are we not off to see The Wizard,” asked the Lion, sounding dumber than the Scarecrow.

But the story had already been broken into, edited, revised, with my interruption. I know how to break a good story, how to kill its innocence, how to rewrite it my way. The criminal act of stealing is as much about narration as creating it is. And I am obsessed with breaking a person’s story for the purpose of rebuilding it my way. And I take such pleasure in watching a life, albeit virtual, fall apart to pieces.

“I don’t think you should talk to him, Dorothy. Not until we see The Wizard.”

How hard the Tinman tried, but his words were unscripted and trailing away.

As I approached Vivi in my own costume, they stepped aside, as if about to head to their trailers to wait for the filming of the next scene. Vivi knocked her heals together. She wasn’t asked to, and it was too early in the story to discover this power, but she was doing it instinctively. Was she trying to escape elsewhere? Did she recognize me as an imposter? Was this a reaction to her fear?

“Remember when I would read you this story, Vivian. Before we watched it on television together.”

I extended my hand and she took it by instinct. Her fingers were almost webbed together by the softest flesh. A baby’s flesh.

“Follow me, Vivian.”

“Down the yellow brick road?”

“Yes. Why not?”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, sweetie.”

“Are you The Wizard?”

“You can say so, yes.”

“Then how did you die?”

“Like I said, you can’t die for real anymore. Death is just another illusion.”

“Let’s stay, Daddy. And never leave. We will return home when the colour fades. I promise.”

“The colour is fading right now,” I pointed to the black hole I had created with that same, concentrated thought. This act would qualify as more than one crime, I thought to myself. But Dreamscape Domination was too new to cover all of the side effects of living out the reality of dreams. I had managed to create my own black hole in this dreamscape universe. And no one had stopped it, or had found me out for that matter. I was a free criminal inventing new crimes to keep me above the law.

“It’s so dark, where you are leading me. It’s so much brighter here, Daddy.”

“I know. We’ll come back. I promise.”

Vivi followed me to the edge of the yellow brick road. It was only one step further to walk into the dark hole with me. That was it. But she hesitated. So I pulled her in by force, and the fantasy was over.

How she screamed and screamed in the black hole.

“Why won’t anyone answer me?”

I watched her in my mental space, only a few feet away. But she couldn’t see me there, it was so dark.

“Is this death? Daddy? Are you here with me?”

Why not prolong the game, I convinced himself.

“Yes. Your Daddy is here.”

She laughed and cried at the same time.

“Is this where you ended, Daddy, in the dark?”

These words soured my pleasure and the charade began to wear thin. As much as I wanted her to stay, she wasn’t worth collecting as a permanent victim. Or maybe stealing her away was the adrenaline, and not the incarceration. Whatever it was, I wasn’t feeling it, imprisoning her forever.

I convinced myself to her escape my black hole. All I had to do was instruct her what to think about. There was an escape route to every Scape, and my black hole was no exception. But she was too panicked and sad to look for it. She would have stayed in the dark forever screaming, if I didn’t release her. I did enjoy my power over her victimhood. Her reliance upon my desires. I possessed her as an evil spirit would, deranging her emotions, tearing her belief system to shreds.

“Close your eyes,” I replicated her father’s voice, the way he lowered it to a whisper in order to encourage her imagination to settle down and sleep.

“Are you going to sing to me, Daddy?”

It took me some time to read the song lists in her mindscape. Which one would she prefer this time around? She seemed to appreciate all of them with an associative memory.

“Close your eyes, sweetie.”

“I don’t have to. It is darker with my eyes open.”

“But you won’t sleep with your eyes open.”

“Says who?”

She was feeling safe and bold again. This emotional connection, her trust in me as her protector, ruffled the feathers of my cold, hard determination to imprison her innocence against its will. I needed to disable it altogether now because it was annoying me, or absolute trust in me as her parental guardian. She was too ignorant. Like her father had the power to make bad dreams go away with good thoughts. The manner in which this belief created hope, even to dark, scavengers like myself. It would make me soft, and genius criminals couldn’t afford to be soft.

“Says the bottom feeder who stole you.”

“The who?”

I had no other choice but to reveal my true identity.

“I stole you to keep as my own.”

“Like my Daddy?”

“Yeah, just like your Daddy.”

And just like that, I realized our relationship would be catch and release. Catch and release.