Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2000 14:52:45 GMT
From: Scotty T <thepoetboy@hotmail.com>
Subject: Mirrors-2

Well, here's part 2 -- part 1 got some good feedback (and some complaints
about confusion, but at the moment I think that's just because you couldn't
figure the dreams out -- which is the whole point!)  I meant to have this
out back on Friday, but having my birthday on the weekend lead to that
being pushed back.

Turning 22 was year another anticlimax. :) And speaking about climaxes, if
you're here for sex, wander off, good fellow, wander off.  I managed to get
through all of LISA without sex, and the complaints stopped after the first
few instalments, and I'll probably do he same thing here.  I have some
personal moral issues about depicting someone who really exists in a sex
scene, so there's your answer.

And if you think this is based on NSYNC, you're right -- it's based on but
doesn't claim any authority about the character depictions and their
sexualities.  And also on that topic, I finally have, and have listened to,
NSA (thanks to Dan for being far far FAR to generous -- and I'll eventually
forgive you for it. :) So if you've been wanting to talk about NSA with me
and have been sworn to silence, then go wild.

Now on to the story!

Scotty T
thepoetboy@hotmail.com

***

Part 2

Mine is also a story of sleep -- and the pursuit of it.  It's an
anti-insomnia.  After the last dream, I started going to bed earlier,
moving bedtime from 1 am to midnight.  I was curious.  I wanted to see if I
could find a way to increase the frequency of the dreams.

And during my waking hours, I was on the net.  If a website was NSYNC
related, I was there.  I bought the CDs -- putting them in my stereo on
repeat.  I wasn't a fan of the music, but I was determined.  I found I was
able to pick out Joshua's voice almost immediately.

My friends thought I was going insane.  I guess I was talking about NSYNC
too much.  I didn't mention the dreams to anyone but my closest circle.

And they knew I was going insane.

It wasn't long before people were refusing to discuss the group with me.
I'd drained them of the limited knowledge, and drained them of their
interest, but I was insatiable.  I kept asking.

And they started to keep their distance.  It didn't matter to me -- that
was the first sign that something was really wrong.  I barely noticed their
absence.  The extra sleep wasn't a warning -- it was a boon.  Truthfully,
going to bed at one always meant I'd get to sleep around 1:30, giving me
seven hours a night.  My body needed more -- and finally my mind agreed.

I thought the fifteenth night would never come.

***

It's a ringing phone.  I'm in a glass booth with tall chairs and black
microphone stands.  Through another window I can see Joshua, he has a phone
to his ear, and he's smiling.  The ringing continues.

I see a phone on the wall, a red phone that lights up with each ring, and I
pick it up.

"Hi, Joshua," I say into the receiver.  On the other side of the glass his
smile widens.

"I've been to your school, so welcome to my work."  He laughs.

"You're in control of this?"

"No more than you are."  He winks.

I climb up onto one of the chairs and watch him through the window.  He
isn't like his pictures.  His skin is marked with acne and his hair looks
natural -- free from hair spray and other stylers.  Even his features are
softened, like he's relaxed, not on show.

                                          He is fiddling with slide bars
and knobs on the control board, randomly messing around with the system.
His smile is faint and pure, like a child released.

"Tell me about you, Eric," he says, and then I realize that somehow he'd
switched to a headset.  His phone receiver is gone.

"What's to tell?"

He laughed.  "Everything."

***

That wasn't the end of that dream -- it went on, turning into the longest
one I'd ever had.  A normal dream takes up to two pages in my journal --
that one took seven.  Even then I lost a lot of information, it was hard to
remember everything that was said.

I learned his birthday (he was two years older), about his childhood and
work, he listed his exs and why they broke up.  It went on and on, and less
than a third of it was stuff I had found online.

Dreams like this went on for the next few months, slowly moving from once
every three days to every two days, to every night.  I moved my bedtime
earlier and earlier, until I found myself in bed right after dinner, trying
to sleep.

I started popping St John's Wort and other natural remedies that were
supposed to increase sleep.  After a while I went to the doctor, claiming
insomnia, but I didn't get anything.  He was worried about dependence.

By now I'd cut off all of my friends.  Even my classmates avoided me.  Any
class discussions went on without my inclusion.  Midterm exams in December
lead to me squeaking by -- managing to just barely pass each of my classes.

I had some things imported from the States -- natural remedies that aren't
allowed to be sold in Canada.  I knew that if I could just get to sleep I
could be with him -- and the times I slept without seeing him were
frustrating.

***

"I'm sorry," he says.  We're in a park somewhere, I'm lying on my back with
my head in his lap.  "I couldn't get away."

I nod, staying quiet.

"Night doesn't come at the same time everywhere in the world."

"I know that."

"But I was thinking about you.  I can't help but think about you."

"I think about you too."

"You're the only relationship I've had in a long time, Eric, I'm just too
busy."

The maple trees slowly shift to oaks, the sun fades out, being replaces to
one farther north in the sky.  It's warmer here.

"I know you're busy, Joshua.  I don't mind -- but I get lonely."

He looks down into my eyes, the familiar smile is sad now.  His head is
slowly shaking side to side.  "I just wish you were real," he whispers.

"I am real."

He closes his eyes and leans back against the rough trunk of a tree.

***

That was the clincher -- that's when I knew I was in trouble.  When your
dreams start to doubt your reality, you know something's wrong.  It brought
clarity when disappearing friendships couldn't, when piles of pills became
common and sane, when eating kept getting reduced.

I knew this had to be escaped -- dispelled.  I had to meet the real JC, to
find something that would damage the dreams to the point that my
subconscious would just give up.

I needed a real life romance to displace it.

That lead to the worst decision I ever made, to a dark bar and a stranger.
A tall man who liked my blond hair, how young I looked with my skinny
frame, the pinkness of my lips.

That lead to his car, streetlights and the awareness that he was so much
older than I'd thought.  A short, terrifying drive through empty city
streets.

Twelve stitches to the side of my head, hidden by my hairline.  A cracked
rib and a lot of bruises, and some tearing where he was never invited to
go.

I had no trouble getting to sleep that night.  Three days later, when I
came out of the coma, I had a couple of dreams to draw from, several that
went on completely free of Joshua.

The last one, the most memorable.

***

Darkness, calm, cold darkness.  The sound of my breathing, at first ragged
but then growing calm.  I'm aware of him even though I can't see him.

"Oh my God."  His voice is quick and breathless.  I'm taking his breath --
using it for myself, taking it.  I'm stealing his warmth for a blanket.

I know he is coming towards me, and without feeling my legs I know that I'm
pulling away.

"Leave me alone," I yell, feeling his breath thrown from my lips.  "I don't
need you."

But I am caught, his arms are around me and I'm falling.

I push against him, hit him, squirm from his arms, but he holds tight.

Falling.

His eyes are closed, his forehead is pressed to my neck and he's crying.

"I'm not real, Joshua."  Falling.  "Forget me because I'm not real."

I push him away moments before I hit the ground.

***

Bright light.  I really did think I was dead -- but I have a feeling death
doesn't come with the words "Wakey wakey, Mr. Williams," and the smell of
garlic.

I was in the hospital for three days after that, pampered and force fed.
There were complications with my blood tests, resulting from the cocktail I
took to get sleep and malnutrition.  Nothing showed up as illegal, so there
were no charges or anything, but I did get some lectures on the side
effects of abusive use of food and natural remedies.

Even now they haven't found the guy that attacked me, raped me.  My
description was less than perfect due to dark lights, no-one from the bar
came forward.  He'd used a condom and very little evidence was taken from
my body.

The dreams had gone silent -- they still happened, more often than ever,
but Joshua never said anything.  He watched me, kept his distance. He even
left gifts of flowers and other trinkets.  But I'd been driven deeply into
myself, even in my dreams.  I closed up shop -- inaccessible to anyone.

Since I wasn't even talking to my friends at the time, none of them knew
what had happened.  I turned in documentation of the rape to the
university, just in case I needed to use it to save my year if I started
losing courses.

While withdrawing into myself, I found myself going deeper into sleep and
the new reality it offered.  Dreams have always been vivid for me -- places
to hide, but Joshua was there to block that.  It had been months since I'd
had any dream that didn't involve him.  On nights when he wasn't there, I
had no dreams at all.

I had constant dark rings around my eyes, was almost always exhausted.
Walking to class was all it took to wear me out, draining all of my energy
for the day.  Walking home was a death march -- constantly wanting to just
lie down and sleep.

But there was no refuge in sleep.  He was there, waiting for me to open up
again.  Watching.

After a week of this, I gave up.  There was nowhere I wanted to be, asleep
or awake.  The malleable nature of dreams scared me.

***

Lightning.  Thunder.  The walls shake -- a picture falls and shatters.
Electricity dies.

I stalk through the house, someone's house.  I'm upstairs in an empty
bedroom, I go into the hall and throw open the next door.  In the bed is an
unfamiliar figure, but with the next flash of lightning familiarity
strikes, and the blond curls become attached to a name.  I'm back in the
hallway, storming to the next door.

His voice is at the bottom of the stairs.  "I'm here."  The whisper carries
over the storm, the screaming of wind through the walls.  I'm at the top of
the stairs, looking down.  The front door is open, showing the dark
neighbourhood with the rain pounding down on the walkway.

I take the stairs two at a time and ran into the rain.

He's there, soaked to the skin.  His arms stay at the side, not worried by
the violence of my movements, the way I skid to a stop inches from him.

"Get out of my dreams," I scream, and the thunder rolls in, shaking the
ground.

His eyes widen but he doesn't move.  I am screaming it over and over,
repeating myself and hoping to find power in the repetition, the mantra.

My voice cracks, growing weak.  Finally I don't even have the voice to even
whisper.

And he's waited through it.

"I can't help but dream about you," he says, with the rain dripping off his
nose and streaming through his hair.  "And I wouldn't let you go even if I
knew how."

I am on my knees in the mud, feeling each drop of rain on my head like a
hammer blow.  He doesn't make a move to hold me, and I'm thankful for that.

"I want my dreams back," but it doesn't come out.  It's lost in my cracked
voice and the nearly constant roll of thunder.

But already the storm is blowing out, and the lightning falls short of
blinding.  The rain comes lighter and it ends with the smell of grass.

***

The plan that I decided on involved actually meeting JC.  I would go to any
appearance they made in Toronto, fight for the best tickets.  I had to see
him in person, take him from a dream world into reality and then forget
him.

I needed my life back.

I waited in line for three days for my ticket, three days in the freezing
cold of a Canadian January, piled under blankets and layers upon layers of
clothing.  My skin was dry and chapped when I came out of it, just short of
frostbite.

I ended up with a third row ticket, way off to the left.  It drained my
credit card and left me begging for the money for the subway ride back
home.

But I knew that mid-February would bring me freedom, it was just a matter
of time.

And meanwhile, the dreams continued.  They were still distant, still not as
comfortable and informative as they had been.  At one point we'd started
not only talking about our pasts, but showing them -- using the malleable
dream landscape to display our pasts like mini-movies.  I'd seen his first
concert, his favourite moments from the Mickey Mouse Club, and times of
depression, shock and sadness.  He'd seen my elementary school boyfriend,
the awkward comedy that came with my high school break-up.  My successes
and failures.

And then I started showing him my current life, as a way to push him away
-- the pills and sleep, the alienation and depression.  The ruins of
existence.

It just drew him closer.  He became supportive and apologetic, repeatedly
claiming to not know how to find release.  He showed me his own life, the
long hours of sleep on buses and hotels.  The jokes from his bandmates
about how much downtime he took, how the bus could explode without him
noticing.  He even showed clips from videos in which he was asked about his
hobby -- and he announced to the world that his hobby was sleep.

I was still convinced it was a construction -- an unconscious building of
fiction from facts I didn't know I had.  At some point I had to have read
about him -- overheard someone joking about that video clip.  On some bus
next to some teenage girls, through magazine articles read out of boredom.

By the time February came, he'd seen it all, every aspect of my reality,
and knew more about my past than the closest of my friends.  I was tied to
him even more strongly than I'd ever been before.  Everything related to
him, everything I read and saw television.  I counted the days until I met
him, careful to not mention the concert in the dreams, even though as part
of me, he probably already knew.  I even went out and bought an outfit like
the one I usually found myself wearing in the dream world.

The concert location surprised me.  There were seats from the back to the
stage, not allowing for any crowding of fans at the base.  The people in
the first row were close enough to see nothing but knee, or, if they looked
up, crotch.

I was glad I got the third row for a better, wider view.

Only three people got into the event before I did.  I found my seat and
spent the next half hour standing up and letting people in, cursing the
aisle seat and the duties that came with it.  Security guards were just a
couple of feet away, making sure no-one swarmed the stage and that the
aisle was kept clear of people who just didn't have the strength to stay in
their seats.

I was surrounded by teenage girls, with the occasional boyfriend tossed in.
There was a small group of fairly noticeably gay boys a few rows back.  The
girl next to me was flirting fairly heavily, proving again that my
sexuality was very hard to divine.  I ignored her, fairly rudely, but I had
a purpose for being here, and she was only fourteen.

Time stretched.  I felt like I was in a dream, because in dreams time loses
its illusion of constancy.  A single moment can expand into eternity, and
forever can pass in a heartbeat.

The girl next to me was trying hard to manufacture eternity.

But finally the lights did go down.  Finally the screaming faded, and
slowly a drum beat spread out over the room.  And everything exploded.

Light, movement, five guys appearing on stage and exploding into their
music, which I still didn't much care for.  JC was performing in the
middle, next to Justin.  His movements were completely unlike the dream
Joshua -- they were rehearsed and energized rather than relaxed and
unselfconsciously performed.

And it was most certainly not my Joshua.  The gloss and demeanour were
completely different.  I felt free and vindicated -- saved from my dreams
by reality.  As the first three songs passed, with the dancing and
thunderous soundtrack, I found myself at first smiling and then starting to
cry.  I was free, but now I was alone, completely separated from anyone who
meant anything to me.  Isolated.

But the story doesn't end hear -- I promised that my life had gone beyond
fantastic, and that moment was approaching.  The moment were all belief in
reality fragmented, shattered like a mirror.  JC was singing, performing a
song that was nearly a solo, with the others providing just supporting
harmonies for the chorus.  He was wandering the stage, singing out and
playing to different parts of the audience.

He was on the stage close to where I was sitting, singing his ballad with
his eyes half closed.  Those eyes, those beautiful eyes, opened, dragging
over the crowd.  They passed over me, on to the girl beside me who screamed
in reaction, and then those eyes passed back, back to me, meeting my eyes
and staring.

There are moments in life when existence crystallizes -- time slows and you
find the eternity I mentioned before.  It's a sensual thing rather than
intellectual -- it occurs external to the mind and you become convinced
that everyone can feel it.

The words were forgotten and I felt like I was connected to my seat, as
immobile and trapped as it was.  And the stare.

But everyone can't feel crystallization; their realities carry them
forward.

Confusion spread and the song stumble to a stop.  Peripheral vision showed
Justin beside Joshua, Lance beside Justin.  There was a rising murmur in
the crowd.  Panic and confusion in the frenzied teens.

And the stare.  His eyes to mine, the recognition.  I was aware of Justin
staring at me, and then they were pulling Joshua away, pulling him
backstage.  Away from me.

And the stare.

***

End of part 2.