Choices To Be Made
THIS FITS CLASSIC SIGNS OF CATTLE MUTILATIONS."
Anders sat at a table in the Gen-X while music blared nearby; he felt he might be going deaf, at least if he stayed in here much longer. "What?" he nearly yelled at Damon, who sat across from him, stirring a lemon in his tea.
"I said THIS FITS CLASSIC SIGNS OF CATTLE MUTILATIONS!!" Damon screamed back, cupping his hands to his mouth to be heard. Anders drew back with a wince; his head was already throbbing, it didn't need any more encouragement. "What the hell's that?" he called back. [Note--hm, how odd. I forgot to separate this into two paragraphs as befits two characters talking. Strange mistake for me to make, but I've done it just recently, so...*shrug.*]
"When cows go missing and show up all cut to pieces. Cauterized."
"What?"
"CAUTERIZED!!"
"What's that?"
"LIKE THEY WERE CUT WITH A LASER!!"
Anders frowned at Damon, squinting his eyes.
"NO BLOOD," Damon shouted back.
The exchange student understood; he nodded his head. "So who does it?"
"I don't know. Aliens?"
"What?"
"ALIENS!!"
The music stopped at that moment and several people turned to stare at the two. Damon hid his face. Anders smiled back at the throng and said, "His favorite movie."
Everybody returned to what they were doing. Another song came on, this time Nirvana; everybody on the dancefloor started headbanging and it was nearly impossible to hear what he was saying himself.
"You're saying ALIENS ARE CUTTING UP HORSES?" he screamed.
"I'm not saying anything--it's a THEORY."
"OH!!"
"But WHAT ELSE could it be?"
"A CULT?!!"
Damon shrugged and shook his head, taking a drink of his tea. Anders responded by rubbing his pounding head and scratched-up throat. He took a sip of his own drink and, turning, signaled to Sidras at the counter behind him. Luckily for him she wasn't cleaning or reading or anything, and came over to them.
"PAD OF PAPER!!" he yelled.
Sid just nodded and disappeared. She reappeared in a moment with a pad of paper and a pen, and handed them to him.
"THANKS!!" Anders put down the paper and wrote on it for a while, then passed it over to Damon. Damon took the pad as Anders got up and left, and read it.
ABOUT YOUR BROTHER GABRIEL--
SOMEONE HAS PASSED IT ALL OVER CAMPUS.
I DON'T KNOW IF IT'S SOME KIND OF JOKE
OR NOT BUT IF IT IS IT'S A REALLY SICK ONE.
I DON'T KNOW IF I BELIEVE IN ALIENS
OR ABDUCTIONS OR WHATEVER, BUT
SOMETHING IS GOING ON HERE, AND I
DON'T KNOW WHAT TO THINK ABOUT IT.
DO NORMAL PEOPLE EVER DREAM ABOUT OWLS???
After reading the note Damon swallowed and, balling it up, tossed it into a nearby trashcan. Whoever had passed out that paper, it was as [sic] sick joke; not because of what had happened, but because it did happen. And now somebody out there was making fun of it. As if Gabe didn't have enough problems. But Anders's closing remark puzzled him; "Do normal people ever dream about owls?" He barely hid a wry smile behind his drink as he got up to go. Sure, normal people dream about owls--it's just that they do so under abnormal conditions.
Anders found himself walking through a field at night.
He wasn't quite sure how he got there; he couldn't remember that detail. But there he was, standing in the middle of the field nearby the college, in a nightgown, looking around.
He didn't know where he'd gotten the nightgown, either. He didn't even wear nightgowns.
There was something standing nearby, near the fence on the side of the field closer to him. He walked over to it slowly, and saw that it was a horse.
It looked just like Rosie. At first he thought maybe it was, but then remembered what had happened to Rosie and there went that possibility. It must just be another horse. As he approached it it neighed softly and bobbed its head, apparently wishing to be untied from its post. Anders went up as close as he dared and untied it to set it free; however, the horse didn't go running. It just stood there, neighing and bobbing its head. Then he understood. The thing wanted him to ride it.
"Uh-uh," he said to it, surprising himself with the sound of his voice. "I don't ride horses anymore."
The animal just whinnied again and nudged him with its head. He started to back away, but then realized it was harmless; he even put out his hand to stroke its muzzle. The horse stuck out its head to let him, and it neighed again, nudging him in the stomach.
"All right," he said to it. "All right, all right! Just hold on."
He'd ridden horses before; he'd had one once, a long time ago, back in Sweden, but had suffered an accident and ever since then hadn't gone near one. They all seemed too testy. This one seemed to be nice enough though. So he took a hold of its mane and pulled himself over onto its back--and then started looking around, wondering just what to do next.
Before he could make up his mind, the horse started trotting away from its post, jolting him abruptly. He bent forward and clasped his arms around its neck, afraid of falling off. He was reminded of the Hi-Roller, and didn't want to have a repeat of that incident. But his eyes and teeth clenched anyway.
And then, before he could stop it, the horse was galloping.
He felt the wind whistling through his hair and heard the dull hoofbeats of the animal below him, whishing through the grass. "Hold on!" he tried to shout. "Stop! Whoa!" But the horse just kept going faster and faster.
He opened his eyes as they entered a wood, then flung up his arms to his face to protect his eyes from the flailing branches which clawed at him. In the tops of the blackened trees he could see figures staring down at him--dark figures, mere blurs in the moonlight. As the horse galloped out the other end of the woods and back into a field they broke apart from the trees they had been a part of, scattering every which way, all around Anders, wings beating and whispering through the air.
Owls.
Hundreds of barn owls flapped past him, some so close he could feel the wind from their wings brush against him. He held up his arms to ward them off; their pale white forms, with their round black eyes glittering out, vanished in every direction, as if becoming stars.
And then something astonishing happened.
He felt something brush against his leg and looked down; the horse was growing wings! [Note--yes--tacky.]
He cried out and threw himself on its neck again just as the wings unfurled and flapped at the air, once, twice, three times and the horse lifted into the air away from the ground and carrying him to the sky and he closed his eyes and clenched his teeth and the world went black
and he was sitting up in bed, gasping, sweat dripping down his face.
He glanced across the room at Dino, but it was completely black and he couldn't see anything.
Shaking, he reached over and turned on the table lamp, nearly knocking it over in his haste to get some light. Dino, the light hitting his closed eyes, murmured something and turned over, snuggling back in his bed despite the summer heat. Anders could only sit where he was, staring off into space and willing the weird feeling he'd gotten from the dream to go away.
Maybe I should have another talk with Al, he thought to himself.
It took him longer than he'd expected to locate Puck, since he couldn't remember the way to Al's house without his directions to go on. He finally found him at the Gen-X, drinking--of all things--coffee, and staring into the screen of his laptop, which was set up on the counter in front of him. Sid swept past every once in a while, always lifting up the computer absently to wipe underneath it; Puck barely seemed to notice, only lifting his eyes and his typing hand as she did so, and letting them back down as she set the computer down again. Anders sat down on the stool next to him and stared at the screen. An array of ones and zeros greeted him.
"What's that?" he asked, nodding at it.
Puck winced and held up his right hand; Anders noticed he typed with his left. "Not so loud," he said.
Anders lowered his voice. "What's that?" he echoed himself, this time pointing. He didn't have to ask if Puck had a headache or not; he had a splitting one himself.
"Computer code," Puck said. "Computers 'think' in terms of ones and zeros. That's how they operate. All the strands of information they receive is translated into this." [Note--bad Puck! Bad verb form, bad!]
"All of it?" Anders hadn't known that. "Wouldn't they run out of combinations sooner or later?"
"No. The combinations just get longer. And who do you mean by 'they'?"
"I don't know. Anyone who uses computers." Anders stretched his arms and was surprised to find that Sid had graciously placed a cup of steaming coffee before him as well. He picked it up and took a sip, wincing himself as it burned his tongue. "I was wondering if you'd tell me the way to Al's," he said conversationally.
Puck looked up at him, and Anders noticed, for the first time, that he was wearing glasses. Real wire-frame glasses. Anders gave him a funny look, which must have irritated him, because he turned back to the computer and started typing again.
"Why's that?" he said.
"I want to talk with him about something--a dream I had last night. Can Al interpret dreams, too?"
"If they're relevant." Puck looked up again and took off the glasses, rubbing his eyes--now Anders noticed they looked bloodshot. "Why, do you think your dream's relevant?"
"Yes. I dreamed about owls."
Puck snorted, a weak attempt at laughter. Anders wondered just what he'd been up to all night to look so terrible. "Again?"
"No. I've never dreamed about owls before."
"Oh really? I could swear you told me you did."
"That was a lie. I didn't want to say what I'd dreamed about. But now I think it's trying to tell me something."
Puck clapped shut the computer and scooped it off into his lap, turning to face Anders at the same time. "Save it till we get there," he said. "If you've had half as bad a night as I've had you won't want to go over it twice. Come on." And he got up abruptly and left the club, the doors swinging shut after him.
Anders took his mug and tried to down the rest of his coffee without seriously injuring his tongue and throat before following him out the door.
Al gamely let them in again, chattering about his "little green friends" as he led them into his parlor and made them some coffee; Anders learned from Puck that Al was a big fan of coffee, drinking several pots a day. Anders wondered if that was why he was always so chipper; he'd never seen Al tired before. As he set down three mugs in front of them he glanced from one to the other, then sat down across from them and clasped his hands together.
"All right," he started, "so what's the occasion?"
"You do hypnosis?" Anders asked. Puck nearly choked on his drink, looking up at Anders with surprise.
Al nodded. "That's what I'm trained for."
"Can you hypnotize anybody?"
Al shook his head; Anders was stunned by his frankness. "No, not anybody. Some people just don't hypnotize. Some don't want to be. It's a rather tricky process."
"But could you hypnotize me? Or Puck?"
"Anders?" Puck asked.
"I wouldn't know until I tried." Al cocked his head in that Nipper pose of his. [Note--Nipper has already been mentioned, somewhere back in this story, but I thought I'd explain him again. Remember the RCA record labels with that terrier sitting in front of the old Victrola? That dog's name is Nipper. True fact. Bonus useless fact: In some commercials from a while back, Nipper was joined by a terrier puppy, whose name was...Chipper! 'Nother true fact. What other kind of fact is there?] "Why? Do you want to try it?"
Anders wrapped his hands around his mug and looked down into it at his reflection. A dark, wavery Anders stared back. "I don't know. But I think I would."
"Just what did you dream about last night, Anders?" Puck asked.
Anders picked up a packet of sugar Al had provided and poured it into the swirling coffee, stirring it slowly. "I was in a field," he started, "and it was nighttime. There was this gray horse, it looked just like Rosie. And it wanted me to ride it, so I did. Only it started galloping and I couldn't make it stop. And we went into a woods. [Note--I used to believe, for some odd reason, that "woods" could be a singular or a plural. Not sure why.] When we came out there were owls everywhere. They flew all past me in every direction. I had to hold up my hands to keep them away from me. There were hundreds of them. And then the horse grew wings, like a pegasus--and it carried me up into the sky. And then the dream ended."
Silence. For a long while they all just sat there, Puck staring at Anders, Anders at his coffee, and Al at a spot somewhere between them.
Finally Al spoke up. "Is it your intention," he mused, "to have me interpret your dream?"
Anders nodded, not asking how he knew.
Al sat back, looking up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "How did you react to the horses and the owls in your dream?"
"I was scared. I don't like horses. Or owls, for that matter."
"What field were you in?"
"The one near the college; I believe it's out back, where--"
"Where we found Rosie," Puck said. "He was--killed somehow. Mutilated."
Al looked at him out of the corner of one eye, but said nothing. "And it was night? Dark?"
"Yes, only the moon was out, so I could see." Anders was growing puzzled. "Tell me, what's this got to do with my dream?"
"Just making sure. Anders, you were afraid of the horse and owls--yet you seemed to go to them?"
Anders stopped to think for a moment. Yes, he had. "Yes. When I held up my hands to the owls, it didn't really scare them away."
"The horse 'carried you up into the sky,' and you went willingly--but you were scared." Al cocked his head again. "Sound like anything you know?"
To Anders it sure did. And he didn't like what it sounded like at all.
Thankfully Al didn't go into any more detail. Instead he locked his fingers and stretched his arms, the closest thing Anders had ever seen him get to looking tired. The illusion only lasted a moment, however, as Al quickly picked up his coffee again and took another drink.
"I really don't think I need to go any further on that one," he said.
"No," Anders agreed, "neither do I."
"But what's this about hypnosis?" Puck asked. He hadn't taken his eyes from Anders since the H word had first slipped from his mouth. "This dream's so important you want to be hypnotized all of a sudden?"
"I don't know," Anders said, exasperated. "It's just that these dreams are starting to get to me."
"Starting?"
"Okay, they have been getting to me. A lot. But I thought they were just weird at first. Now I know they're trying to tell me something. It's like watching a movie over and over and over and trying to interpret it. It gets repetitious because you've seen it all before, but you keep watching it, because maybe you missed something."
He noticed as he said this that Al had reached behind the chair he was sitting in to pull out a small black box; Anders realized it was a tape recorder. He'd already switched it on and was recording them as they talked.
"Good analogy," was all that he said.
"Thanks."
"So you want to be hypnotized," Puck echoed. Anders nearly scowled. He was like a gnat.
"Okay, maybe I should try it," Anders said. "What about you?"
For a moment Puck looked taken aback. "Me? Why me?"
"From what you told me I'd say you didn't have a very good night last night either."
"Oh?" Al looked at Puck now.
"I couldn't sleep," Puck said. "Again."
"And have you ever had dreams about horses and owls? Owls flying at you from all directions, going off into space with the owls--"
"No, I haven't!" Puck shouted. Anders and Al sat silent. "Sure, I had a dream last night; I dreamed I went out into the field, and I found Rosie, and he was all cut up. And you know what? His nose was bleeding." He nodded at the look Anders gave him. "That's right; there was no blood anywhere except on his nose. And it was bleeding. There. How's that for a wonderful dream? Now do you see why I didn't sleep last night?"
This time there was a very long, awkward pause. Seconds stretched into minutes; Anders felt certain minutes would have stretched into hours had not Al cleared his throat and picked up his tape recorder again.
"So, Anders," he said, in that conversational, noncommittal tone of his, "yes or no?"
All eyes were on him. Anders felt as if even the plants on their shelves were staring down at him. Finally he cleared his throat and forced the words out.
"Yes," he said. "I want to be hypnotized."
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