The Listening Room

In the last chapter, Mother put a grand plan to rest. Welcome back to The Listening Room for the last installment of “Hypnotic”.

9.

A car door opened and a weathered black boot stepped onto the dirt road. The door closed with a hollow thud as the person approached a circular clearing pressed down with gravel. Atop it was a dark green picnic table and a nearby grill which had seen better days. Beyond it was a modern rectangular cabin with smooth siding and a sloped roof with a water barrel at one side.

David sat at the picnic table in a pair of pale denim jeans and a gray hoodie. His feet were bare. He swept his toes against the coarse rocks, back and forth as if it were a ritual. He focused on the feel of the coarse and uneven stones against his skin. They were warm from the afternoon sun and pressed onto a layer of sand. He dug his toes in deeper and swirled it into the sand.

Approaching footfalls pulled him out of his trance. He looked up to see a face he knew well, though he couldn’t believe she was real. The moment of recognition curdled to a deep and rising disgust. The corner of his lip curled in a half scowl.

“I should properly introduce myself. I’m Toby.”

He looked at her outstretched hand, but didn’t take it, then tracked his eyes up to her face, studying it for a few moments.

Her pleasant expression wilted and she withdrew her hand, stuffing it into her pocket.

“Mother…” he said plainly.

“Her too,” she said, standing awkwardly just beyond the bench seat, waiting for an invitation. David had already looked away, shaking his head and rubbing the back his neck with his hand. She would buzz around despite his swatting, so with a deep sigh, he motioned for her to sit. She sprang from her spot onto the seat across from him.

Her presence was a collision of the surreal and sobering, like meeting a book character in real life. But Toby, who looked mostly the same as her dream avatar, was flesh and blood, a realization which thrust him into a state of surprise over and over like a skipping record. The amethyst eyes were actually a honey brown. It was a shame to have covered them with jewels since they were already so striking. Mother’s intricate updo was now a high brown puff with blonde tips.

“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Thought I said not to bother coming.

“I-I wanted to see you, uh, check up on, h-how you were doing,” she stammered.

Toby’s face was a plea for absolution, only David wasn’t close at all to forgiveness. He narrowed his eyes at her, his scowl cutting lines into his face. He let the uncomfortable silence linger. He wanted her to feel it, some juvenile stab at justice, but it was what he had. He crossed his legs at the ankles and rested an elbow on the table, not breaking her gaze. She fidgeted.

“How are you?” she asked, leaning in across the table.

He rubbed his palms against the thighs of his jeans. He didn’t want her here or even to tell her how he’d been these last few months alone. The truth was a piston ready to fire and he couldn’t hold back.

“Okay, I guess. The open space helps,” he said, relenting with a shaky exhale. “Mancuso, right?”

“Yeah,” she said, her face brightening with a twinge of something like hope.

“I looked you up. You were much too smart to get wrapped up with those people,” he said.

Toby’s shoulders fell, tacking on his disappointment on top of everyone else’s. She could feel her stomach twist into knots then loosen even in this brief conversation. She wanted so badly to break through the membrane between them, to know someone she’d only observed through images on a screen. She knew they were both navigating the discomfort of meeting what only existed in a phase of reality.

“I wanted to be mad at you, as angry as I was at the rest for their parts in this, but you were different. I saw what you were trying to do,” he said.

She nodded in agreement. It was all she was going to get and all she deserved. They said nothing for a while and listened to the sounds of the forest. Chipmunks chased each other through the brush, as David stared out onto the tree line. What he needed most was time to untangle what had been scrambled. The test runs were not idle experiments, but forms of torture that bent reality to where the colors were melded and couldn’t be distinguished from one another. He needed to engage with nature and re-establish the definition in the colors of his world.

“Tell me about the project,” David said firmly.

Toby straightened up on the bench and folded her hands. There was so much to tell and she pinched her eyebrows together. Start simple, she thought.

“Vincent Vogel and Molly Fitzgerald were the heads of the project. Her ideas and his execution. Somewhere the design got… perverted or maybe it was the entire point,” she said retreating into her thoughts.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Controlling a human mind is the ultimate high,” she said.

David nodded for her to proceed.

“There were seven of you, each playing a role in the assassination plan. Some members were for purely misdirection while others were helpers to lay resources out. Each was in the same facility where you stayed and were evaluated for particular aptitudes. There’s a variety of different types of dreamers—“

Toby broke off when she looked up at him, self conscious about the amount of information she was laying out. The theory was not as relevant as the people. She continued.

“So, there were seven. Number one was Peter. The day of the assassination attempt, he induced your hypnotic state using the same totem you were already programmed with, that yellow square along with a key phrase. Number two was the assistant at the senator’s office. She turned off the security cameras and left the senator’s office door unlocked. Number three supplied the weapon and served as your double. Four and five were false witnesses at a coffee shop on the corner. Those three, numbers three, four, and five, provided misdirection for your escape. Authorities would swarm the immediate area but also chase you uptown. Meanwhile, you’d be headed west. Number six handled evidence plants to point to someone else. You were the seventh. Vincent never wanted to kill that senator, though, just show that it could be done. Got to admit it’s a bold show of power,” she said.

The information was heavy and he dipped his chin to his chest under its weigh, swaying his head slowly from side to side. Questions flooded his brain about the plot that was years in the making. There must be thousands of pages of research notes, terabytes of data from the test runs, and hours upon hours of surveillance tape. They made a choice everyday to gradually pry him away from his senses.

David sat quietly with fluttering eyelids, pressing play in his mind. His vision drew in close to notice the black bird on his tote bag, then wide to see two laughing women arm-in-arm walk past him to the coffee shop on the corner. His head was a fuzzy lump of tv static where little could break through. He heard the click of departing heels as he climbed the stars to the senator’s office and the calm that settled in his belly as he was sure every piece was moved into its proper place. His steps swung backward in a blur, rewinding to the subway and the blackness that overtook him before he got off the train.

David’s tipped his head up and his jaw creaked open. Toby sat in tense silence, watching the crashing waves of truth lap over his wet eyes. She didn’t disturb the process, only scrunched her face in a pained expression. It’s coming together, she thought.

Inside his spooled memory, he was stuck. There were only snippets in the moments before his descent, save for the rock of the train in a soundless void. He tugged at the tape, but it didn’t go beyond that moment and he feared he’d lose it all, so he relaxed.

Spit had pooled in his open mouth and he pulled his bottom lip in before it dribbled out. He wiped his mouth with the heel of hand and shook the memories loose.

“Why?” he asked in a desperate plea.

“It’s a valuable process with few…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for the next installment of “Hypnotic”. David made a swift escape after his last test run but finds himself in another prison.

In chapter eight, his plans are set into motion.

8.

Friday came and it was time to set plans in motion. David got dressed in dark gray chinos, a gray button down shirt and black sneakers. He put on a light weight black sweater and zipped it up half way. He smoothed a steady hand over the front. He grabbed a tote bag from his closet which was a gift from Molly. A black bird was stamped against a white circle. He would turn it on the blank side later.

He hadn’t shaved in weeks and the coils of his beard poked out from the sides of his face. His hair had also grown in thick on his head. He picked at his tapered Afro with his fingers and tucked the coils in. It would all be shaved off soon.

Before shutting the door, he looked once more at the room that had been his cocoon day and night during his recovery. He had the familiar sense of leaving a cloister just like this behind but knew he wouldn’t be able to place it. The fog was still heavy. There had been fitful nights and restless days spiraling between a sort of fugue state and stone cold reality. It was the withdrawal, they assured him. He was coming off hard drugs and needed time to kick remnants of physical addiction but most importantly, the psychological addiction.

There was one problem, however: David couldn’t remember doing what Molly said he did. He was never on drugs or even been inclined to try them. He didn’t even smoke weed because it made him paranoid. After his last stint as a truck driver, a confusing spattering of memories followed that seemed mixes of fantasy and truth. He was hesitant to say aloud exactly where he’d been.

“Hell of a bender,” he’d say, feigning remembrance of a time that didn’t exist. He came to shaking in that very bed with a man in a suit jacket holding a syringe. He read a “Chambers” name badge on the lapel, but never saw the man’s face. Dr. Chambers had been directing his treatment from afar, always missing David by a hair. He talked mainly to Molly and another social worker, Peter.

One night, in the midst of a vivid dream, David saw himself murder an important man in New York City. It was an exercise in espionage and after he stood over the man’s lifeless body on a carpeted office floor, David disappeared. He pieced together the rest of the plan while he was awake, hunched over books at the library downtown as a cover. The walls had eyes in New Directions. He went back into the same dream over and over until he got a name and location. He became fixated on the idea, especially when Molly suggested that his transfer was a long way off. It infuriated him, made heat rise from his belly and into his chest. He felt it every time he heard Molly’s voice with its tone of confidence and finality. He felt it at the dinner table with a strangely familiar group of people who were somehow odd and frightening.

He needed to get out and used fragments of his memory as inspiration.

David snuck downstairs, stepping gingerly over the creaking steps and boards along the way. They were a simple repair in the large, Victorian-style house, but proved a no-cost security measure.

Gerald, his first link, met him at the bottom of the stairs. David passed by silently and gave him a nod. Gerald would say that David had been in his room all morning. In exchange, David hooked him up with a job after his release from the program. It was no small feat considering Gerald’s past and the continuing fight for parental rights of his son. For his part, Gerald didn’t ask why David was going out that morning.

Gerald was not just smooth, but a good talker. David thought he’d be a good fit for sales. A company employing ex cons was happy to place him with a small chemical company. Gerald would have a chance at least.

The front door closed to a sleepy house awash with silence. In the kitchen, Peter was gathering cereals and fruit for breakfast when a small pineapple toy dropped out of one of the bowls. He looked at it and chuckled, disbelieving. What a strange little toy in an adult center. Maybe a child had left it there at some point but he couldn’t be sure.

The figure was a smiling pineapple with little white limbs and gloved hands. There was a winding lever on one side. He wound up the toy and placed in on the counter. It walked jerkily against the Formica and Peter leaned in to watch it. Then a smell hit him.

Gerald came in just to see Peter leaning up mechanically like a wind up toy. He looked questioningly into Peter’s blank face, then to the boxes of cereal on the island.

Peter turned, crossed the kitchen to the back door, and left without a word.

David’s next link in the chain was Kareema, who would meet him at the bus stop and hand him an unregistered pistol she borrowed from a friend. Kareema overheard bits of conversation with Paula one evening, brashly offering to help. She never forgot that David was the only person to check an abusive trucker who’d threatened her. After David gripped the man’s throat and whispered what Kareema hoped were the man’s greatest fears, the abuser quit at Carlsbad Logistics. The same man ended up a suspect in a series of roadside murders along his delivery routes. She could have been next but David didn’t turn a blind eye. He actually stood up and she felt indebted for that.

They stood close in the brisk morning and Kareema passed a brown paper bag into his tote.

“You even know how to use this?” She asked with a side eye.

“Can’t miss shooting point blank,” he said. David was a mask of nonchalance, but inside, he trembled.

She scoffed. “You are dumb as hell. Good luck with this little plan. Paula meetin’ you after?”

“She’ll be at the house when I get back,” he said

Kareema turned to look down the street. No bus just yet.

“There’s easier ways. Like patience,” she said.

He shot her his own sideways glance. “You say that as you hand me a piece.”

“I’m just saying. This is a one-way street. You go one direction and don’t come back,” she said

He turned to face her. The familiar bright smile she was know for was now shrouded in concern. Kareema crossed her arms against the chill.

“I need to figure out what happened to me and I can’t do that here or anywhere near these people.” He looked in the direction of the house.

“I understand. But what if you get caught?” she asked.

“At this point, I feel dead anyway. And there will be no love lost for the senator. He’s a coward anyway,” he said.

“A coward who deserves to die?” She asked.

“You’re a part of this, Kareema, an accessory. Don’t get high and mighty on me now,” he warned. His jaw clenched.

“Planning and really doing something are the same things, I guess. Just wonder how this helps the rest of us,” she said.

“I won’t forget about you. Chambers been holding your release up for almost a year, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

“Once I’m out, I’m coming back for you. I swear it,” he said.

Kareema swiped a tear away with her fingers and cleared her throat. She had people and a life to get back to. She embodied her advice, doing what she was asked and remaining patient, but she was being used. Long term, well adjusted residents made the program look successful. While the others also helped the center’s image, she had been there the longest.

The bus came bobbing down the street and they felt the rush of the air breaks when it stopped in front of them. They boarded and sat on opposite sides of the near empty bus.

The announcer heralded the next train pulling into the station. David boarded a rapidly emptying train and counted the four stops to his destination. He’d get off north of the senator’s office, then switch trains to go in another direction. He was going opposite the midtown rush which made it a bit easier for him to be identified. That was good. He wanted to be seen or for people to think they’d seen him heading into another borough. No one could escape surveillance, so you might as well show…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for the next installment of “Hypnotic”. David Fuller, a man being housed in a sleep research facility Dr. Vincent Vogel and his assistant Molly Fitzgerald, has just undergone his most extreme dream test run yet.

In chapter seven, something sinister is in the works.

7.

David stretched out his aching limbs on the bed. The artificial light in his room was still low signaling early morning. He pressed his palms against the sides of his head and let out a long, low groan. What a night. Snippets flashed before his closed eyes. The casino, the target, the van, and then… he couldn’t remember. He pressed his eyes shut tight but the memory would not surface.

He heard shoes scuff against the floor outside. The lock slid open with a muffled clang and the door creeped open. David quickly rose to his elbows. He was stunned almost into silence before managing to croak out a question.

“Sam?”

Sam stood in dark green coveralls with dirty blonde hair tucked under a cloth hat. A devious smile spread across his face. David dug the heels of his palms against his eyes and rubbed. Impossible. Again?

“No time for pleasantries, friend. We have got to get out of here. Leave your things. You won’t need them.”

David leapt from his bed and threw a shirt on. He put on a pair of sweatpants and dipped his feet into slip on shoes. He grabbed Sam’s bicep and stood close.

“I’m really glad to see you,” David said. His body was a mess of oddly firing emotions all at once. He was aflutter with excitement and grief which burned deep while his eyebrows turned down at the corners with concern and bewilderment.

“And you’ll see other friends too,” Sam said, tapping the hand on his bicep.

David paused to take in the last of the space. His table was nearly folded away with a stool underneath it. His bed, where he’d spent countless hours slipping from daydreams to patches of night behind his eyes, was a crumbled mess. He winced.

A visage of himself projected from his mind pacing, reciting poetry, laughing, weeping, and shielding against the stinging loneliness of isolation. The visage faded. He looked over at his friend and shyly tucked away a smile. David would usually look for an inconsistency, some crack in the façade of his dreams, but he didn’t want to risk finding one. He wanted to believe his friend was freeing him and that there’d be some new adventure on the horizon.

Sam pulled the cap low on his forehead and led David down the hall passed the gym on the right all the way to the end where a steel door was at the left. A sign adhered to the door read “This is not an exit,” which made David’s body tense at the sight. He had never considered leaving, only seeing the experiments through so he could come out the other side.

David combed through the experience in his mind. He spent six months in facility being pried open, drugged, manipulated, and wrung out. His memory was a punchcard full of missing pieces that made him shudder. What had he really done here? And why? The questions sat heavy and demanded resolution.

It was unnerving the way time blew away like sand. He’d been convinced over and over that he was doing something worthwhile and in the moment, it seemed justified, but now that reason drifted like a fleeting rain shower. It pattered quickly away leaving a mist of something he didn’t grasp, only felt.

Sam dug into his pocket and pulled out a key to unlock the door. They slipped out. David did not look back.

A camera pointed toward the exit captured a lone man skulking down the hall and pushing open the exit door.

The room in New Directions Treatment Center was threadbare. A twin bed was pushed against the far wall with a night table beside it and a small lamp on it. There was a desk and chair in front of a picture window in the middle of the room, overlooking a busy avenue. A chest of drawers was on the other wall with a small closet to the left.

David had taken down the bargain pastoral scene painting at the end of the bed and put up a poster. His favorite band stared down from a fish eye perspective. Fresh yellow flowers from the corner store sat on the chest of drawers in a clear, curvy plastic cup he’d found abandoned at the laundromat down the street.

He was beginning to settle here. After being clammed up for weeks in a haze of near dissociation from the world, he started inching back to consciousness and other people. He had started making friends with the other residents and even liked his social worker, Molly. She was helpful and had eased his transition in.

Just then, Molly knocked on the door.

“Morning!” she said brightly as she entered.

“Morning Molly,” David said. He gestured for her to take his chair. He sat on the bed.

Molly balanced a small notebook on her leg before hesitantly setting on the desk. She crossed her legs and glanced at the flowers.

“It’s a good sign that you’re decorating. We make a home wherever we are.” She said the affirmation as if it were the first time. It wasn’t.

David smiled weakly. His hands shook and he clasped them in his lap.

“Now, you’ve been clean for 90 days which is huge, but I wanted to think about where we can go from here.” She pulled her pen from the spine of the notebook and she clicked it. She opened the notebook to a blank page.

David moistened his lips and looked up at the poster at the end of the bed. The group members were in the foreground of a bridge, bathed in dark blue with the lead in a white, patterened Kangol hat. The drummer’s usual Afro was laid down in braids and his eyes were closed.

“David?” Molly asked. She flicked her strawberry curls behind her ears and looked at him expectantly.

His mouth pursed to form words that didn’t come. The walls sometimes loomed over him in a foreboding embrace. That’s when he had to get out, sometimes cutting close to curfew, to escape that trapped feeling. Once outside, though, he could feel his pulse quickened with expectation. His senses sharpened and every face volleyed from friend to adversary. He feared a gaze that lingered a little too long or a bump to the shoulder would send him spiraling into a rage.

That’s when he started to sweat and his chest tightened. David would race back to the house and barrel into his room, shutting the door behind him. His breaths would come in gasps before slowing to deep sighs. He told no one about these bouts and could not remember a time it ever happened before. Whatever he had been addicted to did a number on him.

Finally, he spoke.

“I’m just worried about staying clean right now. I did start sketching a bit, though,” he said with a trace of pride.

“May I see?”

He gestured to the top of the desk which had a neat stack of paper. Molly flipped through the sheets past still lifes of the flowers, the desk chair, and lamp. She kept flipping. There were portraits of the mailman and one of the residents, Paula, who so far was his closest acquaintance.

“This is good, David. Very good. Anything else?”

“No, Molly, that’s all I’ve come up with,” he said, managing a weak smile. His hands were still clasped in his lap.

“I think you should do the food shopping this week,” she said without looking up. She was fixated on sketch of a 90s model sedan with a shrouded driver.

“You and Paula seem like pals. Maybe you two can plan a few dinners for the group,” Molly said, laying the sketch back on the desk and turning to look at David.

Her eyes were ocean blue with dark rims. They bore into him and he suppressed a rising discomfort in his chest.

“That’s fine. I think I could do that,” David said nodding.

She smiled cheerily and jotted down a few notes.

“That is good news. I’ll let Paula and Dr. Chambers know. You can meet with her tonight after dinner when you’ve come up with some ideas.”

She stood up and gripped his shoulder reassuringly. Without another word, she left his room and closed the door. David sat still and waited to hear her footsteps depart down the hallway, then the stairs.

He stood up from the bed and moved the chair away from the desk. He opened the desk …

Welcome back to The Listening Room for the next installment of “Hypnotic”. If you’re just joining, we met David Fuller, a man being housed in a sleep research facility while Dr. Vincent Vogel and his assistant Molly Fitzgerald, examine David’s dreams. Tobias Mancuso sits at the helm recording those dreams and monitoring David during test runs.

In chapter six, we pick up with an Atlantic City, NJ mission, when David meets his target Gamal, his most formidable target yet. And a startling truth is revealed.

6.

Gamal stood with both hands raised. He breathed heavily against David’s cupped hand. After an awkward moment, still exposed, Gamal emptied the rest of his bladder. He gestured toward his open fly. David moved his hand off the man’s mouth and motioned for Gamal to finish. He zipped up and started backing away from the urinal. David moved with him, keeping the blade against his flank. He glanced over his shoulder to size David up, then turned back to face the wall.

David shook with his attention focused on keeping the knife steady. It made him nervous and sick inside to think this man would die at his hands. It seemed wrong somehow, but then again he had never asked why. David was too preoccupied to notice Gamal’s hand balling into a fist. With a quick motion, he shifted left away from the blade and struck David in the stomach. The wind rushed out of David’s lungs and he stumbled back into the stall door, catching himself before falling onto the toilet. He hoisted himself up and looked out just to see Gamal turn to escape.

Carmine emerged from a bank of stalls and blocked Gamal’s dash, knocking him to the floor. He was momentarily stunned but sprang to his feet. David caught up and wrapped his arms around Gamal in a bear hug and they collided into the wall. He held the knife firm and the two wrestled on their feet while Carmine rounded them to assist.

In the frenzy, David made contact and plunged the knife deep. Carmine’s face blanched before a twisted scowl showed the betrayal. He stepped back and a bright red spot widened on his shirt.

Gamal spotted the gap and pushed past the two, sprinting toward the exit through the men’s sitting room. His wide stride slowed like he crossed from air to amber before stopping completely.

David stood panting and bewildered at the scene. Carmine was a leaning tower in mid collapse with a mask of surprise. David opened Carmine’s shirt and saw the gaping wound he created. He pressed it together with his thumb and forefinger until it sealed, then swiped down with his palm to remove the blood. Good as new. At least he hoped so.

Gamal’s was in a photo finish stride as if crossing a checkered portion of track. His head was turned back to check on the competition.

He pulled Carmine upright from his freeze frame.

“What happened?” Carmine asked.

“I made a mistake. Trying to salvage things,” David said, swiping a hand over his sweaty brow.

David walked in front of Gamal and positioned the knife dead center in his chest and braced with both hands.

He pressed play.

“Sam, who is this guy?”

Sam gripped the steering wheel and pressed his lips into a line.

“Sam!”

He didn’t startle easily, but hopped a little in his seat.

“He’s an Egyptian ambassador to the UK,” Sam said quietly

“Are you f*****g kidding? A whole nation will come looking for him. This is insane!” David groaned.

“Lower your f*****g voice when you talk to me.” Sam whipped his head toward the passenger side and his handsome, smooth face was coarse and shrouded in shadows under the moonlight. He turned back to the road. David kept his mouth shut for the moment.

“This needed to be done. He was using diplomatic immunity for all sorts of s**t. We don’t know everything because that’s not our business, but he was—”

“You and Carmine always say that. The people we kill are the worst of the worst,” David said shaking his head.

David thought of how badly this mission had gone. When he pressed play, Gamal’s sternum was crushed against the knife and Carmine had been knocked back by the force. He slid on his back into the doorway of the men’s sitting room. There, Carmine came face to sole with the shiny leather loafers of a shocked patron.

Without a moment’s thought, he grabbed the man’s ankles and pulled him down. While Carmine pounded his fists into the helpless man’s face, David tried to steady himself on the rapidly spreading pool of blood under his feet. He slipped and the two men crumpled to the floor in an inelegant heap. The force of the blow caved the center of Gamal’s chest inward. David panted as he looked into the man’s glossed over gaze. He laid his head on Gamal’s shoulder to catch his breath.

David took tentative steps toward the doorway and saw another man laid on his back with a bloodied face. He’s dead, David thought. Carmine emerged from the main doorway with bloodied knuckles and a wild look in his eyes. His shirt was pulled from his pants, revealing remnants of his stab wound stain but also a fine mist on his chest and face.

David’s face must have registered his disappointment, because Carmine put his hands on his hips and lowered his head in apology. Then a coded knock came on the bathroom door. He gestured for David to join him. Sam was at the door with the bin.

Sam and David wheeled the two bodies into the panel truck then took off into the night. Carmine stayed behind. Getting rid of blood was not as simple as wiping it away. It quickly coagulated to a stubborn jelly. Before David left, he created a drain in the floor to ease the gruesome task. The newly christened Alchemist would have to do the rest.

David leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes. He hoped Carmine would manage alone and that his stab repair had held. Sam seemed to read his thoughts.

“Carmine can take care of himself.”

Sam raked his fingers over his mouth. Even he didn’t believe that. He suddenly jammed on the brakes and the car skidded in the dirt.

“It’s better if you don’t know where the bodies are,” Sam said looking around in the dark, almost as if he expected to see someone emerge from the shadows.

“It’s never good for a conspiracy of men to stay together once the job is done. Better to scatter.”

David looked out the passenger window into a swampy bank only lit by the fading rays of casino marquees.

“Where should I go?” David asked.

“I don’t know. This is fucked right now,” Sam said.

Then a thought crept up and out into the open: Carmine told me where we should meet. It was a certainty.

“Nevermind. I know where to go.”

Color rose into Sam’s cheeks and he let some burden he was carrying go. Getting rid of the bodies seemed the easier part.

“It wasn’t your fault. S**t happens,” Sam said.

He turned and held out his hand for a shake. David grasped it tightly.

“I’ll see you around,” David said.

Sam nodded.

David got out of the car and watched the taillights disappear around a bend bordered with reeds. When Sam was out of sight, he ran.

The sun was rising over the Atlantic Ocean. David sat beside Carmine on a bench overlooking the gently lapping water. The metal was cold in the early morning with a biting chill that made David think it was late November. Carmine sat to his right, looking pale and haggard.

“Did you know Gotham City in Batman was originally in New Jersey?” Carmine asked.

“I didn’t,” David replied.

“Never looked it up. Might be b******t but it sounds nice. We need to be on the map for something other than being New York’s punk kid brother.”

He stifled a cough and brought his arm up to let it out into the crux of his elbow. Bright red blood sprayed onto his white shirt. He shivered. He turned to David. His face was pale and almost chalky with all the color drained out. His lips were peeling.

“I have a son. 15 years old and taller than me. Better than me. No one else knows that.”

Carmine reached into his breast pocket with a grimace and pulled out a shiny metal key. He held it out in his open palm.

“Take it, you b*****d,” he said coughing again.

David took the key and held it a moment to feel the warmth left from Carm…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for the next installment of “Hypnotic”. If you’re just joining, we met David Fuller, a man being housed in a sleep research facility while Dr. Vincent Vogel and his assistant Molly Fitzgerald, examine David’s dreams. Tobias Mancuso sits at the helm recording those dreams and monitoring David during test runs.

In chapter four, we got a glimpse of David’s life before the facility and of what triggers his rage. We continue in this chapter with a major breakthrough.

5.

Molly ran as fast as her pencil skirt would allow with her strawberry waves bouncing behind her. She zipped around the corner, gripping the wall to steady herself, then down a long corridor. This was it and she could barely contain her excitement.

Molly thought about the span of this experiment, of when it first occurred to her to use dream states to implant information back in graduate school. It was no more than a sci fi movie fantasy but she told Vincent about her idea. He pondered on it, as he usually did, rocking in a high back chair with his fanned out fingers pressed together and his sloped nose planted between them like a knock off Sherlock Holmes. Vincent was tall, gangly, and brilliant, so at least he looked the part.

She knew that in his hands, the idea would be sculpted into something well beyond her capability, but she had to be careful. Unlike the famous detective, who refused credit once a case concluded, Vincent had a way of intertwining himself in a project until the two could not be distinguished. He became the project and everyone who didn’t think so made their way out. She wouldn’t do that so easily.

What one had to do was pay close attention and map the direction Vincent was headed so he could be carefully diverted. He had to believe he was driving and that everyone else was a passenger. If he thought he was fighting for control, he got aggressive and that’s when things got uncomfortable. So far the polite deception had worked and he trusted her. It took longer than she wanted to for him to accept suggestions, but things had a way of failing when he didn’t listen.

While brilliant, Vincent was just another arrogant prick convinced of his own specialness, but what was actually special was the seed, her ideas and her direction. He was an overgrown drone.

She threw open Vincent’s office door without knocking.

“You have to see this,” she said panting.

Back in her office, she scrubbed through surveillance video. Vincent sat down quietly behind her.

“I usually check the video before we wipe it and I caught something.”

The video paused on a seated David in his room with an empty food tray on the table. His head was leaned back against the wall. His eyes were open. She pressed play. He jerked his head and upper body as if propelled by some force in the wall, then rocked back and forth on the chair. He scanned the room with the wondrous look of someone discovering a new and interesting place. He looked to his left and squinted. His lips mouthed the words to something he read from thin air.

“What’s he doing?” Vincent asked.

Molly didn’t answer.

David looked to his right and appeared to speak with someone. The exchange ended and David stared off into the opposite wall above his bed. Molly scrubbed forward. David stood up and mimicked a short stair climb as his right hand rested on a railing no one could see.

“Molly, what the f**k kind of charade is this? Molly!”

“I think he’s acting out a dream. Most times he dozes off after breakfast but he started miming things. I’ve watched this like fifteen times and there’s a moment when his eyes close and his body loses some muscle tone. Then his eyes open and he starts this s**t.”

Vincent gaped. One puzzle had already been solved under his nose and he felt a tangle of emotions swelling inside him. He could not decide which parts were pleasant but his heart was ready to thud straight out of his chest. He scooted closer to the screen. The revelation was dizzying: the project would be able to move to the final stage.

“David is probably ready for the field. We can get Toby to create some mission with only a few rooms. Wheel him into the big room after he’s sedated?” Molly ventured.

“No, not yet. We should start changing things. We need to develop his senses now,” Vincent said. More acute senses meant the dreams would be more real and in themselves, become a reality. It could then be manipulated at will.

Molly turned to the video and smirked, satisfied by where the experiment was heading next. David was seated on his bed talking to thin air, but really, he was at a bagel shop, meeting with Carmine for the first time.

The gray walls of David’s room were warmed by a dull amber light, but David remained asleep, exhausted from his test runs. He had been tasked with a number of odd missions, from changing the colors of flowers in a field with his mind to finding his way through mazes. Vincent said he was honing skills in his dream world and they were making good progress. David was taking control, he said, and would have more satisfying sleep. He would finally figure his life out and stop self sabotaging. The insomnia would be gone.

Still, it made him uncomfortable to think how he was whittled down to a stump in Vincent’s presence. It wasn’t a matter of physical strength because David could easily take him down, but of that crushing influence that manipulated his will in the dream room. He would only recall it much later and feel ashamed.

In his quiet hours, of which there were many, in between reading and the occasional w**k, he thought about his fire. He thought about how angry he could get when someone pecked at him and the heat rose from his belly and into his chest. He hadn’t felt that since coming to facility. Maybe it was good to be calm so he could be prepared for the outside, for when a boss sassed him or maybe he encountered some a******s on the highway—

He rubbed his face briskly with both hands. He never got angry without a reason and he never made the first strike, that was for sure. It might be time to call up the fire and resist.

David’s breakfast came as usual with the slide of the pass through and clack of a metal tray being laid on it. He was sprawled on his bed, disinterested in the meal for the moment until something caught his attention: the smell. He perked up and leaned on his elbow. Pale yellow eggs speckled with black pepper practically gleamed from his vantage point, but it was merely the centerpiece. He scooted out of bed and grabbed the tray, folding down his table and setting it on top.

To the right of the eggs were lumps of dark green spinach with pops of red from cubed bell pepper. He wafted garlic off the spinach and a vinegary heat from the eggs. At the top left was a spongy square of bread, probably challah he thought, with a thin film of butter on top. At the top right were slick slices of peaches in a small pool of juice.

He stared at the tray for a few minutes. He took in every color, shape, and scent. The memories burned into a brain that had been starved of stimuli for five months. He could hardly believe how heightened his senses were. He was aquiver with interest but was barely hungry.

David’s hand met the smooth sides of the tray and it was warm. He ran his fingers across the rim and exhaled deeply.

The taste was another experience altogether. He let each morsel linger on his tongue before chewing with his eyes closed. The crust of the bread crunched under his teeth and the slivers of peaches practically slipped down his throat whole.

He leaned his head against the wall after finishing and though he didn’t smoke, a menthol was probably due right then. That and a cocktail made especially for him by Sam. Maybe something with pineapple juice, coconut rum, and blue curaçao in one of those curvy glasses. It sounded so good he could taste it.

David drifted off into his thoughts and could not tell if he had been asleep until a knock came at the door.

“David!” the voice whispered. “It’s me, Sam. Can you hear me…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for chapter four of Hypnotic. In chapter three, David’s allies came to the rescue, both inside and outside the dream world. We resume with who he was before the experiments.

4.

David grabbed his lunch pail out of the fridge and put it on the table next to Janine. She was dead set on completing a game of Candy Crush and didn’t look up. Her tousled hair was in a ponytail tucked into the back of a well worn ball cap. She learned the art of blending into a boys club where she neither got harassed nor included. It was this unsexed limbo where she existed as a neither, invisible.

Janine’s elbows were planted on the circular table and bright, flickering colors danced across her pale face. David knew her lunch was either long scarfed down or ignored completely until break was almost up. One or the other.

The break room was a dull and virtually colorless room with grimy Formica countertops in a regrettable light brown and a white fridge probably on extended loan from someone’s garage. One would assume it was full of beer instead of lunchboxes and an aging box of baking soda. Next to the fridge was a silver microwave that no one used because it had never been cleaned.

David laid paper towel down as his place mat, then zipped open his lunch pail and took out a sandwich and chips. Janine exited the game and nodded in his direction.

“Good game?” he asked.

“No, an unfortunate addiction,” she replied grimly. She laid the phone down in front of her.

“I hear that. Where you headed after this?”

“North Carolina. I’ve done it before.” She yawned and swept her elbows out to lay her head on the table.

“You’re just headed near Pittsburgh, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s quick. But I’ve never been out there.”

“Really? Like Pittsburgh?”

“Nah, the state.”

She scoffed and rubbed a hand against her cheek. Her nails were short with a thin layer of grime underneath.

“I usually take the longer hauls down to Florida or Louisiana so I’ve been all along the East coast and the South. Never been to PA.”

“It’s like a hour from here,” she said.

“So what? Never had a reason to go.”

“What? There’s Philadelphia, Amish country, there’s farms, Crayola… that’s so lame,” she said.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said casting his eyes down to his lunch.

“I think it does. It’s a bordering state.”

“It’s not a big deal, Janine,” he said, his annoyance ascending.

“Jesus, what other basic human things haven’t you done?”

He widened his eyes at her, squaring his shoulders. Her smirk evaporated like steam and her mouth gaped in an unspoken apology. She was like that, though, always pressing someone over some little thing, digging her dirty nails in needlessly. But when he saw her shrink away, he relaxed. It wouldn’t do to embody a threat. It wouldn’t work in his favor anyway. He folded his hands on the break room table.

David had done this often over the years, kept this heat from burning his insides. It was probably some vestige of childhood he couldn’t place, something he only remembered in his body. He had never snapped thankfully but he had been close many times. It was the tiny cuts that got to him, not a drunk throwing a punch or an ex spewing their heartbreak on the street in front of strangers. It was the mockery, the smug look of victory when someone finally got to you.

He remembered this now and quieted himself. Janine did not want to hurt him, but he had to flip that switch and behave.

“A friend told me he had a college professor who was born, schooled, lived, and died in the same 5 square miles. Sometimes its choice, other times chance. The guy was from PA, by the way and had never been anywhere else.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel weird about it.”

They sat in silence as he finished his lunch and she busied herself looking in every direction except his. Tiring of her fidgeting and expectant, furtive glances, he spoke up.

“It’s fine. But it’s really weird you’re talking since you don’t even have a passport!”

“Oh, screw you!” Janine shoved him playfully, but was mostly relieved he wasn’t mad at her.

“Nah, you were getting on me about not being to PA, but I’ve actually been outside the US.”

He reached into his back pocket and thumbed through his wallet. When he reached what he was looking for, he hunched down onto the table. She mirrored his stance and they stared at each other in amusement like two lion cubs ready to pounce on each other and roll in grasslands.

David slipped a £5 note out of his wallet and popped out of his chair, slamming down the note.

“Bam!”he said triumphantly.

She threw her head back and shrieked with excitement. The raucous between the two escalated and soon they were both on their feet with comedic jabs and pats on the back. Before long, they were stretched out on their chairs, panting and wiping away tears.

This is what he always clawed his way back to: that lightness of forgetting. But he did not forget. Just as that heat inside him flared for reasons he didn’t consciously know, all those tiny offenses piled up ready to feed that flame.

“Oh my god, this is why I should never be on shift with you,” David said.

“It’s definitely a problem,” she agreed.

They both looked up simultaneously to see their break was over. It was time for both to take their overnight assignments for supply deliveries in different directions. They packed up their things and walked together to the docks.

“Just take 95 to 78, then 81. More scenic and less a******s than 80. The state cops don’t shoot radar like in Jersey so you can make good time.”

“Yeah, it’ll be a breeze,” he assured her.

“Oh, definitely,” she said raising an arm to give him a hug.

“Call me when you get there, J.”

“Sure thing,” she replied.

The neon lights of Carlsbad Logistics shone blue light onto the pavement made slick from an overnight drizzle. Some spots reflected multicolored swirls from oil that mixed with the water. It was beautiful and calming. He stood there a while not exactly watching Janine board her rig and pull safely from the dock, but the pools of water and oil awash with light.

It was pitch black along the stretch of Pennsylvania highway. Must be a time of night for only truckers and demons, he thought. The air was crisp with traces of winter but the day would be warm by the time he got to his destination. He opened the window and wafted the scent of deep woods with the occasional sting of manure.

A pair of headlights ascended a hill behind him, rapidly closing the distance between them. He looked in the side mirror and squinted against the car’s high beams. He adjusted himself in the seat and placed his hands firmly on both sides of the wheel.

The car pulled up beside him and two men rolled by in a cherry red convertible with the top down. Their hair whipped around their heads like strange halos, stabbing the midnight air. David glanced over and caught the gaze of the passenger. He made a fist and pumped his arm, signaling for David to sound the horn.

David hated that. He could get that lame request from schoolchildren and hip grandmas alike. In the beginning, he let that request drive this strange twinge of guilt. It was stupid. But there was something in their eyes that demanded it. He could feel it burrowing into him and it twisted his will until he gave in.

Now he looked at the two men beside him and felt the passenger’s eyes burrow in. He didn’t know why, but it made him angry now. The rage formed deep in his belly, rising up as heat into his chest. His body jittered to dissipate the tension.

The driver tooted his horn playfully and the passenger again pumped his arm. Before, he would have wished for some glittering skyline or multicolored fall foliage to give his eyes somewhere else to land, to break the awkwardness. But there was nothing out here at this hour. He was alone, in the dark, with two eager sets of eyes compelling him to act.

David looked straight ahead and sped up a little to get ahead of the car. The pair persisted, pulling next to him and shouting. The passenger scooted up and out of his seat, waving both a…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for chapter three of Hypnotic. In chapter two, we learned that David volunteered for the sleep study, but not yet why. We resume with a new dreamscape.

3.

“We’re going to send you into the next test run,” Vincent said. He was standing next to a reclined David in the dream room. He put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it. David nodded and turned up the corner of his mouth into a half smile.

“Look at the yellow square. You’re going to descend smoothly and identify your target. You will be given information about how to accomplish the mission. You will not leave until it is done. Do you understand?”

His glazed eyes fixated on the yellow square as his body relaxed and his eyelids drooped. Vincent held up his index finger to the control room and the induction started. It was more fluid now which made his subject more compliant. That was the important part. No one could be thrust in while in a state of panic. You had to work twice as hard to undo the damage.

Vincent cocked his head at the now sedated subject and could hardly believe his luck. Of all the subjects tested, David was the only one so far to incorporate advanced dream control. It would not be long before he was ready for what came next.

He left and did not bother standing by in the control room. There was no telling how long the run would take andhe had other experiments to consider. The woman in wing F was interesting. Her dreams were like watching a video streaming service. A man in wing Y had particularly strong senses of taste and smell. Back in his office, Vincent swiveled in his high back chair to face color monitors of six other subjects in identical rooms to David. Each had a talent and would be knit together to complete the project. All the pieces would come together perfectly.

David materialized in front of a glass door overlaid with wood slats. The word “Marcel’s” was etched in gold on the display window. He looked down at his outfit. Navy blue slacks, a cream and blue striped shirt, and heather gray waistcoat. His shoes were black and dull. He rocked forward and back on them. Comfortable. It made him think he had to look good from the waist up. He glanced at himself in the glass. He had a tapered fade with twisted coils at the top. His beard was gone.

“Are you coming in?” He looked at the lithe woman who had stepped out of the door with one foot on the sidewalk. Her hair was jet black and bone straight, cutting across the breast of a black dress that looked like a suit jacket.

“David! Hello?!” She impatiently waved him in. “It’s Friday, so I need you focused. We’re booked solid.”

David glanced around at the restaurant. There was a long wood bar neatly lined with stools. Small tables peppered the remaining space. Behind the bar was frosted glass illuminated from above and below by light strips. He note the time on a clock opposite the bar. 3:00pm.

“Do you need me to tell you where to go to?”

“If you could? I… uh, I didn’t look at the schedule.”

“You’re downstairs with Sam and Amir.”

He looked back at the clock. It was 3:01. The big hand moved. He sighed and looked back at the woman. At the hostess post was a stack of business cards and tablet with seating arrangements. The screen was surprisingly vivid and he could easily read the names on each reservation. He knitted his brow. This was an exciting, albeit disorienting amount of realism.

He turned left down a steep set of stairs into a lower level with brick walls and stone floors just outside the bank of guest tables. At the end of a rectangular room was a short bar and two men prepping for service.

Sam, he mouthed.

“I saw you at the bus stop. You were a typical space cadet and didn’t even see me wave,” Sam said as David approached.

He shook his head as if he glitched. “Did you?”

“Yeah, by the mall.”

David had begun to call them certainties, the things he knew to be true without asking. The information was preloaded. Sam was making reference to an event that occurred in 1997 in a previous dream, but now it was 2024. And this bar was in New York City. He knew this as he knew his own name.

He looked at Amir and knew he had an Iranian mother and French father. He grew up in Lebanon for six years before a regional conflict forced the family to move to France. They eventually settled in Maryland before he moved to New York in his early 20s.

David looked at Sam and drew a blank. File not found. Instead he was drawn in by the graceful movements of his hands during the bar prep. He could work in a 3 foot space with ease by just pivoting on a heel. Everything was laid out within reach and his hands glided where they needed to without even looking. Light blue shirt. Suspenders. Tasteful mustache. Easy smile.

“Can I help you?” Sam asked. “You’re staring.”

He cast his eyes down but David could tell he was amused, if not flattered.

“What do you think people will order tonight?”

“Probably the apple pie martini.”

At another time, the flirtatious look would have drawn David in completely, but he was preoccupied with the feeling there was something he needed to do, something he had forgotten.

A heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder. David whipped his head around to see the man he spoke to at the bagel shop.

“Carmine Delavecchio,” David said automatically.

“Yeah. Don’t you f*****g forget it.” Carmine cackled. “You ready for tonight? This is the big test.”

“I’m pretty sure I got this. No big deal.”

He looked into Carmine’s plump and friendly face. His bald head was shaved smooth and under thick but trimmed eyebrows, his eyes were a forest green that glimmered like the surface of a pearl. That’s the detail.

He wore a crisp white shirt with a double breasted black jacket that draped on him like jewelry. In the dim light of the bar, he was more sultan than server.

“I’m glad you’re here, Carmine.” His chest tightened. He was grateful.

Carmine’s lips were curled into a playful grin. “You’re too f*****g sentimental sometimes. It’s alright. Nice to be needed.”

In the dream room a tear streamed back into his hair.

“Holy s**t,” Toby whispered. “Look at this.”

Molly scooted beside her and watched David’s changing hormone levels.

“Dopamine and oxytocin are up. Cortisol is down.”

“He’s emotional. Push a tiny bit of sedative to calm him. I don’t want him to wake up.”

“He won’t,” Toby said firmly.

“How do you know?”

“Watch.”

“You see that lady by the bar? Red sweater?”

“With the highball glass.”

“Yeah. She’s the target. Sam is going to make her a drink but the guy next to her is one of her bodyguards. He’ll be watching Sam very closely. You need to sneak beside her and drop in this pill.

Carmine opened his hand to reveal a small metal box with a nondescript white pill inside. There was no inscription.

“Carmine, we’re going to roofie this woman?” David groaned.

“Whoa, whoa. The dossier I gave you was not there for leisurely reading. She’s a human trafficker. Lowest of the low. This is a tender mercy.”

“Your buddy Sam will recommend the apple martini and some concoction with bourbon. She hates bourbon. But she likes a dirty blonde,” he said elbowing David.

Then his smile dropped as he handed David the pillbox. David slipped it into his suit jacket pocket.

“The pill is a delayed release cardiotoxic agent. Very dangerous and very effective. You’ll take this pill and drop it into her drink. It’ll be a cloudy drink with lots of foam and bits of apple on the bottom. Should dissolve unnoticed. It’s also tasteless.”

David nodded and rubbed his hands together nervously. This was it.

“Samuel Verdan is your partner on this who will save the operation if it starts going sideways. We call him The Magician. You have to trust him. If this all work out, the coroner will think she had heart failure.”

David nodded again and Carmine gripped his arm. “Be cool. You can do this.”

He stared over at the woman, who was laughing loudly with a companion at the bar. Sam was right behind her, cleaning a long stem glass and looking out onto the steady stream of patrons.

David walked to the bar as if he were th…

Welcome back to The Listening Room for chapter two of Hypnotic. You can go back to listen (or read) chapter one to catch up.

We encountered a scary descent into a dreamworld for David and a suggestion by tech Toby about how to improve mission results. In this episode, we see what comes from the stillness.

2.

The hinges of the pass through creaked open at the bottom third of the door. A silver food tray lay in the opening.

“Meal,” a voice said dully.

David got off his bed and walked over to get the tray. He brought it to his fold out table against the wall and pulled up a stool. He could tell it was morning in the windowless room since the lights brightened and dimmed on a timer. Even bathed in golden yellow photons of supposed mid morning, it was dreary and dull against the cement walls.

The food met caloric and nutrient needs but nothing else. Protein, carbohydrates, vegetables, and fruit were partitioned neatly on the tray.  At least there was salt and some pepper but not much else. Vincent had assured him that keeping his environment bland meant he was more suggestible in dreams.

He plunged a fork into the square piece of meat product and took a bite. Not bad, but not that great. Just the routine. There was no television or radio permitted, only selected literature that did not include horror. He wondered if this is really what it took to get results, to be starved of flavor and color just to meet the project goals, but also his own.

His own goals. He pressed his eyes shut for a moment to remember why he even let someone lock him in a room day and night, asking questions, taking readings, taking blood and piss. At the end of this, he would not only achieve what he’d set out to do, but maybe helped someone else. Maybe thousands of people. That made him crack a smile.

He could call his parents with good news for once instead of being the last in the litter. He bristled at the thought, of still clawing toward who he was supposed to be. It felt juvenile. A hundred talents and not one to make a solid living. But he could never latch on to a world he thought was fake. Debt was numbers on a screen and interest, arbitrary. Career climbs meant the same contortion scripted from similar playbooks. Find someone to open a door for you, then walk through. Nonsense.

David rebelled with every cell against what he was supposed to do and so he lived in dreams. In dreams, people were pushed by the wind down a path or could finally say what they meant with conviction. They could be strong and capable, driven by some imperceptible energy. He levitated once because he wanted to and walked across the air down the halls of his high school.

He shoveled the food into his mouth and was still deflating a bloated cheek full of peas when he opened the pass through door and set the tray on it. He snatched up a book of poetry and sat back on the stool to read. He flipped to the bookmarked page and read a piece about rediscovering the places you already know.

“A Day of Never by Gale Kearney. Hmm,” he muttered.

David stopped a moment to contemplate the unnatural, penetrating quiet. There was a low electric buzz in the stillness that put him in a trance. He became acutely aware of his limbs in a way could hardly explain, only that it was detachment. His conciseness drifted outside his body  and he would stare at his hands, watching his finger curl and uncurl like foreign things.

It was month three of the same circular journeys inside himself, of a gray and sterile routine. He tried to be grateful instead of bored, but it was hard when the hours crawled. In two hours, the door would be unlocked and he was free to use the gym. His room was large enough to be comfortable but not for any serious exercise. Opposite his table was a extra long twin bed with a beige metal frame and standard issue gray sheets. Behind the headboard was a dividing wall concealing a toilet, small sink and mirror. At the foot of the bed was a inset cabinet where he kept an extra set of clothes.

The only way to consume time during these hours was in his mind. He had done that a lot before he entered the facility. At his first job as a security guard at a toy store, he wandered into a world behind his eyes until a manger noticed people stealing on his shift. That was the first of quite a few times he was let go for the same inattentiveness.

David lay his head back against the cool wall and his room faded away into a bus stop by the Greenwood Mall in Edison. To his left was an elderly woman in a navy blue custodian uniform and tote bag pressed against her side. The faded logo of Bamberger’s was stamped across it in styled text. Defiant tufts of grass poked out along the curb in front of him.

There was a moment of confusion amixed with a realization slipping away. He looked around and the air was filled with fine dust scattering afternoon sun. He didn’t know how he knew it, but it was 1997. He rocked back and forth on the bench as if to confirm it would squeak and it did. He stifled a guffaw. What a strange proof.

Then a faded brown, boxy sedan rumbled by and there was no doubt. He heard the boom of an expensive trunk stereo rattling the car’s panels. The driver was blasting a song David knew well and he bobbed his head instinctively, recited the lines that trailed out the driver’s open window.

When the car passed, David noticed a man dressed in a dark suit and wide-brimmed hat across the street with a high shrub behind him. The man wasn’t moving, just staring at the ground. David squinted and saw he was clean-shaven. Other cars passed and blocked his view before he was able to focus on the man again. Brown hair?

Suddenly another man scooted beside him to his right and excused himself for squeezing into too small a space on the bench.

“Hey pal,” the man said.

David turned to him questioningly, “How’s it going?”

The man stared straight ahead and his smooth round cheek barely moved as he talked.

“I have information, but we can’t talk here.”

“Oh yeah, then where?” David kept his eyes on the man across the street.

“There’s a bagel place on the main drag in Fords.”

“Liberty?”

“Yeah. Meet me there in an hour.”

The man rose with his bookbag and slung it over his shoulder. He plucked a phone from his pocket and answered.

“Nah, I’m by the bus stop. I’ll meet you by the hibachi place. No, no, not tonight, I’m watchin’ my cholesterol.” He let out a halting snicker into the phone and walked away.

It was that detail that broke the veneer. No one on the street had a mobile phone in 1997, much less one without buttons that didn’t need a dial up tone to access the internet. The phone use was for misdirection and in that moment, his brain defaulted to the easiest way for anyone to exit quickly: an important call. Only he was still in elementary school in 1997, when someone could not be reached if they weren’t near a landline. He had not been old enough for a pager either. A beeping pager and a nearby payphone would have filled the gap better.

David didn’t want to dwell on it. That preoccupation threw him out of a dream more quickly. He was still working on that. Each time a trial. Each task a skill. Had he heard that somewhere?

On the bench where his new companion had sat was a white envelope. David tucked it into his pocket, then looked across the street to see the suit clad stranger was gone.

The bagel shop menu was standard fare. David ordered a bacon, egg, and cheese on an everything with a side of home fries and a coffee. It was a proper New Jersey meal if there was one. He looked at his watch. 45 minutes. His companion would show up shortly, but didn’t have to starve waiting.

He heard the dunk of a wire basket into hot oil and the sizzle of eggs and bacon on the griddle. Besides the teenage waitress and a young man who wasn’t much older, the place was deserted. Weekday morning, probably.

David sat facing the door and looked out on the sleepy street outside. The waitress slid a cup of coffee in front of him and set down a bowl of creamer packages. He flipped…

Welcome listeners and readers! This is the first chapter of The Listening Room presentation “Hypnotic”. We meet David Fuller who is a test subject of Dr. Vincent Vogel, a man doing disturbing research into dreams.

1.

“You know, the closest we get to the feeling of death is the moment before we fall asleep. It’s an utterly delightful, warm, and peaceful transition we do not study enough.”

Were it not for the man reclined with his arms outstretched on a modified exam chair with restraints, Vincent would have been mistaken for a lecture hall professor with his hands clasped behind his back as he paced. He shuffled his feet against the cement floor and glanced down, oddly pensive in front of what looked like a hostage in an interrogation room.

“You see, you are actively engaged in processing, whether it be how the day made you feel, thoughts on what’s for dinner, perhaps the next movie you’d like to see. Then there is a slow, imperceptible depression of higher level function before you start slipping away. Until the very instant your brain converts to delta waves, or light sleep, dozing if you will, you believe you’re awake. It’s only a groan or a nudge that clues you in.”

The low buzz of overhead fluorescent lights filled the consuming quiet between Vincent’s words. David lay against the stiff gray-blue padding of the exam chair, which pressed into the back of his knees where it hinged. The chair also bowed at his lower back, forcing him to sink his body into the hollow. He squirmed against a developing cramp.

His head was strapped down tight enough so he could not look left or right, only straight ahead at a white wall with a yellow color block at the center. Behind him was a two-way mirror with a control room beyond it. Technicians had paused the audiovisual recording to allow Vincent his monologue. Even if David could crane his neck to stare into the dark, rectangular panel, no one would help him.

David panted, staring at Vincent with pleading eyes. He dragged his tongue over his dry, quivering lips and pursed them as if to speak. To beg. But all he could muster was a choking cough as the words got lost on the way out.

Vincent opened a drawer under the exam chair and pulled out a rubber mouth guard. He roughly fitted it into David’s mouth before giving him a wry smile and roving over David’s face with a pitying stare. But like clouds streaming past to reveal a blazing sun, his face brightened.

“David, I am on the cusp of something extraordinary. My hope is to suspend someone in the stage right before they sleep, to reach out and touch that sleep.” He clamped the air with his hand as if catching an insect, then crushing it.

“You’re helping me do that. I want to see what precisely is severing all those connections at the moment you fall asleep, so I can keep them tethered and induce a waking dream, an active dream. Imagine all society would be able to work through in their dreams. Imagine therapy through waking dreams, recreating a circumstance and making a new choice.” Vincent paced and continued lecturing his immobile subject, who tracked his movements with a mixture of horror and stubborn hope.

“You’re going to help me, David,” said Vincent, tugging on the straps holding him to the chair. “We’re going to see exactly how your brain works.”

David’s eyes welled up and his body quaked. He had read about horrific sleep experiments performed on prisoners of war and death row inmates. In mapping the sleep and wake mechanisms, researchers disconnected people from their reality. Subjects eventually could not tell the difference. Worse yet, there was no epilogue for unlucky survivors.

“Sorry about the… accommodations,” Vincent said gesturing to the chair. “We’re not fancy here. Gotta take what we can get. This is from an internist’s office. I would’ve liked a dentist’s chair instead. I want you know I’m working on it.”

David nodded against the head restraint. Vincent always kept his promises, especially when it came to the little things that mattered. The thought brought a momentary reprieve and his back sank into the hollow of the chair. He jerked against a cramp.

Vincent swabbed David’s arm with alcohol and prepared a syringe. The injection was like a drop of water splashing against cement, nearly noiseless, before a pipe burst. Onset was rapid before David would feel he was lifted out of his own mind into a sea of blackness.

“Look at the yellow square. Look at it, David,” he said flatly. “You know what to do when you go under. Find Mr. Feldman. Find him!” he hissed.

David’s eyes fixed on the square. A slow, warm wave washed over his body. He suddenly grimaced and fought back a creeping, nauseous feeling in the back of his throat. Breathe, he said to himself. It was the top of a cliff before free fall. Suddenly he was floating, his body light and tingling before going limp. He winced against the lights and suddenly could not remember why he was struggling. His breathing slowed and his eyelids were heavy with the promise of sleep. Wonderful sleep.

Vincent leaned over next to his ear and whispered, “Into the fog.”

He rapidly descended into an awaiting abyss.

David clamped his eyes shut, then blinked against the glare of the lights. He sat up from the exam chair drenched in sweat.  He leaned over and put his head in his cupped hands. It’s so hard. It’s so much. He shook himself and swung his bare feet down to touch the floor.

He had a more comfortable exam chair like Vincent had promised, not with restraints, but plush supports that fitted the shape of his body. He went on another mission that night but did not find his target. He could not manage to alter the dreamscape this time and the target slipped away. He’d have to try again another night.

Molly stepped into the control room and looked out at a now shirtless David stretching and twisting his body. He slowly removed electrodes from his chest and arms, then peeled away the Velcro strap under his chin, and removed the electrode cap.

“You’re going to burn a hole in his back,” Toby said. She side eyed Molly and shook her head.

Toby had three large screens at her console with blue text and graphs streaming over black backgrounds. She scanned the information and highlighted points of interest for further review. She pulled up a templated document and began fulling in the night’s observations. Molly was seated at a second console waiting for results to be compiled for comparison to a previous test run.

“How close did he get to the target?”

“Closer than the last time but he’s… not there yet.”

Molly frowned. The test runs had begun in earnest weeks before but David had made little progress. He got stuck at similar points in the dreamscapes and rarely moved past them before eventually waking empty-handed.

“Can I offer a suggestion? I mean, I know you and Dr. Vogel are the brains, but I wanted to tell you what I noticed.”

“Go ahead,” Molly said absently, scrolling through the telemetry data on heart rate and brain activity.

Toby sighed. “I don’t want to liken this to a video game —“

“But you’re about to liken it to a video game,” Molly interrupted. She scoffed and kept scrolling through the data.

“You sent him in brute force on missions where he had no skills and no tools. He also had no allies. It’s just one of those things in gaming. Before you go on some big quest, you have to get familiar with your surroundings, look in your closet, talk to villagers, and have an inventory of your food and weapons.”

“Sorry, where are you going with this?”

“Your hero needs to start small. He needs to acquire basic skills before doing anything. I don’t mean to s**t on your experimental design, but—“

Molly had turned toward her and crossed her arms on her chest.

“But you didn’t scale this. You had a good idea but have taken this hurried way of approaching it.” She fell short of calling it boneheaded.

She swiveled away from the console and rested her forearms on her thighs, facing Molly.

“David needs signposts. He needs to recognize where he is and he needs faces …

You’re in the Listening Room, a podcast series by The FLARE Substack. I’m Chevanne, the voice behind both.

If you’ve been a fan for a while or at least gone through my podcast archive, you know that each year on October 3rd, I share an audio presentation. Today continues that tradition as both a celebration of a medium I’ve become more passionate about over time, audio performance, and of my birthday.

I’m 40. Saying it out loud feels heavy because this time felt so far away when I was up at night watching X-Files reruns or reading Fear Street novels as a teen. Time is no longer a slug, but an arrow and I feel it.

My birthday has always been a big event with high expectations, mostly of myself. In recent years, however, I haven’t been able to meet them because it is after all, just another day. I remember telling someone it had never rained on my birthday. It was always sunny, until one year it wasn’t. As I got older, big plans for solo vacations were rapidly scaled back by my own fear and sometimes family obligation.

Was this day a happy event? I’d spent a long time thinking so but a therapy session revealed I was unwittingly raging against this feeling of being in the same place, of doing the same things. I was disappointed but showed up every October 3rd as if the sadness never came.

This year, rather than work myself up with expectations of this big day, I’m changing the narrative. One relates to feeling like I’m in the same place. If I cannot be somewhere new, I can find something new in the places I already go. I’m hoping to lean into that shift and adjust my expectations. In the end, it’s better for me.

I’m also making October 3rd a beginning. Nothing has to be formed and ready but it’s a good day to get started. I’m starting now.

At the end of the show transcript are two deals for a Forever Founder and Forever Fan, both 40% off for life.

Now let’s get to the fiction.

In this season, we meet David, who signs up for an extended sleep study to find a potential cure for his insomnia. He adopts a rigid routine designed by a researcher and his assistant who use certain cues to induce his sleep. David doesn’t know he is being studied in other ways as well.

We go into his dreams but it’s uncertain if he’ll be able to leave them, as the waking a sleeping worlds become two sides of a coin.

To note, this story is still under construction. It’s a potentially complex topic I’m working through so the goings may be slow. Feel free to email [email protected] with questions or insight.

Episodes will premiere each week on Tuesdays at 2pm starting October 15th. Hope to see you there.

Happy listening!

I’m offering two deals for founding and yearly subscriptions starting today. As always, thanks for your support of this newsletter and of my work.

Put in $120 for your founder discount. I’ll send a confirmation to approve the Forever Founder status.

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