There was this man Tommy saw.
At first, in his head. Completely asleep. A strange man with brown hair that kind of gave him a premonition that he was being analyzed.
All Tommy remembered seeing was the face. No body. No soul.
Before Tommy found a therapy group, with a strange circle of broken people wearing physical and mental scars, he would have assumed that it was just his brain making up images. Which for Tommy, seemed to be about a man's face. And waking up with an erection, Tommy had to tell himself: It's just a dream. I always wake up with a boner.
The group that he got involved with, a therapy group in the city's slums—they talked about things Tommy didn't know people talked about.
"Everything is recycled." The therapist of the group was named Kenny. "Our dreams use things we've seen before. Nothing inside our head is naturally created on our own."
"But I've seen things before they've happened. Or people before I've met them—" A man with scars over his arms and legs said.
The facilitator talked with him about Empathy, about how people have an energy that becomes linked with one another. Sometimes people really do share a mental link.
Which made Tommy wonder: Is everything in my dream real?
The rest of the group talked. There were therapies the instructor had prepared: music therapy, art therapy, meditation therapy. The group voted for art. Someone in the group named Chuckie said, "Fuck yeah I love to finger paint!" And while everyone was setting up canvases, and while the painting was taking place, Tommy thought about his dreams.
Mostly sex dreams. Teachers he had slept with. Classmates he had slept with. Tommy wouldn't immediately point a finger and assume they were in his dream, or that his dreams were real.
When he was younger, and he saw a woman having sex, and Tommy felt like he was having sex, it felt like a sex dream. Or maybe it was premonition that he was going to seduce that woman.
Maybe that's why his life was lonely growing up. Why the gang focused on him and targeted him.
The canvas in front of him, it wasn't anything more than a mash of colors. The paint was in a small white container, with separate spaces for individual samples to be poured in.
Tommy didn't know what to paint, not until he remembered the man in his dreams.
YOU ARE READING
The Midnight City Social Hour
Genel KurguThe first prank is an adult dating site to siphon money from the recruit. The third prank gives the website access to their customers' webcams. Because everyone in the gang gets hazed. Tommy watches all his past pain epitomized as he spends his days...
