The Dream Man

CASTON

A man stares across the aisle at a tall dark haired woman. The woman stands abruptly, presumably making her way to the bathroom at the back of the bus.

She tilts her head back towards the man, eyes wide in horror. The man smirks and licks his lips in satisfaction as she collapses and starts siezing on the floor. He kneels and looms over the woman, placing two fingers dead center on the woman's forehead. The color from the woman's dazzling blue eyes drains until the iris turns a pallid, milky white.

A pity really. Such a waste of potential.

The man watches with detatchment as the woman's memories, thoughts, dreams, and aspirations course through his mind. Where are her secret fears?

Thumbing through her mind and soul, the detatchment turns to frustration. Fuck. He has to meet up with the others soon, and he has yet to meet today's quota. There is one other problem too. The woman's body is already disintegrating and her soul is already starting to flee. He must hurry to the Core.

Caston Dunwick was once an oridinary man with oridinary dreams. He had a family. A wife. A daughter. Even a dog.

But that was another life. Their faces are no longer a surface memory, but rather like a mirage of another man's life.

He lost himself when he died, but his merciful boss found him. Though he has never met his boss, he has heard tales of his deeds from others like himself. His boss offers clarity from the distraction of life. Caston and the rest of the crew would follow him anywhere.

One hand is pressed against the woman's left breast, when her hand shoots out and grabs him by the throat.

In that same moment the driver slams the brakes. Caston and the woman are thrown forward to the front of the bus. He instinctively uses his own body to sheild the woman from impact. His upper arms and back are lacerated by broken shards of windsheild and they both tumble to the street in front of the bus.

The woman lands on top of him and the so insignificant driver screams profanities at the both of them. “Save that perverted display for your goddamn bedroom, ya couple of sluts!”

In spite of it all, he is once again drawn to those shining blue eyes, no longer soulless and very much alive.

She leans in close, fangs bared.

He reaches a groping hand out, wanting to pluck those crystalline eyes straight from their bloody sockets.

She leans in even closer, her fanged grimace growing even wider.

His fingers almost grasp the corneas.

She disappears in a cloud of red vapor.

Well, fuck.

The driver comes running out of the bus waving his arms wildly and cursing.

Caston straightens up, the lacerations already healing. “I guess you'll have to do. Gotta make the boss happy.”

“Is your boss a pimp? Stay the fuck away from me man whore!”

He advances on the driver who becomes visibly shaken at his calm and slow approach, but does not cease his screaming. The more fired up he gets, the more his southern roots begin to show.

“You goddamn cuck! You done nearly cost me my job. I'm calling the sheriff. You damn coward attacking an innocent lady like-”

He collapses to the rain soaked asphalt, Caston looming over him. Colorless eyes roll back to reveal whites.

“Go to sleep now. Don't even try any tricks on me fuckstain.” One hand on forehead, the other over the heart, Caston jerks his hands in a counter clockwise motion.

A dripping, bloody, opaque white sphere hovers over the slowly disintegrating body.

The Minds Eye, a large portion of the human soul. Or to Caston and his colleagues, the Core. Finally.

Things go wrong. Very wrong. Very quickly.

The tacky, crimson and white, spherical Core glues itself to Caston's groping fingers and seems to be tugging him into itself. His hand takes on a vaporous quality, then his arm.

The hell?

Real panic begins to set in for Caston for the first time since his death. His job had always been so simple, and now he's been fucked with twice in one day.

The boss must not be pleased with him.

The sound of traffic and rain becomes muffled as his body vaporizes and becomes confined within the driver's memories.

Caston is screwed. So fucking screwed. By the time he would be able to free himself, he'll be days late on filling his quota. At which point he would be hunted and preyed upon by his would be ex- colleagues.

His misery is interrupted by distant shouting. “Ted! Ted?! Where'd ya go, boy? I have a surprise for you in the house.” Ted's father, a bulking, bearded man clutching a beer appears in Caston's view outside a dilapidated shack of a house in desperate need of more than a paint job.

Ted, fooling around in a patch of poison ivy in an overgrown lawn looks at his dad expectantly.

“Yeah pa. What ya got for me?”

“My foot up yer ass if you don't git out them weeds!”

Ted looks at the poison ivy, which he has come to think of as his friends, rather dejectedly. “Sure thing, pa!” He calls back.

His pa only grunts and slams the screen door on his idiot son.

Now Caston knows he really needs to get out of here before his brain numbs from the sheer stupidity alone.

He struggles to break the filmy atmosphere surrounding Ted's lucid childhood traumas he's found himself trapped in. He exhausts himself quickly.

Then he just simply falls asleep.

HELENA

Out of breath, a dark haired woman appears at the front gate of a lavish manor. Vaporizing her own body, never mind that of another, always took it right out of her. But at least now she's home and away from that dumb as shit incubus.

Helena phases through the ornate, wrought iron gate and sprints to the back. She takes a flying leap to the second story balcony outside her bedroom.

She may be free of that incubus, but that doesn't mean she's free of all the soulless dream suckers plaguing her existence.

Helena would have just phased through the polished oak front doors and into the gilded parlor of the Courser family manor, only if she had wanted to encounter her parents. Though she may not have any say in the matter regardless.

The bedroom that she hadn't slept in since she was a fledgling fifty odd years ago lay untouched, dust coated, and disheveled. The curtains hang limply and the bed unmade with her brother sprawled across it.

Much like a graceless cat he stretches upon Helena's bed and promptly tumbles right off. Onto his face.

“I brought a little surprise for your highness,” she says slightly bemused. Only slightly.

Helena casts the gross, sticky white thing at her brother, who only barely catches it. “Not so sure what this thing is, but the stupid soul sucker who attacked me wound up trapped in here. Figured it could be your new toy.”

“This or the incubus?” Victor asks incredulously.

“Both. Do what you will with him. Just make sure he can't make it back to his boss.”

“Those incubi and their invisible boss.” Victor scoffs. “Don't worry Helena, I'll make make sure none of his cult will be able to find him.”

“I left his body in the middle of the road. I hope they find him. He's a traitor. I want to see the looks on their faces when I show them. Before tearing them apart naturally.”

Helena turns back to the balcony door ready to leave home yet again, when Victor calls out. “Mom and dad are expecting you downstairs. You know what happens when you disobey.”

“Yeah. Don't remind me of the whole head exploding thing.” Helena bitterly replies. Her head had been buzzing since after her fight with the incubus bastard. It's the only reason she ended the fight the way she did and came straight home, but not before scooping up the gross, pulsating thing clutched in her brother's hand that the idiot had gotten himself trapped in. She shakes her head in annoyance. “I don't get it. You're their favorite. Why don't they bother you?”

Victor shrugs his shoulders helplessly.

“You're hopeless!” Helena cries angrily, before storming out her bedroom door.