Controlled Chaos (Deadly Dreams Book 1) Page 6

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Hunter, I’m scared.”

  “Scared?” I asked. “What are you scared of?”

  “My body doesn’t feel right. Everything hurts. When I look in the mirror, I see a skeleton where I once was a woman.”

  “Look, Donna,” I said. “Life has gotten a hold of you and it has kicked your ass. But you’re still the Donna that was full of life and had all her dreams in front of her.”

  Donna smiled at me.

  “On an earlier note,” I said, “alcoholism is more lethal than anything that’s out there. If you need some type of stimulant, drink some coffee. It helps me.” I was thinking about my attack, and the only food or beverage I had eaten or drank was a large cup of ice-cold coffee.

  I noticed for the first time how many veins this woman had all over her body. She was a one-woman vein show. Suddenly, her veins started turning me on. I began to feel aroused. That was a very odd response to have at this very moment. That wasn’t lost on me; I wasn’t a complete weirdo. But still, what was the deal with me and veins lately?

  “What do you want?” I asked Donna. “I mean, other than having your son back. What is the one thing that makes you think, ‘if I was clean, this would happen?’ What is that one thing you could do if you were clean? The one thing that your addiction has kept you from doing?”

  Tears ran rapidly down Donna’s cheeks. It was a strong reaction, but I knew I had asked a deep soul a very trivial question.

  “I can’t tell you, Hunter,” Donna said.

  “Why not?”

  “It just something too personal and there’s too... much...involved.”

  “Too much involved?” I said, laughing. “What does that mean?”

  “It means it concerns you, too.”

  “Me? Why would it concern me?”

  Donna was quiet and stood up and went to her room. I followed her in there. I had been in her room many times and it was a place I knew she would accept me.

  “Why are you following me?” Donna said and jumped on her unmade bed. It had a bright yellow comforter as its top cover. She wrapped herself up in that comforter and lay on her side.”

  I looked at her and I said, “May I lie next to you? I want to look at you when I talk to you.”

  “Yes, you may lie next to me. I know you won’t do anything because as I recall, the last time you did anything was that night when we were eighteen years old.”

  So with that diatribe, I lay down next to her. We were facing each other in the dark. The only light that was seen was the hallway light. Now here we were, eyes locked on one another. I could tell she was itching to get high.

  I decided to get her talking again. “So what is this huge secret about yours truly that would be among the things you would want to do if you were to get clean?”

  “Hunter, if I was clean, I could be someone you would consider dating. I know it. You’ve left enough hints that the moment you felt I was in control of my life, you would give me a romantic kiss.”

  “I’ve been saying that to you eight years as a joke to help you get better.”

  “As a joke?” Donna looked hurt.

  “No, not a joke-joke. It was a ploy to help you get clean. But sure, I would have kissed you.”

  “Well, maybe I really, really wanted you to kiss me. Under any circumstances.”

  “Huh?” I was a little thrown off.

  “Hunter, can’t you see what’s right in front of you?”

  “Which is what?” I asked knowingly.

  “Okay,” Donna said. “No labels. I’m not a single mom. I’m not a junkie. I’m just a girl who wants the one thing she has never had.”

  “Which is what?”

  “True love.”

  “I’m confused,” I said.

  “Hunter, if I was clean, I know you would look at me in a different way. There has always been an animal attraction between us. I see you wanting to look at me and see the things you want me to be. I always let you down. But yet, you’re still my friend. You have never been a creep and you truly are someone who is always there for his friends. Hunter, I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I have been in love with you, Ross-and-Rachel style, for many years. This time, I’m the Ross.”

  But Donna wasn’t manipulating me. This was the very first time she had ever told me a thing about how she felt about me romantically. It would be a major ethical violation on my part, but I can’t deny I had feelings for her as a person well before she became a hardcore drug user. This had always been a struggle for me in regards to my very good friend Donna.

  Why today? Why now? What was the universe trying to tell me?

  She was right. I wouldn’t allow myself to look at her any other way than a friend in need. In our relationship, I had never had the time to think what it would be like to date this person. That was the last thing I thought either of us were thinking about. But apparently Donna had some real deep-rooted feelings for me. I was surprised and very, very flattered. I’m a real sentimental guy when I allow someone into my vulnerable space. I don’t allow anyone in there. I wasn’t planning on allowing anyone in there today.

  “Would you do me a favor, Hunter? Can we put on KOST 103.5 for old time’s sake and snuggle in the dark?”

  I laughed. It had been years since we did that. KOST was a Los Angeles station that played merely love songs. It was very relaxing, and yes, it was on my car dial.

  “We can do that,” I said.

  Donna stood up and put on her stereo. It was already on KOST. She was a big softy. Donna came back to her bed and she cuddled up with me. I slowly put my arms around her in a safe way, so she knew I wasn’t going to perve on her. I was there to be her friend and get her through this evening.

  So I held her. That was all she wanted. To be held. To feel safe. To be with someone she trusted. I was going to give her all three. I held her for hours until she finally fell asleep. I quietly lifted my body out of bed without waking Donna up.

  I left her a note and told exactly what time I left and that I was always here for her. I locked Donna into her apartment and I headed downstairs to my car.

  Chapter Twelve

  12:01 a.m. Thursday Morning

  I didn’t return home till midnight. It was an evening filled with drama and codependency. That was probably true on both of our ends.

  Good news: she never took anything. She was clean the whole time. Sometimes that was all I could do. I would check first thing in the morning and see how she was doing, but when I left her, she was sound asleep on Xanax and care.

  I pulled out my keys to my modest two bedroom townhome. I walked into the kitchen to cook an early morning meal. I hadn’t had a bite to eat all day. I pulled out a steak to enjoy on this fine morning. I stared at the steak as it sat in a pool of blood on a plate. My heart was racing, and without thinking, I picked the steak up and poured the plate of blood down my throat. My throat had been on fire all day, and the blood seemed to replenish it like a cool glass of water would. I wanted more. I took the steak and sunk my teeth into it, sucking all remnants of blood from it that I could. I did this for the next twenty minutes. I sucked all the juice out of the steak. I tossed the desiccated steak into the trash and went to bed, exhausted.

  I decided to cover the windows of my condo the way I did at my office downtown. I had a lot of cardboard boxes in my home, which was great, because I had a lot more windows to duct tape up than I did at my office. It was late and I knew I would sleep through the sun coming up, and I wanted to make sure that I would have zero irritation.

  Finally at about six in the morning, I went to sleep in my own bed.

  I slept well for most of the day. I was hitting my R.E.M. sleep, and that was when I was most receptive to my sleep paralysis seizures. Then it happened. My dream world turned upside down, and I began having a sleep paralysis seizure.

  The feeling of falling was the first sensation I got with this particular seizure. The sensation triggered a dose of
fear so heavy that it was almost unbearable. I tossed and turned in the fit of another dream so vivid that it didn’t seem to be a dream at all.

  Felix had a starring role in yet another of my dreams. He had been in every one of my sleep paralysis nightmares since I awoke in the hospital.

  He had murdered an older man in the first dream by bashing his head into a pulp. In the second dream, he had been robbed, and he shot the robber dead with the guy’s own gun. Two dreams and two murders.

  And this dream was similar as well. Felix stood on a corner wearing blue jeans and a black shirt. It was day. This was the first dream I’d had that was in the daytime.

  Felix was standing, almost waiting. Not waiting for someone in particular, but maybe standing there waiting for anyone. He was just on a street corner, fiddling around on his cellphone.

  I knew just from experience that Felix was a drug dealer. Cars passed him one by one and Felix appeared to wait patiently for one to stop. A car finally slowed down; it approached Felix and stopped right in front of him. A younger man stepped from his car and looked around. I recognized him. He was Tyler from the previous dream—the man I saw Felix shoot. Tyler was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. In the previous dream, he had on a black jacket with a pair of blue jeans. He looked far healthier without his skull shot through with a bullet, but there was no doubt about it; he was the same man.

  He approached Felix and they seemed to be discussing something. Felix pulled out a bag that I recognized as heroin and Tyler nodded. Then Felix took out what appeared to be a receipt and Tyler went into his car and grabbed a pen. He handed it to Felix. Felix wrote something down and handed it back to Tyler. Tyler got back in his car and left. Felix looked around and saw no one coming and began walking in the direction of a street corner. I recognized the side street. It was 8th Street and Beach Boulevard. I recognized the street corner, too. It was a side street just minutes from the Grind Away coffee shop.

  Then the dream ended, as well as my seizure.

  My eyes peeled open at around 7:00, an hour at which I rarely awaken. I was once again sweating from head to toe.

  My dreams were not dreams at all. They were still sleep paralysis seizures, but something else was being revealed to me instead of just a mushed-up dream. I was sure of it.

  I had brought the notebook that I took with me from the hospital. I got out of bed and walked into my kitchen and found a nice red pen. I wrote every detail of dream three down. I looked at the other two dreams and I knew there was more of a connection than the fact this guy Felix was the main character who sometimes killed people.

  They were too vivid, in the way that you would remember a party you just returned from. I didn’t understand what it all meant, but I knew enough that something extraordinary was happening to me.

  I rolled out of bed to get the newspaper that was sure to be at my doorstep. I was one of the last people to enjoy a newspaper in the morning. It reminded me of my father. I wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t.

  I had no intention of going into my office that early, if at all that day. I had no idea how to deal with the sun, and I was sure exposure to it was killing me slowly. I opened the door slowly as sunlight came through the crack. I looked around for the newspaper and snatched it up, burning my arm only slightly.

  What a way to live...

  I pulled out another steak, wrung it out into a coffee cup, and sat down with my newspaper. I knew what I was doing was only something a mental patient would do, but I ignored it for the time being, as it cooled my throat. I would have thought I would gag at the taste of coppery blood in my mouth, but it was actually quite delicious. It was never enough, though, and I knew I would have to find another alternative for food.

  What the hell was wrong with me? Was I pregnant?

  Look, I wasn’t stupid.

  I knew how similar to being a vampire all my new characteristics and symptoms were. But there was no way in hell vampires existed, and no way in hell I was now one of them. I would continue to look at everything that was happening from a rational, scientific perspective. I may have contracted a weird disease from one of those men that bit me, for all I knew.

  I opened the paper and perused the news, looking for something specific. I didn’t find any information about any murders.

  I closed the paper and drank my blood. I threw the paper in a heap in the corner of my kitchen. I thought I should probably talk to Steve about these dreams. Maybe Steve had heard about some of this or had run in to the creepy-looking Felix.

  My thoughts drifted to Donna. She was special to me because she was raw and honest. What she said to me touched my heart. I might not have shown it, but I was incredibly flattered. I had battled having feelings for Donna for years. She didn’t bullshit around. She didn’t lie. And for a drug addict, that was an amazing trait to have. She needed me, and I worried again if I would fail someone else. I did not want to see her on a slab in the morgue, and I worried that her fate was already sealed.

  Prior to drug use, she had been a talented artist. She was a painter, an amazing one at that. She longed to return to it, but her drug use had a hold on her. This was why she needed me. She wanted her life back, and I was just the person to give that to her. Why was I thinking about her this much? All I knew was that I wanted to help her kick her drug of choice: crack.

  What was happening? Was I developing feelings for my old friend? That was never good. This was going to test a lot of boundaries. It was an exciting and very unfamiliar time.

  Chapter Thirteen

  5:30 p.m. Thursday Evening

  I didn’t go into the office. It seemed I had bigger issues to figure out. I did, however, plan on dropping in to check on Donna as soon as the sun set to make sure she was doing alright. I worried about her addiction and feared letting another friend slip through my fingers and overdose. It might be time for a career change. If Donna was determined to change her life, I wanted to make sure that happened, regardless of how we felt about each other. The main goal was to make sure she was clean.

  I called Donna from my cell as I made myself some coffee from my old-school coffee machine. I’d had it since college. It was my old faithful. Thank God coffee didn’t make me sick. Well, that and blood.

  I am not a vampire. I’m just not.

  Donna seemed down when we talked. I let her know I would stop in within the next couple of hours to have a chat with her. Level five attention in my field was doing things for patients that made them feel nice or like someone out there cared for them. Again, Donna was not my patient, but there were skills I could bring to our friendship table.

  Drug addicts often felt alone in the world, and if they knew someone out there was fighting for them, they typically fought a little harder for themselves.

  I offered to bring over some dinner and a movie, and she jumped at the offer to have some company. I certainly struggled with my attraction to Donna, especially after she spilled her heart out to me. My career was important, and I would never do anything to ruin that. It was just a known fact that Donna Schwartz was a drug addict. She had fallen from beauty queen to the person she was today. Anybody from our high school or inner circle was aware that Donna had a bad problem. It would look highly unfavorable to the people we both knew if I was to suddenly date her.

  I had a feeling people may see it as taking advantage of an opportunity. I knew in my heart that I wasn’t. I had plenty of chances to cross the line over the years, and never chose to do so. But that was before I knew how she felt about me. That caused me to seriously evaluate how I felt about her. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had been in love with Donna for quite some time, and there was a part of me waiting. Perception is reality to people, and I wanted to be looked at as a professional.

  The sun finally set; I headed out into the night as a true vampire.

  Dear God, please tell me this isn’t happening?

  I looked up into the sky and marveled at the difference at not having to run to
my car in fear. No stinging. Nothing. It was definitely the sun that was poisoning me. Holy shit.

  I am not a vampire.

  I had put in an order at a pizza parlor close to Donna’s home so that I could arrive with hot pizza. I stopped in to the DVD store and browsed the titles. I avoided anything overly sexual or that had a love story attached to it. I snapped up the latest Ben Stiller comedy and headed to the cashier. Donna probably needed a good laugh; I knew I certainly did. As I approached the girl at the counter, I began to feel ravenous again. I had the sickening feeling of wanting to feel her heartbeat pulsing on my own. I considered the fact that I might need to see a psychiatrist instead of a doctor. Holy hell. What the fuck was wrong with me? At least this time I didn’t hear her heartbeat from the veins in her neck.

  I hurried out of the video store. My throat was burning, and I wondered then as I drove to the pizza parlor if I would even be able to eat the pizza that I was picking up.

  As I walked in to grab my pizza, I stopped a few feet short of the counter, shocked. There was a man in line ahead of me, talking to the guy serving the pizza. I knew the guy working. I stared at him, and my mouth was wide open. I had to catch myself from appearing too weird about the situation. The cashier was Felix. It was him. I knew it like I knew my left hand had one dark freckle on it. This was the same person that had haunted my dreams for the past few nights.

  The question of whether or not Felix existed in real life was now answered. And holy hell, he stood behind the counter and was serving up pizzas to his customers. My heart raced as I approached the counter. I was right next to this guy. I looked into the eyes of a cold-blooded killer. I had to remind myself that I had nothing to fear; Felix had no idea who I was.

  He had a slight, wiry build, and he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years of age. I didn’t need to worry about mistaken identity, as his name tag read Felix R.

  I decided then that I was going to try to obtain as much info as possible from this guy in the hopes of figuring him out a bit more.