As I Remember

As I remember waking up:

Something wasn't right with the world.

It wasn't anything specific, just a bunch of little things that stacked up to a lasting feeling of unease. The sky wasn't right; it was very bright, so bright it was more white than blue. But the harshness didn't hurt my eyes or even make me squint, and it wasn't hot either. The pavement felt cold on my bare feet. I looked up, rocking on my heels, feeling an eerie chill run down my back as if someone nearby was dragging their nails down a chalkboard. But there was nobody nearby. There wasn't even a single car lined up against the yellow curb I was balancing on.

That was very strange.

I couldn't recognize this part of the city; the buildings around me were tall enough to hide all the familiar scraps of skyline. All I knew was that I didn't belong. It was more of a feeling than anything else, a sink hole of loneliness and confusion. I turned to look around at the strip of stores lined up behind me like glass dominoes. They were all perfectly spaced apart from each other and their glass fronts were all the exact shade of crystal blue. Their signs were generically identical too. I heard the city as a muted growl, as if I were listening to it from the deep end of a diving pool.

My eye twitched. My neck itched. My palms tingled.

I stepped down from the curb and walked into the middle of the road. I didn't know where my shoes had gone. There was a huge blue bruise growing like a steroid-fed amoeba up the side of my thigh. I couldn't feel it and I couldn't remember where it came from. My cell phone is missing too. The shorts were mine, but they weren't the same ones I had put on this morning.

I walked.

I walked down the street and around the corner; my eyes drifting hazily over the deserted cityscape. I rounded a corner and stopped to a teeter on the curb. I wiggled my toes in the air over the gutter; it was the same curb I had been perched on only minutes before.

Something was very wrong with the world indeed. I sat, clasping my hands around my shins and resting my chin on my knees. Something inside me knew that I would always end up in this same spot no matter how far I walked. There was now a garbage can beside me that hadn't been there a moment ago. It didn't seem out of place, I thought, it should have been there all along and I grew bitter at it for being late.

"Hello." I said to it.

It looked back at me with a mesh smile and an empty belly.

"Hello."

"What's happening?"

It didn't make any gestures but I got the strong sense it somehow was shrugging at me.

"Don't ask me."

"Fine."

I debated getting up and walking again. Maybe I would try a store to find a working telephone or internet connection. Maybe this was the rapture my dad had always preached about. Maybe this was just a bad reaction to some drugs I didn't remember taking.

I got up and patted the head of the unhelpful garbage can before I walked away. I tried a door. It opened but there wasn't anything inside the store. There wasn't even concrete on the floor. Just dirt. There was a large rectangular hole half dug in the middle but there was no sign of a shovel. The dirt was perfectly smooth and mine were the only footprints. I could see a door along the far wall and I walked to it and opened it slowly. The street was outside.

"Hello." The garbage can said, looking over his shoulder. I shook my head and closed the door. The room was too dark, just like outside was too bright. But it all felt the same to me. I could see perfectly without the light. I didn't know what I should have been doing so I laid in the dirt in the corner and fell asleep. Maybe the drugs would wear off when I woke up.

"Hey, Clive..." I felt something soft pinch my arm and it chased away the fog of sleep. "Clive, you can't be here."

I sat up and looked around. I was in the middle of the street again; my chin was resting on the cracked yellow line. My feet were still bare but the ugly bruise had gone and there were now people everywhere, walking in random, useless patters up and down the sidewalk. They looked choreographed, but it was a dance with no end. They weren't going anywhere. They were all carrying empty shopping bags from shopping at the empty stores. I rolled over and stood up. I couldn't see who had poked me.

"Clive?"

I looked at the garbage can accusingly, "What?"

The garbage can [shrugged] back at me and [pointed] to where I should have been looking. I spun on my heel and found myself looking at a familiar face. She radiated a friendly, welcoming smile but I could see concern in her small hazel eyes as if she didn't quite know how to tell me something. Maybe I was bleeding from the head.

"Are you okay? You're talking to a garbage can." She touched my arm and I looked at the simple action of her skin touching mine. I realize I was solid and I smiled.

"I know."

I should have felt weird for talking to her. But I didn't. She made me feel like she was an old friend, completely trustworthy and unthreatening.

"Come over to the side walk, there's a bench to sit on."

"Do we know each other?" I asked as we walked. She took my arm with one of hers and touched my shoulder with her other hand. Her hair was sparkling and the loose curls skimmed the tops of her bare shoulders. She was wearing the same shorts as I was, but they were cinched very tight to fit around her narrow waist. They hung so low on her hips I could see where her thighs started to form just under her waist. She wasn't wearing the same shirt as me, but I recognized it as my own. I let her sit first.

"Yes, hun. We do. Summer. Summer Glau."

"Summer Glau." I repeated her name slowly. Then I repeated it again and it felt firmer and truer in my mouth. "I don't remember talking to you before."

"Don't be silly. You know everyone here."

I raised my eyebrows and looked past Summer down the sidewalk. She was right, I did know everyone. A couple of the faces I recognized as girls from my school. Some were actresses. Some I only remembered from seeing in glossy magazine spreads.

"They're all girls."

"Women," Summer corrected me, sitting with me on the bench. "He didn't want you to see any men here. That might confuse you."

I chuckled, "That's generous. Who is 'he'?"

"Him." Summer shrugged, patting my forearm innocently. "Don't worry about it."

I bunched up my eyebrows and frowned. "Why are you here?"

"To help you, Clive. We all are." A large, reliable smile grew across her face and I couldn't help but feel calmer. "I know things are glitchy right now, some things take a while to get working properly. He threw this all together in very little time. Do you blame him?"

"I guess not," I shrugged. I didn't know who I could blame for this. "How does this work?"

Summer looked relieved I had asked that question, "I'm glad you asked."

"Me too, it felt good, like scraping off dead skin. I just felt better for doing it."

"Hun, that's gross." Summer's nose crinkled a little.

"I can't help it. Things are giving me strange emotions. The sky makes me mellow and your toes make me flirty and that garbage can makes me bitter."

"Flirty?" She giggled, wiggling them, "I'm sure that will pass. This place takes some practice."

I stared at her toes and saw sunlight glint of the glazed nails. She had perfect nails. "Please stop," I said, touching her toes with mine to stop the wiggling.

"Oh," she pouted, "Why? There's nothing else to do."

"Nothing?" The word felt heavy coming out.

"Nothing."

I squinted into the street. Every woman who was nearby had stopped, their empty bags swayed a little in a breeze. There must have been thirty or forty of them and they were all looking at Summer and me.

"If I figure this place out do I get to leave?"

"No, it's not like that. You're here for a reason." Summer explained. She had trapped my toes with her other foot and she was leaning against me now. My bicep was pressed in her cleavage. It felt great and she didn't seem to mind being pasted onto me, "you'll leave when it's time."

I knew it would be pointless to ask when that time would be. I looked at that odd little birth mark at the thin end of her eyebrow, just a little ways from her temple. It somehow calmed me.

"Oh come on, it isn't that bad!" Summer playfully slapped my knee.

"Why are you touching me like this?" I asked. She looked hurt for a second and then her soft, wide smile returned like that of a teacher's pet with the right answer.

"Oh my god, you're such a gentleman." She looked out to the statuesque women standing all around us. "He hasn't figured it out yet."

"What?" I was starting to get impatient.

"We're here so you can fuck us."

I blinked. There was a feeling of immense genuineness in her expression. Her eyes could not have lied to me...they were too bright and friendly.

"That's why there are no men."

"Right."

"But why are you wearing my clothes?"

"It's all that was in my closet this morning. If there had been something sexier there I would have worn that instead."

I wasn't insulted by her comment, but I did disagree.

"I think it's incredibly sexy. Stunning."

"Really, you think?" she asked, twirling a strand of her maple-coloured hair between her fingers, "Does it make you want to touch me?"

"Yes."

"Then touch me," she said, pulling down the neckline of her tank with a middle finger. Her lips were dangerously close to my neck and I could feel her hot breath mist over my skin.

"This is wrong. This is seems like some twelve year-olds wet dream fantasy."

"That's exactly right. That's why he thought it would work for you."

"Why? I'm not a horny teenager."

"No," she shook her head, "But that doesn't have to stop us."

It felt too complicated. I couldn't absorb the idea of fucking Summer Glau or any others from the hoard of pretty faces. They all wore expressions of suspense, as if my next words would seal their fate. It was easier to deal with the talking garbage can.

"What if I don't want to?"

"Then I guess you won't have to. But there is nothing else to do. At least, not yet. Maybe later he will make some improvements. But trust me; you don't want that to happen."

"Why?"

"It means bad things," a voice in the crowd spoke up. I flipped my eyes around, searching for the voice. I had recognized it instantly and when I saw her I was intrigued.

"Catherine Bell." I said, standing.

"Yes?" She brushed past that red-haired control freak from

Desperate Housewives

and stepped up on the curb.

"Can you help me solve this mystery?" I asked her. Her large, brown eyes looked sad for me. She slowly shook her head.

"None of us can," Summer explained in a soothing tone. But the comfort in her words was lost on me.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to run across the asphalt and back into reality. I wanted this high to end, no matter how titillating it promised to be.

A whisper of a breeze came and tugged on the hem of the pale blue sundress Catherine was wearing, flipping it up enough to expose the smooth skin above her knees. She was bare foot, just like everyone else I could see. Her hair was very long and dark, almost midnight-black and the wind was busy blowing it across her face and bare shoulders. I knew the dress didn't belong to me, which meant that things were slowly developing. This world seemed to develop like a computer program: adapting and re-writing itself to become more unique with only the smallest amount of input.

"You're not real, Catherine." I said.

"I can touch you," she argued, "I can feel you. You can taste me, hear me, smell me and see me. What more could you want?"

She had me. Everything about her, right down to her eager, pleading expression worked in concert to make her argument clear. Those eyes were so darling; wide and bright and wonderfully kind. They made me think she was the person I could tell all my dark secrets too. They were the shade of sun-bleached walnut. Her breasts were perfect for that dress too; they seem to be on the verge of spilling out of that plunging v-neck. She looked so good she could have stopped a tidal wave with a smile.

"I've had a thing for you. For a long time." I admitted.

I could practically hear all the women on the street relax; especially Catherine.

"Well," she smiled, "You're a bright man, I'm sure you can figure out what to do with me."

I liked the way she called me a man, even though I'm only eighteen. I know I didn't look very much like a man. Outside this strange world she wouldn't have cast me a second glance. But here...here was different.

Fuck, she is practically begging to spread her legs for me.

"Should I fuck you here on the sidewalk?" I ask with a chuckle, sitting back down on the bench and draping my arm around Summer. Catherin didn't even blink an eye. I began to think that they wouldn't view the other women as competition, or if they did they have the civility not to display it.

"I'd prefer you didn't," Catherine's smile was genuinely flirtatious, "but if that is what you want..."

I shrugged, "Naw. Is there a park nearby?"

"There could be," Summer smiled. She kissed my bicep, and I looked down at her mouth. The kiss felt weird, like it had been air-mailed in from another country. I could hardly feel it. "All you need to do is think of one and it will be there...here. Whatever."

"Really?" I asked, "That's how this works?"

"Uh-huh." Catherine offered her hand, palm up, "Let's go. I'd be happy to be your first."

I took her hand and stood, leaving Summer. I pulled Catherine close and she melted against me as if we were slow dancing. She fit so well in my arms, her height was perfect for me. Our noses touched and our eyes locked onto each other.

"What if I want you to be my only?" I spoke softly, my lips grazed hers. I could feel the heavy mass of her hair blowing against my neck and it felt hotter than the sun and the asphalt. It was strangely comforting. It made her seem more real.

She pulled back, her long neck straining with thin cords of muscle. Her smile couldn't have been bigger, "I wouldn't complain, Clive. But I doubt you'll be satisfied with me; not when there are so many women here."

"I could be here forever, right?"

"I hope not."

I frowned. These women knew something and their guise as willing lovers couldn't hide it any more that a mini-cooper could seat an elephant.

"Have fun, hun," Summer said, standing up off the bench. "We'll be around when you want us."

She flipped me a wave and walked into a store. The rest of the women on the street begin walking away too. Soon it was only Catherine and I left on the dream street.

"You do feel real," I said, touching the small of her back. I could feel the hard base of her spine end in the soft valley of her ass crack.

"Of course I do." She hugged me tightly. Her fingers trickled down the back of my neck, eliciting warm feelings of arousal.

"I like you better with short hair though," I had to say. "You're one of the few women in Hollywood who can pull it off."

"Short hair," Catherine nodded slightly. She pulled away from me and raises her palms up, placing them over my eyes. "All you have to do is ask."

I asked, politely, and she slowly pulled her hands down, revealing her newly shortened hair. I blinked, but I wasn't startled. Not only was it shorter but it was also a lighter shade of brown, lightly feathered and fanned out. She looked ready for a photo-shoot. Her face is freshly coloured as well. Her lashes had thickened and became dark and flirty. Her lips were a new shade of glossy pink.

"Gorgeous," I breathed.

"You're getting good at this," she said, pressing her mouth against my neck. Her hand was drifting lightly across my abdomen, threatening to graze my crotch. "Take me to the park now."

Her kiss felt more immediate than Summer's had. I could feel some wetness and pressure, even some suction.

"I have more questions," I said, "They just keep piling up in me faster than I can answer them."

Catherine shushed me with a finger and shook her head, "Not right now."

I stop talking to taste her finger. My lips wrapped around her nail and I sucked her in past the second knuckle. I could taste the salt on her and feel her fingerprint on my tongue. Her eyes closed as I suckled and I smiled widely, catching her finger with my teeth. She slid her middle finger against my lips and I kissed it before letting her loose. We began walking then, and I took her hand in mine, entwining our fingers like lovers. I must be smiling stupidly because she laughed and touched my cheek with her free hand.

"You look like you've died and gone to heaven," she says.

"Haven't I?" I asked with a morbid chuckle. This time she answered me with plain, unhindered gravity.

"Not yet, no."

As I remember fucking Catherine Bell:

Where the street turned back onto itself we now found a sprawling park. There was colourful playground equipment set up in huge sand bunkers and the sun glinted sharply off of them. The grass was soft and blanketed everything in sight except for the sand and the trees. It looked surreally beautiful and comfortable. There was enough to look at there; it wasn't bland like the street with the identical stores.

At the entrance to the park there were two wooden columns and a connecting archway between them. The archway was thick and carved with a name.

"Madison." I read it aloud. "Do you know her?"

"No." Catherine frowned. My eyes lingered on the full pout of her lips and the way they cut so sexily across her jaw. I could have made a meal out of them.

"Do I know her?"

"No."

Catherine let go of my hand and used her thumbs to pull up at the shoulder straps of her dress, raising it over her head. In a breath she was gloriously nude. Thoughts of the archway vaporized from my mind and with a girlish giggle Catherine tossed the sundress over my face.

"Hey," I smiled, tasting fabric, "Now I can't see you!"

"Can you feel me?"

I did. I felt her hand knife up the inside of my thigh, grabbing a fistful of my package.

"Mmhmm." I groaned.

She pulled her dress from my face to kiss me. I could really taste her. It still felt a little wrong though, like a cheap knockoff of what a great kiss would taste like, but the base flavour of heat and saliva was a good start. It was as if the world was putting together sensations from scratch.

She rained kisses on my face and after a moment or two I could taste her more. I feel the texture of her lips and taste buds rubbing against mine as she frenched me deeply. Her body was burning up; I could feel the spike of her heat through my clothes. Heat seems to be a sensation this world could do very well.

While she frenched me her hands loosened my waistband and pushed my shorts down over the curve of my ass. Then she pushed her hands underneath my shirt and explored upwards. I lifted my hands and she removed my shirt for me, and then pressed her hungry mouth hotly on my chest.

"What would you like from me?" she asked, speaking to the soft skin, "I can do anything.

I took both her hands in mine and held them lightly.

"Don't be afraid. I'm not made of glass." She squeezed me tightly to demonstrate. My eyes must have looked blank to her because she laughed and pecked me playfully on the lips. "I'm going over there, to that half buried tractor tire. I'm going to lay on it and wait for you."

I let her go and watched her walk across the grass and into the sand pit. Her bare feet made perfect imprints, which didn't make sense. The sand was dry and should have fallen back on itself, making uneven craters, not perfect imprints. She reached up to grab hold of the thick treads of the tire and climbed up it until she was balancing on top. She perched there, waiting; looking at me.