Caleb 5 - The Dream
I knew I was in a dream as soon as I became aware. I do not know how I knew, but I knew, and the thought was somehow reassuring.
I was standing on the high street of a small town, outside a movie theatre. There was a huge poster advertising the movie
The Life and Times of Harold Bleasdale
. It was not something I wanted to see, but I knew that that was why I was here.
I moved to the ticket office where Josh was seated. He smiled at me and handed me a ticket for the movie. Walking into the foyer, I saw Sue behind the concessions stand, where you might normally expect to buy hotdogs, soda, or popcorn. Her stand, however, was empty. She looked at me sadly, as if to say, "Sorry; there is nothing here for you."
Louise, the usher, took my ticket and tore it in half before leading me into the actual theatre and down to the only seat, which stood alone in the middle of an auditorium that could have easily held five hundred more.
I sat, and immediately the lights dimmed, and the screen flickered to life.
The movie was boring. It started when Harold was around three years old, his first memory being of a car journey to somewhere with lots of green. He had an unremarkable childhood, went to school, had a few friends - pretty much the same as every other kid in middle America. The only thing really to note is that Harold had developed into a brat.
He had doting parents who gave him anything and everything he asked for. He held his parents in contempt. They were merely there to provide for him, and if they didn't do so, he would punish them with atrocious behavior and tantrums, which almost always resolved the situation to his satisfaction.
He transposed this behavior to school and became a bully. His family had money, and so he was able to attract the type of sycophants that gravitate toward rich assholes, which is exactly what he had become.
The pivotal point happened in the last fifteen minutes of the film.
Harold had celebrated his eighteenth birthday the week before, and his parents had bought him a new car. He went to school and arrived to find that someone had just beaten him to the parking space he liked to use. There were other parking spaces, but Harold considered that one his. He honked his horn, indicating that the person, who was still sitting in his car, should move and find another space.
The guy in the other car looked at him, amazed, and wordlessly indicated that there were several parking spaces, and that Harold should go use one of those.
Harold honked his horn again. The guy flipped him off. Filled with rage, Harold shouted at the guy that he should move his car to another space.
The guy's eyes glazed over, and then he did just that, backing out of the space and parking it a few spaces away.
Harold grinned. His reputation had won the day. He parked his car and went to school.
As he walked down the hallway, he became aware that there were strange clouds around people, of different, sometimes even shifting, colors. At first, he thought he was seeing things, but quickly realized that there was a pattern: one cloud around each person, and no clouds around anything else. He accepted the possibility that they were real, at least in some sense. His narcissism much preferred that to the idea that he was flawed in any way. He wondered at the clouds' significance, but couldn't immediately concoct any theories.
In the closing scene of the movie, Harold went to his locker to get his books. The locker next to his belonged to a girl he had repeatedly asked out and been repeatedly rebuffed by. She was always nice about it, but he didn't take rejection well.
Today she looked particularly alluring, wearing tight jeans and a halter top.
"Hi Julie," he said as he opened his locker.
She glanced up at him from her phone; she had been texting someone.
"Are you doing anything Saturday night?" he asked.
"Sorry Harold," she replied, "I'm going out with Brad. We're going to the movies."
"Oh, I didn't think you were going out with anyone just now," he replied, disappointed.
She smiled. "It's our first date."
"Then you won't be cheating on anyone if you give me a kiss now, will you?" he challenged her. He had no idea where that had come from.
"What?" she said, not believing what she had heard.
"Kiss me!" he said.
She kissed him.
He was amazed. Her kiss was hot and sweet and immediately gave him a huge erection.
She held the kiss for a moment before coming back to herself.
"Oh..." she said "Oh, NO, I'm sorry! I don't know why I did that." Then she fled.
The last shot of the movie was of Harold, fingers touching his lips and a triumphant expression on his face. He KNEW why she had done it. He had felt the power. He couldn't wait to see exactly what he could do with it.
The credits started to roll, but then the screen went black, and I sat for a moment in the pitch darkness.
When the lights came up, I was no longer sitting in the movie theatre. I was sitting on a park bench, watching the world go by.
I looked to my left and saw Harold. It wasn't the eighteen-year-old Harold; that version was walking down the path in front of me. The Harold to my left was the Harold I had seen at the party, complete with food stains on his clothes. He smiled ingratiatingly and indicated that I should watch what happened next.
Young Harold was on the prowl. You could see it in his gait. He was hunting, though for what, I had no idea. But then my memory of his memories gave me the answer. He was looking for his first woman: the woman on the park bench.
I looked around frantically and saw her at the same instant that young Harold did. We approached her at the same time, and I tried to intercept him. He did not indicate that he could see me, and neither did the woman. I realized to my horror that I was just a spectator, incapable of affecting the outcome. I turned, wanting to look away, but each time I turned, I ended up looking in the direction of the woman. I tried to wake myself up, but that escape was denied to me also. I was stuck there, observing the horror of what was to come.
Harold sat down beside the woman. I didn't hear what he said to her, but he seemed to brace himself as if he was half expecting her to slap him. She didn't. Instead, her eyes glazed over, and she reached for his belt. Within seconds, she had pulled his cock out of his trousers and was bobbing her head up and down on him.
Young Harold rested back on the bench, grinning like a maniac. He looked around, and, seeing there was nobody nearby, said something else to the woman.
Immediately she stood and bent over the bench, lifting her skirt and pulling her panties down.
The woman's child who had been playing nearby had wandered further away and was playing on the slide. She climbed up the ladder and slid down, but couldn't stop herself at the bottom and fell onto the gravel at the base of the slide.