Monster - A. Lee Martinez [42]
“So I’m your dream?”
“Could be.” Chester grunted and wrestled with the rug, working it half free. “And I myself am very likely merely a dream of a much higher entity. And so on and so on and so on.”
“Where’s it end?”
“What?”
“The dreamers. Which dreamer is the last?”
“There isn’t a final dreamer,” said Chester. “It goes on forever.”
Monster plopped down on the couch, right on top of the feathers and blood and gaborchend drool. He squirmed before reaching behind him and throwing aside another of Liz’s damn extraneous pillows. “It can’t go on forever.”
“Why not?”
“Because nothing lasts forever.”
“Who says? Your mistake, indeed the mistake of your inherently finite senses, is to view the universe as an extension of yourself. You expect that, like you, it should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But what you fail to understand is that everything you consider to be you, except for that rather silly imaginary part you call consciousness, is merely bits and pieces borrowed from the universe, and to the universe it will all return. You had no beginning, and you will have no ending. Everything that is you has always been and will always be.” Chester stopped philosophizing and thought for a moment. “Unless, of course, your entire universe is just a shared dream of my species’ universal unconscious, in which case you’ll probably cease to exist if we’re all ever awake at the same time.”
“And what if the dreamers of your universe ever wake up?” asked Monster.
“Then we’re both screwed.”
With a final determined grunt, Chester wrenched the carpet loose. It sailed free and smacked Monster in the face.
“Sorry.”
“Do me a favor, Chester. Dream me a beer.”
The paper gnome retrieved Monster’s beer. “Maybe someone put a curse on you.”
“I think I’d know if I’d been hexed,” said Monster. “And there’s no hex that can summon a bunch of cryptos. Not one that I’ve ever heard of anyway.”
“Maybe it’s a new development. We should check your body for any marks.”
Monster didn’t feel like getting off the couch, but he supposed Chester was right. If someone had hexed him with some kind of crypto attraction curse, it would be better to know. It wasn’t the worst curse for a crypto handler to have, but if it kept interfering with his off-hours, then it’d have to go.
He went into the bathroom and took off his shirt. A glance in the mirror confirmed nothing on his chest, back, or arms. He took off his pants and checked his legs. Nothing out of the ordinary there either. If there was a curse, there should’ve been some kind of mark.
Monster pulled down his underwear and had Chester take a look at his ass. “See anything?”
“Nope. Wait. Nope. That’s just a mole.”
Monster pulled up his pants. “See? Told you. No curse.”
“It was just a theory.”
Something thumped in the bathtub, as if someone had thrown an anvil into it. Monster pulled back the shower curtain. A gaborchend was in the tub. It wasn’t the same one. Its left horn was cracked and chipped, and it seemed as shocked to find itself there as Monster was to see it. It bared its teeth and growled.
“I suppose that’s just a coincidence too.”
11
Judy went back to Paulie’s place, but either he wasn’t home or he wasn’t answering his door. After banging on the door for four minutes, then waiting another ten, she decided she’d probably have to find someplace else to crash today. She wished she’d taken the time to actually have a few friends.
She couldn’t remember when she’d become so isolated from the rest of the world. It wasn’t that long ago, during her first and only year of college, that she’d had plenty of friends. So many friends and parties and good times that her grades had gone to hell. She’d failed to meet her scholarship requirements, and her dad couldn’t afford to help with both Judy’s and her sister’s tuition costs. There just wasn’t enough money to go around, and Judy wound up the loser in that deal. Now here Judy was, nine years later, no education, a crappy job, no apartment, and no money.