A Short Story By Ewa Mazierska

Ewa Mazierska is historian of film and popular music, who writes short stories and nonfiction in her spare time. They were published or are forthcoming in ‘The Longshot Island’, ‘The Adelaide Magazine’, ‘The Fiction Pool’, ‘Literally Stories’, ‘Ragazine’, ‘Shark Reef’, ‘BlazeVox’, ‘Red Fez’, ‘Away’, ‘The Bangalore Review’ and ‘Terror House Magazine’, among others. Ewa is a Pushcart nominee and her stories were shortlisted in several short stories competitions. She was born in Poland, but lives in Lancashire, UK.

Ewa Mazierska

Dream Factory

It was Paul’s last full day in Edinburgh; the next day he was meant to fly back to New York. He felt that he could not take any more of these business trips, with meetings in high-rise buildings, the coded language used by the people there which made him feel on edge and the excessive amount of coffee and alcohol, which only gave him headache and made him sleepless.  He thought he screwed it up too; the meetings didn’t follow the scenarios he prepared and all four days he was in Edinburgh went excruciatingly slow. At times he even couldn’t understand these Scots, whose soft, childish accents were like a cover-up for the most insincere plans. Everybody says that Scots are friendlier than the perfidious Albion, but he thought the opposite – for him they were outdoing the English in hypocrisy. He was also down because it would be more difficult than ever before to leave his job, as Sandra, his wife, who had so many ambitions for him, and so few for herself, recently became pregnant.  

 

As the day was surprisingly hot for such as northern city, he decided to take a stroll through the centre. Apparently it was a day of a solar eclipse, but Paul doubted this could be observed in the middle of the city. Anyway, he never saw anything more unusual than the rainbow, as far as events in the sky were concerned. He left his mobile at the hotel, so nobody could get hold of him – neither his boss, nor his colleagues from work, nor his wife. At first he walked around the castle, admiring the magnificent building, perhaps the best-situated castle he knew of and then took a steep narrow back street. The beauty of Edinburgh’s centre was that it consisted of such steep narrow streets, in which one could easily get lost but also miraculously emerge in front of the familiar building. The important thing was not to think too much about one’s destination, just let the streets lead you, as somebody told Paul the previous day. He followed this advice, especially as he had no specific plan, except to strengthen his legs, sit down in a café, drink a soda, take another aspirin and read a real paper. Unfortunately, his headache got worse, and he felt like his lips were getting dry, but there was no cafe or even a shop to buy a drink. Suddenly he found himself in front of a building with a neon sign saying ‘Dream Factory.’ The building looked like an old cinema, although as far as he knew, there were no more cinemas of this sort left in Britain. He went in, as he expected it to be cool inside and he thought that perhaps they sold soft drinks there.

Inside there was a dark corridor lit with a very weak, red light. He had to walk for some time until he reached a small desk, where a Japanese-looking receptionist greeted him in English with a strong Scottish accent:

‘Do you have an appointment, Sir?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘What is your name?’

‘Paul Taylor.’

‘I do not have you on my register, but this might have to do with the power cut we suffered yesterday, which wiped some information from our system. Is this your first visit?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you need to see our personal dream advisor first.’

They carried on walking this long corridor which was even more badly lit than the reception area. The uneven walls were painted in dark red and there were many doors, as if it was a hotel full of small blind rooms, which are not uncommon in cheap hotels in China and Thailand. Paul was taken to one such room, indeed lacking windows. The only furniture there was a small desk with an old-style PC and two chairs. On one of them sat an old man, also looking distinctly Asian and he had the same Scottish accent as the receptionist. He introduced himself as ‘John’ and said:

‘Welcome to Dream Factory. Our motto is “We dream for you.” Our philosophy is based on the premise that dreaming is a hard and dangerous work. Dreams can make you exhausted and unhappy, even more so than insomnia. Therefore we want to ensure that your sleep will be restful and satisfactory and help you survive your daily life.’  

’How does it work?’

‘First we try to establish what type of dream you want and what characters you want to insert into it.  Then we take a scan of your brain to extract the appropriate mental images to place in what we call the master narrative. Usually these will be people you want to see when sleeping: your beloved or, conversely, your enemies. Once the right combination is achieved,  you have a dream trial. If you are satisfied with it (and most customers are), we work with you on your long-time “dream plan,” where you decide how much of your sleeping time you want to devote to quality time and how much to leave to unstructured sleep.’

‘How do you insert these dreams?’

‘We inject them with a special syringe; as this ensures that they work almost immediately. However, it is also possible to take them in the form of a pill.’

‘How is it better than taking LSD or something like that?’ asked Paul.   

‘Many people ask us this question. To begin with, drugs are poison; everybody agrees on that, even their users and manufacturers. Sooner or later they will kill you. By contrast, our dreams are completely safe. We represent biocybernetics, not some junkie business and we have almost a hundred years of experience. Our headquarters are in Vienna, not in Columbia or Mexico. This is our founding father – he pointed to a portrait of an oldish, baldish man with a beard and a cigar, which was vaguely familiar, but Paul could not recollect where he’d seen it before. Secondly, people take drugs to cope with their daily reality, even if the drugs affect their sleeping pattern. Our injections and pills work only when our customers are asleep. Hence they are entirely private. There is no danger that you will embarrass yourself by acting erratically or aggressively as is the case with users of heroin, LSD or meth.’

‘Are they addictive?’

‘Not in the usual sense of the word. It is you who decides what to do with the dreams. You can request new narratives or develop them with our designers or on your own. It is like moving from a primary school, through secondary, up to university. First you need a teacher who does everything for you, then one who assists you and finally you can do it all by yourself.’  

‘How much does it cost?’

‘This depends on the type of meta-dream you choose. We have three basic types: the loving type, the killing type, the avant-garde type. The loving type is the cheapest – it is around 150 GBP per dream. Next is the avant-garde type – about 200 GBP per dream. The killing type is the most expensive – 250 GBP per dream. You can reduce this cost by up to 30% by agreeing for us to insert an advert into your dream, like popular songs on YouTube. The only difference is that you cannot skip the advert. You have to dream them to the very end. But they are, of course, short. We also try to make them fit the actual dream. Our team designs the adverts in the same way we design dreams. The dream trial costs 100 GBP, irrespective of the type of dream and lasts about two hours.’

‘What are these types?’

‘The loving type is, in a nutshell, the dream of having sex with a person you wish or more than one, for that matter. In the killing type you torture or kill people you hate. In the avant-garde dream you do not see people, only soothing images and hear pleasant sounds. We try to customise them too’.  

‘Can you kill real people in these dreams – people I know?’

‘Yes, that is the beauty of it. You can place in your dream real people and do with them what you want. There can be historical people too and imaginary, as long as they are clearly defined. You can kill Hitler, if you wish, and sleep with Angelina Jolie.’

‘What do people usually choose?’

‘Few people opt for Hitler. Most people want to kill those they know and sleep with those whom they do not know.’

‘Like who?’

‘This year among heterosexual men the most popular are the Taylors: Taylor Swift and Taylor Schilling. Among those who are dead the leading ones are Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. But there are also national variations.’

‘Can I have a threesome with Monroe and Diana?’

‘Yes, but it will cost you an extra 50 GBP. 200 GBP in total.’

‘This will be more expensive than a night with a hooker.’

The man smiled, and then answered:

‘A customised dream is a very complex commodity and still a very new one. Imagine yourself being the first customer who bought a laptop or a mobile phone. Things like that weren’t cheap when they first entered the market.’

‘Are there any cheaper companies doing this?

‘Yes, they are, but they are not reliable. If you go there, it will be like buying crack cocaine from an unknown dealer.’  

‘Can I also commit suicide in my dream?’

‘Yes, though such dreams are a bit dangerous. It might be difficult to wake up from them.’

‘OK. I know what I want. First I want to kill the annoying man whom I met in Edinburgh and… ‘

‘You do not need to tell us all that’, John raised his hand to stop Paul. ‘Just put this headgear (you see it is very light and comfy, not like these cosmic helmets from old science fiction films) and imagine the people you want to place in your dreams. First in the killing dream, then the loving dream. Press this button after you finish with one type of dream.’

Paul put the headgear, which indeed felt very light and soft, like a bandage. He wasn’t certain if he closed his eyes or not, but for sure he found himself in a new place: a kind of huge curiosity shop, dark and musty, and filled with various things from his past, mostly those which he disposed of. There was a Santa Claus costume which he was asked to wear when he was a child, many old toys, a pile of CDs Sandra threw away when they moved to a new apartment and even a piece of a fancy cake he failed to eat because Sandra was unwell and they had to leave a party. These things were arranged in no particular order, as in a junk shop. When he was approaching them, he noticed that behind them there was somebody a person, who gave him this thing or took it away from him. The things were much larger than the people, as if it was a warehouse serviced by gnomes and they had shy smiles on their faces, as if they were asking for mercy. After all, it was meant to be a killing dream.  But Paul had no time to stop and talk to these people or inspect the old treasures – something forced him to hurry up. The further he went, the less crowded became the warehouse and the more light was filling its space. Eventually he reached its end, where there was a large, old-fashioned wooden gate. Unfortunately, it was locked, and there was no way to open it. He was kicking the door, but this only made his body ache. Suddenly he noticed that there was a small eye-shaped object on the frame, like a small knob or a large button. He pulled it and the door started to move with a crackle. When it happened, Paul started to regret that he didn’t stay a bit longer and didn’t eat the cake, which looked delicious. But there was no way back – he was now pushed forward, leaving the junk behind. Eventually he heard somebody saying, ‘He is waking up.’

He opened his eyes and saw a man in a white uniform.

‘Is this a dream factory?’ he asked.

‘You could say so,’ the man said with a smile. ‘But we are slightly more versatile. We also try to wake up those who are sleeping. You are in a hospital.’

‘What happened to me?’

‘You lost consciousness. Most likely it was a reaction to a solar eclipse. You were lucky a Japanese tourist called an ambulance.’

‘How long have I been here?’

‘About two hours. It doesn’t feel very long, but we were worried about you. It looked like every part of your body was switching itself off, as if preparing to take you to a different reality. Very unusual’, continued the doctor.    

The doctor asked him to stay in the hospital for another day, but Paul insisting on leaving, as he had a plane to catch.  

Back at the hotel, he checked his mobile. Sandra was texting him to phone her back. When he phoned her, she told him that she had to rush to a hospital, as there was a danger of a miscarriage and how angry she was, not being able to contact him at this time of anguish. In the end everything was fine and the baby was saved. She talked about all these things in her typical minute detail, managing to squeeze in every sentence a drop of self- pity and accusation.’

Finally she said, ’and what about you?’

‘Me, as usual. The meetings were stressful and I had a bit of a sleeping problem. But it is all over now.’

‘Of course, with you always everything is fine, therefore you don’t understand how it is for me to be here on my own, with all these worries, when you are enjoying himself.’

Paul started to feel again very tired and uncomfortable. It was in part because his clothes were hurting him, especially his tight trousers. He put his hand in his pocket and took out from it a small eye-shaped object, like a little knob. He started to squeeze it.

Short Stories and Art From Adam Kluger

Adam Kluger is a New York City born street artist/photographer/painter/performance artist/playwright/filmmaker/writer. A direct descendant of famed British sculptor Jacob Epstein and a past art student of renowned artist, Ion Theodore, Kluger went to the same high school as Jack Kerouac, and spent some time studying the great artists throughout Europe before settling back in New York. He draws his inspiration from diverse sources that include Jean Dubuffet, Marc Chagall, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Bob Ross, Eric Payson and Pablo Picasso. “Whether I apply chromatic composition, an eclectic palette or color desaturation with my mixed media methods, makes less of a difference, than if the art object resonates with the viewer. It’s totally hit or miss and that’s what makes it so exciting to me,” says Kluger. “I adapt my painting style to the subject matter—and New York City has no shortage of fascinating subjects.

A Bowl of Cereal

Mike Greenstone's phone suddenly stopped working. He kept trying it to no avail. Then he heard someone else complain about getting no cell reception either and other people too. Suddenly, it made perfect sense to him and he looked around and ran as fast as he could to a nearby abandoned building. Through the window he could see and hear the jet-planes from a far off distance approaching. It all made sense.  

The first wave of jets swept by the building in sonic speed. He could make out blue and red logos on the side of the planes and he could hear an eerie metallic voice announcing that the imperial government of North Korea was taking revenge for the criminal acts of the outlaw country known as the United States and that escape was futile and death was imminent.

He saw the explosions going off all around his building and he started to think of how he could escape...but knowing that escape was impossible... he simply woke up.

The invasion nightmare was a pretty common one. It mirrored the feelings he had when bills got too high and life stuck him between a rock and a hard place.

It was better than the dream he had the previous week about having three penises. Freud would have had a field day with that one. He remembered his college psychology classes and how dreams were simply an unconscious manifestation of anxiety or guilt. The feelings worked themselves out in the brain while we slept and almost like watching a horror film--there would be some sort of catharsis or relief upon waking. Or some shit like that. He got a B+ in that class and slept with his student advisor who looked like a young school marm, so all things considering, he couldn't complain.

He had an older dream when he was younger that was even creepier.

It was a recurrent dream that haunted him. Again and again he would return to a high school gymnasium and there in the pool with steam rising to the surface would be all sorts of whales and dolphins swimming end to end. Occasionally they would surface. Dreams are always very real until you wake. Then they are easily dismissed as silliness. Foolishness. But when you are in it, a dream feels real. Very real. This dream haunted him. He was afraid of diving into that pool.

One time in elementary school he dreamed that everyone he knew had turned into giant, fat marshmallow people. It was so scary that he woke up and ran into his older sister's room and jumped into her bed crying.   

The first nightmare he ever remembered  having was playing on the rooftop playground at school and then rolling down a hill and falling over the ledge over the side of the building into a dark alleyway.

Not all his dreams were bad, of course--there were the good ones where he had sex with old girlfriends and other attractive women,  and on rare occasions the times he would have conversations with his beloved dad who had long since passed.

In a recent dream he was hanging out with Donald Trump who lent him his leather jacket. In another dream Greenstone had a fight with a sneaky, former subordinate. Ultimately, if you really think about your dreams they all make sense.

Yup, Freud and Jung were pretty smart to study dreams, Mike Greenstone decided. Then he went to the kitchen and made himself a bowl of bran cereal with a cut up banana and almond milk.

"Dig it" B/W photograph of acrylic painting by Adam Kluger

The Bully

Ronald Schitzwald was looking at his shelf in his office.

He did this every morning before he started his workday.

He loved to admire the dozens of shiny, silver and glass industry awards he had collected for making some of the world's most recognizable political ads. He had single-handedly been responsible for getting at least one highly ineffectual U.S. President elected and countless other politicians placed in office.

Schitzwald himself had no political preferences. His greatest professional skill was his ability to lie without remorse and not to care about the consequences of his actions.

The President he helped elect was naturally a disaster for the country. Rolling Stone voted him the worst President ever-- responsible for destroying America's standing around the world, a multi-billion dollar economic surplus, while plunging the U.S. into a useless war that cost countless lives, dollars and so on and so on.

The other politicians indebted to Schitzwald's handiwork were also bad actors and bad people. One was a died-in-the wool racist who was a former member of the KKK, another was an ardent supporter of the NRA and the Nazi Party in his youth. Nice.

None of this meant a thing to Ronald Schitzwald.

He loved to make money and he loved power.

He thought American voters were weak-minded losers and he was twisted in his world-view somewhat from a very early age by traumatic family events that he never discussed with anybody. Maybe that could explain why as a kid, Ronald used to pull the wings off of butterflies and squish caterpillars on the sidewalk , throw rocks at cats, and was the schoolyard bully at his tony private school.

Ronald was tall and sarcastic and mean.

He could spot someone's weakness and attack relentlessly. Ronald probably  didn't know how hurtful his comments were to those he targeted. Frankly, he didn't care less. Family money had assured a decent college was awaiting and a career and trips to Europe and all the good stuff despite his many personal bad deeds over the years. He didn't have many friends and that was fine with him. People were stupid and needy. Fools.

As a Editor-in-Chief of a right-wing newspaper in college, despite a subpar grade-point average, he parlayed  a Poly-Sci major into a couple of respectable internships working for his dad's friend's law-firms--and young Ronald was well on his way.

Ronald Schitzwald quickly discovered the power and rewards that could be derived from humiliating decent people with  inaccurate or downright nonfactual political ads. His teacher, an Ad-world veteran all but annointed Schitzwald as the new enfant terrible of the advertising world. Schitzwald earned his large corner office and Ted Talk speaking engagements in record time. He become a master-blogger espousing vitriolic rhetoric and French philosophy while regularly posting smiling photos on the yachts and private planes of his desperate, and quite dangerous political clients.

As the stakes got higher and higher in a campaign, Schitzwald's natural viciousness toward opponents would surprise almost all those around him.  A universally reviled attorney named Gary Fischbean, who actually had an even worse reputation than Schitzwald, commented upon meeting Ronald at a fundraiser, " Schitzwald is definitely my kind of guy--he doesn't let facts get in the way of winning a race and he enjoys making fuckers suffer--I love this guy!"

Schitzwald's marriage was a strained, unhappy bit of stagecraft from the beginning. He never really spent quality time with his frigid, angry wife or spoiled kids (dubbed "Thing 1 & Thing 2") .  

The Advertising agency's corporate credit card took care of paying for all the Schitzwald family vacations, summer camps, private schools and make-up jewelry as well as the hookers and drugs and guy's parties on the many unscheduled "business trips" and "client calls"  Ronald had to rush off to all the time--no problem there---ever.   

If you based your knowledge  of Ronald Schitzwald on his Facebook Profile and postings--you might even think on the surface that this was a somewhat decent guy...as long as you ignored his political postings...and didn't look too closely into those vacant, sad, empty eyes of his wife and kids in those vacation "selfies."

Sometimes, you can tell how popular a person is by the number of Facebook friends they have--knowing this, Schitzwald made an effort at reaching out to past political contacts and business associates to make sure he had a respectable FB friend count. It wasn't 5000. But it was enough to cover the truth.

Schitzwald really did not have one real friend in the entire world.

Not one person he loved.

Not one person he cared about. Not one person he looked up to.

His pitbull Uncle Fester was the only creature in the world he had any affection for.

That was only because of the day he saw Uncle Fester rip apart a smaller dog, a mutt who had gotten on its nerves in the park. He ripped it to shreds with utter frenzied joy and remorselessness. Schitzwald fell in love with Uncle Fester right after that. Of course,  Schitzwald had to pay off the distraught owner of the deceased mutt-- and feign concern and distress over the incident-- and It ended up costing him $500. But it was more than worth it. Uncle Fester was truly a majestic dog. Schitzwald didn't even mind picking up his poop. Any dog that could kill like that and then wag his tail, with blood and flesh dripping off his teeth, was more than alright in his book.

Back to Facebook, Schitzwald loved the fact that he was able to stick it in the face of all those losers from high school that he was such a big success and he also loved to keep an eye on his former conquests or one-night stands through FB. Girls who were fooled by his family's money and his expensive car-- into thinking that Ronald Schitzwald might be a good catch. He was strictly a fuck-em and leave em kinda guy.  Most of these chicks were either stupid, gold-digging whores, dykes or fugly-butter-faces to one Ronald Schitzwald anyway.

Oh look, there's Melissa Wormsel...total goody-two-shoes--did her Senior year after the big football game at Ratzlinger's after-party. Fucked her after I got her drunk, took her virginity --then totally blew her off the next day.

 

+Add friend request, see if she replies...

Five minutes later. Melissa had accepted Schitzwald's request.

That was quick.

Hey Melissa- Ronald S. here, just surfing FB and came across your name- wondering how you have been -long time no speak since high school. I'm around- involved in Presidential politics and stuff--let me know if you ever want to grab a drink and stuff-haha...

The reply took about 15 minutes.

Ronald: It's been almost 30 years since that fateful night that you date-raped and impregnated me after that football game. Not a day or night had gone by for many years --that I hadn't been haunted by that awful memory. It's taken years of therapy to forgive you and forgive myself for allowing myself to become so vulnerable and trusting. To forgive myself for destroying the baby through an intentional miscarriage. I finally have created a normal life with a family and children. Needless to say- I prefer not to look back again on that painful incident. I do forgive you--for myself, I must. But I will pass on your offer to get together in the future or "grab a drink and stuff." Please don't take this the wrong way but I think it's best that I "unfriend" you at this point--but I do wish you all the best. -Melissa Wormsel-Miller.

"Well that was certainly awkward," thought Schitzwald as he shut down Facebook, cracked open a chilled Pellegrino water and prepared for the morning meeting.

The new client wanted to build a wall to keep out all immigrants. He was a famous Billionaire who was going to spend at least 100 Million dollars on his presidential campaign and Schitzwald was in charge of the first set of attack ads. He had met with the client and immediately loved his attitude that came from his "fuck-you money" and love of winning at all costs. They were cut from the same cloth.

Schitzwald had  just wished that he had remembered that the client had a serious dislike of shaking hands.  People said the client was a germaphobe. But Schitzwald recognized immediately what is really was-- as soon as they met. They were both unabashed narcissists. They both knew they were smarter and better than everyone else.

Later that day the news stations all led with the terrible news of  yet another high-school shooting rampage.  Echoes of Columbine as a suicidal student who was the target of a vicious year-long cyber-bullying campaign by classmates, brought his father's hunting gun into a Pacific Coast High School and killed 8 students and 2 teachers before taking his own life.

"Horrible...just horrible..but this stuff is going happen in a Free Society...guns don't kill people...people do," said Schitzwald's new client who was in the lead to lock up the GOP nomination.

"Gutless pussy," said Schitzwald disgustedly when he saw the photo of the young shooter flash on his enormous office plasma screen, as he dug a plastic fork into a large container of shrimp lo mein--stabbing a giant prawn.

Strangely enough, the shooter looked like a perfectly nice and normal kid.   

"Man feeding pigeons" charcoal pen and watercolors by Adam Kluger