Chapter 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.

Harold stood and thrust himself inside of the woman as her child started to cry.

I looked away and saw the older Harold, the one who had indicated I should watch. He was grinning. What was worse was that he had his cock out and was openly masturbating as he watched his younger self defile the poor woman.

I strode over to him and, with an open palm, slapped him hard across the face. He looked at me, surprised. I instantly knew his thoughts: I was a fellow power user; surely I understood. The scene around us disintegrated.

Harold and I stood in the darkness. He had a red mark on the side of his face, and his cock hung flaccid out of the front of his pants.

“Put that away,” I snarled at him. He flinched back, then complied.

“Why?” I asked, “What did she do to deserve that?”

He didn’t answer but regarded me fearfully.

Finally, he seemed to brighten up. He smiled tentatively and pointed.

Immediately I saw a pinpoint of light traveling towards us at speed.

It grew as it approached, and I saw it was the mouth of a tunnel. I had no appreciation of movement but as we emerged from the tunnel, I realized that I was now seated in a subway train. It was late at night, and the car was almost empty.

Young Harold was seated alone at one end of the car. The only other people on the train were me and older Harold.

The train stopped and a gang of youths got on. There were about six of them, aged between eighteen and twenty. There were four boys and two girls.

The boys were obviously trying to impress the girls, and they were loud and obnoxious about it. For whatever reason, though, the younger Harold caught their eye and stole their collective attention. They began to stalk towards him. Harold, rather than looking fearful at the approach of this feral crowd, grinned in anticipation.

“Da fuck are you grinning at, peewee?” the leader of the gang said, laughing and looking to the rest of the gang, who laughed along.

Younger Harold looked up at him.

“I’m grinning because I am going to fuck your girl’s ass, and then you are going to eat my spunk from it and thank me.”

The leader’s jaw dropped. He had no idea how to respond to that, and so, true to form, fell back on old favorites.

“Da FUCK you say to me?”

“You heard me. Now, which one of these sluts gets my cock up her ass? Point her out.”

The leader’s eyes glazed over, and he pointed to one of the girls.

She didn’t notice immediately. She was so sure that her man was about to beat Harold down that his change in behavior didn’t register right away. There was a strange pause, and then it clicked for her. I could see it on her face: confusion, already creeping into worry.

“Lenny, what are you doing?” she asked him.

“Tell her to drop her pants and bend over the seat,” young Harold told the leader.

“Drop your pants and bend over the seat,” the leader said woodenly.

“Say it like you mean it,” young Harold instructed.

“Bitch, you heard me, get them pants down and get over the seat.”

She looked at him fearfully, then looked to the rest of the gang.

They were looking around uncomfortably. Lenny was their leader and the toughest of them all. If he said something, then it was law. This was something well outside their norm though, and they didn’t know how to deal with it.

“Make her!” young Harold said.

Lenny grabbed the girl by the scruff of the neck and forced her over the seat. He then started ripping at her pants, trying to get them down.

She screamed and struggled. The other girl moved to try and help her, but one of the other boys, who I assumed was her boyfriend, put his hand out to stop her.

Harold stood and approached. “You boys help him.”

Immediately the other three males of the group descended on the girl and began to restrain her, one of them being far more successful than Lenny in removing her jeans and pants.

“You wanted to help her?” Harold said to the girl who had initially tried to help.

She was frozen in fear. Harold didn’t wait long for the response that was likely never to come.

“Then you can suck my cock. Get it hard and wet. Don’t want it going in dry, do we?”

It was not clear whether he had used his power on the girl, or whether the situation itself had persuaded her that obeying this strange person was her only option. Wordlessly, she dropped to her knees and fished his cock out of his trousers.

He was already hard, so she took him in her mouth and began a wet, sloppy blowjob.

One of the other boys was glaring daggers at Harold but didn’t seem able to abandon his post holding down Lenny’s girlfriend. There wasn’t much fight left in her anyway. She was just sobbing, pleading with Lenny and the group not to do this to her.

Harold stepped up behind the defeated girl.

I had seen enough.

Once again, I looked across at older Harold. Although he wasn’t openly masturbating this time, he was massaging his crotch, his arousal obvious.

Angry again, I stormed towards him. He saw me coming and flinched. The memory of the train fragmented, once more leaving us in darkness.

“You think she deserved that?” I yelled into his face. “You sick fuck!!”

Suddenly the darkness cleared, and I found myself in a courtroom.

Harold stood in the dock, his hands shackled. There didn’t seem to be any lawyers present, but there was a judge in black robes. I was seated in the jury box. There were eleven other people there, but they were grey and unmoving.

I looked across the courtroom and there was a huge television.

Beside the television was the clerk of the court, who was holding a scroll - a real, honest-to-goodness papyrus scroll. It was weird, but I’d never forgotten that I was in a dream, so I didn’t get hung up on it.

“The defendant is also charged with the rape of one Natalie Walsh,” he intoned. He gave the details of the offense, including the date and time. He then turned to the screen.

It showed Harold in a nightclub. He was sitting with his back to the bar, surveying the room. I had seen the look on his face before. It was the same look he had had at the party. I had described it to Gerald as a fat man at a feast wondering which dish to sample first.

I saw his expression change as he spotted his target. The screen showed a beautiful woman dancing with a man. They looked good together. The camera zoomed in to show that they wore matching wedding rings.

He watched her for a while until she said something to her husband. The husband nodded and headed to the bar. She, in turn, headed toward the toilets.

Harold made his move.

He followed her into the toilet. As she turned to close the door, he simply told her to drop her pants and bend over. She complied and he took her from behind. All the time he was raping her, he was talking to her, telling her how much she was enjoying it. He forced her to orgasm repeatedly as he was pounding into her.

Finally, he came, pumping his seed deep inside, telling her that the feeling of him cumming in her was giving her the most intense orgasm she would ever have in her entire life.

He pulled out and zipped himself up.

His parting shot was to tell her to go and tell her husband exactly what had happened, to describe how much she had enjoyed it and how many orgasms she’d had.

He watched from across the room as the woman re-joined her husband and began to talk to him. The look on her husband’s face - first disbelief, then rage - made him laugh.