Uno and Fog: Trust Issues

I think for a moment.  Do I trust him?

I did trust The Fog with my life.  I have numerous times, as well as my secret.  We were partners.  But he didn’t say he was The Fog, merely part of me trying to escape some kind of mind trap.

Could he be lying?  Could it be someone that looked like him trying to trick me?  To what end.  What advantage?  If they knew enough about me that I trusted him, they knew everything about me and could mess with me in more painful direct and indirect ways then telling me I was in some sort of dream.

Everything looks and feels so real, but I don’t remember getting married, its hard to think about the past at all, its slippery.  I can kind of picture a wedding, finding my mother somehow but the details are jumbled or missing.

Despite all that I feel content.

I head down the stairs to the kitchen.  The smell of the food is wonderful.  Have I ever smelled food in a dream before?  Once, maybe.  I remember being so hungry that I dreamed of bacon, could smell it cooking, could taste it and feel the crunch, but that had been one time and under fairly extremely circumstances.

“Was someone up there?”  Serafina asks me, there is worry in her eyes.

“Yes, but he ran off as soon as I got upstairs.”  I walk over and look at the food she is cooking.  Reds, yellows and browns mixed together.  I looks enticing.

“Thank goodness.”

I nod, “security will call the local police.”

I reach for the spoon to taste the paella.  Seraphina slaps my hand playfully, “don’t ruin your dinner.”

Is this real?

Is this what my subconscious desires?  Wife and children, a position of power and success above almost all of the world.  Home cooked meals and crayon drawings?

Maybe not a normal life, but normal on steroids.  Ideal normal life.

On a darker level, I’ve displaced my father and have my mother which has enough oedipal connotations to give any Freudian psychiatrist endless hours to analyze.  I didn’t really want to follow that line of thought.

So if I accept that this isn’t real, and I wasn’t sure that I did but I was starting to lean that way,  how do I wake up?

Pinching myself didn’t work.  I felt the small pain but that was it.  Pulling in power until my whole nervous system felt like it was on fire, but in an exhilarating way, didn’t do it and I was still here.

Everything looks so wonderful, feels so wonderful, but there’s that nagging disquiet and I can’t remember how I got here.  The more I try to remember, the more vague images come up, vague memories that feel real, but I wasn’t sure if they were.  There was a fuzziness about them.

What was I doing before I walked into my office.  My father’s office?

I remember a church.   A simple, white church that you would find in small towns all over the country.  Why would I be there?  What was important about it?

My head started to ache the more I try to remember.

“Something wrong?”  The worry is Serafina’s eyes.  Again that sense that something wasn’t quiet right with the eyes, like they belonged on another face, struck me.

“I forgot something at work.”  I lie.

“Can’t it wait, dinner is ready.”

“It can’t,” should I feel bad about lying if it isn’t real, “it won’t take long I promise.”  I almost kiss her, but then I remember the feeling of the first one and I’m afraid of what another would feel like.  It would it be too hard to leave?  That feeling of kissing someone you love for the first time could get addictive.

Love was in my experience the most powerful drug in the world.  People have destroyed themselves and everyone around them, destroyed empires, all for love.  Perhaps more commonly, people have abandoned everything, their hopes and dreams, the possibilities of achieving greatness because of love.

Love can often be a dream killer.

I wonder if I can use love to get out, if this isn’t real, but I don’t know how I would do that.

I head out with her calling to me.  as soon as the door closes, I run.  Run into the city.  I head to where my old penthouse was along the greensward.  I don’t care who sees me, I weave in and out of traffic, across the bridge into New Amsterdam.

My suit ripples with the air pressing against it, the tie I wear flies up and over my shoulder like a miniature cape.

Then its there, in front of me, my old home.  I race inside.  The elevator takes a moment to open and when I step inside I remember I need to have a key to get to the penthouse or the sub basement and I don’t have the key.

“Fog!” I shout, hoping that he is here, hoping he hears me.

I wait.

I wait some more.

Impatient, I zip up the stairwell and break through to the penthouse.  The door breaks easily.  Acceleration is a major part of applying force.

The penthouse looks a like they way I remember it.  The pool outside which I didn’t like to use but kept up for appearances,  the walk area, surrounded by low waist high walls.  The planters and outdoor lights.  The greensward in one direction, the canyons of the city in the other.

“What are you doing here?”  A familiar woman’s voice says behind me.

I turn to find my mother.

Not the mother in the tailored suit though.

No, my mother’s true identity, all in black with a red fist on the left breast of her outfit, black cape, black mask, hair loose and cascading down to her shoulders, the grey specks are noticeable even in this light.

“Mother.”  I answer.

She takes a step closer to me, “I ask again, what are you doing here?”

I hear an undercurrent of menace in her voice.