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  DREAM ESCAPE

  Sal Conte

  Dream Escape

  Published by EViL E Books

  a division of Sweet Lorraine Productions Publishing

  Copyright © 2017 Ehrich Van Lowe

  Edited by Camille Pollock

  Cover art director Jim Seidelman

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally.

  ISBN:--

  Library of Congress Control Number: --

  SalConte is the horror writing pseudonym for E.VanLowe. To request permission to reprint any portion of the book, e-mail [email protected] and in the subject heading, write the name of the book.

  “Parting is such

  sweet sorrow.”

  You always hurt the one you love.

  Isn’t that what they say?

  One minute I’m fine, talking about the law, laying out our futures together, and the next, I’m doubled over feeling as though I just swallowed a bucket of hot, molten lava.

  My stomach hurts, no it more than hurts. I wish it was just a stomachache because this feels as though I’m being burned alive from the inside. I can literally feel my stomach lining melting from the heat of the lava flow in my belly. It hurts so much…

  I’m screaming.

  It’s the kind of top of the lung scream you’d expect from a person who just got a hot poker in the eye.

  And I’m praying. I’ve never been a child of God, but I fall to my knees and I pray. I’m actually praying for that hot poker in the eye.

  Something tells me it would be a lot kinder than this. You can live with one eye. No matter how painful it might be when the eye burned out, no matter how sorry you might look, in the end… you get to live. I can tell as the poison eats holes in my stomach walls and begins corroding my intestines that what’s happening inside of me is the type of thing a person does not survive.

  I’m crawling.

  Okay, it’s not really crawling. A baby crawls. I’m slugging along the floor, totally prone, my fingers digging into the carpet, my nails clawing the rough under layer as I struggle to propel myself forward.

  I have to get to my phone. If I can get to my phone I can stop screaming long enough to hit the button and holler one word.

  Help.

  My shirt is getting wet. It’s getting wet from the inside, from my belly side. I believe the poison has punched its way through, and my entrails are spilling out of me, seeping onto the floor, creating a trail of disgust as a drag myself forward.

  I am dying.

  I push harder. I’m not going out like this, I tell myself. That’s what the good guy in a movie would say, and then he’d find the strength to make it to the phone, push the button and make the call before he passed out. When he’d come to he’d be in the arms of his lover, surrounded by paramedics who’d be bringing him back to life. The lover would look down at him and smile.

  We got to you just in time, she’d say.

  But this isn’t a movie, and I am not the good guy. I’m the victim who’s been poisoned by the woman who should be holding me in her arms.

  Why?

  The question fires through, but what difference does it make? Why doesn’t matter when the outcome is surely death. The only thing that matters is not dying, and the chance of that has just rolled past longshot, and landed squarely on sure thing. Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

  I can feel hot bile rising into my throat. I roll to my side so that I don’t drown in it, and begin puking like I’m that girl in “The Exorcist.” This bile isn’t green, though. It’s red, and contains tiny bits of my stomach lining.

  “Relax,” she says. “It’ll be over soon.” She’s standing over me now, her voice is soothing.

  I listen to her. Against my own wishes, I listen to her, and every muscle in my body begins to relax. And it doesn’t hurt so bad anymore. It’ll be over soon. Good.

  As I lay there waiting for death to relieve me of my mortal coil, I think: I may not have recognized that she was a monster, but I sure as hell hope somebody else does before it’s too late.

  I want to be her only victim, or at least her last victim.

  “Something good will come of this,” she says. “I promise your death will not be in vain.”

  Big whoop, I think as death rushes up on me. Big…friggen…whoop.

  Chapter One

  “Welcome to Rick’s Café.”

  Peter Hathaway was the perfect host. He knew this without anyone ever having to tell him, although many did.

  While he didn’t like to brag, Peter knew he was handsome, charming, and although he was fast pushing forty, he struck a striking figure, especially while wearing the white dinner jacket he had on that evening. Okay, his hairline was receding faster than the polar ice caps, but even time couldn’t take away his killer smile.

  Peter could feel the ghost of Humphrey Bogart himself, sprinkling an added dose of Bogey-charm over him as he ushered customers into the Casablanca café.

  “This place is darling, Henry,” said the twenty-something bottle blonde in the cheap gown to her escort. The dress was riding up on her, bunching at the hips.

  The place was more than darling, it was exquisite—an exact replica of Rick’s Café in the movie “Casablanca.” Peter had chosen every detail himself, down to the hand carved detailing on the white upright piano.

  “I’ve been wanting to come here,” Henry replied to the girl on his arm. “And you, my dear, are the perfect reason to visit such a charming place.” Henry was mid-fifties, overweight, and horny.

  Peter escorted the May-December couple to a table off to the side. These tables, hidden in deeply shadowed alcoves, were reserved for gentlemen who desired something discreet. Henry, an industrialist who was getting rich off the war, was a regular at the café. In fact, this was his second visit of the week. Discretion, above all, was his utmost desire.

  “Champagne,” Henry said, slipping Peter a fiver. This got the woman to gushing.

  “It’s on its way,” Peter responded, applying his killer smile as he secreted the money into a side pocket.

  The five dollar bill was not a tip. It was the signal to send the cheap champagne. The bottle blonde was not someone Henry planned on seeing again. Why waste the good stuff on a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am evening?

  Peter had seen it all during his time hosting Rick’s Café, and he enjoyed the adventure of it. As he was returning to his station at the front, the soft piano music entertaining the clientele made an abrupt shift. As Time Goes By began to play, and Peter knew that just as in the movie, the woman who had stolen his heart was near.

  The fragrance of Evening In Paris wafted over to him. He turned to discover Kim, radiant and beautiful, standing just a few feet away, her azure blue eyes beacons that cut through the fog that had once filled his heart. Her short blond hair was styled in a close cropped finger wave. She was wearing a skintight, flesh-colored beaded gown that ignited a fire in him.

  “You’re early,” he said, smiling. His heartbeat quickened at the sight of her. A lump formed in his pants.

  “Am I, darling? Do you mind terribly?”

  Normally, this was his favorite part, the bantering back and forth, the clever repartee, but on this occasion, he was so overtaken by her beauty, and his desire to have her, that he simply said: “Come with me.”

  They wound up in the small room above the café, the same room they’d come to make passionate love on so many occasions he’d lost count. In what seemed like seconds, they were both naked, bodies writhing beneath the silky sheets, touching, groping, kissing, needing one another.

  The ceiling fan twirling above at a leisurely pace did little to cool the room as it fanned the flames
of their burning desires.

  Peter was so intoxicated by the touch of her, he didn’t hear the sound.

  “What’s that?” Kim whispered. She stopped caressing him, craned her neck, and listened.

  “Huh? What?” he stammered, wanting to get back to it.

  Then, he heard it, too. A faint sound. At first, it was the sound of an alley cat crying in the night, but it soon became clear, it wasn’t an alley cat. It was the sound of baby crying. The baby. HIS baby.

  “It’s the baby. She needs me.” As soon as he spoke the words, the moment began slipping away.

  “Baby? What baby?” Kim’s voice, once sweet with a side of sultry was now ringing with alarm.

  “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be back. She needs me.”

  Kim sat up, throwing off the sheet. The street light shining through the window illuminated her perfect body and alabaster breasts.

  “Where are you going?” she demanded. “What baby?”

  But he was already up, and headed for the door.

  “It’s my turn,” he called over his shoulder.

  *

  Peter awoke with a start, bolting upright.

  She needs me.

  He dragged himself from the depths of the dream, not knowing how long the baby had been crying in the nursery down the hall. His heart was beating wildly.

  Emma, his wife, lying next to him, was already stirring.

  “How long?” he asked as he oriented himself to his surroundings: The window, the dresser, the overstuffed chair across the room where he always threw his pants even though Emma implored him to hang them up.

  “She just started. She’s probably hungry. You were out like a light. Go back to sleep,” Emma said.

  His heart and jangly nerves began to calm. The baby was fine. The dream had disoriented him.

  “No, no. It’s my turn,” Peter whispered. He ran a hand gently along Emma’s shoulder. “Get your sleep.”

  “Are you sure? You’ve been working so hard on your big case. It’s drained you.”

  Ha-ha. Good choice of words.

  “Yes, I’m sure. It’s my turn.”

  He started to climb from the bed, and realized he had a raging hard-on that he didn’t want her to see. He didn’t know why. There’s nothing wrong with a man waking up with a stiffy. Actually, he did know why. This wasn’t just a hard-on. This was caused by the hot dream. The faint fragrance of Evening In Paris still lingered in his nose, keeping the dream alive. A part of him felt as though he’d been cheating. It was a ridiculous notion, but one he couldn’t shake.

  The pitch of the baby’s crying grew insistent.

  He kissed his wife on the cheek, then rolled to the side of the bed, turned away, and got up at an angle so she couldn’t see. He peered guiltily at her over his shoulder as he headed from the room. Her back was to him. She was already drifting back to sleep. Good.

  Peter padded down the hall, past Robbie’s room. Robbie, their five year-old, insisted on sleeping with all the lights on. Night monsters are afraid of light. They didn’t have a chance in Robbie’s well-lit shrine.

  Peter moved into the nursery. By the time he arrived the passion in his loins had subsided. He plucked Dinah from her crib. The moment she was in his arms, the crying ceased.

  “Nothing wrong with you, is there? You just want to be held,” he said, looking down at her chubby face, her soft, brown curls. His daughter smiled up at him. “Spoiled,” he said, and laughed. Dinah’s smile did that to him. When Dinah smiled, it opened up a place in his heart he didn’t know existed before she arrived.

  He still remembered the first time he saw her. She was handed to him in the delivery room. He thought he’d be afraid to hold her. For weeks he had the secret feeling he might drop her.

  Once she was in his arms, though, she did the darndest thing—she smiled. The nurse said it was just gas, or a reflex. She’s not really smiling. Newborns don’t smile. But his did, and she was smiling at him.

  At that moment, he felt the place in his heart open up, and it never closed again.

  Peter turned on the motorized mobile hanging over Dinah’s crib that played a soft lullaby. Then, with Dinah is his arms, he padded over to the rocker in the corner.

  It was different with Robbie. Robbie came a week early while he was out of town travelling for the corporate job he’d had at the time. He missed that early bonding moment. Not that it changed anything. He and Robbie were tighter than a photo finish.

  He began rocking, and singing along with the soft lullaby.

  “How lucky am I?” He thought out loud.

  It wasn’t that long ago, while Emma was going through a difficult pregnancy—always angry, always complaining—that he wondered if their marriage would survive. As he rocked and sang Dinah back to sleep, Peter thanked his lucky stars that it had.

  The dream, like so many dreams we awaken from in the middle of the night, clear and vivid one moment, quickly fading to mist the next, was forgotten.

  This dream, however, was very different from the dreams many wake up from in the middle of the night. This dream would not stay forgotten long.

  Chapter Two

  She’d been watching the house.

  It wasn’t stalking. She was not a stalker. Rather, she’d come to claim what was rightfully hers. She’d learned at an early age that success was the reward of those who persevered. She wasn’t stalking, she was persevering.

  Besides, it’s what they both wanted. They’d found love—amazing, passionate, perfect love. It was the kind of insurmountable love that overcame all obstacles, all challenges… even the challenge that lay before them now.

  She knew he felt as she did, but he needed a nudge, and once that nudge had been provided, he’d come to his senses, and fall back into her open arms.

  Of this, she was certain.

  Her raison d’etre had become to find the perfect nudge.

  *

  French toast.

  Robbie was seated at the kitchen table in his favorite Ninja Turtles PJs, his arms folded across his chest, his face scrunched up at the bowl of oatmeal in front of him. He’d gotten it into his head that he wanted French toast for breakfast that morning, and nothing they said could persuade him otherwise.

  “Hey, Trooper, how about Froot Loops?” asked Peter. “You love Froot Loops.”

  Robbie shook his head back and forth.

  Peter shot a helpless look at his wife feeding the baby.

  Emma, wearing an oversized Cal sweatshirt that dwarfed her tiny frame, looked down at the baby in her arms and shot Peter a helpless glance of her own.

  “I’ve got my hands full. He’s all yours,” she said with a smile.

  Peter sighed, and turned to his son. Robbie looked like him. He had Peter’s eyes, thick head of dark brown hair (for now), and his killer smile.

  “How about we make a deal?” Peter asked.

  “What’s a deal?”

  “A deal is where both parties, that’s you and me, get what they want.”

  Robbie’s arms began to unfold. He leaned forward. “I get French toast?”

  “Yes. You get French toast.”

  The scowl disappeared, and Robbie smiled. It really was killer. “Yes. We make a deal. I get French toast, Mommy,” he called, “I get French toast,” he said as if to say See? I’m getting my way… again. “French toast, I love it a lot, French toast, French toast.” Robbie began to sing a crazy, made up song about French toast.

  “But I have to get what I want, too, right?” Peter asked, leaning in to him.

  Robbie stopped singing. “What do you want?” the child asked.

  “I want you to eat Froot Loops this morning.”

  Robbie seemed confused. “But… I… want…” His lower lip began to quiver.

  “French toast. I know. You’re not only going to have French toast, you’re going to have peanut butter and jelly French toast,” Peter said.

  Emma stopped feeding the baby, wondering where in the world Pet
er was going with this argument.

  Robbie was intrigued. He’d never had peanut butter and jelly French toast. That’s because Peter just came up the breakfast idea in the moment. All kids love peanut butter and jelly. Why not add it to French toast?

  Peter was using the negotiating tactic of making the outcome of the negotiation so sweet that the party was willing to give up something big to get it—like having it today.

  The ploy worked. In just a few minutes, French toast this morning was off the table, to make way for a big peanut butter and jelly French toast breakfast on Saturday. And Robbie was happily headed to the pantry for the box of Froot Loops.

  “Mommy, I’m going to have peanut butter and jelly French toast. It’s special.”

  “I know,” Emma responded as she resumed feeding Dinah. “Way to go, counselor,” she called to Peter with a teasing smile.

  “Well, you win some, you lose some,” he called back as he plopped a spoonful of Robbie’s oatmeal into his mouth. “If only the Booker case was this easy,” he added with a sigh.

  “You’ll win it. I have faith in you.”

  “Thanks,” Peter replied, his mood shifting.

  If he couldn’t convince Judge Toliver to vacate his judgement of thirty-seven years ago, a man who went to jail as a teenager on a trumped up drug charge, would spend the rest of his life prison.

  If Horace Booker was ever going to see the light of day again, Peter felt he needed more than the faith of his wife, or confidence, he needed a sound argument, one a bit stronger than what he just used on his five year-old.

  “Don’t forget to take the box of cookies on the counter to the office with you. I picked them up special for Molly from her favorite bakery.”

  “I won’t,” he said, glad Emma had changed the subject. There’d be plenty of time to think about failing Horace Booker.

  *

  It was times like these that he thought about her—Kim, his fantasy girl, living in his fantasy world. He had chosen the world of one his favorite films, “Casablanca,” and the folks at Dream Escapes had taken care of the rest, casting him as the dashing central figure of the fantasy, and then creating Kim, according to his own specifications, as his lover.