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--Secret is out for our tortured Dreya. What's left for him now?

Where Minds Lay:

Visions of Forthcoming

by theonehowl

After a few hours in the ''Rear Rooms'', I've burned through a dozen or so clients. It's hard to keep count after a few.

I finally get to have a seat in the dressing rooms, with the large vanity mirror reflecting the tired excuse for a show-fox that I am. My paw props my head up while my eyes are closed. The idea that I had to be something else for so many people, it's devastating. It's also a paycheck, what I keep saying to myself. The first wolf lingers in my thoughts constantly. It's that stupid boyish grin. He can't be such a good boy, though. It doesn't fit around here. There's only bad boy and bad boys with lots of money. It's usually obvious which one I prefer, but damn this exception to the rule. This red coat-wearing wolf.

''Hey, hun, you going home soon?'' The soft voice pulls my attention over to the dresser and vanity just a few feet from mine. Leritle is sitting down and applying eye make up. The mouse likes to use red eye shadow, to contrast the blue fur that surrounds his white midsection. I like him more than the others mostly because he's hot like me and is the same size. The rest are usually taller somewhat, Hissem being a foot taller, drawing the macho crowd.

''Yeah, but just dragging it out, I guess.'' I continue watching him apply make up.

''Well, you should probably move in with me and Jin. We made the offer a while ago. I don't know why you put up with that stupid gator friend of yours.'' The over-judgmental tones make me smile because underneath his glamor and tyrannical control over other's lives... I feel like he might care. They did make the offer some time ago, but I already could see what kind of life style they were involved in. Jin steals a lot from drug dealers and other shady people. I fear just as much for Leritle as he does for me. He merely justifies that Jin knows what he's doing.

''I know. I'm about to take you up on it. One more reason for me to leave... and I am out of there...'' I try to make it sound honest. Leritle makes a weak sound that says this story has been told too many times before. It actually has. Something inside me says to go ahead and leave before you burn more of your bridges down with empty lies. I take that advice. ''I'll see you later, Leritle.'' Standing, I move and give him a kiss on the cheek, not breaking his concentration on the mirror. Before I am out the door, he says something that really gets my attention.

''How did you like that wolf earlier tonight?''

Turning, my ears twist in a confused interest.

''W-what do you mean? I had quite a few tonight... you'll have to be more specific.'' He turns draping a lithe blue-furred arm across his chair's back and gives me a quirky smile.

''The one who works as a Special Agent officer for MegaMarketCorp... I thought you would have something special for him, considering the generous tip he left.'' Then my eyes narrow in an even more confused gaze.

''All the tips have been average tonight.'' Leritle gives me a look like he just said something he probably shouldn't have. Slowly, the mouse recovers.

''Uhm... I guess you really should talk to Fred then.'' He turns around as if processing how screwed I'm getting at this club. I do a lot of things for the sake of the work, and I only do it for one reason. I like the job, but I don't love it. No, the reason I put up with this place is for the money. The money is what keeps me here to have the miserable experience after the other. Sure, there are some good people here, but they're not perfect, kind of like me. I don't even like myself that much!

My next stop is Fred's office. It dominates the top floor as his personal work room and household, equipped with a bathroom, bedroom, and living room. I climb the stairs, thinking about all the times how I wish my paws were big enough to ring his neck. I'm pretty sure my foot is strong enough to rocket his genitals to space. It's the thought that counts.

Opening the door, the bear is rattling off on the phone. The conversation obviously had risen to a crescendo of verbal blows long before my arrival. He makes a tasteless offer for whoever to shove it up his ass, because he won't be shoving up anyone else's here. It's best to wait for him to finish. He yells a little more and hangs up.

''Dreya, what is it?'' he says with a slight rush and an undertone of dismissal. He turns to some papers, which makes it real hard to talk to him.

''Did I get any... 'out-standing' tips tonight, Jeff?'' His eyes lift up to me then, catching my gaze and holding. For a moment, I really think he's going to admit to something. Jeff never dissappoints, though.

''Nope.'' The paper draws his attention away from me, again.

''That's fine. So if... or maybe I should say, when, I found out that I did miss a tip- for reasons of the management- I should contact a lawyer next, right?'' He smiles, laughing under breath, and then looks up to me. He reaches down for something in his desk, and my ears fall a little in thinking it could be a gun. Jeff can scare you like that. Instead, he pulls a cigarette out and lights it.

''That usually would be what you would do,'' he says with a stuffed bud in his lips. ''But for a pill popping loser like yourself, no one will represent you.'' He closes the drawer like he's closed the lid on this situation. He hasn't won, yet. The cigarette leaves his lips and gets bumped on the side of an ash tray nearby. ''I let you work here... let you slide by... but that could all change, Dreya.'' Maybe he has won. He leans back and puts the cigarette back and begins talking so arrogantly with his lips latched on to it. ''Consider this a pay off for your little drug habit. A slide-by fee.'' He leaves the silence open with a smile.

The anger shows, but it doesn't effect him one bit. I could effect him. He could easily go out that window behind him. I wouldn't be the wiser... he can do it all by himself.

The pulse in my head beats louder and louder as my thoughts play with this... this dark fantasy of ''what if's''. Reality... I need to get back there. I close my eyes and turn around. Seeing him is like asking for trouble. He embodies his grotesque arrogance so well.

''Just remember Jeff...'' I turn my head to look him straight in the eyes. ''I'm counting the score. Remember that next time.'' I turn back and exit quickly before I can hear him laugh. I detect, though, that a little pest like me couldn't do anything. The promise saves him..., but I would definitely get some justice out of this. I-... I just need my humanity more, though.

---

The bartender makes me a few on the house, and he even listens to me rant on about Jeff. There isn't anything anyone can do for me. I'm a lone fox. I just don't know how much more of this helplessness I can take.

I leave him a tip, it would have been more if I had gotten mine. But I didn't. It's all those higher in the economic food chain that get their dues, leaving us grabbing at scraps. Why are all of us rats with scraps? Why is everyone around me, everyone outside walking under electronic screens shoved at them- talking about good living and the things they can't live without- why is everyone just... taking it? Why am I?

These are the questions that batter me. The questions are not the source of the abuse. It's me instead. Whenever those questions come, my answers insult me and I beat myself: It's all you, you chicken shit fox! You're the cause of your own misery. You and your stupid pathetic promise. They walk by with nothing and no hope because they have nothing given to them. You carry a gift, your curse-you say, and think you have the right to think yourself miserable.

It's not a gift, though, I argue back to the deep inner voice. It killed Dad... drove away Mom... It's too much, and I can't handle such... such power.

I force the image back, keep it away so I don't cry. Not even an adult should be subjugated to such horror...

I walk out into the back alleys to get away from those bright signs. They hurt my head right now. The brick halls of the restless city rise high above me, shielding me like dark featureless shadows. I can still find my home through the darkness. I like how peaceful it can keep things. The droning of traffic is more muffled, and no one is in sight around here. I can think to myself without worry.

That's what I think, until...

''H'RR!'' Something beats me, blunt and heavy, and knocks my head instantly into the brick close by. I cry out in pain and fall down, clutching at the aching on both sides, mostly on the right where my head ran into the wall. Then another grunting sound of effort from behind before a large force centers on my back and thrusts me down into the cold, cracked cement. My body is scraped up a little from lack of clothes covering me. That heavy force stays on me as something pulls the blue jean-shorts down around my ankles.

I try getting up, but whoever it is behind has the leverage.

Suddenly, it leaves, but only to be replaced by the vice grip of entangling arms. He puts me in some kind of hold that leaves my arms tied back and unable to move. Then flips me over, holds my wrists into the ground, and stabs his knees in between my legs and spreads them. I can't close them, he's stronger than me... that leaves a large majority of who this unnamed beast could be. The small amount of light combined with my already built-up night vision helps me connect that it's the guy who always waited outside for me. He's finally making his move.

He grins down at me, letting me see the pearly whites from the shadows of his hoody.

''It's so good to finally meet you, Dreya...'' he says, short of breath. His voice is cracked and hollow, a voice that would scare me under normal circumstances. Maybe my opinion is simply bias by the circumstances... could be. ''I never thought you would take this route..., but you knew... you knew I was waiting... you knew I needed this edge...''

''I don't know a goddamn thing you're saying!'' I spit in his face, making him reel back. Then he looks back at me, looking like he might laugh hysterically. I think he enjoyed the spit, which scares me.

''Oh, don't pretend... I know you're a big pretender, wearing the clothes and dancing... pretending be a show girl for the homos and the closet-freaks.'' He leans down and licks along my neck and up my cheek fur, driving me away and pressing my muzzle flat to the other side of the ground. ''*slurp*... ahhh... you taste better than you smell, Dreya. I know your smell. I took your pair of panties when you dropped them for me, on the way to your apartment. I know you only dropped them for me, because you looked so hard at me... you looked for a long time... you wanted to ask, but I know how shy we all can be.'' He goes on and on. I wish he'd just shut up, but then something else would happen. Without the talk, that leaves only the walk. The walk consisted of a lot of different scenarios, all in which something very unpleasant happens for me. All of which could be prevented by a broken promise.

I can't do that! I need my humanity, but I have no ideas. I don't want to be raped. I don't want to die... I don't... I...

I don't know what to do, Mama... (She's already walked away and gone, Dreya).

I sniff away the weeping as he keeps talking, talking about something I did or I knew about. He's filled up his head with these notions, and now he has to make them all true to me. He's so desperately wants them to be true, wants to be right to think this way all along. It simply isn't that way, though, Mr. Rapist. I'm not interested. I just want to go home.

The tears drip slowly, and I hope with everything that he doesn't lick them too because that might cause more crying. Then more tears, more licking... Then more... He goes on and on, and suddenly his voice rises in the midst of his monologue unexpectedly and makes me jerk slightly with a whimper. This finally catches his attention, and he stops mid sentence. His paw comes down beside my face and softly cups the fur of my cheek. Please don't lick me. Please...

''Shhh... don't cry, Dreya. I love you. I'm going to make sure you're loved, too.'' The paw pets me there, but it doesn't reassure me of any promise of safety or love.

My body shivers, and my head is screaming ''Break the Promise! Break the Promise!''.

''Nooo,'' I whine softly, with tears squeezing out of my eyes when I shut them. I'm scared to do so, but my eyes are so welled up with the liquid. The lump in my throat is relieved by a sudden gasp of breath I didn't realize I had been holding.

''No?'' he says it like he never heard the word. ''Noo?!'' Now he's angry. He grabs my shoulders painfully. ''You fucking bitch!'' He growls it over my face like a discouraged bipolar grocery shopper, strings of his slobber descending over me like poisonous spiders. My head turns to flee from the nasty dribbles, eyes wet and watchful of his reactions out of their corners. He continues snarling at me. ''You tease and build up my hopes for this one moment- I...''

His rage switches with an unpredictable, calm rationality. ''I-I know that this isn't exactly... the most traditional way to approach someone, but...-WHY ARE YOU STILL CRYING!?'' He roars in my face with the rage returning, and as the terror passes I think that maybe someone might have heard him screaming. Maybe help would come, but who really goes in aid to these kinds of domestic disputes anymore?

The savage snarls drag through his throat and pour audibly inside my ears to clutch my beating heart in its terror. I barely see his eyes, wild and moving rapidly with no focus like they can't pick their target, or maybe can't find the right reason to attack just yet. Was he just looking for an excuse, an opening to act violent? Or did he just want to scare the shit out of me before...

The knowledge, the hard set fact of the inevitable carries a new-found outlook.

Nothing in life is going right, and it never will. I give up. I don't want to be raped in the dirty cold alley of this bottomless-garbage can of a city.

Knowing full well what I need to do to get out of this, I turn my head to face the brutush nut-case head on. His eyes don't bounce indecisively like before. They finally set themselves on my own eyes. I give nothing away, preparing myself for what needs to be done. Can I still do it?

My brows sink sternly over my eyes when I begin to flex the ability, the Gift. It's like how the fist has to clench when you flex the bicep before a punch. The stern facial expression I take is all apart of the process. The promise is broken when I feel that familiar feeling, like reaching in the backseat for that little knick-knack you didn't really want for Christmas. There are too many and not enough descriptions for the Gift. I just know the feeling when I use it. The whole world sort of shivers, quakes as if I took destiny in the form of a little plastic box and shook everything out of place. Except I don't shake everything out of place, just the rapist. His mind, to be precise. The invisible tendrils, quick like whips, hook and connect into everything that's contained in his noggin.

There are too many things in his head, and little time I wish to spend like this. The more time I use this gift, the more I feel more accustomed to it. Naturally tapping into people's minds isn't something I wish to feel accustomed to. It's what I have been trying to get away from this whole time. Here I am, though. It's my father's horrific death all over again... No. I'm going to be careful this time.

Don't take out the bottom blocks, Dreya, I say to myself. Just add a little over the top.

I drape a large tarp over that large structure, all figuratively speaking when it comes to explaining what this invincible ability is doing to an unseeable object. The structure is an odd hemisphereic oval, like a oval-shaped golf ball on a four-corner pillar of a Tee. I don't pay much attention to it. Like I said, I don't plan to spend much time here in this place, this outer plain outside my own body. I still feel very much in the seat of my own vessel. I could probably walk around and still keep connected-

I shake my head a little, still keeping connected, trying to force out the tempting ideas of toying with this power. The temptation and wonder I always experience with it overcomes me and makes me forget the dangers it possesses sometimes.

I focus on the drape. Instantly, I fold it over the large structure. It's scary how easy it is. It's even scarier how well it works...

My would-be-rapist suddenly has a shocked expression with a distant look in his eyes. If I didn't understand what was happening, I would think I had just turned purple or something crazy. Everything he had been doing, strangling my shoulders with his rough paws, savagely snarling down at me, wagging his tail in sick expectation; all of it ceases to be in a single moment... in a single thought by my own creation.

That giant drape over his mind says ''Stop, Be Nice'' in big bold letters. He hasn't started the nice part, yet, but I can't be sure if he knows what nice is exactly. He might have been nice this whole time by not beating and raping me furiously in the first few seconds. The latter does make the earlier experience seem much nicer.

The urge to peak inside still stays, even when I retract the invincible cords of power. The addiction is so powerful, maybe just as powerful as the ability itself. The lack of closure nags at my gut. I merely stare up at him for a moment, his face is just as empty as a few seconds ago.

Just a little look.

I have to know what he planned to do to me. I also thought about how he could do it to someone else. Maybe my own selfish motives conquered, but some good can still come out of this.

I extend the power again with that earth-wide shake coming afterward. It's much faster this time, easier than relearning to ride a hover bike. The large oval tower stands on the very thin four-corner pillar, still covered by my tarp. I go underneath it, letting it stay to let me have my time without any dangerous interruptions from the owner of this mind. The whole rounded structure consist of blocks- concrete or clay, who cares. Each of them act like little chests full of information, memories, thoughts, and dreams. The whole monument is the equivalent of this rapist's very brain. Doing this a few times before, long before I killed Dad, I had an understanding that deep down, the blocks become bigger and broader in thought or function; while the smaller ones cover the outside, making up simple to the most irrelevant thoughts.

I only have to check the outer blocks. They consist more recent data. I find the blocks that hold the events which just happened. The thought pattern leads to exactly where I knew it would go. I trace along the path to see other victims, from previous times.

What I find...

''You...'' my voice is strange to my ears when it speaks from the outside of this Gift. ''You fucking bastard...'' My own eyes stare at him with the same expression he posses. My next words are spontaneous, but somehow run parallel with the actions of my power. ''Find the tallest building and jump off.'' My words are so cold, uncaring. It wouldn't bother me if I truly cared. After seeing what he did, and how he has gotten away with it... I needed this. I needed that closure that nagged deep in my gut earlier. Because the others needed the closure, too. So many of them needed it...

The rapist began to remove his hold on my shoulders. I rub the ache out of them. His expression never changes. The tarp never came off. There is simply more big bold print on it, the words dominating his mind like a god with puppet strings. He finally begins walking in a lost haze of obedience, going to his destination.

It doesn't come until he is out of sight. That regret hits hard just when it's too late to stop him. I'm on my feet and running to find him, but I let him get too far. There isn't any sign of his hoody when I reach the dense crowd of the city streets. It's hopeless. I've killed another one with the Gift. The curse. I strive to think of the others, but it doesn't feel like they're any less dead or justified, or any less raped as before.

----Sorry for the over-spaced paragraphs. I divided the section where the story breaks. I don't feel like using time to take out spaces. I'm sure you all can deal. ;)