Something Like Dreams
Charlie had a futuristic skintight jumpsuit on, femme-cut but with exaggerated shoulders. Their makeup was fire. Blends of reds, oranges on the eye, yellows on the lip, hair coiffed up into a cross between Eraserhead and Bride of Frankenstein. A feathery, flaming boa slung around their neck, nestled in décolletage. Massive spiked platform boots that gave them a half foot of extra height at least, the boots painted in what seemed to be Vantablack, all light hitting it seeming to disappear within. A week’s stubble on the face, spray-painted chrome. The final result was enough to keep the entire audience silent, entranced, waiting for what came next. You got the impression that even if the whole show was just Charlie standing there looking the way they did, spotlit and staring intensely into the crowd, everyone would’ve felt they’d gotten their money’s worth.
Charlie took in a breath, smiled an enigmatic smile. They looked us all over in sections, left to right, then at each audience member individually. Charlie’s eyes inevitably settled on mine. When they did, they opened their mouth, to speak or sing we didn’t know. Absolute silence. Then a gunshot.
Charlie’s arms first outstretched as if to take us all in, then pulled in at their chest, and the chorus of screams, and dilated time like a float in a sensory deprivation tank we’d all been stuck in, and craning my neck just in time to see the darkened figure at the back, watch them as they lowered their pistol, kicked behind to force the door open, and disappeared into shadow. Charlie took a step back to brace, staggered a few more steps, and dropped center stage.
Several audience members ran to side doors, created choke points as they pushed, tried to get them open. Someone from the sound booth rushed down and over to Charlie, checked for a pulse, listened for breathing. Before they left the sound booth they must’ve accidentally switched on a mic, because there first was the high-pitched whine of a feedback loop, then the sound of audience screaming picked up and amplified back to the audience, its own sort of loop. A few people sat still, either figuring it was part of the show or stuck in the same backup/reset state I was in. From somewhere far away, more the suggestion of the sound than the actual thing, came sirens. I found myself getting up, felt my legs propel me toward the stage. The person from the sound booth looked at me with glazed eyes and zero comprehension. They bit their lip till bleeding.
I leaned over Charlie, remembered TV show instructions about applying pressure, and did what I could. Charlie’s eyes stayed open, looking at the ceiling or perhaps past it. Their expression stuck between excitement and fear, confusion and recognition. I’d never seen a face look like that before.
In time, the paramedics arrived. I stepped back and let them do their work, looked around at who was left. The rest of the cast was there, still in costumed futuristic androgyny like Charlie, some crying, others consoling, no one with a clue as to what to do. I stood apart from them a while, feeling like I’d gotten up abruptly, head rush, dizzy forgetfulness, and it took a few seconds to remember where I was, then when, and my eyes followed the stage’s still-blinking lights, and it felt like I was outside my body, watching it as it watched the world, and Charlie stood up from their body, half opacity as they rose into the air, walked in circles, hovering as the paramedics did what they could. It still smelled of smoke from the single shot, metallic smell of blood wrapped around it, and I saw the half-light of a round traveling slowly, same trajectory, before disappearing through the far wall. Another silent bullet, this one angled enough to the right to have missed Charlie had they still been standing there. Another one, but this in a superpositional state, a solid line of glitchy texture, like a lagged-out old PC when you drag a window and there appear infinite copies of itself. Another Charlie, then another, in different costumes and styles, on and on till superposition too. I looked around. No one else seemed to notice.
My own body went superpositional, or versions of it did, and there came a flatness to the world, like depth perception had a hidden slider and someone had turned it all the way down. Space became more a concept than an actual thing. I don’t know how else to describe it. I watched versions of me on stage with Charlie, some dressed the same and doing audience participation, others where I was a cast member too, face clean-shaven and makeup a dream: a nonbinary icon in colors and materials not of this Earth. Some where I’d transitioned. I looked happiest there.
I started crying, or at least the physical me did, but onstage I was someone else entirely. Foreign memories came flowing in like thick unavoidable smoke, and the room was filled with hundreds of people who weren’t there, not anymore, and I wondered if this was how it happened, if they’d try to rid us with a bang or a whimper. Whatever it would be, we’d have to face them together.
I walked the half an hour back home, didn’t shower, didn’t even take off my clothes. Instead, I pulled out my laptop and brought up the window I’d minimized, the tab open to the HRT appointment I’d been putting off for the last few weeks, one flimsy excuse after another. I scheduled it, closed the laptop, went to bed. No dreams that night. Not yet. But something like dreams.
