I woke up an indeterminate time later with Dormi looking lovingly down at me. I closed my eyes and wished she wasn't there. My head felt hazy, but I couldn't help wishing I felt worse, so I could justify telling her to go away. When I looked up again she was leaning back, stung. I tried to make my thoughts less unpleasant, and more or less entirely failed. I realized I hadn't dreamed and glared at her accusingly.
"Lazlo was worried about you." She said unapologetically, crossing her arms, "Your dream was dark, like Mimpi level dark. I got no joy out of eating it."
"It's still my dream. And I wasn't sure I wanted to do something… personal, with you."
"Oh, because that might be sick, or wrong, somehow?" She glared at me.
"No… just, not…" I trailed off. "I don't remember what happened yesterday." It surprised me how unsurprised I sounded as I said it.
"Oh, you must have just pushed it all into your subconscious then."
I blushed. "Was it… my dream wasn't…"
"It was unusual, I'll give you that."
"This is why eating each other's dreams is a bad thing!" I wished I knew what I'd dreamed.
"Yes, much better to starve to death whilst remaining morally uncorrupted." She rolled her eyes. "Because you, of all people, would have the moral high ground."
I looked away. It seemed to be late afternoon. Kaoru would be back soon.
"Oh, so you're too pure to do something with me, but a human is fine?"
I tried to focus my thoughts- 'Go away go away go away...'
She stayed where she was. Her previously soft, kind eyes were blazing.
"What do you want from me? I'm weak! I give in to my urges! I…" I couldn't keep the anger flowing, my intended tirade of self recrimination fizzled out before it even got going. Unable to give that momentum I just sat there, staring at the kennel walls, counting the tree rings in each plank.
"I got you something." Dormi said impassively. She extended her arm gracefully, and released a long silver chain, with a drop shaped silver pendant on it. The pendant swung gently back and forth, glinting in the fading afternoon light.
"Where did you get that?" I asked warily.
"It's your human's. Well, it was hers. It can be yours now. She doesn't need it. You do."
"You took… what is it?"
"It's something she wears around her neck sometimes. A necklace. I did take it. I felt it had just the right weight, for a pendulum."
I'd lost my pendulum, and with it, a little piece of my identity. A part of my mind was pleading with me to just take it, restore some of my lost dignity and control. But I wasn't sure I trusted Dormi's calm, impassive face.
"Why don't you want it?" I asked her finally.
"I want you to have it. You need it. Who would I want to hypnotize after all?"
I did something I felt immediately ashamed of, and tried to read her mind. I just wanted the truth out of her. Whatever that was. I was hit instantly by a web of impressions, thoughts, memories, thoughts of thoughts, instincts and desires. It took a few seconds for me to gather myself together. Dormi was staring at me, a smile very poorly disguised. "That takes practice, you know."
I blushed furiously and looked away. "I'm sorry, I'll never do that again."
"I don't mind."
"You should, it's… disgusting."
"Really? Do you really think so?" She sounded teasing, and that pendulum was still in her hands, its chain curling around it.
"It isn't right to see that much all at once. It… shouldn't happen that way."
"You have to filter it a bit. Separate the important stuff from the other stuff."
"No, I don't want to know." I clung stubbornly to this one shred of morality I could still claim I possessed.
"Here, take it." She pressed the pendulum into my hand and slunk out of the kennel, looking over her shoulder, eyes flashing over her mane. The pendulum was warm, and smooth; really the ideal weight. Necklace, I should think of it that way. I sighed. Then slipped into the almost instinctive habit of polishing it with my mane. Necklace, pendulum, either way, it was mine. 'Dormi, you wonderful creature' I thought, a feeling of calm settling over me as I practiced swinging it at just the right speed.
It took me a while to wonder where Lazlo had disappeared off to, and then a while longer to feel concerned enough to go looking for him. I realized I had no real idea what Lazlo had been filling his days with, while I cycled between hazy sleep, perversity and being a test subject. I'm a bad friend, I thought dismally. The afternoon sun was casting its reddish light on the house, it made the place seem ominous, like nature itself was casting a blazing, judgmental eye on it.
Everything was eerily silent. I fastened the pendulum around my neck, hiding it in my mane. I knew Kaoru and the children would be out, but I felt a sense of deep foreboding as I opened the door and walked softly into the kitchen. I crept around to that room with its dismal tables, and Mimpi's sad drawings. It was empty. The stillness of the room had a harsh finality to it. A permanence. I sat up on the table closest the door and let the emptiness wash over me.
"They've been removed." I started. It was Traum, of course. I couldn't say anything. "Your friend too." He was goading me; for once there was even a tiny sliver of fear in his voice.
"Lazlo is gone?" I was asking myself more than him. Lazlo was gone. That couldn't be. He was a constant. I'd never spent a day in my life without the knowledge that Lazlo was around, that I could seek him out if I wanted to. He was my connection to home, to my world here.
"Yes, he's gone. They're all gone! Tranquilized, taken away. They'll be coming back for their documents too. But not us. Then we'll… we'll…" He trailed off.
"Why?"
For once he didn't try to confuse me, or dance around the truth, "There was a problem. Big one. They needed to do more intensive tests, fast, and we… the others are fresher subjects, than the Hypno at the other locations."
"They'll be coming back?"
"Not for us. Someone will be back for us. But we're not 'good subjects'." His voice dwindled away to nothing. This was serious, apparently. But we weren't going to be tested any further, how could that be bad? They'd just release us. I could find Lazlo, and we'd be able to go home.
"You're a fool." Traum's voice returned to its usual scornful tone. "You think they're just going to let us go?" He laughed harshly. "Oh it's so easy, in the mind of the little, naïve, human fucking swamp denizen. They'll just give us a pat on the back, thanks guys, pleasant travels!" He pushed me and I shoved him back reflexively. He looked up, his face showing furious anger. "They own us! What? You think we're still individuals? We can go wherever we want?"
"So what, what would they want with us now? We're not any good to them!"
"Not for testing their mind rape machine maybe, but there are other things they can use us for. There are terrible places we could end up, you brainless innocent!"
I was going to yell something angry and probably foolishly ignorant in response, when there was a sharp tap on the doorframe to distract us both. Dormi.
"Sorry to interrupt this macho home truths session, but the humans are home, and we might want to make a run for it sooner rather than later." Her breezy tone annoyed me. Traum glared at her
"We have to go." Traum wasn't messing around. His apparently unfeigned fear was starting to burrow into me. I followed meekly behind Traum as he wandered through the house. I could hear car doors slamming, and unfamiliar voices. Dormi grabbed my hand, intertwining her fingers in mine. "So this is it," she whispered conspiratorially "Out into the big, wild world."
I swallowed nervously, and wished she wasn't so confusingly unafraid. Traum's fear was worrying, Dormi's lack of it honestly bothered me more. And I didn't know what I should even be afraid of.
I heard the front door open, Norio's jovial voice saying something my frightened brain blurred out. Traum hurried to the back door and slid it open as silently as he could. The sun was setting. He crept forward. Dormi followed, pulling me with her. I could hear footsteps heading upstairs. My heart raced. Dormi squeezed my hand excitedly, and I hated her. We slunk around to the back side of the house, Traum looked around to where the cars were and turned back to us. "There's a lot of them. There's no cover out here, so we've got to just go, don't stop, don't change direction, we just have to keep heading away from the house. I think there's a forest about two hours walk away, and they won't find us there." He sounded like he was reassuring himself, rather than relaying a plan.
I head a door slam downstairs, and one of the humans start swearing, they'd obviously found us gone. "Just go. Run!" Traum said grimly. We fled.
