-Zoey’s POV-

 

“There’s a large number of ATMs on campus, so you shouldn’t have any cash issues even if you don’t feel like driving out.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” I said, wondering when the last time was that I had needed to use cash for anything. I doubted that even Laura Young needed the stuff beyond single-handedly funding the crack cocaine market in Deer Valley.

We were inside one of the major shopping buildings that was built here on campus. Much like the atmosphere had been outside, students were hanging around and lounging in the open area, seated in front of stores and food spots with other people their age. Judging by everything Laura had shown me for the past hour, living on campus was like being a part of an ecosystem no different from that of a small town. There are social events organized by students and the board, supply stores on every corner, and there’s even a wide selection of food options from groceries, fast food spots, cafes, and everything else you could ever want as a young adult. It wasn’t difficult to see why someone who’s lived in their parents’ shadows for their entire life would be enticed by the freedom of a campus lifestyle.

“Gum?”

I glanced her way as we walked side by side and found her holding out another stick of gum. Was this girl obsessed with giving this stuff out or something?

“I shouldn’t,” I said, adjusting my glasses. “I think it’s about time I eat something.”

“Oh, that’s fine. We can grab a seat at the sushi place you were eyeing earlier.”

I wasn’t about to say no to that. It’s been a while since I treated myself to anything more extravagant than Chinese takeout.

“Lead the way then.”

Laura took my words to heart and began her leisurely stroll towards the sushi place. She seemed to be walking at a decent pace, and yet, from the casual air of her stride, it felt like I was watching someone without a care for whatever happened to be going on around her. Was she really that carefree, or was it all an act? She took a swig of the coffee she’d bought at a cafe earlier then took a right to exit the building we were walking through.

“Hey Laura, you coming to Logan’s party tonight?”

The second we made it out into the open, the two of us turned to the sudden call from our right. Two male students wearing what were assuredly plastic smiles approached us with open body language, both of them staring at Laura.

“Sure. I’ll drop in to say hello,” she said.

“Oh come onnn, you should stay for once,” he protested.

“Hmm, I’ll think about it.

Conversations like these with students weren’t uncommon for Laura. In fact, this was the fifth person who had stopped her to say hello since the two of us had met up. It seemed like she stood out even in a vast college of over ten thousand undergrads. Unfortunately, it seemed that by virtue of standing next to her, I had unknowingly made myself a target for these people, and this time would be no different. Before I could take the time to analyze either boy any further, I realized that both of their gazes had already turned to me.

“Who’re you hanging out with though?”

It was a question posed by the second student. It only took an instant to realize that, while the main boy who spoke to Laura seemed friendly enough, this friend of his was someone I needed to be wary of. From the corner of my vision, I could feel his invasive gaze examining me from top to bottom; its palpability was raising the hairs on my body.

“Oh, this is Zoey. She’s an old friend from DVH who’s looking at enrolling next year. Zoey, this is Marrick,” she said, gesturing to the first student who called out to her. “We had Public Speaking together. And his friend is…”

“Taylor.” He brushed past his friend and stretched his hand out. “Zoey, huh? Nice to meet you. How old are you?”

There he was, stepping into the limelight to make his move. Quite frankly I was tired of it. Why did Lawrence send me on this pointless trip again?

“I’m eighteen.” I accepted his handshake with my usual smile. “Pleasure.”

“I can only guess. After looking at boys all day, a real man must be a breath of fresh air.” He pulled his hand back and began flexing his biceps.

He was putting on quite the shameful display, but there was something amusing about it; I’ll grant him that much. I adjusted my glasses and smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry. I only meant that it’s your pleasure. You’re not really my type.”

“Oh? How come?”

“I don’t know, it’s just this feeling you give off.”

“Feeling?”

“Feeling,” I said. “As in, I feel like you’re the type to go driving back home to Alabama in a rundown pick-up truck for Thanksgiving.”

“How’d she know about the pickup?” Marrick asked with a chuckle.

“Lucky guess.” Taylor smiled. “I’m Peach State born and bred though, so she’s only half-right.”

“Half right? But I hadn’t even gotten to the cousin-fucking yet.”

Laura blinked twice, surprised by my sudden transgression, but the boy only grinned. “I mean… If my cousins looked anything like you then could you really blame me?”

Marrick laughed. “Sweet Home Alabama! Cousin-fucker Taylor. Everyone’s gotta hear about this!”

“Shut up, man,” he laughed and knuckled his buddy in the shoulder.

“Still, she’s got a mouth on her, huh?”

“Yep, Laura knows how to pick them.” Taylor turned back to face me. “You should come to the party. You’re kinda fun.”

“Fun? Do you enjoy being berated by younger women that much?”

“Only if it’s you, sunshine.”

He ran his hand along the stream of hair on the right side of my face. He was better than Lawrence was in sophomore year, I’ll give him that. Confident? Or just an utter lack of shame? I couldn’t tell, but insulting him felt like tossing rocks at an armored vehicle.

“I’ll have to pass,” I said, swatting his hand away gently. “High school girls still have curfews to consider, you know.”

“Hey, don’t make it sound weird.” His smile morphed into a sort of half grimace before turning to leave. “That’s fine then. When you’re all graduated, be sure to give me a call. I’ll make sure you get into all the fun parties.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

I turned to face Laura once Marrick’s friend had left alongside him in what was easily the most welcomed parting of the day.

“You don’t like parties?” She didn’t respond. She just stared at me with her mouth half-agape. “What?”

“I’m just… I’m surprised, Zoey. You handled that well.”

Guys like that will only respect you if you meet them where they’re at. There’s no point in rubbing shoulders with them. Some playful banter is enough to earn your chops sometimes. Besides, I’d much rather insult people like that than put on a pretend friendship show.

“If that’s handling it well then I’d hate to see how you’d deal with it,” I said, making my way toward the sushi place.

“It’s not a pretty sight. I’m not amazing at dealing with guys like that.” Yeah, and guys eat little timid girls like you up for lunch, I thought, watching her fling her hair over her shoulders. “I don’t entirely hate parties, no. It’s just that they get a little too crazy for me. Plus, I’ve got church tomorrow.”

“Church? You’re like the opposite of Lawrence, aren’t you?”

“Oh really, how come?”

I thought about outing him and his sexual misadventures, but I wouldn’t hear the end of it from him if he knew I told her the extent of it.

“Well, it’s not him in particular. I feel like most believers these days only care about God for about an hour a week. I can’t say I’ve met many who don’t sin as much as the average person does.”

“I don’t deny that. But that’s not how I live,” she said.

“I can see that.”

At the very least, she seemed to hold to the values of a true believer. Staying strong against peer pressure in a college environment rife with boys, drugs and parties is the undertaking of a saint.

“I take it that you’re an atheist?” she asked.

“I am. Will that be a problem, sister Laura?”

“Nope. I’m just curious about it.”

She’s curious? Surely she’s met with people like me before. And if not, there’s always the internet. So what exactly was she talking about when she said that she was curious?

“Sure. What would you like to know?”

“I hope that this question doesn’t seem rude to you.”

“Don’t worry, I don’t bite,” I said, smiling.

“Well in that case… what kind of atheist are you?” she asked.

“What kind? Are you asking if I don’t believe or if I just choose not to worship?” I rolled my head around, trying to come up with a response. “I just don’t think, in my opinion, that there’s enough evidence to prove that God really does exist. He could, I suppose. I’m not ideologically opposed to the possibility that He’s real. I just don’t see any evidence for it.”

It was getting more and more difficult to believe that He didn’t thanks to my exposure to a real-life spirit, but the existence of spirits and that of God Himself are two entirely different things, At my answer though, Laura turned to me with as much interest as a smile-less girl like her could muster on her face. “No, no. That’s not what I mean.”

The conversation had taken a strange turn. There was a level of audacity I hadn’t seen in her before. She was pushing on a scary topic. The truth is, being grilled on one’s spiritual beliefs might be an uncomfortable experience for the average person, so it might have been a little out of line for her to ask these types of questions. But I had to admit, I was curious about where she was going with it. “Okay, I’ll bite then. What do you mean by a ‘kind of atheist’?”

She circled over and cut in front of me, stopping me in my tracks. Her dark eyes were as wide as saucers, seemingly peering through my very soul. My own gaze met her, but the determination in her expression was overwhelming, even for me.

“Zoey Brahm. How do you reconcile the fact that you’re going to die someday?”

“How..?” Her eyes were unmoving. Just where did that come from? Her question was like a sucker punch to the gut. I was left speechless. At least, for as long as it took for her to open her mouth again.

“It’s a terrifying thing to come to terms with, isn’t it? We can’t remember the times before we were born, after all. It’s all just a big, blank nothing. And as an atheist, you must believe that your death is very likely going to return you to that nothingness. Isn’t that hard to accept? That these harsh times on earth are all that you have?”

She was asking a difficult question. Of course it was hard to accept. If it were easy, then mental disabilities such as anxiety and depression would be wiped off the face of the earth.

“Are you the kind of atheist that searches for new heights to forget her own mortality? The consumerist who drowns herself in shallow material joys to distract herself from it? Buying new clothes, a new phone, fancy new pieces of home décor, a new gadget, or some other form of tangible joy to give you some temporary high that you can convince yourself is better than the homeless man who smokes out of a crack pipe to forget his own dread? Or perhaps meaningless sex is your vice? The pleasure of touch, conquering and being conquered, living in the moment of that ecstasy and not a moment longer?

“Or, are you the awake, burdened atheist, who begrudgingly saunters through life with the knowledge that any day could be her last day? Battling tooth and nail with the fear inside of her that nothing she does in this world will help her escape from that undeniable truth?”

A vicious turbulence was surging inside of those glassy eyes. Her words felt malicious, but beneath that perceived malice I could sense genuine curiosity. It was that wondering of hers that made her words so potent. Was someone asking out of spite really capable of striking at the heart of the human condition the way she did? It was the first time I’d been talked down to by a servant of God that effectively. She hit right at the heart of it all, with an inquisitive gaze that was searching my face for a reaction of any kind.

“You know what I think, Zoey?” She said, suddenly turning back to walk. I followed. “I think atheism is a privilege. Think back to Samuel, the homeless man from earlier. Do you really think it’s fair to tell him that this one life is all that he has? That this dead-end of a reality that he’s been dealt is the entire truth of it? Of course not. Of course he has no choice but to believe in God. Because if not, then how can he go on living in such a harsh world? How can he live with the fact that his only conscious experiences will be of the miserable hand that this world has dealt him? That’s why I think of Atheism as a privilege. Because only those who’ve been dealt a fair hand can afford to believe that what they’re experiencing right now is all there is.”

“No, you have it backwards,” I spoke up finally. “They should be cursing whatever God it is that condemned them to their misfortune. Why would they choose to worship a God that takes so much joy in human suffering? Why should they believe in a God that casts them down into the depths of human suffering while the morally bankrupt thrive?”

“Maybe so, that is one way of looking at it. So, is that the kind of atheist you are, Zoey? The one whose been wronged by the world and so she turns the anger inside of her back outward and points it at God?”

My mouth opened to respond, but the words didn’t come out.

It was a sudden surge.

The shock caused my body suddenly jerked forward.

The sensation of having my consciousness wrestled from me was like having ice-cold water dumped over my body.

I denied it.

I won’t have my body taken.

Not now.

“Zoey?”

Laura appeared concerned, but I couldn’t find the strength to answer her.

My consciousness was being put through a blender.

Was Tristan hacking me?

Why?

Why now?

Wasn’t he supposed to be out with Gwen for her birthday?

Was it a lie?

Were they conspiring against me?

No, I confirmed it with Lawrence earlier.

They were definitely meeting up at the mall.

So was it a group conspiracy with all of the mall-goers?

No, it couldn’t be. Ben and Tristan don’t get along, and Tristan wouldn’t risk telling Ben’s girlfriend anything either.

So then, why?

Why was I being hacked?

“Are you okay?” Laura asked. “Do you need to sit down?”

I did everything in my power to force it out.

The external threat.

The intruder.

I used every scrap of familiarity I had with Dream Paralysis and pulled the plunging prongs aiming at my prefrontal cortex out of my head.

“God…”

“God?”

The pressure on my brain was finally relieved.

It was like the sweet sensation of a cramp finally letting up, where the pain immediately dissipates into something vague.

“No, not God God, but… nevermind. I’m fine.” I recentered myself. “I just felt a migraine coming on, that’s all.”

I searched the immediate area as discreetly as I could manage in my daze. There wasn’t anyone conspicuous nearby that I could see. Not that it mattered. Dream Paralysis was a remote power that could only be activated during REM sleep. Still, that wasn’t a normal hack. While some of the sensations were similar, it felt like an entirely different experience. It was as if my mind was incompatible with whatever it was had just tried to take control of me. Was I growing resistant to Dream Paralysis?

“Do you want to head home?” Laura asked. “I can call you an Uber.”

“No, it’s fine. False alarm.”

“I see, then that’s good. We’re here anyhow.”

I turned to where Laura was gesturing and found that we had been standing right before the sushi place this entire time. Just how shaken up was I by her questioning to not have noticed it? My eyes took in the sight of the tables with Japanese-style umbrellas hanging over them. The aesthetically pleasing eating spot cemented within me once again the impression that Deer Valley State was a magical place.

“Right. Can I leave the ordering to you?” I asked, still rubbing my temple. “I’m fine with whatever you’re having.”

“Sure, and for a drink?”

“Water’s fine.”

She smiled and headed over to the counter to make the order. I took a seat at one of the tables and immediately took my phone out to call Tristan. I needed to find out what was going on over there. Did he bail on the mall trip just to hack me? What exactly was going on?

“Uh, hello?” Thankfully, it didn’t take long for him to answer the phone. He must not have been doing anything important.

“Did you just try to hack me?”

“What?”

“Give Gwen the phone.”

“W-what, but?”

“Right now.”

After a few moments of silence, the phone shuffled and eventually Gwen’s voice filtered in from the other side.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“What are you guys doing right now?”

“What? No happy birthday?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought people stopped looking forward to those after they hit 30,” I said.

“We’re in the same year, dumbass.”

“Really? Those bags under your eyes could have fooled me.”

The line went quiet outside of the sound of the cheesy pop music that must have been coming from the speakers inside of a store. She was clearly doing her best to rein in her frustration. It was her fault anyway. Her birthday’s on Tuesday. Why was she being so confrontational?

“What the fuck do you want? I’m trying to enjoy my day right now, so you’re the last person I want to be talking to.”

“Well, I was just curious about what Tristan was doing just now.”

“Huh? Just now? We’re just checking out clothing stores. He’s with me, Nao, and Law right now. The rest of them are off somewhere.”

There was no reason for her to lie, and I couldn’t sense any defensiveness in her voice. I had to believe that she was telling the truth. But if Tristan really wasn’t sleeping, then that only leaves two possibilities.

“By the way, how’s the Warren situation?” I asked.

“Huh? It’s fine. He hasn’t done anything weird. Look, is this going to be a thing for the rest of today? I don’t feel like putting up with this bullshit. If you wanted to come then you should’ve begged. Heh, maybe I’d have considered it if you got on your knees.”

I thought about telling her about how that wouldn’t be a good thing for her relationship with Ben, but I decided to ease up on her. At the very least, she did provide me with some valuable information.

“Nevermind, I’m hanging up now. Do enjoy your birthday, Gwen. I mean that sincerely.”

“Yeah right. Drop dead, cunt.”

She hung up.

This revelation did nothing to ease the sense of dread building up inside of me. Tristan really was at the mall with Gwen and company. And worse off, he’s been wide awake this entire time. This could only mean two things. One, it’s possible for Tristan to hack people while he’s awake. But would he really do something like that right now of all times? It could have been a mistake on his part, but he would’ve told me outright if that were the case. The other, and more likely explanation has more terrifying implications.

There is a very distinct possibility that there exists someone else with the power of Dream Paralysis.

But why? And why would they target me of all people, just one week after Tristan revealed his own abilities to me? Something wasn’t right. It’s as if, in that short time frame, someone figured out that I had a connection to Dream Paralysis and was trying to pry me for information.

But who? Who could it be? Was it Warren? He’s the only person observant enough to come to such a conclusion, but he didn’t seem to be aware of the power at all. Plus, he was wide awake and hanging out at the mall.

No,.. I shouldn’t assume things. The fact that it might be possible to hack people while awake is still on the table. But if that’s the case, then aren’t I screwed? They know that I’m connected to Dream Paralysis, and they’re free to attack me with their invisible gun from any angle. Knowing that I’m being fired at by an invisible gun might help me duck for cover, but it won’t do anything insofar as identifying the gunman, yet alone disarming him.

At the very least, I should be careful with the people around me today. I need to assume that any one of them could be the culprit behind the hack.

“I’m back. They should be here in like ten minutes.”

As Laura handed me the bottled water she procured after making her order, I couldn’t help but wonder if she was the hacker. The timing was suspicious. It was just after she jabbed at me with questions about my beliefs, as if she were making a statement that God does, in fact, exist. Was it possible, or was I just being paranoid? This power, whatever it is, truly terrified me. I was slowly beginning to accept that navigating this situation long-term would take the entirety of my focus from now on. My grades would fall, and my ability to deftly manage my social circle as I had will probably decline. But this is life or death. I need to gain control over this.

Thinking that, I placed my face on my palm and smiled at the girl before me.

“Are you a virgin, Laura?”

“Hmm? I am. Why?”

An instant answer. She must not be embarrassed about her sexuality.

“Just curious. I heard rumors that you had a boyfriend, so I was wondering if you’d done it with him yet.”

“Mmm, nope.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Need to get married for that.”

“I understand.”

I took a sip of my water. She really was dedicated to playing the part of a good little believer.

“What about you?” she asked. “Have you had sex before?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“Oh, are you that curious about it?”

“And you’re not?”

“A little, but not as much as it seems to excite other people my age,” she said while taking a sip of her own drink.

“Seriously? Have you ever even masturbated before?”

“Nope.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“No, I don’t think He’s ever masturbated either,” she said.

I stared her dead in the eyes, and she stared back eerily. It’s like she was smiling without smiling, and she wanted me to know that.

“What? There’s no commandment against having a sense of humor,” she said after a moment of silence.

“No, I’m just surprised, is all. I think it’s normal to be curious about things like sex and parties. From the outside, it must sound like a ton of fun.”

“I won’t deny that. But when you’ve lived a life of abstinence for long enough, the temptation sort of just leaves your body after a while. I love my boyfriend with all my heart, but I won’t go that far with him until we get married in the future.”

It was a concept as foreign as living spirits or supernatural body possession. She wasn’t merely referring to winning a battle against her own curiosity or biological urges. No. There were so many external pressures, from society and one’s social circles, that push the average person in the direction of things like sex. It would take only a special kind of either discipline to resist the ultimate pleasure in that kind of environment. Or depravity I suppose, in my case.

Either way, that purity of hers infuriated me.

That someone would play the angel before me with a straight face was enough to cause me to flip this table off into a group of students walking by.

And if she really is the one who hacked me, then I decided to make sure to drag it out of her screaming.