CHOCOLATE
Mick Garris
I woke up wearing someone else's smile.
It was chocolate. The smell, the flavor, the unmistakable texture of the good stuff… creamy, dreamy, and dark, so rich that it woke me up. As it dissipated, it left in its place an overwhelming rush of disappointment, bordering on depression.
Now, I'm not a guy who salivates at the mention of a Hershey bar — I've always prided myself of my clear thinking and level-headedness — but in my dream state that morning, I'd have killed for a hollow Easter bunny.
I never dream… not so I remember, anyway. On the rare occasion that I do dream, I never remember the dream, merely the dreaming. I'll wake up, my head filled with the most amazing bubbles and shadows of boundless nocturnal thought, only to have it vanish as I dredge myself into the waking world. Dreamland and I remain perfect strangers.
But this chocolate heaven stayed with me into the light of the morning sun. The purity of its taste, the milky calm of it melting down my throat, the gentle caffeine rush flowed through me with such sensual pleasure that I immediately understood why our great-grandparents considered the stuff a powerful aphrodisiac.
Since the divorce led me into the gym and a macrobiotic diet all those months ago, this was wish fulfillment I never knew I desired. I can take sweets or leave them. I thought. But if I take them, I can hire out to Macy's on Thanksgiving Day.
But the diet isn't so tough. Nothing ever used to be much of a problem. Sure, the marriage was less than successful, but we handled it in a civilized manner. We didn't hit each other, or scream all night, or fight endlessly. It just didn't work, so we ended it. It was a passionless affair, immediately after the vows were said, and we're better off now apart than together. And Babette and I are still friends.
The day The Dream woke me, I had to go shopping. Since the Schick Center aversion therapy, it's no big deal. I could guide my cart past the beckoning candy and cookies with considerable ease. But today the lingering taste made life more difficult. With fierce determination I loaded the basket with the required rabbit food: sprouts, spinach, pao darko tea — you know the stuff. But it was when I headed to the meat counter for the ground turkey that I heard their little voices.
A Nestle's Crunch called me by name; the Cadbury with hazelnuts was trying to crawl into my cart; the M&Ms — plain and peanut — were trying to melt in my mouth, not in my hands. I turned away from the meat counter and went looking for Mr. Goodbar.
I raced home with my bounty and tore into the candy with a voracious desire. Stuffing it into my mouth, where there should have been a surge of sensual satisfaction, a chocolate itch scratched by Godiva, there was only letdown.
It was creamy, rich and sweet… but meaningless. I could take it or leave it. Even though alone, I went pink with embarrassment; it really wasn't worth the hypoglycemic rush I knew I would have to endure. I didn't crave that shit.
I gagged down a salad and washed it down with unfiltered carrot juice.
Yum.
Senses are important to me. I create artificial flavors for the food industry, and my first fear was that the olfactory was acting up, and my career might be jeopardized. But the Chocolate Experience was an isolated one, and it was soon forgotten.
It must have been two weeks later when the sneezes blasted me from slumber at about four in the morning. It was the damned cat. In my sleep it hummed and sputtered in my lap, as I stroked it, loved it, cuddled it as if it were my closest life-long chum.
But I'm allergic to cats.
Okay, I love animals, am a member of Defenders of Wildlife and the Cousteau Society, but I just hate cats. They're sneaky, annoying, leave their hair all over the furniture — which they've clawed to shreds — and make my eyes go red and teary. My deviated septum packs up and explodes when one of the little darlings is near.
So what in the hell am I doing cuddling and cooing Puffin my sleep? And with all deference to the wisdom of my allergies, since when does dreaming of a cat make me sneeze?
Something was going on here that I didn't understand. It struck me that perhaps I was dreaming someone else's dreams.
But it turned out to be more than the purloining of slumber fantasy. What was happening to me was much more than a dream.
One night, while driving home from a particularly tiresome day at the lab, the dream spilled into my waking hours. I was overwhelmed with affection and warmth, overflowing with a rush of romance that would have made the Bronte sisters blush. Somehow, I was a human radio tower, receiving emotions of such depth that I nearly crashed the Mazda.
Here I am on the way home from Consolidated Flavor Enhancement, looking forward to choosing from a variety of at least half a dozen boxes of Lean Cuisine in the freezer, a light beer, and a stroke magazine I hid in the evening Examiner, and I was nearly knocked senseless by this rush of true love so inestimably foreign to me.
I thought I'd been in love a hundred times — I know I told a hundred women I loved them, and I sure meant it at the time — but I'd never known true love. And compared to this experience, I'd never known even a reasonable facsimile. With a crescendo of sudden shame and embarrassment, I realized I didn't know shit about love. I was hit in the face with my shallowness, so incapable of emotional depth that I never knew such feelings existed.
When the transmission ended, it left me drained, and unbelievably sad.
Supposedly you never miss what you've never had, but now that I'd felt this exhilaration, I was left deflated and so depressed that I actually cried on my way home.
Even as a child, I never cried. I used to lie in bed at night, trying to summon up the image of my dead grandfather to make myself feel enough to spill tears, usually without success.
And now, caught in the valley-bound gridlock of rush hour traffic, my anticipation of Pritikin bread and Cookin' Bag chicken was trespassed by the swelling and spilling of heretofore arid tear ducts.
To a newcomer, feeling is pain.
But it was a glorious pain, and once felt, I needed to experience it again. What was happening to me? And why?
Over the ensuing weeks the transmissions were random. Somehow, I was a psychic burglar, stealing someone else's senses. Without warning, I would see through someone else's eyes, taste with their mouth, or — by far the best of all — feel what they were feeling.
But nothing I could do could will the transmissions on. They struck at random, and always alone: smell without sight, touch without hearing, emotions without sight.
However, now that I seemed to understand what was happening, and looked forward to receiving the signals, they were denied me. I wanted to feel the emotions of a true human being, someone who felt deeply and passionately, and seemed to take a proper place on the planet. I felt like a welfare tenant in Hearst Castle, that I deserved to be evicted from the planet for impersonating a human being. I wanted to be allowed to grow.
But days passed, and the only emotions to roll about in my head were, disappointingly, my own. I kept occupied at the lab, made myself so busy that it kept me from wishing for an empathy rush.
Just an ingredient or two from perfecting an imitation honeydew flavor for Jelly Bellies, it struck again. No longer confined to dream infiltrations, the transpositions chose to attack in my waking hours, and usually at the most inopportune of moments.
Like the first time, it began with a smell. It was almost roses. In my business, I knew immediately that it wasn't real roses, but a very good simulation. I've since identified it: tea rose perfume. And then the feeling. I covered myself with my arms, suddenly standing naked in the middle of the lab, toweling myself dry, powdering my body, softly, luxuriously, sensually pampering myself.