It had been so long since I'd dreamt last, that it took me quite a while to fathom what was happening to me. A multitude of visions were cascading into each other without proper order—at least at first.  

I saw my mother, kind and gentle as she was, in a time when I remembered what it was like to have a mother, her voice soft and reassuring, just as her embrace. Yes a stern look here and there, too. I was a frail child and she a protective mother despite my bouts of rebellion. “Be careful, Viktor.” “Don't stay out too long.” And “Please cover up and don't forget your hat.” She called to me. I remember her watching me all the time. My father, said to me “Wash up boy, you look like some street urchin.” But I wanted to be dirty, being clean meant being so… white. I remember. I was different. I never kept any friends.  

Suddenly things turned dark, and I never looked back. There was a man with me. He showed me things that would change me forever. Change. He changed me, deep down. I grew and learned so much. I was still so young, yet I lived a new life with him. Luxury. This man with a quick wit, wicked temper, a strange generosity, and a mind so terrible and complex, became my steward, my guardian. Fleeting images of this relationship bombarded me, and then… and then there was an emptiness. Wrongness. Also, sadness filled me. A brooding darkness—no, not darkness…an absence—so absolute I felt like I was drowning in it. 

I was saved. Something filled that hole, that absence. I  remember just getting by. Surviving minimally. Why? There was a reason… 

Richard.  

He wasn't the reason. Or was he?  

No.  

Presently, I was seeing someone. There was a lot of light. I saw a shape of someone off to the side. I looked. I saw a mirror? A window? I saw sunlight. The room was flooded with its golden quality. The room was aged, but not old and tattered. The bed was ready, made a long, long time ago for guest who never came—or wouldn't, until now. I saw that a familiar bag had been tossed onto it.  

I see, a voice deliberated.  

Clem?  

Go to him, was all she told me. I didn't see her, though I knew she had been there with me—watching. She retreated. I felt her withdraw, though I wasn't sure how far.  

Him?

I tried to look around. I saw no one in the room but me. But wait! It wasn't me. Whoever had been standing where I was stepped away, and I saw that it was the boy, Richard. He sat cautiously on the bed, uncertain he seemed of its sturdiness. He looked around with a drawn, tired face. He didn't see me—couldn't. I wasn't really there, not in body. Not in spirit either, I had given up on that. Perhaps in mind… 

Richard sunk back onto the back laying his head on the pillows. I half expected dust to billow out from the contact. There was none. He did cough though. I saw his body shudder with the short convulsion. He curled up and faced the windows. The wash of golden light brought warmth to his face. I found myself silently staring into his dark eyes—eyes that did not see me, but looked through me. Eyes that yearned for so much. Eyes that filled slowly with tears. He wiped them hastily and hugged his knees.  

He gulped. He squeezed his eyelids shut and hugged himself.  

I watched.  

I watched his breathing tremble and flutter, eventually calming to a steady shallow shrug of his slumped shoulders. He adjusted himself and slid his hands, both of them, in a prayer fashion between his cheek and the embroidered pillow beneath it. I noticed the small droplets of sweat beading upon his brow and temple, the shimmer of moisture around his lips. I thought for a moment, that I could cool him down, with my body—my cold body. But then I remembered. I wasn't in my body.  

Then I remembered something else.  

I imagined myself a body, a body of thought and intention. Something I had heard somewhere. I extended, and willed myself to brush back the sodden tendrils of hair framing Richard's face. He twitched and shuddered. Then he absently brushed at his face from the depths of his slumber. I studied him as he lay there for quite some time before attempting a second try. This time I spotted a trickle of moisture at the corner of his mouth. With delicate intention I sought to wipe that spot, where his top lip and his bottom met perfectly in a slight downward curve.  

He turned onto his back in his sleep spread out his limbs across the bed. His shirt and hoodie twisted as he moved exposing, just under his navel, lightly dusted with little dark hairs. Beyond that his pants were wrinkled from the long trip and his sleep. The clothing’s topography revealed generously what it covered.

I noticed so much more at this unobstructed view of the boy. I drank in the sight of him. The lighting was strange to me, forgotten, and dreamlike, but so intense it felt like I was using my eyes for the first time, though I wasn't using them at all. The stark lingering trace of innocence giving way to the darkness of recent events, like a sunset cut short by rolling thunderheads. The warmth that exuded from his skin seemed feverish, ready to ignite the parched bedding around him like a pyre. The air that was drawn into his body only to be expelled created an atmosphere of wanton serenity. I saw the sliver of a reflection behind his heavy lashes.  

I suddenly became aware that in this state the sight of flesh did not stir the same desires as it normally did. The thirst, that hunger for blood was a distance gravity calling to me. Instead, what intoxicated me now was the desire for his flesh, not for the necessity of what it contained.  

My will and intention became so restless, so ambitious, I nearly was blinded by it. Fortunately, I became aware of what I was doing, or attempting to do when Richard stirred. For the moment he remained asleep. I stilled, unable to bring myself to action. Some remote facsimile of morals stayed my hand. The effect of my manipulation was readily apparent, and I enjoyed it. I wanted… Richard. I wanted a human being like I've never wanted another person before.  

Richard: the boy who was sleeping on an old, long empty bed, slack-jawed and probably snoring, and laying prone to my whim.  

Richard. 

With a gasp, the boy flinched and blinked. Squinting, he  scanned the room warily. He propped himself up on his elbows. His eyes passed over me twice before coming to a rest. He glanced down at himself and the bed. His lips parted and he mouthed a word. No—a name.  

Viktor. 

He shot off the bed and ran to the window with a shock I saw that the sun had moved drastically—it was nearing late afternoon.  

He rubbed at his face with both palms and ran his fingers back and forth through his hair. He glanced back into the room.  He stretched.  

That's when I felt a jolt in my awareness. I was being pulled away. I reached out to Richard and failed to connect. The darkness shrouded me once more, the dark void, that soothing absence.