This isn’t really a sex chapter, but it is my personal favorite.

Chapter Four:

The room was quite large and well lit, with the walls made of yellow marble and the floors decorated with intricate tiles. Adrian was sitting on a bench on one side of the room, facing a maze of velvet rope walkways, leading to a series of counters. The room was filled with people, but only a fraction of them were talking. Adrian assumed the building was a bank, but that was all he could do, because he did not know how he got there. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten to the bank, when he had gotten there, what happened before it, and he didn’t even recognize the bank. This was not a simple matter of “forget what you’re watching during the commercial break”; he literally couldn’t remember anything.

“My mental stability has been compromised,” Adrian said softly to himself as he searched his empty memory for answers. His heart rate rose as he considered the possibility. If his memory had just suddenly failed, then other parts of his mind could follow.

Calm down and think logically. Your memories may be gone but the rest of your mind seems to be processing everything at its regular pace.

Adrian repeated the phrase out loud, hoping that the audio reception would trigger something in his brain. He channeled all of the energy from his physical reaction to his mind, checking every aspect of his consciousness for anything else that had experienced damage.

“My name is Adrian Ashford, I am eighteen years old, and my birthday is July 5th, 1994,” he said out loud, coming across a scrap of his memory and trying to stimulate his mind.

He could remember personal information such as his identity and who he was, but no actual events. Adrian thought back to what he knew about the human brain, and while the information was there, the source of where he gained that information could not be found.

“Interesting, my Limbic System seems to be functioning only partially, but I can’t find any other part of my mind that is changed. Whatever is going on, I need to make a mental map, should my mind be impaired even further.”

The brain remembers what the body experiences better than what thoughts actually take place, so he had to keep talking to himself to increase the chance that he could retain what little memory he had. He looked around at the people in the bank, trying to decide whether he should try to interact with them. On one hand, his mental health was obviously in jeopardy, but on the other… how was he supposed to explain this? Would he just walk up to the counter and ask ‘Ma’am, could you please help me? I can’t remember how I got here and I’m probably going to start hallucinating soon’. Most likely, anyone he spoke to would think he was either on drugs or about to rob the bank.

Besides, it was very likely that he was already hallucinating. Did the bank exist? Did the people in it exist? Or was it the other way around, and everything existed but he was perceiving his own actions wrong? If he went up and tried to say something, would it be possible for him to think he had asked for help but instead just shouted a bunch of swears like he was drunk? For all he knew, he could think he had gotten up and asked for help, but that was the illusion, and in reality, he had never gotten up from the bench.

It would be best not to draw any attention to himself or try to talk to anyone until he fully assessed the situation. Adrian looked to his left and saw a desk with several pens and a stack of application forms. He took one of the forms and laid it down on the bench with a pen in hand. If his logical side were the next to be affected, then he would need a psychological flash drive to compensate. He began writing on the back of the paper, saying out loud whatever he wrote.

POSSIBLE REASONS FOR MEMORY LOSS:

“Partial memory loss is most commonly associated with dreams and hallucinations,” Adrian muttered before writing DREAM and HALLUCINATION.

“But knowing my psychological history, sudden memory loss is also an undeniable symptom of mental illness, possibly brought on by trauma,” he said before writing down MENTAL ILLNESS/AMNESIA.

Adrian then dug his fingernails into his palm as hard as he could, letting the pain reach his mind instead of blocking it while beads of blood started to drip from his hand.

“If this is a dream then it is a vivid one, vivid enough to trick the Thalamus. If I’m able to feel pain in this dream, then the chances are extremely low that this is a dream at all. Either that, or I’m not asleep exactly. This could very well be a drug-induced coma or some kind of unconscious hallucination. I shouldn’t try that ‘death wakes you up’ option since my body may very well be in the real world instead of my mind.”

He wrote POSSIBLE/UNLIKELY under DREAM.

“Hallucination or a mental illness, maybe even blunt trauma to the prefrontal cortex or other areas of the brain. Whatever is going on, I need to find out what is going on before my mental state deteriorates even further.”

PRELIMINARY MEMORY RECOLLECTION INEFFECTIVE

ATTEMPT SENSORY OVERLOAD

After Adrian finished writing, he folded up the paper and stowed it and the pen in his pocket. From the size of the bank, he was obviously in a city. Because his mental stability was already compromised, he would need to try and induce a seizure in the hope that it would knock him unconscious and his mind could reboot like a computer. He had to get out into the streets and use his surroundings to confuse his senses, similar to an epileptic seizure.

Through the glass doors, Adrian could see cars passing by in the city streets and crowds of people walking down the sidewalk. But as he stepped outside, every moving object disappeared. The cars and people had completely vanished, leaving the street empty and silent. It was as if the glass of the doors had been TV screens, showing him a recording. Adrian looked back into the bank, but like the street outside, the entire room was suddenly empty.

“I’m running out of time, either I’m losing control of this dream or my hallucinations are worsening. Damn it, I should have asked for help when I had the chance!”

He stepped out into the empty street and looked around. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky and the sun was directly overhead. He looked at the buildings on both sides of the street, trying to recognize something. As far as he could tell, he had never been in this location before.

“This city could very well not exist and very well be a product of the hallucination or the dream, whichever it is. However, the city could be real, but my subconscious is filtering out the people and they really exist, meaning that they could be walking right past me, but my mind won’t let me detect them. I could still try and make contact, but if they are real and do exist, they would most likely try to ignore me.”

Adrian took out his pen and laid out his mental map against a mailbox.

SENSORY BALANCE DETERIORATING

DREAM/HALLUCINATION WORSENING

LOSING CONTROL

As he wrote the words down, noise suddenly reached his ears. He looked across the street at a nightclub. The dark windows were dimly flashing with different colors and techno music was pulsing through the panes of glass. Just a moment ago, the building had been quiet and calm. Adrian ran across the street, knowing that the road could still be filled with people and cars, but his unstable mind was not processing them. Regardless of whether he was hallucinating or not, he still had to be logical, and he had to protect himself from things that should have been present, whether he could detect them or not.

He stepped into the nightclub and checked his surroundings. The walls were dark purple and decorated with lit candles. The ceiling was covered in mirrors and the tiles had intricate patterns. There were no tables, just booths lining one side of the room opposite to the bar, with a small lamp dimly illuminating each one. A bolt of dull pain shot through his mind as a quick flash of a memory entered his consciousness. This nightclub was the same setting Adrian used to talk to his Id and Ego.

The club was filled with people, all talking and dancing with each other. He couldn’t make out a single word anyone was saying, and as he walked through the crowd, everyone seemed to move away without even glancing at him. Taking a deep breath, Adrian stood in the middle in the room and shouted as loud as possible, yet no one even turned to him. They were all hallucinations. Out of options, he came up to the bar and sat down on one of the stools. He looked at himself in the mirror, contemplating his journey through this mental maze. His sensory overload idea wasn’t working at all and he didn’t know what to do next.

“This is way beyond a mental illness or a hallucination, but I’ve never experienced a dream that was vivid and complex, and even let me feel pain,” Adrian muttered to himself, looking down at his hands.

“That’s because you’ve never dreamed this deeply before,” a soft voice cooed as a martini was placed under his face. Instead of a toothpick, the olive was skewered with a tiny Demium spike.

Adrian looked up at the bartender. “Hello, Jenny,” he said dryly.

The blonde beauty gave a coy smile. “’Hello, Jenny’? That’s all you say to the woman you love?”

“You’re an illusion, there is no point showing any emotional attachment to a figment of my imagination.”

“Only you could be so cold,” she pouted.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on, or not? If you’re my subconscious, then you should know I am becoming aggravated.”

“That, my love, is for you to figure out. Hallucinations are the brain’s way of trying to solve problems, and as you can see, this is one serious hallucination.”

“I thought you said I was dreaming.”

“I never said that. I said you’ve never dreamed this deeply before.”

“So this is a hallucination?”

“You figure it out.”

“Well of all the things that I’ve encountered in this dream of mine, you’re the only one that I’m actually able to interact with. Everything else disappears because it is unimportant or could break the dream, meaning that my subconscious wants me to stay here, at least until I accomplish something. Plus, isn’t it strange that in the most vivid dream I’ve ever experienced, my sense of logic hasn’t been affected in the least?

You and logic, the two greatest forces in this dream… I wonder what that could mean?” he asked sarcastically as he downed the martini.

“Bingo. Something has happened and you must make a choice now. You must choose between your love for me and your cold logical side. For years it has made you more than human, but if you wish to keep the woman you love, you must become human.” The martini glass snapped in his hand. “Will you give up your soul or your heart?”

“This isn’t a dream, it’s a nightmare,” Adrian cursed. He then looked up and yelled, “Id! Ego!”

Regardless of his call, his alternate personalities did not appear.

“Why can’t I summon them?”

“Because you can no longer identify them. The barriers you set up between your three personalities are breaking and their influences are leaking out erratically, causing growing psychological trauma. You are the Superego, correct? Basically, you’ve been letting your Id and Ego affect your actions as the dominant sentience, but then disregarding those actions and trying to maintain your identity as a cold and emotionless robot. Basically, you’re scrambling your mental stability by constantly switching from machine to man without properly handing control over to one of the other personalities.

As I said before, you created the Superego to be cold and logical, but you also want to be with Jenny. You can’t be with her without showing emotion and physical desire, but you are too afraid to let any of the other personalities take over, so you are trying to use your Superego in ways you never intended it to be used for and putting massive amounts of strain on your mind. You’re basically trying to drive a Prius like it’s an ATV.”

“And the only way to protect my mental stability is to choose between my Superego and Jenny?”

“Correct, and you can’t leave this dream until you do. For the sake of self-preservation and as your subconscious, I will not allow you to continue this corrosive tendency. You know what I’m talking about; you’re driving yourself into an early grave because you are too stubborn to give up something! You can’t gain something without giving something up! You need to quit torturing yourself and make a choice, but before you can make your decision, I will show you the results of both paths. Pull out the sheet of paper in your pocket.”

Adrian pulled out the paper and unfolded it. It was no longer the application sheet/mental map Adrian had gotten from the bank. The earlier print and writings had been replaced with a line of coordinates, but with each second that passed, the numbers seemed to change with Adrian unable to remember what they had been previously. It was as if he had misread it, but every time he tried to go back and read it again, he just made bigger and bigger mistakes.

“That is the location of your goal, the key to changing this world and ending all conflict. However, the only way you will ever achieve your goal is if you defeat your opponents, and that will be impossible without your intellect.”

She then grabbed the stem of the broken martini glass and stabbed him in the center of the chest. Adrian fell off the bar stool, snarling in pain. He hit the ground with blood streaming from his chest, spurting from his mouth, and leaking from his ruptured heart to his torn left lung. He pulled out the long glass shard and the pain instantly fell away. He felt his chest but could not find the wound. His clothes weren’t even torn or bloody.

“If you keep your logical side, your relationship will shatter. Every day after, you shall feel that pain in your heart from losing the one thing that truly made you happy. You will sacrifice yourself to help the rest of the world,” Jenny said as Adrian climbed back up onto his stool.

“So I can be a martyr and save the world, or…”

“You can give up the one thing that truly makes you unique. If you give up your mechanical mentality, you will be at risk of your emotions running your mind and causing physical damage similar to the placebo affect. As your subconscious, I will be forced to shut down your fulfilled potential to protect you from such harm, at the cost of your intelligence. You would most likely have a normal IQ, right around 100 points.”

As she spoke the words, the shattered martini glass repaired itself. The walls of the club began to change, losing their dark violet shade and gaining a shifting orange hue, with blobs of color swerving just beneath the glassy surface. The walls of the club almost resembled the inside of a lava lamp. The people in the club began to change as well; they lost their physical bodies and became merely holograms of their former selves, passing through all the physical objects and each other. Blobs of colored fire began wafting up from all of the candles, hovering in the air before turning into liquid and popping like bubbles.

“Can I have another martini?” Adrian asked, even though the first one tasted like bug spray.

“I’ll try.”

Adrian watched as she went through the process of making the martini, putting all of the ingredients together in the mixer and then shaking it vigorously. But when she poured it into his repaired glass, it came out as orange juice.

“Sorry, it looks like luck was not on your side,” Jenny mused.

With a calm expression on his face, Adrian picked up the martini olive that had fallen on the table when the glass broke. He pulled out the tiny Demium spike. “Cute,” he said sarcastically before eating the olive. “What is the purpose of this world? Of all dream sceneries, why a city? It seems rather cliché.”

“Ah, now you know what to look for. This world is your mind, as dictated by your mental state and personality and chosen by your subconscious. Before you met me, your mind looked like the inside of a supercomputer, with electric synapses passing through the circuits at speeds far above regular humans. But when we began our relationship, you became more social, even if it was just with me. Your mind is shaping itself around this new social behavior and your new emotions, gaining a very ‘human’ influence.

The circuits have been replaced with towering buildings, which represent your tendency to cling to stony organization. The electric synapses have been replaced with people, moving through this city in a pattern similar to their predecessors, but in a more social form. Consider this the “user-friendly” version of your mind.”

Adrian held up the martini glass and flicked it. As the ripples moved through the orange juice, it turned to soda. “If this is my mind, then why is all logic and reason being cast aside for random anomalies?”

“Because I’m trying to show you the risk of choosing me. If you surrender your abilities of logic, you will lose much of your ability to predict outcomes and understand things that happen before you. Your ability to think analytically would be nearly crippled. Even worse, your emotions and desires may run rampant. Everything is as random here as it would seem in the real world. You are all about self-control, Adrian. You suppress your emotions and choose when you let physical desire show, just to remain clear-headed and balanced. If you choose me, then you will have to give up your plan of a new world order, resulting in the destabilization of your inner world. And if you fall too far, then you will lose Jenny and you won’t be able to go back to the way you were. Your self-control with continue to disappear until you end up like this…”

Adrian turned around in the stool and raised one of his eyebrows. All of the men and women in the club had ripped off their clothes and erupted into an orgy. They were all writing on the floor, with each person having sex whoever was closest. Adrian jerked as he could suddenly feel soft human skin against his own and turned back to Jenny. “Ok, you’re going to have to elaborate.”

“Just turn around,” she said with a smile. Adrian turned back to the orgy and Jenny wrapped her arms around his neck. “All the male apparitions are you in the life of debauchery that could possibly happen if you give up self-control to be with Jenny, but fall so far that you lose her and become like Caligula. They are all you at different times in this possible life path. Every act of hedonism is being compacted into this one scene, letting you feel every woman, every orifice, every sexual experience in your future if you fall. Everything that they feel, you feel. Consider it the ultimate sexual euphoria. Enjoy the show…”

Adrian sat on the bar stool, watching the orgy. He could feel every woman as if he were screwing them himself. He could feel the endless number of breasts against his palms, each with their own unique dimensions, from A-cup to D-cup and from pointing nipples to small ones. He couldn’t keep his tongue still, because his sense of taste was saturated with the taste of all the women he was going down on. They were all similar, yet each had a hint of individuality. Having all of the kinky tastes combined made him think of a wine-tasting party. He could actually feel the orifices around his tongue as the apparitions explored the women’s insides. Like his tongue, he could feel the mouths, pussies, and asses gripping my manhood, all combined into a single experience. He looked over to one male apparition, fucking one of the women anally in the doggy style. He could actually feel her asshole gripping his cock tightly, as if he were the one hammering her. He looked at another apparition that was getting a blowjob, and could actually feel the woman’s tongue, gums, and cheeks soaking he manhood in saliva.

Adrian had the largest erection in my life and he could feel it being used to fuck the women anally, orally, and vaginally. Every square inch of his body felt like it was pressed against the soft flesh of one of the women, almost like a physical Nirvana. His whole body jerked as I felt over a dozen orgasms all combined into one simultaneous feeling. He looked down and realized he had ejaculated and dampened his pants.

He turned around back to Jenny as all the apparitions disappeared, leaving the two of them alone. The club returned to its normal form, with the only illumination coming from the lights above the bar’s mirror. The bar itself was sitting in a pool of light, surrounded by darkness.

“If you fall too far, you will become what you hate: a mindless player who uses women for no reason and lives just for pleasure. You will become a modern-day Caligula and end up dead either from a drug overdose or suicide because of self-hatred. But there is only a chance of that happening. If you can surrender your machine-like side and balance how much self-control you give up, the rewards would be great,” Jenny said as she motioned down the bar.

Adrian looked down at the corner of the counter, where an elderly couple were having drinks, happy and in love. He watched as both the man and the woman drank from each other’s glasses and then kissed.

“That is you and I, celebrating fifty years of marriage. If you choose love but don’t fall too far, you will have a lifetime of happiness with the one you care about.”

“I can either sacrifice my happiness and try to complete my goal, or I can give up my individuality and risk a psychological crash, but possibly live out my life happy with Jenny,” Adrian said, looking at the old couple. He then turned to the girl before him. “The real Jenny I mean.”

“That is the choice you must make.”

Adrian was silent for several moments before sighing. “I can’t choose either of them,” he said with his face downcast and his hands shaking. “I will lose Jenny no matter what I do. If I stay the way I am, with my cold machine side as my dominant personality, then Jenny will eventually become fed up with me and will seek someone who can give her the emotional support she needs. My personality as the Superego has been changing gradually, but it won’t be enough to keep her. But if I give up who I am… then I would no longer be the man she loves. I would be like everyone else, and she sought me out because I’m different.”

“Then that means you are fated to lose me, just like you always said you were.”

His hands stopped shaking and Adrian looked up at Jenny, showing a small but warm smile on his face. He finally understood. He finally knew what he had to do. “More proof that you aren’t Jenny. I believe that fate controls everything I do, but the real Jenny believes the opposite. So far, you’ve only told me what I already know, even if it’s only at a subconscious level. Well let me tell you something; I love Jenny, and while I won’t cast away my logical soul or my heart, I will cast away my beliefs.”

All of the glasses and bottles on the shelf behind the apparition started to shake and rattle.

“You only gave me two options because they were the only options I had created for myself through my actions, but there is another option, one that you did not mention because of how far it goes against my beliefs. All this time, I have been trying to gain ultimate control over my body and mind. I learned to harness the full potential of my muscles, block pain, and erase all distractions. I kept telling myself that it was because it was the only way to evolve, but really I was just afraid. I was afraid of myself, afraid of my emotions, afraid of losing control. I sealed my emotions because I was terrified of letting them run my life. I sealed them because I thought that I would never be able to control them. I only weakened myself and my potential by ignoring my full self. It’s time to face my fears so that I can truly gain self control.”

The entire nightclub began to shake.

“I am going to create a third option. I will rejoin the parts of my mind that I originally separated: id, Ego, and Superego. I am not as weak as I was when I first woke up. I have become strong enough now so that I can finally control the deepest recesses of my subconscious!”

A huge crack then ran through the counter, with a bright light shining up through. Bottles and glasses began falling from the shelf and breaking while the chairs around the counter all began to shatter into splinters.

“Jenny once told me to use my mind and see the world and then use my heart to change it in my favor, and I’m going to use my heart to change the rules. I’ll do what she said and become the man she wants and needs me to be, but I will not give up any of the aspects that make up who I am. I will be whatever she wants me to be, and she is what will keep me balanced. There will be no going back once the change is made, but I don’t care. I will accomplish my goal with Jenny at my side!”

Everything in the bar began shattering, sending splinters and blades of glass flying in all directions, but none of them touched Jenny or Adrian.

“Are you really willing to gamble your mental stability and your life on your relationship with me?” she asked with a smile.

“I gambled my identity, my soul, and my future to be with her; adding my mental stability is basically like throwing in another poker chip,” Adrian said with a cynical smile.

Jenny’s smiled widened. “Very well, but remember this: if you lose Jenny, everything will fall apart. You could lose your memories, become a completely different person, or go mad and spend the rest of your life killing people. You’ve had no faith in the relationship since it started, why are you so willing to bet your whole life on it now?”

“Because I love her, now let me out.”

Adrian gasped as his eyes bolted open. Bright lights above him kept him from seeing, and every square inch of his body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. As his eyesight steadied itself, he recognized the lights and ceiling above him; he was in the hospital. As his mind lit back up, he could hear the beeping of the heart monitor beside him and he could feel the blankets of the bed he was in, as well as the breathing tube in his throat. It was then that he realized that there was a bandage wrapped around his head.

Adrian was about to lift his hand to feel it, but something was pinning his arm down. He looked to his side and saw Jenny. She was sound asleep next him, coated in dry tears and holding onto him for dear life. Adrian gave small smile as he looked at her beautiful face. He felt much different than before, almost like after he and Jenny made love for the first time, but even more vibrant and excited. His mind didn’t feel so divided like it was before, split between his sense of logic and his emotions and physical desires. His thought process did not seem impaired in the least by the presence of emotions, and his emotions themselves seemed perfectly under control.

He had really done it; he had combined his human emotions and love for Jenny with his pure intelligence and logic, achieving a flawless balance and combination. He did not need to switch between them anymore, for they were now fused together into one aspect of his personality.

Adrian tried to lift up his other arm, but it was handcuffed to the hospital bed. It seemed some of the details of the night had reached the police…

He gently worked his arm free from her grip and placed his hand on her cheek, which was wrapped in bandages from when Logan stabbed him.

Her eyelids slowly rose and she became breathless. “Adrian…” she gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing. She then wrapped her arms around him and began crying on his shoulder, with her forehead buried in the side of his neck, but while being careful to move him as little as possible. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up! I’ve been here for hours, begging you to come back to me!” she sobbed.

Looking up in shock, she almost stopped him as he grabbed the respirator mask and pulled it off, yanking the breathing tube out of his esophagus and coughing for a few seconds.

“Don’t worry, Jenny. Everything is ok,” he said warmly once he caught his breath. Turning to her, he wiped away her tears and then kissed her on the lips. “What happened?” he asked.

“You were shot by Logan, remember? He and his friends attacked us in the park, but you managed to beat them. We came here to get your hand taken care of and he burst in, covered in blood and waving a gun. He pointed the gun at you and shot you in the head. By the time the security guards tackled him, you were unconscious on the floor with blood pouring from you skull. Oh Adrian, I thought you were dead, I thought you had left me! The whole time you were in emergency surgery, I was praying that you would live or contemplating suicide!

The doctors said that the bullet went straight through your prefrontal cortex and basically pierced everything behind it. No one has ever survived that much brain trauma! They said that you would be a vegetable for the rest of your life if you didn’t just die before morning.”

As Adrian mulled over what she said, he began to chuckle, which turned into a booming laugh.

“What are you laughing about?” Jenny asked with disbelief, both that he was laughing in such a situation, and that he was ACTUALLY LAUGHING.

“While I was unconscious, I was in the most vivid dream I had ever experienced. I couldn’t leave the dream until I made a decision. I had to discard my emotionless logical side or my heart and my love for you. The dream completely changed who I am, the decision I made was real.”

“Which did you choose?”

“Neither. I created a third option. I reunited the parts of my mind, both logic and emotion. The bullet didn’t kill any parts of my brain; it just let me reconnect them. I love you, Jenny, and I’m going to be whatever you want me to be, whether it’s emotional or logical,” Adrian said with the warmest and happiest smile she had ever seen.

Jenny wiped away the last of her tears and smiled. “I love you, Adrian, I love you with all of my heart.”

“Adrian!” He heard his mom call. Adrian looked to the doorway as his parents rushed in and Jenny reluctantly backed off so that they could hug him while shedding tears of joy.

“It’s an absolute miracle, we thought we had lost our only son, this time for good,” his dad said, unable to keep from crying.

“We’re so happy that you’re alive! It was like the car accident all over!” his mom wailed, hugging him again.

“Don’t worry, I’m all right. In fact, I’m more than all right.”

Jenny wrapped her hands around his. “Did you die again, like you did when you were ten? Have you been reborn a second time?”

Instead of replying, Adrian looked out the window, watching as the sun began to come up with the first few slivers of light shining across the sky. “Yeah, you could even say that today is the first day of the rest of my new life.”

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