Brett has been writing (tentatively) since the age of ten. Never having found a market in South Africa for the genres he prefers to write in, the discovery of  Something Wicked was a pleasant surprise. &arial is part of a much bigger tale-in-progress that draws a lot from the works of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, as well as many Cyberpunk-themed movies and anime series. Brett’s reading interests range through Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi and Non-Fiction. His favourite authors are Stephen King, Frank Herbert, Ray Bradbury, Terry Pratchett and Clive Barker. 

This is Brett's second story for Something Wicked. His first was &Arial which was published in Issue 3.

extract from Dreaming My Life Away

Have you ever had a dream while you were awake?
I have. I have them all the time. But my dreams are not nice dreams, daydreams. No, my dreams are dreams that should come to me in the armpit of the night, at three in the morning, when I can wake up sweating, stifling a scream into my pillow.
But these dreams, they come in the day.  
I can’t wake up from them, because I am not asleep. And they are always of the same thing. Or so near to it that it makes no difference at all. They happen at work, when I am out, when I am talking to friends and family. There is no way to stop them, none that I have found yet anyway. There could be a way, though I won’t consider it until I have exhausted every other option.
The dreams, the fevered daytime terrors that haunt me, are dreams of me. My hands, covered in blood and brains and flecks of bone. The feeling of still warm flesh spattering my torso. Sometimes I am holding a gun, sometimes… a knife. People always die in those dreams. Sometimes I do too, but that doesn’t happen often. When I die, I know it is a dream. I jerk awake, screaming. Usually it is everyone else. Once I step in front of, or behind or to the side of them, it makes no difference, they always die.
These dreams scare me. I can feel the sensation of pulling a knife through muscle, feel the blade glide through fat and slice through sinew, even the hard stop when the edge binds as it bites into bone. I can feel the warm rush of life leaving a body (they never have names), feel the stickiness as it coats my wrists, staining me red.
These dreams scare me. I don’t feel, not in the way I do when I deal with people in everyday life. I feel nothing, none of the abstract emotions. No joy, no passion, no love, no hate, no disgust, I feel nothing! Nothing beyond the urge to plunge the blade in again and again, to pull the trigger and shatter the soft grey tissue behind it’s fortress of bone.
These dreams scare me. I can follow the path of the bullet; feel the heat the metal slug takes on from its explosive departure from the barrel, the heat it gains from air friction as it flies. I can feel the thud as it connects with whatever I have unleashed it on. I can feel the bone, flesh, matter eject out the back of whomever I have just shot when the bullet passes through.
And I always do it again.
These dreams scare me. They scare me in a way I cannot explain. They scare me because I like them.

---

 All material Copyright ©2006-2007 by Inkless Media and the respective authors. Inkless Media makes no representations or warranties with respect to the information contained herein and takes no responsibility for supplementing, updating, or correcting any such information.