Dream Paris Read Online Free PDF Page A

know that the Dream World has broken through to our world in the past. We suspect that Dream Paris is a remnant of a former incursion.”
    “So I’m to go into the Dream World and look for Dream Paris. But you don’t know where it will be.”
    “No. If we did, we would have gone there ourselves.”
    Looking back, I really should have thought more about what he’d just said. But at the time I was too distracted. All I was thinking was that I was going to see my mother again.
    “And then you found this fortune scroll.” I looked at the paper. “I’m your route to Dream Paris.”
    “She’s not going to Dream Paris! She’s…”
    Petrina paused, pressed a hand to her head.
    “I don’t feel so…”
    “What’s the matter?” I said.
    “I think this is it,” said Mr Twelvetrees.
    Petrina was looking at her hands.
    “How many fingers…?” she murmured.
    “Petrina, look at me.”
    She wasn’t listening. I was trying to see her eyes. Blue checks, square pupils… What was wrong with her?
    “Everything is wHoLe. EveRyThInG iS sepArAtE…”
    What was the matter with her voice? She sounded like she was being auto-tuned, her voice stepping up and down between pitches.
    “EvErYtHiNg iS mOvInG aPaRt.”
    “What’s happening, Anna?” That was Mr Twelvetrees. He sounded eager, excited.
    “Her eyes! They’re like little television screens. Mr Twelvetrees! What’s going on? Do you know what’s happening?”
    “I’d step away from her if I were you, Anna.”
    I didn’t know any better than to do so. I wasn’t a sadist, I took no pleasure in the death of another human being.
    “AnNa, tAkE mY hAnD! HOlD mE to tHiS wOrLd, I…”
    She looked at a hand that had turned into a cluster of pink boxes and was silent. Her head was a cube sticking from her knitted jumper. She was a badly made Guy, a collection of cuboids slumping to the floor, dead.
    “5:23,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “What is it? What’s happened?”
    The sound of music filled my head, brass bands blaring. The thing that had been Petrina Kent lay on the floor. What the hell had happened to her?
    “What is it?” said Mr Twelvetrees.
    A soprano cornet was screaming in my head. I imagined a vault, thick walls, a heavy door, and me, inside, in the silence. It worked. It worked a little. The madness receded, the sound of it dulled by the walls.
    “What can you see?” repeated Mr Twelvtrees.
    “She’s like a computer woman. An ultra low resolution picture of a woman.”
    I looked around the kitchen. My beautiful, spotlessly clean kitchen. I didn’t look at the floor. I sat down on a stool next to Mr Twelvetrees. It was 5:25.
    “I can’t stay here,” I said. “I need to go to Dream Paris to find my parents.”
    “The scroll only mentions your mother,” Mr Twelvetrees reminded me, cruelly.
    I was convinced. He was a sadist. And I was in his hands.

THERESE DELACROIX
     
     
    M R T WELVETREES SAID that I wouldn’t need anything, that everything would be taken care of. I wasn’t having that. That’s a trick that men play on women, one they instinctively seem to know. “ No need to bring anything, it will all be provided. Hey, dinner’s on me! It’s okay, I’ll run you there. No need to bother learning how to fix it, I brought my tools …”
    They call it chivalry, they call it being a gentleman. Really, it’s just a way of keeping you in their power.
    I stood in the doorway, looking everywhere but at the shape on the floor. (Who would tell her family? What would happen to the body?)
    “I want to fetch a few things,” I said. “You wait here.”
    Mr Twelvetrees was gazing at nothing, fly eyes glittering like jewels in the flickering candlelight. The dull warmth of the kitchen, the smell of the Rayburn, the thick oak door that kept out the night… I didn’t want to leave this place.
    “Don’t be too long,” said Mr Twelvetrees. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
    The salesman’s trick. Make up a deadline. Still, I ran up the uneven