losing skin, hair,features, gaining fluorescence in their place, and when Cole, thus transformed, leaned down to kiss him again, Merriman accepted him with gratitude, and he felt himself being transported somehow, as though on the MARTA, moving rapidly from station to station, passing corridors of light, one after another, until thrown on their blinding walls were tableaus of earlier moments in Merriman’s life, scenes of him as a handsome youth and his erotic encounters with other handsome youths, nameless faces, interchangeable bodies, like madly whirling slides in a runaway magic lantern. They passed into another tunnel with undiminished speed and came back out to yet another station. And on the platforms fleeting past he thought he could see himself standing, Robert Merriman, thirty-eight, relatively young and handsome, until the succeeding platform showed him older and grayer, given to paunch and stooping shoulders and then older still and older until he was no longer recognizable, until everything went black.
* * * *
He must have slept because he dreamed. He was in a room of stainless steel floor and ceiling and bright-reflecting glass, but he wasn’t alone. Others surrounded him, on all sides of this crystalline auditorium, pinned as he was to the mirrored walls. All around the room. Dozens of them. At first the brightness of the room permitted no comprehension; he could not read or discern the features of his fellow captives: their faces, their entire heads, were only blobs of intense light.
Soon enough, though, he grew used to the light and saw that each of them resembled the other. They were practically the same: old men; white hair grown shaggy and shoulder length; naked, pectorals flabby and distended like old women’s breasts; stomachs full and pendulous enough to cover their genitals; legs withered down to brown, crusty, vein-scarred feet. Trolls. That’s what they were. The old and the undesirable. Instead of dreaming of buff young hunkswith bronzed muscles and extraordinary profiles, men like Cole and Ronnie and the endless others right there in Atlanta, he had dreamed of trolls. He laughed. The others watched him, confused, even upset by his laughter; they all turned their hoary faces his way. Some grunted, others cried out in weak attempts at speech.
The old man to his left, however, had a steady, strong voice not yet atrophied by his advanced years.
“Don’t laugh,” he said with contempt and warning. “You are one of us too. Look.” And he pointed Merriman’s attention to the opposing mirrored wall, where other trolls stood chained, helpless, and afraid. In the glass Merriman saw himself—surely it must have been him—it was his forlorn, shocked, unbelieving face staring back. It was the same nose and mouth and eyes, but withered now and frosted with gray hair.
He had always heard that as soon as you realized you were dreaming, you would come awake.
“I’m dreaming,” he shouted, rousing the others to moans and gibberish. But he did not wake, and the horrid phantasms around him did not disappear; he was still an old man staring back at himself. He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed hard against the glass panels behind him, hoping to force himself to consciousness. And when he opened his eyes again, he thought for a moment that he had succeeded: for there, standing in front of him, was his normal reflection, his as of yet unlined face and dark moustache, his full head of dark hair with only flecks of gray at the temples. He was relieved until he realized this was no reflection at all but an actual face, his face, staring at him, smiling. The face spoke.
“It’s Cole, Robert. Yes. I know you must be wondering how this happened, how I became you, and if I had the time to explain it to you, I would. But that time will come later.Now I just want to thank you for this gift and assure you that I will use it well. Through you, through your beautiful face and body, I will give many men
* * * *
He must have slept because he dreamed. He was in a room of stainless steel floor and ceiling and bright-reflecting glass, but he wasn’t alone. Others surrounded him, on all sides of this crystalline auditorium, pinned as he was to the mirrored walls. All around the room. Dozens of them. At first the brightness of the room permitted no comprehension; he could not read or discern the features of his fellow captives: their faces, their entire heads, were only blobs of intense light.
Soon enough, though, he grew used to the light and saw that each of them resembled the other. They were practically the same: old men; white hair grown shaggy and shoulder length; naked, pectorals flabby and distended like old women’s breasts; stomachs full and pendulous enough to cover their genitals; legs withered down to brown, crusty, vein-scarred feet. Trolls. That’s what they were. The old and the undesirable. Instead of dreaming of buff young hunkswith bronzed muscles and extraordinary profiles, men like Cole and Ronnie and the endless others right there in Atlanta, he had dreamed of trolls. He laughed. The others watched him, confused, even upset by his laughter; they all turned their hoary faces his way. Some grunted, others cried out in weak attempts at speech.
The old man to his left, however, had a steady, strong voice not yet atrophied by his advanced years.
“Don’t laugh,” he said with contempt and warning. “You are one of us too. Look.” And he pointed Merriman’s attention to the opposing mirrored wall, where other trolls stood chained, helpless, and afraid. In the glass Merriman saw himself—surely it must have been him—it was his forlorn, shocked, unbelieving face staring back. It was the same nose and mouth and eyes, but withered now and frosted with gray hair.
He had always heard that as soon as you realized you were dreaming, you would come awake.
“I’m dreaming,” he shouted, rousing the others to moans and gibberish. But he did not wake, and the horrid phantasms around him did not disappear; he was still an old man staring back at himself. He squeezed his eyes closed and pressed hard against the glass panels behind him, hoping to force himself to consciousness. And when he opened his eyes again, he thought for a moment that he had succeeded: for there, standing in front of him, was his normal reflection, his as of yet unlined face and dark moustache, his full head of dark hair with only flecks of gray at the temples. He was relieved until he realized this was no reflection at all but an actual face, his face, staring at him, smiling. The face spoke.
“It’s Cole, Robert. Yes. I know you must be wondering how this happened, how I became you, and if I had the time to explain it to you, I would. But that time will come later.Now I just want to thank you for this gift and assure you that I will use it well. Through you, through your beautiful face and body, I will give many men
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