Secret Diary of a Prawn Star

Entry #49

Codename: Chaplin

Date: 15 September 2027

Client: Melodie Tan

Payment in advance: Yes

Session Goal: Get rid of creepy malevolent dream character

Location: Hilton Excelsior, Room 2329

Narcolepsy status: Giant afternoon nap. Feel good now

Nutrition/stimulants: Donuts and celery

Start time: 11.35 p.m.

End time: 12.01 a.m.

In all dreams, there’s a feeling of disjunction at first. I find myself in someone’s dreamspace. If it’s their house, then in the beginning it looks like my house. Usually but not always my childhood house. And then, dimly, with a slipping sensation, the shapes of rooms and furniture and smells will start to morph until I can see what the client sees. Same thing with the people. They start out being people I know, but over time as I synchronise with the client, the dream people transform so that I’m seeing the world through the eyes of my client.

I start out in the auditorium of my school in Wapping. It’s dim and empty and I’m sweeping up behind the seats. On the stage I can see Mel’s harp. It sits in a single spotlight, all golden; it’s practically radiant. She walks across the boards and I can hear the hollow sound of her footsteps. She’s wearing soft slippers and Hello Kitty pyjamas. I’m down in the fourth row, bent over behind the seats, sweeping up with a little dustpan and brush like a movie usher. But there’s no popcorn here. I’m sweeping up something else. Can’t quite see what it is.

She sits down on the stool and puts her hands on the strings. She takes a shaky breath, and even from here I see her throat move as she swallows nervously. She starts to play.

I know this is a dream – her dream – but it seems to me that the sound of the music is more beautiful and more real than any music I’ve ever actually heard. It sends ASMR tingles across my scalp, then down my spine and into my extremities. I’m supposed to be doing the ASMR on Mel, but it’s the other way around. I’m melting into calm.

Bugger. I can’t melt. I’m working. Mentally pinching myself, I crouch behind the seats, literally keeping my head down while we wait for the Creeper to show itself. As I sweep up debris under seats, I notice that the auditorium is changing to a proper theatre, with gilded seventeenth-century boxes and red velvet. There’s a lot of mess on the floor for such a fancy hall, and I wonder what the nature of the trash beneath the seats says about Melodie’s dream.

The sound of the harp rises into the upper levels of the theatre and hangs under the ceiling like smoke. The air is warm with it. I glance down at my dustpan. The contents are not popcorn or chewing-gum wrappers or crumpled programmes. In the dustpan are tiny bones, hair, a desiccated eyeball or two and a decaying human finger.