Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2006 16:41:11 EDT
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: "Ah's House of Bottled Dreams"

		       AH'S HOUSE OF BOTTLED DREAMS
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		      WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
			WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM

     That was what it said on the sign over the door. It was one of those
little stores you see along Main Street, they're there for a month or two,
and then they close and the store is vacant again, and then someone else
goes and tries there again.
     Ah's House of Bottled Dreams, it said all right, the narrow little
store was stuffed in between a shoe repair shop and a tailor shop that had
gone out of business only the week before. The sign's letters were oddly
shaped, like whoever did it was copying words in a language they didn't
know and had memorized how it went and was working from memory. You could
read it, but still...the letters were kind of odd.
     The storefront looked like the last people in this store had sold
clothes. Women's clothes. Now, the windows were decorated with shelves
loaded with bottles. All kinds and shapes and colors. I looked and you
could sort of see a wisp of something moving around inside, like a piece of
phlegm or a blotch of spiderweb floating in a clear liquid. I couldn't read
any of the labels, they were all on the other side of the bottle, I could
only see their backs, enough to see that they had been glued on
individually.
     I'd taken my lunch at the little deli on the corner and so had a good
half hour to kill before I just had to be back at my office on the next
block, so I decided to see what a "bottled dream" was.
     There was an old guy behind the counter, his skin was sort of
off-color, kind of brown, kind of red, kind of gold. Oriental, I decided,
maybe mixed with something else.
     "Hi." I said.
     "Welcome, welcome!" he said. Yes, that accent was Chinese, I felt
sure. "You come buy dream, yes?"
     "I don't know." I said. "What is a dream, some sort of Chinese
good-luck charm or something?"
     This got the guy mad. "Me not Chinese! Me name Ah Lee Inh, me not
Chinese!"
     He sure as heck sounded Chinese to me! "Sorry." I said. So he was
Vietnamese or Cambodian or Korean or whatever! I wasn't that curious! "So
what are you selling?" The inside of his shop was loaded with shelves, and
the shelves were loaded with bottles. I had only thought the windows showed
every shape, kind and color. As it was, I was almost dazzled, if you can
get dazzled, by the sheer variety of the bottles. None of them were the
same shape or color.
     "Me sell dreams." the man said. "You choose bottle, you open it, you
have dream, then you pay."
     "How much?" I said, getting intrigued. Was this some kind of drug? It
couldn't be, they regulated such things. Maybe an herbal this-or-that.
     "Depend on dream. Some dream two dollar, some dream five dollar, some
dream ten dollar." He stopped.
     "So it's ten dollars or less?" I asked.
     Ah nodded. "More special the dream, the more you pay."
     I had some money in my wallet, enough to satisfy my curiosity. "Okay,
I'll buy a dream." I said.
     "You choose and open bottle." Ah said. "No buy bottle, only buy dream
inside."
     "Fine, fine." I said. I figured it for some sort of funny smell, I'd
try it and laugh and have a story to tell Jerry at work when I got
back. "So, which one do you recommend?"
     "Me not know which dream yours. You know which dream yours! You find
it, you know!" Ah made a shoo-away motion with his hand, like you shoo away
a naughty child you don't want to bother with.
     Okay, if he didn't want to help me, I would just have to look around.
     I hadn't considered the bottles so far, beyond their variety and
shapes as I have said, so I got up closer and saw that the labels didn't
have words on them, they had symbols. Not words, not anything you could
recognize. Sort of like that shape that the singer Prince had for a while
as his name, do you remember that? That kind of thing, odd, weird glyphs
that somehow were like the words over his door. Familiar, yet strange.
     I looked over the bottles and over the symbols, and one of them seemed
to sort of...sing to me. Me, it seemed to say, pick me! Not words, not that
it glowed or the shape changed. It just sort of...told me to pick it. The
symbol was like the others, but looking at it, I saw what reminded me of
adventure, of pirates and ocean and sword-fights and bravery. Yeah, this
was the one I wanted!
     I saw the bottles were all sealed with a cork with wax dripped over
it, opening it was just a matter of grabbing the cork and giving it a twist
and a yank! The cork wasn't in that firmly, it came away easily and I found
myself enveloped in a brief "whoosh" of fog, I blinked and my eyes
cleared...and I was somewhere else!
     Clinging to the mast at the top of a ship, below me, pirates were
milling about, clashing with figures wearing mish-mashed clothing, smaller
than the pirates, yelping like crazy...and they were beating the pirates
easily!
     And I jumped into the air and I flew! Crowing like a rooster, I flew
down toward the figure in a long, red coat, the captain of the pirates! He
looked up and I saw the hook at one hand. Great Jesus Christ, I was Peter
fucking Pan!
     So this was what Ah meant by selling a dream! I laughed and I landed
on my feet light as a feather and I fought with Captain Hook and he fought
with me!
     There was nothing horrible about this battle, this was all sheer joy
and delight, I was laughing and so was Captain Hook. He wasn't truly my
enemy, I mean, we fought, but we needed each other to be who we were! Just
like the Lost Boys who were fighting the pirates. There was no blood, there
was no danger, there was only laughter and joy in the battle, in the fight,
in the victory!
     I knocked the sword out of Captain Hook's hands and he grinned, and
said, "Well, Peter, you have bested me once again." And he went down on one
knee and said, "I am at your mercy. Do with me what you will."
     "Arise, Captain." I said grandly and when he did, I said, "I shall now
do what I want to with you. You will permit me to, or you shall pay with
your life."
     "I am at your mercy." Captain Hook said.
     And I did what I wanted with him, which was that I opened his pants
and I pulled out his cock and I began to play with it. I giggled like any
boy who is doing something naughty, and the Captain just laughed. His cock
was large and clean and even lightly perfumed. I took a deep whiff of him
as I took his dick into my mouth and I sucked him with the rapture of young
adventure into the realm of things-you-aren't-supposed-to-do.
     Captain Hook moaned in his pleasure and long before I could possibly
become tired, he said huskily, "I'm ready to blow, laddie. Can you take
it?"
     I held on tight and I mumbled my yes around his cock, "mm-hm" and he
groaned and roared and with a pirate's oath that would blister your ears,
he blasted his load into my mouth and I drank him down and Captain Hook
fell over exhausted, and I crowed out my victory!
     And there was a rush of light-and-sound and I was blinking.
     I was back in the shop again.
     "Damn!" I said, my voice hoarse. I could still taste the come in my
mouth! I had flown! I had been Peter Pan, but Walt Disney had never had
this fantasy!
     "You like dream?" came Ah's voice.
     "Uh? Huh, uh, yeah, yeah, it was great!" I said.
     "You pay five dollar." said Ah. "Bring bottle, pay me five dollar."
     I did and walked back out into the real world.
     Shit, I had to tell Jerry about this place!
     Jerry was at his desk, like he usually was, he brought his lunch and
didn't get out much. I perched my butt on the edge of his desk so he
couldn't ignore me, and I gave him the word on this new store.
     "So you were Peter Pan, eh?" he burst out laughing when I got that
far. "Alec, I didn't know you had it in you!"
     "Neither did I, but there I was, on top of Captain Hook's ship, and I
jumped and I flew, really fucking flew, and went down and fought Captain
Hook with a sword. I fought him and I won!"
     "Yeah? And what happened then?" Jerry wanted to know.
     "Uh....that part's personal, but it all felt damned real!" I said.
     "Okay, so the guy has some kind of drug that gives you
hallucinations." Jerry said. "Isn't that against the law?"
     "It wasn't a drug." I said. "This guy sells just what he says he does,
bottles with dreams inside! You have to come with me and try this place
out!"
     "Okay, okay." Jerry laughed. God, he looked so damned good when he
laughed like that, the epitome of an easygoing stud, with his curly black
hair, square jaw, cleft chin, blazing blue eyes, gleaming white teeth, a
body that the suit covered so I could only guess what was underneath...but
could tell it was damned good! Suits don't hang that way on anything but a
firm, slim-waisted, broad-shouldered body.
     "Come with me and we'll go out for dinner after." I said, nattering a
bit now. "If you aren't happy with what you find at Ah's House of Bottled
Dreams, I'll pay for dinner."
     "If I'm not lying on the floor in some sort of nasty withdrawal, you
mean." Jerry stretched his long arms up and out. "Well, time for you and me
to hit the old grind again."
     "Yeah." I said and went to my own cubicle.
     While I worked, I thought about it. Had I just had some sort of
drug-induced fantasy? No, no drug I'd ever heard of was a floating gas
inside a bottle, hit that fast and that clearly, and left no hangover or
withdrawal! It had to be something new, something extraordinary.
     I wondered if Jerry would remember our after-work date (okay, date was
a little strong, but I'd take what I could get), I mean, usually he was
gone by the time I walked by his desk after finishing for the day. If he
forgot, I'd be left either revisiting the shop alone or just going home.
     But Jerry was there, and I smiled and said, "Ready to have a dream on
me?"
     "Why not?" Jerry smiled. "You and me off on a weird trip together. How
far is this place, anyhow?"
     "Just around the corner." I promised him.
     When we walked in, Ah said, "Ah, you back. And you bring friend!"
     "Sure." I said. "I want Jerry to give it a try."
     "You go find dreams." Ah said. "Me close shop in little bit, but me
wait for you."
     "Thanks." I said. "Okay, Jerry, which dream is yours?"
     Jerry and I went around the shop, me just watching Jerry. He blinked,
as I'm sure I did, and reached for a bottle, one behind a couple of other
bottles. "What's this one?" he said. "It's kind of, I don't know, calling
me."
     "That's your dream." I assured him. "Just pull out the cork and you'll
have a dream."
     As Jerry pulled on the cork, I heard Ah call out, "No, no, not two
together! One per dream, you in danger...." And that's when the cork came
out and the gas enveloped us, and Ah's voice dissolved like so
much...reality.
     And I was standing in an arena! Sword in one hand, small round shield
in another. I was only wearing a red loincloth. Beside me, Jerry was
dressed the same, his body making that ludicrous clothing look just right,
a true gladiator. And coming toward us, were six men wearing white
loincloths and carrying swords of a different style in one hand and a
squarish shield in the other. From the way they wielded those things, they
knew how to fight that way.
     "Jerry!" I screamed. "This was your dream?"
     "Not this!" Jerry said. "Honest."
     "What are we going to do?" I shouted back.
     "Fight like hell!" Jerry said. "And now! Back up against my back,
we'll protect each other! Keep moving! Don't just stab at them, wait for an
opening, and then strike them hard and fast."
     And they were upon us. There was none of the free-and-easy feeling I'd
had as Peter Pan, I was scared shitless, and it showed. But Jerry was
wielding his sword with an ease that was incredible! He thrust and parried
and I did little more than keep them from sneaking up behind him. Good news
was that they concentrated on Jerry (if that was good news), and I only had
one or two to fend off. Wide sweeps with the sword did that, though I had
to use the shield as well. There were clangs and blows and grunts and
screams, and the smell of blood....
     But the six men became five, then four, and then it was two against
three and me fighting a guy who was rather badly wounded, and couldn't hold
his shield properly (he had had to switch his arms and put the shield on
his wounded right arm to have it at all, and I, who had never considered
killing anyone before (even in my Peter Pan fantasy, nobody had died), I
saw an opening and I buried my sword deep in his breastbone.
     And was struck with a blow on my head from behind and I was down in
the dirt. One of the two other men had turned his attention to me and had
knocked me on my back, my sword had fallen away from me, stuck in the other
man's chest, and I didn't know where that was anymore, my shield was there
and I held it above my head and screamed, for I was about to die!
     And there was Jerry, and he struck the man down with a savage hack to
the neck, and the man fell away and there was only one man left now, and
Jerry cut at him viciously, and the man fell, lifeless.
     There was the roar of the crowd, and then the soldiers who led us back
into our captivity, for we were slaves as well as gladiators.
     Out of breath, I had to sit and rest a while before I could
talk. Jerry was standing and calling out for food and water.
     "Jerry." I croaked. I was thirsty, that water sounded like a good
idea.
     Jerry turned. "Are you all right, Alec?"
     "Yeah." I said. "Only...God! I got us into this! My own dream had been
so beautiful and fun, I didn't know that he had nightmares, too!"
     "It was my doing." Jerry said, calming me with his hand on my
shoulder. "I chose the dream. You were just standing nearby. That damned
Chinaman should have warned us about that."
     "He was trying." I said. And then, smiling feebly, "And he isn't
Chinese. Or at least he said he isn't, and I believe it. No Chinese person
I ever heard of could do this. God, Jerry, I got us into this! I'm sorry."
     "Hey." Jerry said. "Don't be. Hell, I can teach you how to fight. I
fenced all through college, and sword-fighting is just like that, and I
learned how. So I'll teach you and we'll get through this. If this place is
like ancient Rome, a good fight can win us our freedom and we'll get out of
this."
     "Get out?" I said. "How do you get out of a nightmare?"
     "You look the nightmare square in the face and tell it you aren't
afraid of it." Jerry said firmly. "And it will go away."
     "But I am afraid of it." I said. "God, Jerry, if you hadn't save me,
I'd be dead now, dead!"
     "Hush, now, hush." Jerry said. When I moved into his arms, he didn't
stop me. I held him like a protector, like a comrade....like a lover. And
he let me.
     I looked into his eyes and they were kind. His lips were soft and they
called to me. Called to me like those bottles and their dreams inside....
     I reached for his lips with my own. Jerry was a little surprised at
first, but then his lips started kissing mine back, and his arms which had
been so protective, suddenly became...possessive. So simple to give myself
to him, my friend, my savior, my partner in this horrible place. The only
familiar thing all around me. Outside was the clang of sword on shield and
the roar of the crowd, another fight was starting.
     But inside here, I was safe. So I gave myself to Jerry, when all my
fantasies had been of myself taking him instead. Such a simple difference,
and it was so much easier, all I had to be was myself.
     And Jerry lowered me back onto the straw upon which we had been
standing, and it was none too clean-smelling, but nothing was sticky about
it, it was dry and a little hot upon my bare back. Above me, Jerry's body
was hovering over me, and I could now touch his chest as I'd always wanted
to do. He had a fair amount of hair on his chest, just like I'd hoped, I
ran my fingers through it and pulled with my fingers closed against each
other as I lifted up, and Jerry gave a small gasp, not of pain, but of
stimulation.
     "God, Alec." He said, his voice laden with his desire. "God, yes, do
you want me, Alec? Do you want me?"
     "Yes, Jerry, God, yes!" I gasped out. "Ever since we met, and more
after I got to know you. I was hoping, maybe after dinner tonight, we could
have gone to my place."
     He made that smile. "Evening didn't turn out like we'd thought, did
it?"
     "I'm not as afraid of this place as I was." I said. "Not if you'll be
here with me."
     "Always." he said, his breath heavy with promise. "Always, if you'll
let me."
     "I do." I said. "God, I do!"
     And our kisses burned my mouth, burning with need, burning with the
passion that had flamed within me even before we had become stranded in
this bizarre place, and Jerry lay down upon me and his hands stroked my
body as his lips sizzled against mine. I thrust my tongue up into the fray,
found it matched by his and we parried with our mouth-swords in playful
delight.
     Every touch of his hand upon me left a blazing trail in its wake, my
skin quivered as the sensations piled upon each other, over and over his
hands moved, and I could soon bear no longer. I wrestled my legs out from
under his until they were on either side and I lifted them up to clasp them
upon his lower back. "Take me." I guttered with my final bit of
breath. "Now, God, take me now!"
     Jerry's cock was a hard staff under the flap of his cloth, nothing
impaired its journey as he moved to let our bodies' friction pull the
loincloth aside, and now his manhood throbbed as he touched it against the
sweat-slicked crevice of my buttocks.
     That moisture must have reminded him, for he started, and said,
"Cripes, I almost forgot to lube you up."
     "Don't bother." I said fiercely. "I can take you. I know I can,
now. I'm so hot right now, my fucking ass is flapping wide open, I need you
so bad. Give it a try before you make us stop. Please."
     "All right." Jerry was dubious, but my sphincter clutched hungrily at
his glans as it touched and I milked it down into me, pulling and tugging
him, while my hands and legs clenched against his body, urging him to go
faster now, faster!
     Jerry gasped and threw his head back as my asshole captured his
cockhead, and began to pull the rest of him into me. "Christ, Alec, you are
hot!" he breathed at me. "How are you doing this?"
     "This is your dream, remember?" I said. "You picked the dream, and
that involves fucking me." I didn't have any special knowledge, the idea
and the words came together. "Or maybe I'm just so ready for you that my
body can't wait. It doesn't matter, God, it doesn't matter, push it into
me, harder, now, harder! I need all of you inside me, Jerry, push it in
deep, please, deeper!"
     Jerry pushed with his hips, and my body stiffened rigidly as he
plunged into my bowels, his hot shaft burning its brand into my flesh, a
permanent reminder of its visit. There was no pain at all, still, even as
my innards gurgled and adjusted to him, making him welcome.
     Jerry moaned and began to move in and out of me, and I clung to him
like a man to a piece of wood when lost at sea, he could let me ride out
this storm. With him beside me, how could I be in danger? He had fought six
men for me, and never a wound upon him or me in the process. Sure, he was
right, we would win our freedom and build a new life together. Who was I to
say that the life of a sword-fighting slave in arena was worse than that of
a wage-slave in a big corporation like we were. One marked your body with
physical scars, the scars of a cubicle job went deeper and hurt
longer. Sure, I was ready to take on this new life...with Jerry beside me
during the day, and in my bed at night.
     I threw myself into the passion and the delight of our lovemaking, I
matched Jerry's thrusts with my own, until we were a synchronous pair, a
matched duo of loving bodies, cooperating in the ecstasy that built up in
both of us, each giving of our talents and being rewarded with the bounty
of the other.
     "Oh, God, Alec, I'm coming, I'm coming!" Jerry groaned. "Oh, God, oh,
God, oh, oh, OH!"
     "Shoot it." I panted back at him. "Shoot it in me. Oh, Jesus, I'm
coming too! Oh, yeah, yeah, uh, UH, UH!!!"
     "OOOH, OOH, UH, UH, GUH-KNNNHCH." Jerry ejaculated heavily into my
bowels as he spasmed on top of me.
     "UH-HUH, UH-GUNN-NNUKKHHH!" I matched his climax with my own, and our
arms held each other tightly as we squirted, him inside of me, me against
his stomach in fat dribbles that rained back down upon me, and then Jerry
collapsed on me and his weight was extreme, and my own orgasm was done, and
I joined him in his lassitude, closed my eyes and held him tight.
     And the straw at my back hardened suddenly, lost its prickliness, and
I opened my eyes.
     Jerry and I were lying together on the floor of Ah's shop. Both of us
fully clothed, the stickiness in my briefs telling me I had squirted by
rubbing against him while in the dream. Jerry's was wet, too. Just like a
couple of puppies, we had creamed our shorts together.
     "Jerry?" I said. He was still lying on me, panting, his eyes
closed. "Jerry, open your eyes. We're back!"
     "Back?" Jerry opened his eyes, and he clambered awkwardly to his
feet. "We're back!"
     "Yes, you back." Ah said from behind his counter. "You never go. You
always here. Always everyone here. It only dream."
     "Then why did you warn us of the danger of sharing a dream?" I said
when I got to my own feet.
     "Me no say you in danger." Ah said. "Me say you in danger of both
paying full price for one dream."
     I started to protest, then I laughed. "Fair enough." I agreed. "Jerry,
let's pay the guy and go get dinner. I'm starving."
     "After all that, so am I." Jerry agreed. "And then after, we can go to
your place...and get cleaned up a little."
     I smiled slowly. "Cleaned up. Yes, eventually."
     "Okay, Ah, what do we owe you?" Jerry said. I had told him that the
price was something you learned afterwards.
     "You each pay twenty dollar." Ah said.
     "Twenty?" I said, incensed. "But you told me ten dollars was your top
price."
     "Is top price, for regular dream. But you buy special dream. Very
special dream, you pay extra!"
     "Huh?" I said. "But..."
     "Never mind." Jerry said. "Let's just pay him and get out of here."
     "Okay." I said. "Only I'm going to have to hit the ATM before we get
dinner though, at that price." I told Jerry.
     "It's worth it, though." Jerry agreed.
     We paid Ah and went outside. "What did you think of Ah's House of
Bottled Dreams?" I asked Jerry when we were a few steps away.
     "That's quite a place, all right." Jerry said. "I'm going to have to
tell my friends about this place." He had turned his head to look back, and
he froze. "Only where is it?"
     "What?" I looked at Jerry.
     "Ah's House of Bottled Dreams." Jerry said. "Where is it?"
     "Between the shoe shop and the tailor's." I said, and then I looked as
well.
     The shoe shop and the tailor's were side-by-side. There was no shop in
between them.
     Jerry and I went back and looked carefully. No shop.
     "Did we imagine this place?" Jerry said.
     "No." I said. "It was here." And then I realized. "Jerry, he said his
full name was Ah Lee Inh."
     "So?"
     "Say it with a long A and you have...alien." I gulped. "Jerry, you
don't think...." I couldn't continue the thought.
     "I don't know what to think." Jerry said. "It makes as much sense as
anything else that's happened. Only why would an alien come to Earth just
to sell the two of us dreams?"
     I took Jerry's hand in mine. "I don't know. I just know I'm happy with
my purchase."
     "Me, too." Jerry smiled and we walked off to work on the rest of our
lives together.
     Like Ah had said, we had bought a very special dream. We had bought a
dream come true!

				  THE END
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