Free Ex-Purgatory: A Novel by Peter Clines Page A

always feel like there’s something I should remember and I can’t. Something right there that I just can’t see, y’know?”
    “You’re acting weird because you forgot a couple of dreams?”
    “No.” George shook his head. “It’s not dreams, it’s life. I feel like this when I’m awake. I’ve got this constant, nagging feeling I’ve just forgotten something.”
    “Like a dream?”
    Over Nick’s shoulder, a gap opened at the bar. There was a woman there with stringy blond hair. It looked like she hadn’t washed it in months. In fact, it looked like there were things tangled in it. One of the thin straps of her top had slid off her shoulder, and that side sagged dangerously low. She didn’t seem to notice or care. Her skin looked pale against the dark top.
    Her head swung in a slow arc that made him think she’d been drugged. Her eyes were blank, pink circles in the club’s red lights. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish gasping for air. George was sure if the music hadn’t been so loud he would’ve heard her teeth hitting each other from here.
    Then the bartender stepped forward to set some drinks on the bar and blocked the woman from view. When the gap opened again, the woman had turned around. Then a couple of guys filled the gap and she vanished.
    Nick held out his hand and snapped his fingers. “Hey.” He glanced over his shoulder, scanned the bar, and looked back at George. “Someone over there I should know about?”
    “I don’t think so,” he said. “I just … I thought I saw someone I recognized.”
    “A girl?”
    “Yeah?”
    “From campus.”
    “No.” He wasn’t sure where he knew the woman from, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t work. He shook it off.
    “So you’re just in some kind of … what, existential funk?”
    “Maybe? I don’t know.”
    “We so need to get you laid.” Nick gestured at the two women dancing with each other. “Two of them, two of us, what do you say?”
    “What about the publicist? Nina?”
    “Nita. I was thinking of blowing her off and inviting that gymnast we saw in the parking lot the other day.”
    “I don’t know if you’re pathetic or … something else.”
    “I’m good with something else.” He settled back into his side of the booth. His sunglasses reflected the dance floor, and for a moment the spinning lights gave the lenses a mechanical look, like a camera iris.
    “You want to hear something even weirder?”
    “Something weirder than you ignoring two hot, scantily clad women putting on a show for us?” Nick sat up. “Please, tell me. I’m dying to know.”
    George gave the women an obligatory glance and then took a sip of his drink. He was already a bit hoarse from raising his voice to be heard. “Okay, you know how when you have the realistic dreams, your mind fills in all the missing parts? If you’re a pirate you know all the crew names and how you all met, that kind of thing?”
    “You’re dreaming you’re a pirate?”
    He shook his head. “No.”
    “Freak,” said Nick. “Is this about a parrot fetish or something?”
    “Anyway,” George shouted over the music, “I think there are holes in my dreams, too. I’ll be dreaming, but there are still things I can’t remember. It’s like I know I’ve forgotten things in the dream.” He sipped his drink. “Have you ever heard of anything like that before?”
    Nick laughed. “With the roster at my agency? I hear crap like this all the time. If it wasn’t you, I’d say you need to stop taking pills from strangers at clubs.”
    George sighed and looked out at the dancers. On the edge of the crowd a tall woman in a tight blue tank top swung her hips. She’d painted her spiky hair fluorescent red, and it almost glowed in the club’s lights. Two men were near her, waiting to be acknowledged, but she didn’t seem to notice them.
    He’d known a woman with wild hair once. A past girlfriend who had … spots? Stripes? He was pretty sure it was someone