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**Vincent Lane** · **02-28-2015, 08:46 PM** "Loverboy" - Past Lives, Part 2 -->

Out of the Rolling Ocean, The Crowd - Walt Whitman

Out of the rolling ocean, the crowd, came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travel'd a long way, merely to look on you, to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look'd on you,
For I fear'd I might afterward lose you.

(Now we have met, we have look'd, we are safe;
Return in peace to the ocean, my love;
I too am part of that ocean, my love--we are not so much separated;
Behold the great rondure--the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us, 10
As for an hour, carrying us diverse--yet cannot carry us diverse for
ever;
Be not impatient--a little space--Know you, I salute the air, the
ocean and the land,
Every day, at sundown, for your dear sake, my love.)

“What the fuck was that, dude!”

The therapist’s heels bang against the faux wood paneling lining his office as he dangles by his lapels from the clenched fists of a near-feral “Loverboy” Vinnie Lane.

“Vinnie… relax…”

“Relax? RELAX!? What the FUCK, man!?”

Another thud as the therapist’s body is rammed against the wall again. His head bounces, loosening a framed diploma which slides to the floor and cracks in its frame.

“What did you do to me, man? Are you some kind of fuckin’ witch doctor, like every other freak and weirdo I run into every day? Roxy said you were legit!”

He punctuates every sentence with another thump of the therapist against the wall. As the shrink attempts to stutter through reasoning with him, his face going apoplectic from the pressure of his lapels squeezing against his throat, Loverboy grows more and more incensed.

“Tell me what you did! Who was it that wanted you to do that shit to me, huh? Was it Evertrust again? Is he back to fuck with me some more? Is it that drugged out shitstain, Mystica?”

“M-m-m-?”

It has the inflection of a question, but nothing more than a squeak sounding like an M comes out of the therapist’s mouth as his shaking hands begin to droop from where they had been, trying to pry the cloth of his jacket away from his neck.

“Yeah! Mystica! The most recent has-been the XWF is rolling out the red carpet for in the form of trying to feed me to him. Like I’m the designated guy to drag one more good match out of the retirement sector, right?”

The guttural sound of the rapidly fading therapist is the only response to Loverboy’s query, though he doesn’t seem to notice the response in any fashion.

“I have to go into one of the biggest shows of the year with a partner who orchestrated my kidnapping and torture, whose dead wife and kids I’ve fucking met and eaten with, man, and we have to go fight a living cartoon and a burnt out never-was who’s done so much cheap molly he thinks he’s a fucking GOD and can’t undilate his eyes without Preparation H brand eye drops! And instead of preparing to once again spoil all of Shane

and John Madison’s plans by dropping their predetermined winners onto their skulls and put them to sleep, I’m in here getting mind-fucked by a charlatan in a tweed jacket!”

“Vinnie!”

Behind him, the door has swung open. Roxy stands in the doorway, concerned, as Loverboy releases the therapist and watches him drop like a stone to the floor.

“Vinnie what are you doing?”

“This fucking shylock here did something to me, dude! He’s a fucking scam artist!”

“Vinnie… did he… did he touch you?”

“What? No! Jesus, Rox, why does everything have to be slap and tickle with you? He drugged me or something, probably mushrooms or LSD or peyote, man! He tried to Dream Warrior my shit like Nightmare on Elm Street Three.”

Roxy rushes in, her stiletto heels clicking against the hardwood floor of the office, and leans down, tending to the gasping doctor.

“Are you alright?”

“He’s fine! He shouldn’t be, but he’s fucking fine!”

“I… I…”

The therapist tries to gulp the swelling from his throat, emitting a glottal click instead of a full reply. Roxy hurries to an end table holding a pitcher of ice water, pouring some into a paper cup and bringing it back to the therapist as he pulls himself into a sitting position on the floor.

“Drink this… Vinnie, what the fuck is your problem? You could have killed him!”

“He messed with my brain, man! He had me hallucinating about being in a god damn jungle, only I was, like, Chinese or some shit.”

“What are you talking about? Doctor Redmayne, what is he talking about?”

“I… put him under… he was experiencing past life regression… then he… he… he blew up!”

“Past life what? Vinnie? You were hypnotized, right?”

“More like glamoured. I’ve been attacked by wizards and shit in the past, man, I know what it’s like.”

“Vinnie, he’s not a fucking warlock, he’s a hypnotherapist! He helps people deal with buried memories and to deal with issues from their past! You were in your own head, nowhere else!”

“Bullshit! I’ve never been to a burning jungle, I’ve never seen a dude’s head blow up like a bomb, and I’ve sure as hell never been a Chinaman!”

“Vietnamese.”

The therapist stands to his feet. Roxy moves to help him, but he waves her aside and stands on his own. Walking to his chair, he sits and places the empty paper cup into a nearby wastebasket.

“Whatever, man, it’s all the same.”

“No. It’s very different, Vinnie. Roxy, you can stay in on this next session. Please close the door.”

“No way, dude, we’re getting out of here! Come on baby, this quack is lucky I don’t beat his ass.”

“No, Mister Lane… Vinnie… you’re lucky I don’t sue you or have you arrested for attempted murder. Now please, sit. I insist.”

Loverboy stammers but ultimately has no retort. He looks at Roxy and grabs her by the hand, bringing her with him back to the therapy couch.

“Miss Cotton, please. The door.”

“Right. Vinnie, let's just listen to him. Talk to him. I'm right here, nothing will happen. I promise.”

Roxy steps away and closes the door to the office before returning to Loverboy as he stands bemused in front of the couch. After an uncomfortable moment, he nods his acquiescence and the pair sit down next to one another. Roxy crosses her leg over one of Loverboy’s out of habit as her fingers get squeezed white between his.

“Vinnie. You said something while you were under. A few things, really, but one thing you said was ‘My Lai.’ Do you know what My Lai is?”

“No. Sounds like a bad porn. Like the kind Frodo’s always watching. You know, Roxy? Where you think they’re girls but then all of a sudden they all have dicks?”

“No, Vinnie. My Lai is a place. In Vietnam. There was a massacre there, a slaughter, at the hands of the United States military in 1968. About 500 civilians were murdered there.”

“Okay, so, more like the porns that Morbid Angel watches. Why are you telling me this shit, dude?”

“Because, Vinnie. Have you ever heard of My Lai before just now?”

“No, of course not, man. I mean, my uncle told me some shit about ‘Nam but he’s crazy, you know? Talking about babies strapped to grenades and peoples’ heads rolling by like it was no big deal.”

“Exactly. You’ve never heard of the massacre, so why were you there in your mind?”

“Dude, I’m telling you, it couldn’t have been… I saw… fuck it, never mind.”

“What did you see?”

“Forget it, it’s impossible.”

“No, Vinnie, trust what you saw. Tell me. What was it?”

“God damn it!”

Loverboy slams his fist down onto the end table, sending the water pitcher tumbling to the floor. As he stands and starts to take a step toward the door, he hesitates.

Loverboy spins around and faces the therapist, pointing a shaking finger at him as his voice cracks and splinters.

“I saw someone I know. You tell me how that’s possible, dude. You tell me how I could have been in Vietnam in 1968, almost 20 years before I was even born, man, and how I could be there and see HIM clear as day, looking exactly as he does right now? How?”

“Vinnie, let me explain something to you about time and space and the human mind…

If you think of time as a linear sequence of events, one before another, after another, following along like ducks in a row, then what you saw was only a fabrication of an overstressed imagination. A dream. But a dream doesn’t explain how you can know things you never knew before, does it?

Now think of time as a fabric. Like Steven Hawking described when attempting to explain gravity. Take a sheet or a nylon stocking and stretch it flat. Time, expanding in all directions from a central point. Space, existence, the universe. Still flat though, still sequential, but a connection is there from every point. If you weigh the center down with a rock, you bring the fabric closer together at the edges.

Now, enter a third possibility. Think of the air around you. Or the waters of a deep ocean. Consider the swirling, fluid dynamic of the molecules as they move about. Single entities, each and every one, like a moment, but free to wander and contact every other through currents.

It is this third concept which can explain your experience most fully, Vinnie. Your human consciousness, the vast depths of which are unknown to even the most advanced research, has the ability to transcend. To reach out from its unique capsule of the moment and find the other like it. To move along the currents and maintain the thread of likeness, to backtrack along the spark of your life force.

What you saw, Vinnie, was another moment in which your very consciousness existed once before. In what we would classify as 1968 in Vietnam, but what the universe would classify as just another drop of water in an endless, bottomless, undulating sea.

Do you understand?”

Loverboy and Roy stare forward at the therapist, eyes wide and jaws slack. They blink and look at one another.

“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, man. Seriously. That’s some True Detective shit you just dropped, you know? Have you been getting into Mystica’s stash?”

“Vinnie… he’s trying to help.”

“I tell you what, witch doctor. Do it again. Right here with my girl watching, so she knows there’s no tricks. Send me back in time or whatever. Front row tickets to Lethal Lottery says you can’t. Deal?”

The therapist can’t help but to allow a sly smirk emerge on his lips as he once again reaches for the pocket watch and holds it up for Loverboy to see.

“Deal.”

Beneath his feet, the boat shifts. He feels it, though he has not opened his eyes to see. The wood beneath his bare soles is wet and shifting, and there are many voices, many dialects, creating a cacophony around him.

Well, better than a warzone, he thinks to himself.

A hunger in his belly squirms, groaning within him. He moves to clutch his stomach and then hears the rattling of the metal chains around his wrists.

He opens his eyes.

Everywhere Loverboy looks, shoulder to shoulder, standing room only, are hundreds of black men and women in tattered clothing.

Heavy links of chain attach them all to one another, and they all stare down at the floorboards as water seeps between them, wetting their toes.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

Loverboy asks in a panic, darting his head back and forth over the sea of dark skin. They seemed serene, mostly, though some others were more attentive to the situation and understood that danger was afoot.

With the myriad of languages aboard the ship though, not many seemed to understand Loverboy’s dialect. The pidgin languages the others quietly talked back and forth to one another in were completely alien to Loverboy, who grabbed words here and there but nothing more.

Water.

Captain.

Stuck.

Downstairs.

Was the captain stuck somewhere? Was he downstairs with the rest of these men? Maybe there had been a mutiny of sorts, or a pirate attack.

Loverboy looks up and sees the hatch leading to the upper deck, then moves toward it, but a hand on his shoulder stops him.

“You shouldn’t try.”

The wiry black man said in a clicking, throaty language that Loverboy somehow understood.

“The ship is sinking. They made us come down here. Just pray with the others that we die quickly.”

“Die? No way, man! There are hundreds of us down here!”

“There is nothing we can do. The ship is hopeless. We have no way to shore.”

“Fuck that.”

Loverboy rushes to the ladder leading up, but a face appears in the hatchway as he ascends. Bald and old, the face is, again, that of his tormenter from the jungle of My Lai. And from elsewhere, of course.

“Down! No!”

The man shouted at Loverboy like a dog, swatting at him and attempting to slam the hatch shut. Loverboy reaches the top and holds the hatch open, looking into the eyes of the Old Man.

“You let me out of here. I know who you are!”

The Old Man, who should have had no knowledge of the tongue Loverboy magically spoke, smiled broadly as he looked back into Loverboy’s wide eyes.

“Oh… it’s you again, isn’t it? Yes, yes, it is. Hello, my friend. We do not have time to chat right now, unfortunately. You’re going back to the bottom with the rest of them. We will see each other again soon, though, I’m sure.”

A moment later, a wooden staff was rammed into Loverboy’s face, driving him to fall from the ladder and crash into the wooden floor of the ship.

Loverboy looked up and tried to rally the many other men around him to help rush the Old Man at the top of the ladder.

“O jẹ awọn esu! O jẹ awọn esu!!”

But to no avail. The words just echoed back to him, foreign but not, all at the same time.

The water had already reached his shins as Loverboy stood up and raised his hands over his head, dangling the shaking chains from his wrists and staring as the hatch above slammed shut.

By the time he heard the nails begin to be hammered into it, the water had gotten to his knees.

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