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  She hadn’t thought of that. And she must have looked like it because he said: “Things are not always what they seem.”

  “But… You saw his face! He didn’t even pretend it was a joke. It must have rung real true to make him run like that. It’s him all right.”

  “When I’ll hear it from his mouth I’ll consider the question answered. Until then…”

  “Aren’t you curious? Let’s find out. Send me in again.”

  “I am very curious indeed. The paper that I will write when I finally understand this phenomenon will likely make me quite famous in the field of cognitive science. But I am also concerned about you. As your therapist.”

  “I was fine last time!”

  “As a matter of fact, no, you weren’t. I clapped you out as soon as you had the name because you were getting febrile. And the description I was getting from your conversation with your Mom gave me the impression that you were in a lot of distress.”

  He was right. She had been. And if the dream-world was consistent with itself, Dream-Dad was likely to be “the worst asshole that ever saw the light of day”. She wasn’t looking forward to that. But she had to know and hypnosis was the only way. Waiting for Reality-Dad to resurface was simply unbearable. “Then do that again. Yank me out as soon as you get the wrong kind of feeling. You’re the one in charge, aren’t you?”

  She didn’t have to argue a lot to convince him. He wanted her to explore the dream just as bad as she did. After all, they were now both in the business of ‘challenging established science’, weren’t they?

  * * *

  She didn’t feel too good when she woke up in the dirty smelly room with the cracked mirror askew on the wall. Last time she had come, her mom had told her some pretty fucked up shit. She hadn’t had much time to think about it, and maybe she shouldn’t do it now. But how do you stop yourself from thinking about stuff? Worst thing that ever happened to me. What could have Mom meant with that? When Eeva had heard it, she had dismissed it as some manifestation of her subconscious, trying to keep her from finding the truth. But then, they had gone and used the information gathered here in the real world. And it had worked. And now, she knew that this place was as real as the other one. This is how the world would have been if her mom hadn’t died when she was five. The horrible bitch downstairs was who her mom would have become. Did she become like this because of me? What kind of shitty daughter must I have been? She wanted to go down and ask her. But she wouldn’t get it. She would go all “What kind of drug are you on?” Getting cross-reality information from her was just too hard. What she should do is try to get something nice out of her. Something to remember her by, in case she never came here again. If they did find Dad when she came out and the dream stopped.

  She walked out of the room, downstairs, into the living room. Her mom was there, watching TV; check. Ashtrays full of dead butts; check. Half empty bottle of vodka on the table; check. “Anything good on TV?” Eeva asked. Mom turned her head towards her and snapped: “Shut up, bitch. I’m watching.” Eeva sighed and walked towards the door, grabbing the phone book on the way.

  “Where the fuck are you going.”

  She stopped with her hand on the knob. “I might have a job.”

  “Well, make sure you get it fast. I got bills to pay.”

  She turned around. “Mom.”

  Mom turned to her with the What? look on her face. The cigarette hung forgotten on her grayish lips, the ash about to fall.

  She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “Since I was a little girl, I’ve never stopped loving you. I’d be devastated if I lost you.”

  Mom put on her What drug you been doing? face. “What are you trying on me, you sneaky bitch?” Her hand jerked involuntarily, spilling a bit of her vodka glass.

  She sighed again. “Nothing. Gotta go. Bye.” And she left with tear streaks on her cheeks. What the fuck had happened to this family? This was worse than getting your Mom shot dead and never knowing your dad. Grandma was no mom-surrogate, but at least she didn’t harass her. She opened the phone book, paged through to Kimmo Anttila in it and ripped the leaf off. You know, asshole. And you’re going to tell me.

  A woman picked up the phone. “I moved here six months ago. Maybe you’re looking for the former tenant? Do you want the number of the agency?” The leasing agency did know him. He was the former tenant. They gave her a phone number that didn’t work and an email address that she didn’t have time to use. Was her subconscious getting in the way again or was this place the real deal and Kimmo Anttila was just hard to get hold of? She took the tram to the former address and walked around a bit. That was the shop where he probably bought his groceries: “Kimmo? Sure I know him. He comes every now and then.” the clerk confirmed.

  “Still?”

  “Yeah, weekends mostly.”

  He still lived in the neighbourhood. “You know where I can find him?”

  “He hangs out a lot at the Molotov. Maybe you’ll find him there.”

  It was a pretty hardcore punk bar. The tables seemed like they were kept dirty on purpose. He wasn’t there, but the bartender knew him well. He gave her his address.

  The place was a squat. She got into the building by just pushing the gate in. She knocked on the first door.

  “Nah, Kimmo lives on the third floor. Door on the left.”

  Take that, unconscious mind.

  * * *

  He didn’t look too different from Reality-Dad. He had longer, messier hair and was sporting a three-days beard. Did she just wake him up? She was standing squat in front of him in case he tried to run away again. But he didn’t do anything weird. “Do I know you?”

  “’parently not, but you should. My name is Eeva, I’m the daughter of Olga Roivas and you. The cops are downstairs, don’t you try to run.”

  The cops weren’t downstairs but she couldn’t take chances with him taking off again.

  His eyes bugged out like crazy, he forgot to breathe for a few seconds. “That bitch!” he whispered. Now that was an expected reaction. That’s when it hit her: Reality-Dad already knew about me! This dude doesn’t. He interrupted her train of thought.

  “Come on in. Why the cops?”

  “Protection. They’re listening in,” she patted her phone pocket “and will come up break your neck if they hear something fishy.”

  “I’ve got no beef with you. Though you understandably have some with me.” She followed him in. “I didn’t know about you, Eeva. Olga… she must have been early in the pregnancy when she dumped me. And she never picked up the phone ever. I never even talked to her again after we broke up. I never suspected anything.”

  “Will you make us some coffee?”

  “Sure. I’ll be ten minutes.”

  He headed into another room and stayed there for a full minute. She noticed an open pack of cigarettes on the table and helped herself. Her dream-self needed her nicotine fix. He crossed into the kitchen, speaking into his hands-free. “Hi buddy… I’m fine, it’s just… No, something big just happened. I’m gonna have to skip rehearsal… I’ll make it up… Really sorry… Gotta go, I’ll tell you all about it.” A woman emerged from the room he had just gone in. She was so sexy-and-she-knew-it, it made Eeva shrink a bit. You could tell she had just picked up her stuff the way she was carrying it; and that she had just gotten dressed the way her clothes fit ill. This is trouble. But the girl walked right past her, popped a head in the kitchen, “Call me soon.” and was gone. With just an apprehensive side look at the clearly underage girl who had just gotten her kicked out of the bed of her lover. Before Eeva could even wonder what Dream-Dad had told her, he was back with two cups of brew. He had washed his face too, and put on a shirt that didn’t look like he had slept in it.

  The coffee was a delight. Better than at the coffee shop. “I found a crate of beans in the dumpster of an organic shop. The expensive kind.” He’d found this in the trash? She put the mug down. “Relax! It was sea
led. And, really, they put an expiration date on coffee beans because they legally have to. They even put an expiration date on honey! Honey literally lasts forever. Archaeologists find palaeolithic honey that is still good. Coffee beans don’t last millennia, but I guarantee you those are fine.” She let it slide. After all, the guy had just learned he had had a daughter for fifteen years and wasn’t freaking out. The least she could do was to keep calm as well. She left the mug on the table though. Better safe than sorry.

  While her coffee was going cold, they went at it rationally, trying to piece back together what Bitch-Mom, as she thought of her now, had done to herself. With Dad’s side of the story, it was a piece of cake.

  * * *

  “You’re fifteen, right? So I met Olga when I was… twenty-four. I don’t remember how old she was. Probably the same. We stayed together for two years. Two really bumpy years. She was really sweet and really pretty. I was in love with her for that. But she was also very jealous, possessive, manipulative… Stuff I normally don’t like at all. But… I don’t know… I was hooked. I just stayed with her. And then one day she dumps me for no reason. After so long… I felt cheated. Which turned out to be spot-on, because one week after she stopped taking my calls, I saw her walking down the street hand in hand with that jerk… what was his name again… Timo Something. Ten years older, a lawyer… At the time, I wasn’t even dreaming of having my stuff in an exhibition yet. I was broke, see? And so was she. University dropout, couldn’t keep an underpaid night-job for more than a week. It’s so obvious she went with him for the… huh… security. It only lasted a couple of months. I don’t know exactly. She had ignored me long enough that I had stopped trying. But I couldn’t help noticing that that Timo asshole was walking down the street with a new bimbo hanging to his arm. I thought she’d left town.”

  That was what Mom had meant. He prevented me from getting married to the man of my dreams. The bitch was blaming others for her own failures. Eeva should have known better. Coming from her, “worst asshole” ought to actually be “awesomest.”

  “She hadn’t left.”

  “No, she probably found out she was pregnant after jumping ship, and obviously failed at convincing Timo Asswipe that you were his, and got subsequently dumped.” He turned to her with a startled expression. “Shit, that’s not a very nice way to describe the way you came to be.”

  “I lived as an orphan most of my life. Anything beats that.”

  “What do you mean, an orphan?”

  Shit! She’d blown it! She was getting way too comfortable around this guy. “I mean, that’s the way I’ve been feeling for some reason.”

  He gave her a skeptical look. She had to divert the conversation. “So, you’re painting?”

  “Yes!” His face lit up with glee. “Took forever, but I’ve been a full-time painter for a couple of years now.”

  “Can’t be making so much. I mean, you live in a squat. You get stuff from the dumpster.”

  “And? You think it’s because I have to? Because I can’t afford buying things? I’d rather save stuff from the incinerator than buy new. Food in particular. Supermarkets dumpsters are overflowing with good stuff. And nobody’s taking it! If poorer people than me were lining up for the pick, I wouldn’t fight for it. Same for the furniture. Same for the squat. We take it because it’s there, nobody wants it and if we didn’t, it would be spoiled. Not only is it the right thing to do, it’s also great fun.

  She had nothing to answer to that. Probably because it did make sense, and she had said something stupid. But he hadn’t gotten on any high horse. He was busy gathering the leftover sugar in his cup on his finger and licking it off. This. Guy. Was. Fucking. Awesome. She picked up her lukewarm coffee and started sipping on it. Why did he run like hell when he saw her in reality? Could it be that Doctor Astikainen had been right all along? That her disconscious-or-something had summoned the dad she wanted to have instead of the one that really would have been? She wasn’t getting anywhere here.

  “I wasn’t serious about the cops.”

  He smiled. “You’re a pretty good liar, but I already knew that. Cops can’t go into a squat unnoticed. Squats get evicted every few months. We can even tell a plain-clothes copper from a regular guy.”

  “I was afraid you’d run.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Run where? This is where I live. You’d just have to sit at the cafe downstairs and wait for me to return.” Exactly! she thought. “Plus, why would I run? To be honest, I find this really exciting. I’m not looking forward to confronting Olga again, but you and me have a lot to catch up on!”

  Butterflies. She literally never felt such a strong happiness in her whole life. Even being in love couldn’t beat that. But the part of her that wasn’t tripping on adrenaline knock-knocked her. That did it. This guy and his double from the gallery were two completely different people.

  She almost expected to hear hands clapping and wake up, gasping, on the doctor’s couch. But she was still there, and so was he, and he was smiling. She wished he would lean forward and hug her, or squeeze her hand… But she knew the years of holding hands and hugging were behind her. She’d missed them and she’d have to live with that void forever.

  “How did you end up finding me?” he said.

  “Oh. I threatened to sue her. I actually went to the police station and filed a complaint and showed her the receipt.”

  “Wow.”

  “You can say that again.”

  “How did she react? I mean… Do you need a place to stay?”

  Butterflies. Squared. Yes she did! She liked this place more than reality now. She’d lose the weight. She’d wear long sleeves. She’d stop smoking. She’d avoid the Bitch. She had found her Dad. And he was so cool she couldn’t believe it. Wait. She closed her eyes. She shouldn’t believe it. This had to be fake. The doctor was right. Dream-Dad and Real-Dad were just two different people.

  She was relieved somehow. Mom wouldn’t have become that bitch either. Dream-Mom was just a fictitious monster her mind had whipped up to guard the secrets of her past. Everything here was fantasy. She opened her eyes again, and there was the doctor, the couch, the rain against the window, Mom dead, Dad gone… reality. Shit.

  Back home at Grandma’s, she couldn’t shake off the depression, after having been so happy there. Why couldn’t it have been like that at the gallery? Why was her life such a nightmare? Why did she feel like she belonged in the dream? Imaginary happiness. Wasn’t that better than what reality served her every day and night?

  * * *

  “I understand that you want to keep believing in the parallel-universe fantasy, but you cannot go back there and you know why. You know now that it isn’t ‘what your life would have been’. It is just a manifestation of your subconscious.”

  She lowered her gaze. “But it’s OK. I just want to see him again. I’m not gonna pretend he’s real or anything.” Her nights had become unbearable again. She had had the parallel-dream again a couple of times, but there simply wasn’t enough time to go meet Dream-Dad. The only way was through the doctor.

  “It is no coincidence that your nightmares have become worse. You need to make peace with your past. With reality. However hard it might be. Dwelling in makeshift happiness will only delay your finding closure.”

  Real-Dad was still on the run. It had been ten days now. They had found friends of his who had no idea where he was and sounded genuinely worried. The doctor was sure he would come back and that they should just wait. But she couldn’t do that. The nightmares had come back swinging. She was getting her head blown up every other night.

  The doctor had her back so she didn’t feel so helpless. They were meeting two or three times a week now. He would schedule only one. The rest was off-the-record. On his free time. “In my own interests, of course,” he said with no trace of irony in his voice. She had grown indifferent to his presence and didn’t confront him so much. She even kind of appreciated his tireless
support. She’d called him in the middle of the night once, and he didn’t seem upset about it. She knew he was doing it only to study her, hoping to make some scientific breakthrough that would award him a wikipedia article. That was OK though. It prevented her from feeling like she was abusing his niceness. Even though he was nice to her and she wasn’t giving him half the credit he deserved. Without him, she might have already been dead or dying.

  She had gone back to the gallery. They had removed all of Dad’s paintings and were displaying something else. He hadn’t called them back since that night. She still lurked at his place sometimes. The neighbours knew nothing either. Maybe the police would find him, but why would they look? There was nothing more she could do. She needed a vacation. She needed to see her Dad. The one from the dream.

  But the doctor just wouldn’t.

  When she had the Mom-dream, she just stayed in bed, listening to the drone of the TV downstairs. She didn’t feel like talking to the Bitch at all. Even a fake-ass imaginary bitch that wasn’t like her mom at all. But the dream-dad that she had created herself, she wanted to go see him so bad. He was right there, a few kilometres away. All she needed was one hour…

  She wasn’t going to go back to school. She had missed enough that her year was wasted. She wasn’t going to sit on her ass either, drinking coffee all day, feeling the sorry gaze of Grandma on her neck. So one afternoon, she jumped into her sneakers and walked out with a plan.

  * * *

  “Doctor? You hearing me? Can I talk to you now?”

  “Of course Eeva. What is it?”

  “Something wicked. You’re not gonna believe it.”

  “One second.” She heard some typing. “I’m all yours.”

  “You’re not gonna like this, but I went to his place. To Dad’s. I mean Dream-Dad’s. I went to where he lives in the dream.”

  No noticeable sign of disapproval, but she was sure he thought it was a bad idea. “Yes?”

  “I’d never been here except in the dream, see? But it’s all exactly like I remember. The streets, the building.”

  “You think it validates the ‘parallel universe’ theory?”

  “Wait, that’s not all. Better sit down if you’re standing. I don’t know how much I told you when I was in-dream, but I had gone into a local shop to ask for directions. The shop is there in reality. And the guy in the shop, it’s the same guy.”