1.

“W’sup Roy boy?” Joe screamed over the loud, pulsating music. “Bobby said you might not show up tonight.”

            Royer smiled and stopped to listen to Jennie Thompson and her out-of-tune choir of Westview cheerleaders try to fake the words to REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”

            “Last night, de de da.. It’s the end of the world as we know it; it’s the end of the world as we know it.”

            “You know me, Joe. Wouldn’t miss one of your killer parties, and judging from the crowd, this one seems to be off to a good start.”

            “Great game today, Velcro. You keep up those amazing-grace catches and you’ve got a free ride to the college of your choice. By the way, where’s Susan?”

            “Who knows? I blew her off yesterday, so I guess she’s returning the favor.”

            “Oh well, try to enjoy yourself. There’s three kegs in the next room and mind-altering drugs outside for us true partiers. For you there’s your token Coors Light in the fridge along with a couple bottles of cola.”

            “Ha ha. I guess you know me well, buddy.”

            Royer decided to take Joe’s advice and try to have a good time, although he still had a lot of figuring out to do about all the feelings he had been having over the past few days. He figured the best way to get his thoughts in order was to put them aside for a while—his father had a point about being too close to a problem to see the whole picture.

             He bypassed the fridge and went straight to the keg room. Bobby was there, surprised to see him.

            “Roy!” he cried enthusiastically. “Glad you could make it.”

            “Hey, Bobby, so am I.”

            “Great game today, huh? I think we have a good shot at regionals.”

            “Yeah,” Roy said. He grabbed a sixteen-ounce plastic cup and started pouring from the keg marked ICE DRAFT.

            “You drinking tonight? What’s with the change of pace?” Bobby inquired.

            “Oh nothing, just thought I’d try to fit in tonight for a change.”

            “Well good, fill up your cup and join me out on the patio. I don’t think I can take another chorus of this damn ‘End of the World’ song. It seems Joe has his CD on perpetual replay.”

            “Well, it’s the theme of the party Bobby, remember?”

            “Yeah, I can see why you didn’t want to come tonight.”

They walked outside coatless. The air was cool and heavy but not unpleasant, and Royer knew they were in for some snow soon. Bobby sat down on the small brick wall that outlined the perimeter of the pool patio. Inside the pool house, where Joe stayed when his parents were away, the party raged on, but the walls pleasantly muffled the music to a nondescript drone.

            Across the Olympic-size pool sat the Monster Grill that Joe’s father had built over the years. Joe’s father, Franklin Albert Teirney, whom Joe affectionately referred to as FATs, was a big man, about six foot four and over three hundred pounds. Originally from Arizona, but with a constant hunger for good steak and a huge desire to build things big and bigger, many often mistook him for a native Texan.

            The grill started out just fairly large, but each year as his famous Fourth of July barbeque grew, so did the grill. About ten feet wide and two feet deep, with a five-foot back wall, the grill had two thirty-six-inch grills on the left that he primarily used to cook the thirty or so T-bones, and a second tier of grills reserved for his famous thick, juicy ribs. To the right was a four-foot grill for the chicken, and in the middle on the top was a small twenty-four-inch grill, which was used to keep Mrs. Teirney’s kettle of five-alarm chili warm.

            Roy watched a snowflake, which seemed to appear from nowhere, flutter some two hundred yards down from the sky and land on his left Converse. He looked up to see a bunch of dirt bags, who all seemed to be enrolled in the same class, Smoking Lounge 101, take off all the grills from FAT’s pride and joy and fill her up with the fireplace logs that were stored under the porch. Royer nudged Bobby, who was sipping own beer, and pointed past Walt Matthews. Having doused the wood tower with a full can of lighter fluid, Matthews flicked open his Zippo and lit his empty Marlboro pack, flipping it onto the pile. Even from across the pool they could hear the FOOOFFF sound as the fluid ignited, and in the matter of a half minute the backyard was bright as day.

             Bobby looked at Royer. “It seems old FAT’s Monster Grill is now a Monster Bonfire.”

            “Yep, when he finds out he’ll be flaming mad.”

            “Flaming mad!” Bobby slapped his knees, as he always did with Royer’s silly puns. They looked at each other and laughed hysterically. Royer’s laughter died away and he stared off toward the fire. The fire reminded him of the fires at the camping trips his father used to take him on when he was younger. Bobby, still chuckling, could see the change in his friend’s mood and pulled up closer.

            “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, Vel.”

            “Nothing, really.”

            “Don’t give me that shit, you’ve been out of it for the past week or so, so no more bullshitting. Spit it out.”

            “Christ, man, you sound like my mom and Susan. It’s really nothing. I just have to work out a few things.”

            “Well, I don’t want to pry, but I know sometimes you need to talk things over with someone else, and it usually turns out that it’s easier to tell a friend what’s on your mind than your mom and girlfriend.”

            “Why do you think that is?” Royer asked.

            “I think it’s that whole male macho shit us guys are brought up on.”

            “How’s that?”

            “Men are supposed to be in control all the time. It’s the man’s job to listen to the women bitch about all her problems, but you can’t let on that you have a problem because you’re afraid you’d lose control.”

            “And boy can women bitch about their problems.”

            “You betcha, buddy.” Bobby chuckled. “So now that we’ve got this man-woman stuff out of the way, what’s been plaguing you?”

            “Just thinking about my dad lately.”

            “You don’t talk about him much. I guess it’s hard losing someone you love like that.”

            Royer nodded, and downed the rest of his beer. He could sense that Bobby was searching for the right thing to say. Whenever anybody talked to him about losing his Dad, they were always very careful about what they said, afraid of hurting his feelings by saying the wrong thing. Roy figured he’d offer a little more instead of making Bobby sweat it out by playing twenty questions.

            “What bothers me the most is I never got a chance to say goodbye and tell him how much he meant to me.”

            “How did he die?” Bobby asked.

            “He and my mom got into a fight, and he went out to buy a pack of cigarettes, and the next thing I know is my mom waking me up at three in the morning crying and telling me to get dressed. She said something happed to Dad and we had to run down to the hospital. When I tried to ask what happened she just started bawling, so I hugged her and just let it slide. I didn’t find out till a few days later that my father was shot to death trying to stop a liquor store hold-up.”

            “Wow. That must have been pretty tough on you.”

            “More so my mom. I guess she felt guilty because the only reason he went out that night was because they were fighting. No matter how much guilt she was feeling, though, I could never tell her that it didn’t matter how it happened. Because my Dad basically told me that day that he was going to die. But I wasn’t paying attention to him—I mean, how could someone actually predict his own death, Bobby? How?”

            Royer could feel his throat swell and his eyes start to tear up. He knew that if he continued he was bound to break down and start bawling, so he simply added, “Anyway, that’s how it happened. Well, I bored you enough with my personal trauma. I think Shanice is going to hitch a ride home with Jerome if you don’t get back in the party and pay some attention to her.”

            “What are you talking about, Roy? Shanice is a big girl and can take care of herself. I think that we should…”

            “Go inside, Bobby!” Royer demanded.

            “OK,” he replied. “But sooner or later you’re going to have to talk about these feelings you’re having. It’s not healthy to keep them bottled up inside like that.”

            Royer watched Bobby walk through the sliding glass doors into the house, and turned back toward the fire. Even from across the pool he could see the flames dancing in the air as the fire seemed to be building a pyramid in an effort to reach the stars. It appeared to Royer like the large flames had grouped together at the base of the grill and lifted the medium-sized flames up on their fingertips; the smaller flames then jumped on top, trying to springboard as high as they could, breaking the chain, and eventually dissipating into thin air.

            Royer was always captivated by fires like this, almost as if he were in a hypnotic trance. He could watched them going about their business for hours on end. But this one seemed different, it was if it were calling to him to come over and warm his hands and feet. He composed himself, wiping his eyes dry, and worked up the nerve to do what very few of his football buddies ever did, socialize with the DBs.

            He hadn’t even gotten within five feet of them when Walt Matthews, who seemed to be eying Royer’s small journey around the pool, figured Royer was close enough, and in his best sentinel voice said, “What do you want, jock boy?”

            Not sure of what to say, Royer blurted out, “Just wanted to cop some weed.”

            “I don’t think Coach whatshisface will be pleased to know that one of his little flunkies wants to get high,’ Walt replied.

            Already feeling out of place, Roy was just about to forget the whole thing and turn around when he heard a sweet voice from behind him say:

            “Walt don’t be such an asshole.”

            Roy quickly turned his head over his shoulder and saw Gina Fazzia step out from the shadows behind the grill and into the light of the fire. Her face glowed like an angel’s in the flickering flames. He couldn’t stop himself from staring, like he did every homeroom period, mesmerized by the way her deep, dark eyes blended so perfectly with her milky white skin.

            “This is a party. I don’t see any reason why Roy can’t join us for some fun.” She turned toward Royer and smiled. Royer could feel his heart almost leap right out of his chest. It wasn’t the first time she’d smiled at him. He’d thought once or twice she’d caught him daydreaming about her in homeroom and returned a pleasant acknowledging smile, the kind that seemed to say “you’re kind of cute, but not in this lifetime, buddy.” However, this one seemed more inviting, and the fact that she even knew his name got Roy so excited he thought he was going to faint.

            “Suit yourself, jock,” Walt replied with his back turned to Royer. He threw another log on the fire. “Gina, since you’re so hot for this kid, you entertain him.”

Gina, who by now was standing by Roy’s side, wrapped her arms around his elbow, pulling him gently toward her until her breast pressed firmly against his upper arm. Her full lips brushed lightly across his cheeks and rested centimeters from his ear.

            “Don’t mind Walter, he’s not so bad once you get to know him, Roy,” she softly said in almost a half whisper. The combination of her warm breath caressing Roy’s ear and the soft floral scent of her hair seemed to overwhelm all his senses, creating an electrical aneurysm in his nervous system. An involuntary shutter released this energy, causing Gina to move her hands down Roy’s arm with a playful tug. She said, “Come on, let’s get you closer to the fire before that cute little butt of yours freezes off.”

            They sat down by the fire. For a few minutes they talked mindlessly about homeroom and how boring Mr. Jenkins was, when abruptly she said, “You’re dating Susan, right?”

            “Yeah.” Roy hesitated. “We’ve been seeing each other for awhile.”

            “She’s a good girl. We used to be pretty close.”

            “Oh. I never knew you two knew each other.”

            “Well, we kinda went our separate ways after grammar school. Now she’s head cheerleader and I’m queen of the DBs,” she said with a laugh. She reached in to her purse and pulled out a small piece of hand-crafted wood. Royer was just about to blow his cover and ask her what it was, until she opened up a piece of paper and started putting a dark-looking substance into it, and he realized it was a pot pipe.

            “You got a light?” she asked. It was one of those lines Roy had always fantasized coming from her in his daydreams.            “No, sorry.” He pretended to search his back pocket. “Think I left it at home.”

            She smiled as she moved the contents of her purse back and forth a couple of times. “Roy, what are we going to do with you.” Then she held up a baby Bic,  and said, “Voila.” She lit the pipe and took a deep drag, then handed it over to Royer. He inhaled carefully, trying not to choke or cough, fearing he would reveal how green he was to the whole pot smoking experience. He thought he’d taken the hit like a seasoned pro, and then Gina asked, “Is this your first time getting high, Roy?”

            “No, I’ve tried it before once or twice. Why do you ask?”

            “Everybody I asked said you were straight as an arrow.”

            “Well, I guess that’s the way it would appear.” He added, “You’ve been asking about me?”

            She just smiled.

            “Well, I’m here tonight. So any questions you have about me you can get straight from the horse’s mouth,” he replied, and quickly thought how stupid that must have sounded.

            “Well, I’m glad you came. I think it’s about time we got to know each other a little better. We have a lot in common, you know.”

            Roy smiled and tried to imagine what they did have in common, because up until now he’d thought they were as different as night and day.

            She took another hit on the pipe and offered it back. This time Roy inhaled deeply and held it in. The smoke burned his virgin lungs, reminding him of the dream he’d had a few nights back about climbing the hill. His thoughts quickly turned back to Gina and how pleasantly weird this whole encounter seemed.

            As they smoked and chatted a little longer, he could feel his tongue getting heavier and his head getting lighter. In fact, all his senses seemed to be pushing into overdrive. He was annoyingly intrigued at the way his own voice seemed to echo in his head with each word he said, and when he looked around it was like looking at a 3D movie. Everything seemed more vibrant—the fire brighter, the sky less dark. Even the snow flurries, which were coming down harder, seemed more defined. In the background he heard a couple of guys talking about the bitchin’ time they had at the DeadRats concert last weekend. They were talking real slow and laughing in between almost every sentence. He thought to himself that he might be talking like that too and hoped Gina wouldn’t notice, praying he wouldn’t make a complete ass of himself in front of his dream girl.

            As Roy wallowed in self-paranoia, Gina leaned over and whispered in his ear again. “I have to—how would Susan put it?—go powder my nose. I’ll be back in a few minutes, so don’t go anywhere.” And this time she bit his earlobe lightly in a playful manner. Once again the excitement was too much for his body to handle, causing goose bumps to explode all over his open flesh.

            While she was gone Royer sat by the fire observing the others. He wasn’t quite sure if it was his newly drug-enhanced perceptions or the unfamiliar situation and environment, but the more he watched the others going about their normal party routines the more everything seemed very peculiar. He felt like an alien spy sent to observe the rituals of a less sophisticated society—a race whose people were not only satisfied with but even enjoyed normal, mundane conversation, meeting and clinging to the same people every day, doing the same things over and over. A race of people who never strived to find a higher knowledge. It was if he were a human looking at the social habits of a group of dogs, watching them just hanging around playing their dog games, barking their canine talk, and going about the same daily business day after day. Then it occurred to Royer that he was part of this race and participated in these daily routines every day. He started thinking once again of his father’s sociological theories and tried to remember what he‘d said about living in borrowed dreams.

            Royer stared back at the fire, as he had a hundred times before. But something seemed different this time. It looked the same but felt different—it felt alive, and it seemed to be calling him. As he stared deeper into the flames, he felt them pulling him closer.

            As he sat watching the fire call him closer, everything started to shake. He first thought it was an earthquake and jumped up to seek cover, only he couldn’t move. His body, still seated, was frozen still, and he couldn’t move his eyes away from the fire. As he struggled furiously to break free from his statue-like state, he began to realize that nobody else seemed to take notice to the earthquake. They just went about their normal party activities as if nothing extraordinary was happening. As his initial sense of panic started to subside, he realized that everything wasn’t actually shaking like he’d thought it would in an earthquake. It seemed more like a waving motion, similar to watching a movie shot from out on a boat in rough seas.  The entire world seemed to rise up and buckle back down in unison, everything except Royer himself, and the fire, which seemed to remain on a separate plane. As this continued he became less alarmed and more curious. The wave motion seemed to intensify, creating a blurry world around Roy and the fire, and eventually faded into a semi-blackish gray mist. The fire also seemed to intensify, growing steadily and replacing this mist with orange flames. Soon the bright glow of the flames, the crackling of burning wood and sweet smell of campfire smoke, were the only senses he could detect.

            The fire, which by now engulfed Roy’s entire vision, still invited him to come even closer, but now it seemed too anxious to wait for him to RSVP. It began to actually pull him in. Still motionless, he could feel something within his body being ripped forward into the fire’s grasp. He felt for a moment like an astronaut trainee in a G-force machine. Nausea quickly invaded, making it hard to keep control of his soul, or whatever was being ripped out of his body, and he gave into the fight, letting the fire yank it out of his body. The second he released, he lost consciousness, or lost sight of all the senses he knew. Everything suddenly went black. He had absolutely no feelings, no thoughts, but seemed to be aware in a different sort of way. Having no comprehensible thought patterns during this time, he had no way to keep track of time and wasn’t sure if he was in that state for seconds, hours, or even days. But one thing was for sure: He remembered coming out of it.

2.

“I think he’s coming to.” As his senses started to regroup, he heard a familiar sweet voice.

            “Roy, can you hear me?” the sweet voice asked, closer now. Royer could tell its owner was probably kneeling over him, but when he opened his eyes to get a glimpse, he had trouble focusing through the thick mucus that had built up underneath his lids.

            “Stand back. Give him time to become aware,” came another voice, this one very familiar.

            As his brain worked to feverishly place it, his sight sharpened and he could see that he was lying next to the fire. However, the surroundings were very peculiar. Staring up at the sky, he expected to see the snow lightly falling, or even stars. What he actually saw was a pinkish glow of gaseous clouds in a dome-like atmosphere that seemed to extend for an eternity. The Tierney patio Royer thought he was lying on was actually a soft, pliable substance similar to a bed of raspberry Jell-O. As he placed his hand down to support himself up, he found that the surface was surprisingly strong and resilient, very smooth yet not at all sticky, like he’d imagined it would be.

            “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore,” Royer muttered to himself as he looked around. He noticed there were no trees or any type of foliage, just mounds of reddish substance, some of which rose into mountains. Feeling a bit disoriented, groggy, like he was fighting the aftereffects of a massive hangover, his mind placed the sweet voice with Gina’s face, and he immediately thought that this was all just a weird hallucination, sure that she had let him smoke pot laced with LSD or some other mind-altering drug.

            Royer snapped his eyes shut again and quickly tried to imagine that he was back at the party, sitting on the cement patio. He tried to feel the cool winter air and hear the voices of the other partygoers, but it was to no avail. When he opened his eyes again, he was greeted with the same strange sights. He didn’t know if it was the sudden shock to his sensory perceptions, or the side effects of the drugs he had taken, but he couldn’t control his bodily functions anymore and heaved up what must have been his last three meals. He sheepishly scanned the surrounding to see if Gina and who ever she was talking to before had taken notice.

            “He seems to be handling it a bit better than expected,” the familiar male voice said from behind the fire.

            “Better than I did, my first time,” Gina answered.

            “We had good teachers,” said another familiar male voice that Royer could not exactly place.

            Royer looked through the fire and saw silhouettes of the three voices staring back at him.

            “Congratulations, Roy,” said the first familiar male voice. “How does it feel to make your first dream skip?”

            “Dream skip?” Suddenly, he placed the voice. “Dad, is that you?”

            “Sure is, champ, how are you feeling?” Jay walked around the fire toward Royer, who immediately jumped up and ran to him. Roy hugged his father tightly, then stepped back in a state of utter confusion. He was hugging a man who had been dead for nearly three years.

            Positive he was dreaming, or dream skipping as his father had just said, Roy asked “What kind of dream is this? It seems so real.”

            ‘You tell us. After all, we followed you here,” said the other man, who came over to join them.

            “Oh stop it, Roy, can’t you see he’s confused enough.” Gina walked over to the guys. When she stepped around the fire, Royer noticed she looked older, possibly in her early to mid thirties, but just as beautiful.

            "OK, so what’s going on? I know I’m dreaming. But I don’t know why, if I am dreaming, I know that I am dreaming. And I definitely do not know why it seems so real.”

            “You are, in a sense, dreaming. But it’s much more than that,” Royer's father said. “You made it this far without any help, so obviously you are ready to learn.”

            “I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” Gina interjected, “but listen to what your dad has to say first. It will make much more sense once you know the basics.” She took a deep breath and then, as if she couldn’t hold it back any longer, exhaled. “God, it’s good to see you like this again, sweetie.”

            “What are you talk—” he started to say, only to be interrupted by the man, Arby or whoever he was, sshing him again.

            “Like Gina said, listen to your dad first and then we will answer all your questions. We have a lot to go over and not enough time to do it the other way.”

            Jay stared at his son for a moment while he collected his thoughts. “Son, sit down. This may take a while.”

            They all took a seat on a soft red mound, Gina on Roy’s right and Arby on his left. His father remained standing, pacing back and forth as he often did when he tried to get his thoughts in order.

            “Do you remember back when we had a conversation about controlling your dreams?” he finally asked.

            “Sort of,” Royer replied. “I’ve been actually trying to remember for the past couple of days. I think you called it creative dreaming.”

            “That’s right. Creative dreams. Controlled dreams, or creative dreams as we called them, are dreams where you are aware you are dreaming and can control what happens in them. I know you’ve had them before because you once told me when you were younger that sometimes you would wake up in the middle of your dreams only to realize you were still dreaming, and then you said you would just follow what was happening in the dream.”

            “That’s right, I remember,” Royer added. “You told me then that with some practice, I could change what happened in my dreams and even have creative dreams whenever I went to sleep.”

            “Have you been practicing, trying to have these types of dreams?” Jay asked.

            “No. Ever since the day you died, I haven’t thought about the things we talked about much. It brought up too many memories.”

            “I know, son, I’m sorry I had to leave like that. But when the time comes, you need to move on, or else you lose your window of opportunity.”

            “What do you mean? And how did you know about your own death?”

            “We’ll get to that in a minute, just bear with me for a little bit. In fact, I plan on answering all your questions tonight. I owe it to you….I owe it to me.”

            “I’m sorry, go on.”

            Jay continued. “The reason I asked if you were practicing your dream technique was partly to see if you were ready for the next step, which you obviously are since we are all here. But also, more importantly, to see if you can understand the significance of the next step.”

            “Which is?”

            “Understanding the correlation between dreams and what we call reality.”

            Some of their previous conversations on how peopled confine themselves into strict laws call physics were starting to come back to him in a clear sense, but he proceeded to ask: “What is the correlation?”

            “Dreams as you know them are a preview to alternate realities that you are not familiar with.” His father went on. “And in a sense a gateway to those realities. By learning to control your dreams you accomplish two things. Number one, you can view these new worlds in more detail and prepare to explore them for real, and number two, you gain the necessary skills to make that journey.”

            “But most of my dreams are about everyday things in my everyday world,” Royer said. “They aren’t of strange worlds, like the one we’re dreaming about now. Are we just—or am I just dreaming right now…or is this reality?”

            “Yes, sweetie,” Gina said. “This is just a dream, and believe it or not we are all dreaming it at the same time. So in effect it is a sort of quasi-reality.”

            “Gina is on the right track, and as you learn a little more about these types of dreams you will learn the difference between these interim dreams, the previews as you know them, and real life dreams,” Arby added.

            “OK, guys, don’t jump the gun. Let’s take it one step at a time.”

            “Sorry Jay,” Gina said. “I’m just excited to see things moving so quickly. I’ve been waiting for this for so long.”

            “Alright. Forget about all that for right now Roy. Let’s get back to your question about the difference between your everyday dreams and this type of dream,” Jay picked up. “We once had a conversation about a video store and people renting the same movie.”

            “Yes, I remember.”

            “Well, the same goes for the dreams. People seem to feel more at home dreaming about what they already know. Things that are familiar to them seem safe; things that are strange seem to hide danger.”

            “So, you are saying that since dreams are a preview of alternate realities, and most people stay away from abnormal dreams, they don’t get to see these other realities and can never enter them.”

            “Precisely, it’s the old catch-22.”

            Roy sat there for a moment trying to comprehend what all this meant. His father, Gina, and Arby remained patiently quiet, giving him time to absorb. He finally decided to ask the question that would change his life and the lives of many others forever.

            “So what does creative dreaming have to do with it all?”

            Jay turned to Gina. “Why don’t you show him, the way you were once showed.”

            “I thought you’d never ask,” Gina said giddily. She took Royer by the hand the way she did earlier that evening and started to lead him away. He looked back toward his father and saw him talking to Arby, who just nodded, reminding Royer of the way he nodded when he was getting plays in the huddle. Royer looked back at Gina, who was still smiling. “Now that we are alone, can you tell me what’s really going on?”

            “Oh, Roy, always rushing the gun. You will soon see.”

            They walked on for a little longer and then she turned to Roy, kissed his lips lightly, and said, “A very young, yet wise, man once told me the world is a canvas and you are the painter. You have the choice of painting by the numbers or using your imagination and creating a masterpiece.”

            Then she told him to close his eyes. After a brief moment she turned Roy around so his back was to her front, leaned up to him, and softly said, “Are you ready to paint?

            “What?”

            “Open your eyes and tell me what you see”

Roy obeyed. He immediately noticed that he was now standing on the edge of what appeared to be the largest crater he ever could have imagined. It seemed to span miles and was twice as deep, making the Grand Canyon look like a pothole. Off in the horizon, directly ahead the red spongy ground blended seamlessly with the lighter sky, making it next to impossible to see where one began and the other ended.   

            “Describe what you see,” Gina instructed.

            “It’s breathtaking,” he answered. “I would say heavenly if not for one factor.”

            “And what would that be?”

            “Too much red.” Royer replied. “The lack of colors diminishes its potential.”

            “So fix it.”

            “What?”

            “Go ahead and paint it, the way you see it in your mind.”

            “What are you talking about? I can’t paint, and even if I could I have nothing to paint with.”

            “Oh, Roy. Of course you can paint. You are one of the most gifted dream painters I know. That’s what makes you so special.”

            “Huh? Dream painter?” Roy thought for a moment about what she was trying to tell him. “Are you talking about the creative dreams my father was asking me about?”

            “Precisely. The world is your canvas, your imagination is your brush, and this dream, this wonderfully creative dream, is your classroom.”

            “And you are my teacher.”

            “Think of me more as the janitor who was called in to unlock the supply closet at the beginning of class.”

            “So what do I do, how do I paint?” Roy asked.

            “Picture the landscape as you would like to see it, and start painting.”

            “So I should just imagine it and it will happen?” 

“Kind of. It will take some practice before you can just close your eyes and change the whole thing. Let’s start off small. First close your eyes and imagine what you want the sky to look like.” She waited until she felt Royer comfortably had an idea in his head. “Now open your eyes and stare out to where you imagined the horizon.”

            Roy obliged.

            “Now keep your eyes focused on that one concentrated spot for a while, soon you will see it grow brighter, then dimmer, brighter and dimmer,” she continued in a hypnotic tone. After a few minutes he could see it happening. 

            “Yes, I see what you mean.”

            “Good. You will start to see a shadowy, circular shape fade in and out. When you do, grab on to it and don’t let it go. No matter how bright the surrounding get, don’t succumb to the urge to move your eyes away.”

            “OK, I got it.”

            “Great, now concentrate until it grows darker, into a more solid blotchy sort of ball.”

            Roy watched as it faded a bit, and then it seemed to slowly implode like a black star. As it did it seemed to suck the red out of the surrounding sky.

            “Good it’s working.”

            “You can see what’s happening.”

            “Of course I can,” she replied. “The blotch you are concentrating on is your paintbrush. Slowly move it with your mind’s eye, steadily to the right. We are going to make a horizon line.”

            Roy followed her instructions. As it moved to the right it also simultaneously moved to the left, with the blotch remaining constantly in the center. The red continued to be absorbed in a three-inch diameter from the top to the bottom of the moving line. As the color was sucked inward, a deeper, more brilliant shade of metallic blue seemed to outline the new track in the sky, which prompted Roy to ironically think that every cloud has a silver lining, or more precisely a blue lining. He giggled out loud and Gina, feeling his excitement, squeezed his arm encouragingly. As he continued to move his paint line through the countless miles of landscape, the blue lining grew inward, taking with it a bigger cross section of the red sky above it. It was a chain reaction, multiplying rapidly with each section of new sky he shaded. Soon the line was more than a third of the sky high, filling up with a beautiful blend of blues that started with the metallic horizon line and quickly faded to a whitish blue mixture immediately on top, then slowly grew into luxuriously deep blues near the top, which was now well above his peripheral vision.

            His body senses were vitally energized with an omnipotent sense of power as he now effortlessly recreated the physical structure of this new world.

            “I think you’re getting the hang of this,” Gina said enthusiastically.

            “Yeah, once you relax and stop concentrating so hard, it’s quite simple. It seems to control itself.” Royer finished up the sky. He paused for a moment, admiring his minor masterpiece. Although totally cloudless, the deep blends of cerulean colors engulfed his vision, enabling him to timelessly enjoy its overwhelming vastness. It reminded him of the ocean, strong, powerful and extending far beyond the imagination, yet it was serene and soothing, like a still pond on a lazy summer afternoon. He imagined himself diving in and floating for hours in a peaceful sate of relaxation, void of any anxieties or fears.

            Remembering what he was here to do, he peeled his eyes away from its glory and looked at Gina, who seemed to radiate equal beauty in the new light. “What’s next?” he asked.

            “You tell me, this is your painting.”

            “Well, I’m thinking about filling in the great valley down there with rolling grassy hills that will make Shenandoah look like a city ballpark.”

            “Sounds good to me.”

            "So, I should do the same thing, just pick a spot and find my paint—” Roy stopped mid-sentence, jaw wide open. As he turned around to look for a spot, he saw that the green valley he was talking about was already there, just as he imagined, only bigger, greener, better. He muttered the first thing that came to mind, the phrase that best described what he as looking at: “It’s real.”

            “You bet your sweet ass it’s real. And quite beautiful.” She pointed over a hill a little to the left and added, “Love that tranquil pond with the two geese swimming side by side. Nice touch.”

            “But…but how can it be?” Royer asked. “I didn’t even pick a paintbrush.”

            “Of course you did. Your imagination is your paintbrush. That dot we created in the sky was just a way to get you to focus your energy in the right way. Once you started, everything was absorbed in its power and transformed into your thoughts.”

            Royer looked around to the level he was standing on and noticed it had transformed to a semi-grassy ridge about a hundred yards deep, bordering a thick forest of redwoods and evergreens. Amazed with the details of this alternate reality, he reached down and picked up a handful of pebbles and dirt and let it sieve through his fingers. The grainy texture passing through the seldom-used nerves on the fatty portion of skin between his pinky and ring finger made him once again question the fact that he was just dreaming.

            “How can this be real, Gina? How can you turn thoughts into nature? It doesn’t make sense. I mean…look at the details here. There are dewdrops on the blades of grass, for god’s sake. Tiny red ants in the dirt, trees with a thousand leaves apiece. There’s got to be a million years of evolution here, in what was just a barren red moon walk enclosure a few minutes ago. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, even if I could imagine it and even if I could bring you into my imagination, I would never be able to think of all this.”

“That’s the amazing thing about transposing energy, Roy. It takes what you give it and adds so much more. At least I think so—I’m not quite sure how it all works. That’s a question for your father, but I do know that everything is energy. Your body, the world you live in, and especially your thoughts and feelings. And when you learn to mix these energies, the way you just did, wonderful things happen.”

            “I just don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense. It can’t make sense.”

“Well, then, follow me.” She ran off toward the dense forest.

            Before Royer realized what she’d said, she had slipped into the woods. He could hear her giggling gleefully. He wiped the remaining dirt from his hands against the legs of his jeans and trotted after her. Her cheerful giggles began to diminish, and once he reached the foot of the wall of trees that marked the gateway between the ridge and the forest, they were gone completely.

            3..

Royer stepped into the woods and called Gina’s name, but received no reply. Walking a little farther, he shouted louder, then stopped and listened for a moment. He could hear birds fluttering high above the trees and the sounds of a babbling creek somewhere off in the distance, but still no sign of Gina. Sure that she was engaging him in a simple game of hide and seek, he decided to look around and see if she’d left any clues to where she was heading.

            Royer noticed that the denseness of the trees above made it seem like late evening twilight, just after the sun goes down but right before the stars appear in the darkening sky. Off to the right about twenty-five yards or so, a break in the leafy rooftop enabled the sun to shine through like an angelic spotlight. Royer slowly walked in that direction, admiring the beauty of a single dark green fern glistening in the brilliance of the warm rays beating upon it. As he bent over to take a closer look, he suddenly became dizzy with an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. He wondered why these actions seemed so familiar in a created world he never had encountered before. He quickly thought that if it was all a dream anyway, it would be perfectly normal to dream of an experience he’d once had. That’s when it dawned on him that he was reliving a past moment in his life. He had bent over this same fern in this same patch of light maybe five or six years ago. It was the day his dad had taken him to the spot for the first time.

            “Of course! How could I have not noticed before? I was standing on the exact same path that led up to that secluded break right past the tree with no…” he said, quickly turning to see if the tree with no bark was still there. And sure enough it stood towering above him some fifty yards away. Without hesitation, he ran up to the tree and stopped abruptly, suddenly fearing that the spot might not be there or, worse yet, that the sanctity of these virgin grounds may have been violated by frivolous intruders. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and walked through the thicket that barricaded the spot.

            “You can open your eyes, Roy, it’ll be just as you want it to be,” he heard as he stood there imagining the worst. He opened his eyes, half surprised to see that it was just as he had hoped it would be, just as he had last seen it—pure and mystical. And there sitting in his own stumpy chair, as he had done on so many Sunday afternoons, was his father.

            “It seems a bit smaller than I remember,” Roy finally said.

            “You’re a bit bigger. I’d say five or six inches taller since we last visited.”

            Royer took a seat on his stump, and squirmed a little. “And about four inches wider in the bottom,” he snickered.

            “I guess you are.” Roy’s dad chuckled back. “You’ve grown into a fine young man.” He added, “How’s your mother?”

            “Surviving, I guess. It’s hard to tell. It’s been a hard couple of years for her, but I think she’s starting to put it behind her.”

            “She’s a tough little lady, but I trust you are helping out the best you can.”

            “Of course.”

            They paused a moment to reflect on the past, and Royer could see a slight glaze in his father’s eyes as he reminisced. Jay took a deep breath, looked around for a moment, and then turned back to look Royer square in the eyes. “You’ve done well, son, better than we expected, but then again we knew this was your talent.”

            “What is?”

            “Dream painting, of course. You didn’t miss a detail. This place is an exact replica of the one that took me years to create.”

            Suddenly, overwhelmed by confusion at being able sit down with his dead father and talk about things the way they used to, Royer was engulfed in the raw emotions of the moment. He felt his throat tighten, as if his Adam’s apple turned to lead. His eyes quickly welled with salty tears. “I don’t get it,” he wailed. “I don’t get it.” And then he broke down completely, hysterically bawling for several minutes. It was the most he had cried since his father had passed, and probably the first time he could remember crying in front of him since he was a toddler.

            When he finally regained control, he looked up to see if his father was embarrassed or even disgusted by his breakdown. He only appeared to be sympathetic and somewhat emotional himself.

            “I’m sorry,” Royer said anyway. “I don’t know what came over me.”

            “Don’t apologize, it’s good to sometimes set your emotions free. It helps clear your mind.”

            “I’m just so confused. I have so many questions…about what’s going on, about what all this means.”

            “That’s why we are here right now. My job is to help you understand. So fire away and ask me what you need to know.”

            “I don’t know where to begin.”

            “How about we start at the beginning of this dream,” Jay said.

            “Now there’s a good spot. How come this dream seems so real?” Royer asked.

            “Because all dreams are real. There are basically three types of dreams. The first type is dreams of the conscious, or mind, if you will. These dreams are based on your thoughts and serve mainly as a storyboard for working out how you wish to proceed with your primary dreams.”

            “Primary dreams,” Royer echoed.

            “We’ll get to those in a minute, son.” He continued, “The main purpose of mind dreams is to show you how to use your five senses together.”

            “You mean sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch?”

            “No, those all are part of just one sense, the sense of body, and ironically that is the one sense the mind dreams do not encompass.”

            “So what are the five senses?”

            “Sense of body, sense of mind, sense of emotion, sense of intuition, and sense of spirit.”

            “I don’t follow. This doesn’t make sense—no pun intended,” Royer said.

            “The reason it doesn’t make sense, as you said, is because you are relying on just your sense of mind to interpret the meaning, blocking out your sense of intuition. But let’s not jump too far ahead. I think we’ll try going back to dreams.”

            “OK.”

            “Your mind dreams, as we discussed, are used to train you in how to use all your senses in your primary dreams.”

            “So what are these primary dreams?” Royer asked again.

            “Basically what you call reality.”

            “So are you saying real life is nothing but a dream?”

            “In a sense,” he said smiling, adding, “or a few senses, that is. Just understand that life is all about learning to control and utilize all five of your senses. Life is a school and your experiences are the classes. When you pick up enough knowledge, you graduate to a third type of dream—your chosen dream.”

            “What’s a chosen dream?”

            “That would be your final dream, the dream you pick as the one you want to keep for eternity. What most people refer to as heaven.”

            “OK, so what kind dream is the one I am having right now?” Royer asked.

            “This is a primary dream.”

            “But I thought you said that primary dreams are real life. This is too strange to be life. I mean, this whole dream painting thing—you can’t do that in real life, or primary dreams. Can you?”

            “You can, once you learn to understand your senses and fully utilize them. The primary dream you are referring to is your first day as a freshman in high school. You have already picked up basic knowledge of the five senses in previous primary dreams you have experienced, and have moved on with six billion or so other residents to study them in more detail one by one. This dream we are in right now is maybe your junior year in school, where you are well aware of what the senses are and how they work, and you get to play with them.”

            “How so?”

            “Well, like playing the guitar or even driving a car, you need to first understand how it works mechanically before you can even pick it up or get behind the wheel. Next you need to practice and then finally you can master the art. So in freshman-level dreams you look at the surface of the senses, primarily mind and body, and learn to work them. As you get comfortable, your sense of intuition and spirit—or what your refer to as your Know—will guide you with a better understanding, a deeper perspective of how your mind and body work.”

            “First off, I never called it the Know, that was Arby. And how did you know about that anyway? Second, what does intuition have to do with understanding the mind and body?”

            “You need to first understand that things may not be as they appear. Everything that exists is a form of energy. From the tree stump you are sitting on to your thoughts, memories, and emotions. Now, these energies are constantly intertwining to form the five senses, which in turn create the different type of dreams one experiences, depending on the combinations of the energy that are being woven together. Do you follow?”

            “I think so.”

            “Good. So to continue, let’s imagine that a person is composed of the various energies that make up the five senses. His sense of body enables him to physically relate to other energies, to explore its aspects in a tangible way. His sense of mind will enable him to control all of his energies in a systematic way. His sense of emotion allows him to connect, as in love, or disconnect, as in hate, to various energy masses.” He paused a moment to see if Royer was still comprehending.

            “So, you are saying that since both the mind and physical matter are part of the same basic substance—energy—one can control physical energy with thoughts and emotions.”

            “Yes!”

            “Then how come people can’t do it in reality? I’ve never seen somebody dream paint in real life.”

            “It’s a bit more complicated than what you did here,” he replied, kindly adding, “not to put down this masterpiece you created in the slightest. First off, ninety percent of the people in your primary dream have not discovered the simple fact of energy balance and the basics of what make up physics and psyche. What do you think would happen if everybody in the world could change things like you just did, or even just a few?”

            “There would be total chaos.”

            “Exactly, conflicting energy would make everything unbalanced and eventually destructive. The world needs to consist of harmonious energy levels to strive and survive.”

            “So what prevents that from happening?” Royer asked.

            “It’s simple. The law of physics.”

             “I thought you said that physical matter was just energy, and could be manipulated by mental energy.”

            “That is true. I know it and now you know it to be true, but the six billion people of your primary dream don’t know it, at least not yet.”

            “So how does that stop anyone who does know from changing matter?”

            “Since all the people of the world are convinced that physical matter is a constant that cannot be changed at will, they have joined together to pool all their mental energy to make sure that it stays a constant.”

            “So one man’s mental energy is not enough to conquer or redirect the energy of the masses,” Royer surmised.

            “Exactly. You catch on fast, my son.”

            “So, what about when people move on to their sophomore or junior years of school? Here don’t they already know about the aspects of energy and how to control them.”

            “Basically.”

            “Then they would not have the preconceived notion that physical matter could not be changed, hence wouldn’t everybody be anxious to try to make the world they exist in the way they wanted it to be?

            “Yes, but then again you have to understand the power of the masses. To start with, the mass will always be aware of potential chaos and will govern laws to keep energy harmonious. And second, it takes time to learn how to control energy. Once you are aware that there is the ability to do so, you must learn how to. That is what sophomore and junior level classes are about.”

            “How is that done?” Royer asked.

            “Well, in freshman year you learn the basics of the senses, primarily focusing on senses of body, mind, and emotion. But to fully be involved in energy you need to connect to all the senses. Once you can do that you move on to the junior level, where you start to practice.”

            “Like you said this dream was.”

            “Right again.”

            “But how come in this dream there isn’t anybody but you, me, Gina, and Arby?”

            “Because when you are learning to play the guitar, do you pick it up and immediately hold a recital for the world, or do you practice on our own an perfect your skill before displaying it to others?”

             “You would practice first.”      

“Well, to prevent the chaos we were talking about before, the mass always encourages skipping to practice dreams. Some people do it alone; others find those who are on the same level and want to achieve the same things, and skip with them, so they can practice together, symmetrically.”

            “How do they know who is on the same level?”

            “That comes when you learn to master your sense of intuition and sense of spirit.”

            “I don’t follow. You know I don’t believe in spirits and God. And isn’t intuition just a random act of reasoning, or an excuse to not follow what makes perfect sense?” Royer said defiantly.

            “Not at all. This is something very important you must understand before proceeding.”

            Royer nodded.

            “Your sense of spirit is a connection to those energy masses that exist on all levels. To reach them or even connect in more than a physical way to the energy masses, or people if you will, on your own level you need to have a sense of intuition. What you are thinking about is just a portion of intuition that most people occasionally have, to remind them that it is there, so that they do not forget about it completely.”

            “So what exactly is intuition?” Royer asked.

            “It is the key to connection. It is the central guidepost that brings energy together and opens the door for combining the senses for a more complete physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual merger. It is your online service that will enable you to explore the Internet. Without it you may know that there is a network of people out there but have no way of communicating in a substantial way.”

            “So how do you know when you are connected with intuition?”

            “Think of how you feel when you are in the Know. You feel disconnected from reality, don’t you?”

            Royer once again nodded.

            “That is because you are observing life from outside your physical energy. Here you can relate equally to all your senses. You are filled with the energies of the universe and hence now have a channel to communicate with energy masses from different planes.”

            “You’re saying we can talk, when I make myself—I mean, put myself—in that state?’

            “Again, you need to look past the physical world. We can not actually talk like we are now, because, I no longer have any physical energy in your primary dream. But we have been communicating through your sense of intuition.”

            “Huh?”

            “When do you usually get in the state of observance?” he asked.

            “Usually when I am confused and need to sort out the answers to problems I am working on,” Royer answered.

            “And what usually happens during this state?”

            “I get a feeling one way or another about what I should be doing. Sometimes the answer just pops in my head as if somebody whispered it in my ear.”

            “Exactly. When you get that way, you are calling us for advice. We try to steer you in the right direction.”

            “Who’s Giving the advice?” Royer asked.

            “Those of us who have already experienced what you are going through now and moved on to another dream.”

            “Dad?” Royer asked. “Who is Arby? Is he supposed to be Jesus or some kind of prophet?”

            Jay paused and then said, “Yes, I guess he is. He is, or will be by your perspective, someone who goes a far way in teaching the people of the world the wonders of the universe. But that’s all I can say for now. You will find out soon enough.”

            “Sorry, buddy, time is running out. I think I hear Gina coming back.”

            Royer heard Gina from the other side of the bushes. “Roy. Royer, are you there?” She popped through the bushes and walked up to him, staring into his eyes. “Roy, snap out of it. We need to get you inside. It’s starting to snow harder.”

            Snow? Royer thought. What’s she talking about? It was sunny and warm. How could it be snowing? But before he could ask she started to shake him by his shoulders. Once again the world seemed to waiver and he could feel his guts beginning to churn. He prepared himself for another passage, or dream skip—whatever they called it—but the thought of going though that experience once again was too much. H e blacked out.