1.

When Royer came to, his stomach was turning and the world seemed to be moving. His immediate reaction was that he was still in the midst of the skip. He opened his eyes. It was dark, but not pitch black. His head was slightly twisted to the left and he could see scattered shadows through a hazy concave rectangular shape. His body was lying on some type of vibrating bed that seemed to be made up of plastic-like substance. Through the steady drone of the vibrations underneath there was a rhythmic sound to his right that went chhh-chhunk, chhh-chhunk every five seconds or so.

            Royer was starting to get nervous, feeling a bit paranoid about what type of world he had jumped too. He reached down to prop himself up and felt a rough oval object, which his hands immediately recognized. “It’s a football,” they told his mind. “A football?” his mind answered. “What the hell is a football doing out here?” Then he realized—he wasn’t on another strange world. He was in a car. And judging from the two fifteen-inch subwoofers that made up the backseat, which he now recognized he was leaning against, he knew it must be Bobby’s Z-28.

            “God, this was just another one of those fucked-up dreams. But how could it be? You had a conversation with your dead dad, and altered reality as if you were painting a picture. It must have been the drugs.”

            “Bobby?” Royer finally said aloud through scratchy vocal chords.

            “He’s alive!” Bobby exclaimed jokingly. “Thought we lost you there, buddy.”

            “I guess I’m not used to those mind-altering drugs Joe was telling me about,” Royer replied. And then he thought, Gina must think I’m a complete idiot, passing out in the middle of a party. How juvenile was that.

            “Did Gina say anything about me passing out? I must have looked like a complete asshole.”

            “Don’t be silly. Why party if you can’t zone out every once in a while?”

            Royer immediately recognized Gina’s voice and wanted to curl up and die of embarrassment. In his homeroom daydreams, Royer often pictured himself as a knight in shining armor who would come riding along, and swoop up Gina in his arms to ride off into the sunset. But how could he be her valiant knight if he couldn’t even take a hit off a pot pipe without losing it?

            “How are you feeling, sweetie?” she asked.

            “Embarrassed as all hell. You’ve got to believe me—this has never happed before. I don’t know what got into me. Ask Bobby, I can drink or do drugs with the best of them.”

            “Shush,” she said kindly. “You don’t have to impress me with any of that macho bullshit. If I wanted to hear that, I’d still be hanging with Walt.”

            To Royer that didn’t matter. How could he face the girl of his dreams after behaving like that? The only thing that kept him from opening the door and jumping out and running away was the mere fact that she was in the car and did not leave him in disgust at the party. So he swallowed his pride a bit and summoned up enough courage to ask:

            “So, why are you here anyway?”

            “Why, Fate of course. Don’t you know you are my knight in shining armor, sent to save me from a life of misery? A girl doesn’t get to meet too many knights these days, so when one comes riding by you have to grab that horse by the tail and wait for him to ask you aboard.”    

Royer’s heart skipped a beat as he wondered how she knew about his fantasy with her. He wondered if she was able to read his mind and was simply mocking him, but she was there and that was what mattered.

            “Well, I’m glad you’re here, milady,” he replied

            “Likewise, Sir Velcro.”

            The rest of the ride was quiet. Bobby concentrated on driving. The snow was coming down pretty hard, and he had a few beers in him. Royer was still trying to make sense of the night and the whacked-out dream he had just had. Gina knew Royer needed some space to recoup, so she was happy to remain quiet to let them both concentrate and contemplate. Finally Bobby broke the silence.

            “It’s the third house on the left, Gina?”

            “You mean shack, don’t you? Yeah, it’s the dinky little thing over there. Not much, but it’s home while they repair the mansion,” she said sarcastically.

            Bobby pulled up in front of the house. Royer quickly got out and opened the door for Gina. “Why Sir Velcro, thank you kindly. I think a lady could get used to this kind of treatment.”

            “Think nothing of it,” Royer replied as he helped her out of the low bucket seat.

            “Would you be so kind as to walk me to the door?” she asked.

            “Why, of course,” Royer replied and extended his elbow. She wrapped hers around him and he escorted her through the snow-covered walk. They stopped at the porch and awkwardly hesitated for a moment. Royer looked up at the snow, which was coming down even harder, and said, “It looks like this storm is going to be a big one.”

He put his arms around her waist from behind. She snuggled closer and watched with him for a moment or two, then softly replied, “It sure does,” as she turned around and put her soft lips on his. Just then the porch lights flickered on.

            “I think I better go in. It’s getting late, and it appears my old man is still up.”

            “All right. I had a great night. Can I see you again sometime this week?”

            “Actually, we’re driving out to my grandfather’s in Wyoming tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I’ll be gone for a week, but when I get back you can take me out to dinner.”

            “It’s a date.”

            “Great. See you later Alli-gate-or.”

            “OK, see you when you get back.” Royer quickly kissed her again. He watched as she turned to walk up the steps, thinking how lucky he was to finally get a date with such a

lovely creature. But it was more than that. He felt they had connected. Like two batteries and a piece of copper, he thought you could almost see the electricity flying between them as they stood by each other. He guessed they did have something in common, but who would have known?

            “Gina?” he called just as she was opening her front door.

            “Yes, Roy?”

            “You said tonight that we had a lot in common, but we hardly ever spoke before. How did you know?”

            “Call it intuition,” she replied, blowing another kiss Royer’s way before she opened the door and slipped in the house.

            “Intuition,” Roy murmured to himself. How strange. Again, it was as if she had been eavesdropping on the dream he had, as if she was actually there listening to his father tell him about the different senses and how important the sense of intuition was. Royer tried to remember exactly what his father had told him in the dream, but it had begun to fade from his memory. Royer was starting feel drained. He got back in Bobby’s car.

“Wow!” Bobby was exasperated. He spit the word out as if he could hold on to it no longer, as Royer opened the passenger door.

            “Wow, what?” Royer replied.

            “Wow, all this,” Bobby replied. “Mr. Jock-O One Beer walks into a party, beelines it straight back to the dirt bags, smokes the old peace pipe, and walks away with the queen. All while mumbling in an incoherent catatonic state for well over an hour.”

            “What the hell are you talking about?” Royer asked.

            “I don’t know. You tell me.” In a mocking falsetto he added, “S-W-E-E-T-I-E.”

            “Oh, cut the crap. I mean, what do you mean ‘catatonic state’? I thought I passed out.”

            “Not when I found you.” Bobby said more seriously. He could see that Royer was in no mood to play his kiss-and-tell games. “Alls I know is after we talked tonight, I went back into the party. Hung around with Shanice’s group for a while, keeping my eye out the window every now and then to see if you were all right down there in uncharted territory. You seemed to be going just fine—getting all cozy with Gina, I mean—so I stopped checking. But after about a half hour or so, Shanice said she wanted to go home, so I took one more glace to make sure things were cool. That’s when I noticed Gina was shaking you.”

            “Shaking me?”
            “Yeah, I went down to see what was going on. She was telling you to snap out of it. I asked her if you were all right and she just said you were zoning a bit. But man, it was more than that—it was if you were in a trance.”

            “A trance? Come on. I was passed out cold, even had a dream.”

            “Sorry to disillusion you buddy, but it was a trance. Gina said you were even talking to yourself.”

            “About what?”

            “She said you were mumbling something about needing to know.”

            “Needing to know?” Royer asked. “Needing to know what?

            “Something about needing to know who Arby was.”

            “Arby?” Royer repeated, starting to sound a bit like a parrot.

            “Yeah, I think that’s what she said. So how are you feeling anyway?” Bobby asked.

            “Tired.”

            “Yeah, I guess it’s been a long night, Vel.”

            “Yep.”

Although not physically exhausted, Royer’s mind felt like a camel, carrying a thousand tons of badly packed supplies for a long journey through a hot unknown dessert. He needed to sort through the newly acquired information and neatly repack it for the expedition he knew he would soon be embarking on. But first things first, he desperately needed some rest. So he turned off his mind completely, fearing that any thoughts of Arby, his date, or dream painting would surely overload his senses, creating a nuclear meltdown right there in the front seat of Bobby’s car. They rode silently the rest of the way home, watching the snow come down harder and harder. They were definitely going to get hit hard by this storm.

            2.

Royer slept through the night soundly, without any dreams. He awoke feeling completely refreshed, and brand new. He walked to the window and drew the blinds, staring down on the freshly snow-decorated yard. The bushes, picnic table, and even the small shed at the rear of the yard were engulfed with winter’s soft white touch, reminding Royer of the dream from the night before. A single-colored landscape of soft mounds, only these snow-covered mounds seemed much warmer and cozier than the drab red Martian-like mounds of his dream. The sun glistened brilliantly off the tiny frozen crystals that composed this minor winter miracle, making it look like a half-acre field of tiny diamonds dancing ceremoniously in the new morning light. He felt peaceful and rejuvenated, as if this new layer of fresh snow completely erased any anxieties that have been plaguing him for the past week, or even the past few years. With a strong yearning to get out and explore the new day, he quickly got dressed, grabbed a breakfast bar and wrote a note to his mother explaining that he was going back down to Joe’s to try out his new snowmobile. Although he had no intentions of doing that, he felt he needed an excuse since Sundays were supposed to be their day together, and he didn’t think she would mind as much if he had a good reason to skip out on her before she got back from church.

            Once outside he breathed in the new fresh air, which seemed to revitalize his energy level even more. He ducked through the side post fence and headed down to Westview High. As he walked down the road leading up to the football fields he saw a couple of young kids sledding down the hill with youthful vigor. He noticed they seemed to have the same newfound energy he was experiencing, or at least one that he’d never noticed before on anybody. He admired their playful actions for a few more moments and then continued up the hill behind the field. Plopping down like a sack of wheat, he laid on his back, head wresting on soft pillow of snow, as he stared up at the rich blue sky.

            Royer’s thoughts, once again, were directed to the strange dream from the night before and how he created a world, with a sky much like this one. Was what his father telling him about matter being made up of energy true? He decided to practice, the way his dream-Gina had told him. It was a little different this time because everything that he should create was already there. There was no lack of color or scenery. He tried to image what he would change and only drew blanks. They sky was beautiful as it was. It was deep, dark, and rich, with a few strategically placed fluffs of clouds that seemed to add that perfect imperfection, like a mole on the upper lip of a gorgeous model. Not knowing how to improve on its beauty, he decided to try and mar it a bit by taking away the clouds.

            Royer focused in on the smallest of three clouds that seemed to be gathered slightly below the glare of the noon sun directly above him. He concentrated strongly for a few moments, waiting for his paintbrush to appear as it did in his dream the night before, but nothing seemed to happen. He was just about to give up, thinking that he was crazy for even trying this for real, outside of a simple dream, when every thing around him seemed to start glowing bright, more vibrant. The sky took on a surreal, almost two-dimensional look, like a painting. Keeping his eye on that cloud, he could now start to see the dark blotchy spot of his paintbrush appearing just to the left of the cloud. Holding on to the spot, he moved it in toward the cloud, covering the perimeter of the straggling white vapor trail that had broken away from the cloud as it moved east. As he continued to move the dark splotch inward, he noticed that the puffs had disappeared in the blueness of the sky, sending a strong rush of excitement down his spine. Was this really working? Like a kid on Christmas morning he lost all self-control, and rather than taking it slowly he immediately spun the blotch right into the center of the cloud, engulfing it in one big gulp. His excitement doubled, as he could no longer see any remains of the smaller cloud beneath the darker outline of his paintbrush. Holding it there for a few seconds, the sky jiggled back and forth between its three-dimensional and two-dimensional personas. This distracted Royer. He lost the paintbrush, and with that, much to his disappointment, he noticed the cloud was still there. It was only hidden beneath the darkness of the blotch. His rational mind told him that he was just kidding himself. There was no imaginary paintbrush that he could create; it was probably just his eyes playing trick on him as he stared into the sun. Who knows—I am probably burning a hole in my retina or something, and the disappearance of the white vapor trail was probably the normal path of the cloud, he told himself. That’s how they disappear for real; they just break off piece by piece and vaporize. Perhaps he really didn’t do anything to change the skyscape, only observed the subtleties of nature.

            Disappointed, he looked away from the sky and down at the roof of the school, which lay in the valley below the hill he was lying on. Despite his doubts, he couldn’t help but see that everything still had that surreal look to it, as if he was still stoned off the pot he’d smoked the night before. As he looked around, in his semi-hallucinatory state, he started to feel as if the world was just a painting and somehow he’d managed to jump right out of it to look at it from another perspective. On top of this, he had the strongest feeling that what he was dreaming about at the party was real. It wasn’t just a feeling, it was a premonition, or better yet a message from somebody from that other world. Just like my dad was trying to tell me in the dream, he thought.

            Royer decided to give it one more chance and looked back toward the cloud he had been working on. However, as his eyes wandered up there, he could only locate the two larger clouds and not the smaller one that was tagging behind. His rational mind once again interrupted his enthusiasm, stating that he didn’t actually see it disappear in thin air and theorizing that it probably just caught up to one of the bigger clouds and morphed its way in. But he couldn’t quite buy that fully, for his gut feeling—or intuition, as his father said—was telling him otherwise. So he focused in on the larger cloud and searched for his paintbrush once again. This time it appeared effortlessly, so he grabbed on to it strongly, not wanting it to slip form his grip once again.

            Like a wine lover who just opened his favorite bottle, Royer let his imaginary painting tool brush ever so lightly around the perimeter of the cloud, savoring every part of it before soaking it in. Every time it brushed up and kissed the cloud, he would let it slowly retreat, teasing its puckered lips. The cloud now seemed drawn toward the spot, anticipating its moves, wanting it to become a part of it. Royer moved in a little deeper, then once again slowly retreating. This time there was a nice blue patch where the spot had been. Excitement rushed over him one more time, and he had to take a deep breath to stop himself from making his earlier mistake. He practiced this slow-tease method around the entire border of the cloud, and as with the first, each retreat brought a fresh new patch of blue. It took him a good half hour, but when he was done spiraling his way toward the center of the cloud, there was nothing but blue sky in its place.

            Royer stayed with it for another hour or two, fascinated with the process, and evaporated a few more clouds. As he got more accustomed to the technique, he began to realize that he did not need the paintbrush anymore. He could now stare at the entire cloud and watch it slowly shrink. As they did this, he could almost sense the energy that surrounded each cloud, compressing it in to nothingness. He still remained amazed at the symmetrical beauty of how effortlessly the blue sky replaced the void left by the vanishing clouds, as if it were just waves from the sea, washing ashore and filling all the holes left by little landscaping tikes.          Finally, with all the clouds in sight gone, Royer decided to expand his newfound powers and try them out on something a little more tangible—the snow-covered bushes in front of the schoolyard. He let his eyes soak in the surrounding scenery, and tried to imagine what it would be like without the bushes there. Once again, it was hard to imagine, as if his memory was accustomed to their presence and resisted his imagination’s attempt to remove them. He laughed out loud, because he didn’t think that he’d ever paid much attention to them before. Sure he knew they were there, but after all, they were just bushes, nothing to sit and ponder.

            Having a hard time trying to rid the bushes from his memory, Royer decided to do the next best thing and get rid of the snow that covered the top of them. This he assumed would be an easier task, since he knew there would be no chance of sentimental memory attachment to the newly fallen snow. More importantly, he thought about what his father had told him about painting in the real world, and how the people who thought it couldn’t be done would trump the ones who thought it could. Knowing that this was not done as a conscious move but more so an assumption of standard physical law, a thought occurred to him: Memories might be the keeper of this law. Once somebody or a group of people see an object, a cerebral bookmark is placed in their memory. Anyone trying to change that object through mental energy must overcome the group that is subconsciously protecting its physiology with the memory of how they first saw it.

            He further assumed that because physical change was possible (as would be the case with a gardener who came and trimmed it in the summer, or even better, a landscaper who chopped it down completely), memory must allow for certain variables or conditions for the change. But unusual circumstances that did not have rational explanations, such as someone using a dream painting technique to erase the bottom of the brushes but leave the tops intact, would be inhibited from happening from the mass of energy emitted from memories of the bush.

            As he pondered these ideas, he felt his own energy grow even stronger, escalating his euphoric state even further. With this feeling, he had the sensation that he was not alone mentally. He felt like his thought process was being continuously fed by others, as if he was in a group discussion. With each revelation that he made, the sensation pulsed and his energy grew stronger with a sense of righteousness.

            The divulgence continued as he thought, or was told though this unique type of mental telepathy, that the mere fact that he was so easily able to eliminate the clouds from existence was because clouds are expected to come and go. Nobody pays much attention to them; therefore they do not hold on to the memory of any cloud in particular. With no memories, there is nothing to prevent their altercations. And if by chance somebody was looking at the particular cloud that was being eliminated, they would rationalize that those clouds disappeared in to thin air all the time.

            Armed with a round of insightful new information, and feeling stronger than ever, he sat down once again to take on a more difficult process of altering what was in touch. He started slowly with the original plan of taking the snow off the top of the bushes. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching, fearing that if somebody discovered his new abilities they would take them away from him for practicing without a permit.

            With nobody in sight, he took a few more moments to convince himself that he was alone and nobody was watching with binoculars from a house across the street. Once assured, he started with his own memory and tried to imagine what the bushes looked like in the summer, snowless and basking in the hot summer sun.

            With memory in mind, he focused his eyes on the front doors of the school and followed down the snow-covered slope that was supposed to be six concrete steps. His memory auto-corrected the vision, and showed him the steps as if he were really looking upon them. He quickly adjusted to this eyesight–mind sight vision and continued down the concrete path, quickly swapping back and forth between the vision of the summer grass and the ocean of white. When he got to the bushes he spent some more time studying his imaginary memory, concentrating on every detail of every branch that made up this bush. Confident that he could reproduce this picture perfectly, he switched back to full eyesight and stared at the cold snow that lay on top of the bushes.

            He remembered how heat waves seemed to waver off a few straggling branches and a couple of limbs that rose above the horizon line of the top of the bush in his imaginary summer pictorial. He focused on how hot the top of that bush must have been, and instead of looking for the blotch paintbrush he used on the clouds, he used the vision of the rising heat as his brush and slowly dipped it on the top of the snow-covered bush. His eyes seemed to blur out of focus a bit with each dip he made toward the target point. He felt more like a surgeon than a painter on this particular operation, pointing a liposuction gun at areas of fat on a patient.

            As he withdrew each time he noticed that the snow seemed a little thinner near the area he had just worked on, and sure enough a couple of stroke later, he could see those straggling branches he had imagined pop though the snow and reach for the sky.

            Feeling firmly confident that he could now change the tangible with this new dream painting technique, he concentrated on the entire top of the bush, and created a continuous heat wave that encompassed it like a domed halo. He watched the haze hover over the snow, flickering it out of focus for a few seconds, and to his expected amazement, when it came back in focus, the haze was gone and so was the snow. Now he could see every branch as it appeared in his memory, but more amazingly, as it had happened in his dream, the top of the bush was not the only thing that was altered. The path that he visually followed from the school steps to the bush was now also snow free. In fact the only traces of its prior conditions were a few puddles and smaller ice patches, as if somebody shoveled it while he was working on the bush.

            This phenomenon started him thinking again about all the implication of dream painting and how to control its various effects, but he stopped himself, afraid he would hurt his brain from the overextending of a vigorous mental workout. He simply got up from his comfy position, wiped off the snow from his pants, and headed back home.

            3.

“Hungry?” Katie Brown asked as Royer walked through the front door.

            “Famished.” Royer looked at his watch, floored to see it was almost five. “Forgot to eat lunch.”

            “Well, why don’t you go upstairs and put on some dry clothes and I’ll fix you a snack. Dinner won’t be ready for another hour or two.”

            Royer kindly obeyed, and returned to a nice hot cup of his favorite soup, his mother’s homemade lentil with big chucks of kielbasa. Katie patiently waited for Royer to finish his first couple of spoonfuls and then said, “So tell me what’s been going on with you lately?”

            Royer stopped, spoon halfway to his mouth. Could she somehow know about his new perception of life? He cautiously answered, “Nothing, why?”

            “No reason, just a concerned mother trying to find out what her son is doing.”

            “Concerned?”

            She nodded.

            “Really Mom, everything’s fine.”

            “It’s just that you’ve seemed out of it for the past couple of days, and this morning you were still sleeping when I left for church, which is unusual for my up-at-the-crack-of-dawn-exercising young man. You’re not coming down with anything, are you?”

            “No, I’m fine. I just got in kind of late last night from Joe’s party.”

            “You weren’t drinking, were you?”

            “Mom, what do you think?” he answered, knowing she would rethink that question, without his having to lie to her, which is something he could never do convincingly. Royer thought she bought it because she went on with her interrogation. “So how’s Susan?”

            “Fine.”

            “You two aren’t having any difficulties, are you?”

            “No,” Royer stammered. This conversation was starting to aggravate him. “Why don’t you cut the small talk and tell me what you’re getting at.”

            She looked at him with wounded eyes, as if he’d just slapped her in the face, and said, “Never mind, I won’t pry. God forgive a caring mother who just wants to make sure her one and only son, her own flesh and blood, for goodness sake, is happy.”

            Royer knew her patented mother-son guilt routine when he heard it, but he still felt bad. He apologized, offering her a bit of what he knew she wanted. “I guess things aren’t going too well with Susan and me. I mean there’s nothing wrong, it’s just that…I don’t know. I don’t love her anymore. Or I’m not sure I really ever loved her. I think that we just got together because that’s what were supposed to do—you know, the typical cheerleader/football player relationship. There was never ever any real connection between us. Do you know what I mean?”

            “Yes, of course I do. But it takes some time to find that special someone who you share that connection with. I never told you this, but I was engaged to another man before I met your Dad. Like you and Susan, we appeared to be the perfect couple in high school. I even thought that I loved him, or at least tried to convince myself that I did, but there was always something missing.”

            “Is that what stopped you from marrying him?”

            “No, being young and naïve, I never knew there was anything more, until I met your father. From the first time I laid eyes on him, it was if our souls reached out and touched. I could always sense what he was feeling, knew what he was thinking and every now and then I could almost feel his heart beat in synchronized rhythm with mine, even when were miles apart.”

            “Is that what you call love at first sight?” Royer asked.

            “To an extent, but I think it is more. Love takes you to a certain level. This was much deeper, and I think it is more along the lines of what some people refer to as soul mates.”

            “Doesn’t that have something to do with reincarnation, and the fact that lovers who get separated through death can find each other again in another life?”

            “Something like that.”

            “Do you think you and Dad were lovers in another life?”

            “I don’t know if we were lovers in another life. I mean, I’m not quite sure I believe in reincarnation. But I do believe that we were together in the before life and will always remain together in the after life.”

            “Mom?” Royer started, pausing for a few moments while he tried to figure out how to delicately pose a question he had been wanting to ask for a few years.

            “Yes.”

            “Nothing.” Royer replied, finally chickening out.

            “If there is something you need to ask me, darling, don’t be afraid. I would much rather you hurt my feelings than to avoid sharing yours with me. That’s the one and only fault I ever found with your father, and I am afraid he passed that trait right on to you.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I mean, your father was an extremely brilliant man. He could talk about almost anything with the utmost knowledge. But when it came to sharing his innermost feelings, he managed to keep them hidden quite well. That’s one of the reasons for the twenty questions today, Roy. I need to make sure you are not keeping anything bottled up inside. So go ahead and ask me what’s on your mind.”

            Once again Royer was a little floored at the fact that what he was going to ask was basically answered for him before he had the chance, or the nerve, to speak up. “Well, you kind of answered it for me. I was just going to ask, umm, how do I put this…”

            “Don’t try to hide anything,” she offered. “Just come right out and ask.”

            “Well, the night that Dad died, I heard you two arguing about him not ever talking to you, and I was curious—if you two were connected in spirit and you always knew what he was thinking, then how come he couldn’t share his, I think he called them ‘secret thoughts,’ with you.”

            As expected, Royer thought he threw her for a loop, because she seemed taken back a bit, just staring off in to space for a short while. She finally asked, “How come you never told me you heard the argument we were having that night?”

            “It was always too hard to bring up.”

            “So I suppose you have been blaming me for his death all these years.” 

“Not at all, how could you even think that?”

            “Well, if we hadn’t gotten in that fight, he would never have had to go out that night, and he would still be alive.”

            “Is that what you think?” Royer choked up at the burden his mother was carrying on her shoulders. He wondered if the only reason she never pushed him into talking about the night his father died was because she was afraid he would find out and blame her for the rest of his life.

            She nodded.

            “Mom, first off, nobody is to blame for his death but the man who pulled the trigger. Secondly, I am not sure he is completely to blame either.”

            “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

            “Well, you may or may not believe this. But the day that Dad died, he basically told me he was going to. Not in so many words, and I’m not quite sure I understood the significance until after he was gone, but he told me that day, as if he were psychic or something.”

            “What exactly did he say?”

            “I’m not sure you would understand either.”

            “Don’t you even try that with me, young man.” Her voice took on a tone of anger that hit Roy like a slap. “That’s the line of self-defense that he used to use with me, and it always made me feel so small. That I was so stupid, that he couldn’t even talk to me.”

            “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that the line he used is based on something we were talking about that you would have to know about to understand.”

            “Then explain it to me,” she pleaded.

            “Well, he said, as we left the park that day, ‘Tonight seems like a good night for a new dream.”

            “You’re right, I don’t understand.”

            Royer explained to her about his father’s perceptions of life and how they related to dreams. After mulling it over for awhile she finally said, “Tell me you don’t believe in all that crap.”

            It was the typical narrow-minded religious answer he expected from her, but rather than argue with her, he just replied, “No…I mean, I’m not sure what I believe in.”

            “Not sure? If you believe in God, you must know that when you die you go to heaven.”

            Royer just looked at her, not knowing how to respond. He realized that his father probably never talked about any of this with her because there was no way she would ever understand, or even ever try to understand. So Royer mustered up some courage.

            “Mom, did you ever think that the reason Dad never talked about any of this with you is because you wouldn’t listen to him? That with closed-minded responses like that he probably felt like the idiot?”

            “How dare you talk to me like that!” she screamed. She stood up abruptly, knocking over her chair, and ran to her room. Royer heard the door slam, and he could hear her crying hysterically. He wanted to go up and apologize immediately, but thought that he had said enough and should let her cool down before he said anything more. So he did the next best thing. He took the chop meat out of the microwave and tried to make meatloaf for dinner.

            About an hour later, she wandered back down.

            “Smells good,” she said.

            “Smells can be deceiving.” Royer handed her a plate of crumbled beef. “It didn’t seem to stay together for me.”

            “How many eggs did you use?”

            “Eggs? Nobody ever told me you’re supposed to put eggs in meatloaf.”

            “Oh Roy, you’ll never know how much like your father you really are,” she said softly, and walked over to hug him tightly.

            “I’m sorry about what I said, Mom.”

            “Don’t be, you made a lot of sense,” she replied. “I always thought I had an open mind, but I guess I never really did. I just wish your father would have tried a little harder to show me that.”

            “Did he ever talk to you about these things?”

            “Yes, when we first got married, he tried to express his theories with me, but I guess he learned early on that I had a one-track mind when it came to religion. The only thing that we did decide on is that you would get to choose for yourself.”

            “Choose what?”

            “I guess who’s side you would take,” she answered. “I think that’s why I got so upset. I’ve always been a sore loser, and even in his death, and I could tell that he managed to persuade you to his views. It’s the one reason I always felt left out on those Sundays when he would take you out to play. Or preach, or whatever he did when I was at church.

            “I don’t think he ever preached, or tried to convince me one way or another.” Royer felt the need to defend his father. “He would only offer what he knew when I asked a question, just like you always did.”

            “I know, sweetie. I know.”

            Royer didn’t recall his mother ever calling him “sweetie” before, it was always “pumpkin” or something, which prompted him to consider the strange new coincidences that were suddenly appearing.

            “So tell me about Gina,” she said.

            Royer sat there, jaw wide open like a kid at a magic show, prompting his mother to add, “She called right before you came home. Said she needed to talk to you and it couldn’t wait. She sounds kind of cute.”

            “Did she say what she needed to talk to me about?”

            “No, but she left a number where she can be reached. It’s on the fridge.”

            “Great. May I be excused?”

            “Of course, pumpkin.”

            4.

            The phone picked up but nobody answered, prompting Royer to offer, “Hello?”

            “It’s him, Gina,” an elderly man called.

            After a few more moments of silence, Gina picked up.

            “Roy?”

            “Hey there.” he said in a deep voice, trying to sound sexy. He immediately felt foolish as the words left his lips. He attempted to recover by adding, “Was that your grandfather who picked up the phone?”

            “Yeah. You have to excuse him. He’s a bit weird when it comes to talking to strangers. I don’t know if it’s his Native American upbringing or just senility, but he won’t talk to anyone without looking into their eyes first.”

            “Oh.” Royer didn’t know how to respond to that.

            “Don’t get me wrong, he’s actually the wisest man I know, and I think you’ll agree once you meet him.”

            “I’m sure I will.”

            “Good, because that is the reason I called,” she said coyly. “He would like you and your mother to join us for Thanksgiving. I know it sounds like a weird request, I mean we just got to know each other and I haven’t even met your mother, but my grandfather seems to think the time is right and I usually trust his instincts. Besides, I’d like to see you again. I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

            “Me too.” Royer replied. “I mean, I’ve been thinking about you too.”

            “Good. Does that mean you’ll come down?”

            “I’d love to, but I think convincing my mother will be the hard part.”

            “My grandfather doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, he told me that you should tell her it’s only 30 minutes north of Cheyenne.”

            “All right, I’ll ask, but no promises.”

            They chatted a bit more, mostly small talk, before she gave Royer directions and told him to call her the next day with a yea or nay. He hung up the phone and planned his sales pitch to his mother. When he finally got up enough nerve, he walked into the kitchen where she was finishing up the dishes.

            “Mom?”

            “Yes, dear?”

            “Don’t you think it would be great if we could do something different this Thanksgiving?”

            “What do you have in mind?”

            “I though it might be nice to drive down to Wyoming.”

“Where did that idea come from?”
“We were invited.”

            “By whom?” she asked cautiously.

            “By somebody who lives near Cheyenne.” Royer waited for an indication of how she felt about the idea before he told her it was somebody he’d just met the day before.

            “I can’t believe he called you. I’ll kill him,” she said furiously. “I told him I would tell you when I felt the time was right.”

            “Who are you talking about?” he asked. “Are you seeing someone, Mom?”

            Her face immediately turned a bright rosy red, with a balanced expression of both guilt and embarrassment. “If John didn’t call you, then who invited us down to Cheyenne?”

            “Who’s John?” Royer asked, ignoring her question.

            “Never mind. Who invited us down to Wyoming?” she retaliated.

            “Gina’s grandfather. He thought it would be nice to meet us.”

            “How long have you known this Gina girl?” Kate interrogated.

            “A while. Now how come you never told me about this John guy?” Royer pestered, knowing that if he could get her to talk about a man she liked, she would see his point of view in taking this trip.

            “I didn’t know if you were ready for me to date again. I didn’t know if I was.”

            “That’s nonsense. If you meet somebody you truly like, I wouldn’t do anything to stop you, Mom. I want to see you happy.”

            “I know, son, but it just seems so strange.”

            “So tell me about John. Give me the who, what, where, and when.”

            Royer could almost hear the debate his mother was having with her conscience about whether she wanted to fill him in on all the details. He didn’t know which side she was leaning toward, so he baited her with, “Tell me all about him and I’ll fill you in on Gina.”

            She caved. “All right, but you go first.”

            Royer egged her on. “Mom, I think your relationship sounds a bit more interesting at this particular moment. Don’t worry, I can fill you in on all the details about Gina on the way down to her grandfather’s.”

            “OK, I was planning on telling you about him this week anyway. Because he did invite us down to Cheyenne for Thanksgiving, and I have been procrastinating on getting back to him with an answer. You see I want you to meet him very much, but I thought it was just too soon and Thanksgiving was always a family holiday to me. I didn’t know if it seemed right to bring a stranger in to your life at this time.”

            “Don’t be silly. Thanksgiving is a time to celebrate and give thanks for what you have. And if there is someone special in your life you should be celebrating with him also. Don’t you think? Now tell me about him, please.”

            “His name is John Wilson. He is a psychologist and an author who has written some wonderful books on relationships. I met him about two years ago when he was conducting a lecture, based on his book Letting Go, about how to cope with the loss of a spouse. His book really helped me out, because at the time the world seemed to be crashing down around me and I think I was heading for a nervous breakdown. After the lecture I told him how his book had helped me. We went out for drinks afterward and talked for hours. Mostly about the guilt I was harboring about your father’s death and how to move forward with my life, but also about many other things.”

            “So you have been seeing this guy for two years now?” Royer was a little hurt that she’d never had the nerve it to mention him.

            “No, not at all. It has been mainly a friendship/professional relationship up to about three months ago. I mean, he would call me up every couple of months to see how I was doing and offer advice, but after that night I didn’t really see him again until he sent me a copy of his new book, Body, Soul, and Mind, last July. This book covered a lot of the things that we were talking about this afternoon. You know, the stuff about finding that right person and making a connection. Well, as it turns out he came back up this way a month later to do another seminar, and as fate had it, we made that connection.”

            “Why do you think it took so long for you two to have that connection? Didn’t you say you were talking on and off for over a year?”

            “John says it’s because I had built a wall around my energy and wouldn’t let any of it project out. You see, love is based on a person’s emotional energy level. And when two like energy forces meet, they grow stronger. It turns out he was projecting and I was blocking. I was able to see this clearly after reading his book, and once I let my wall come down I felt the connection. It was amazing. Does any of this make sense to you?”

            “Perfect sense. Is the book just about relationships or does it go into other energy types, like mental and physical?”

            “Yes, it touches on those types as a building block to his theories, but doesn’t go into it in great detail. To be honest with you, I felt kind of lost reading about those sections. It was kind of like trying to listen to your father go on about what makes the world tick.”

            “I’d love to read the book. And I definitely think you should take him up on his invitation this week.”

            “Really, so you’d like to meet him?” she said gleefully.

            “Of course.”

            “Great, I will call him and tell him to buy a turkey big enough for three. I think he will be thrilled.”

            “You’d better make that big enough for two,” Royer threw in.

“What do you mean?’
“I think that you two haven’t had enough chance to explore the romance of your relationship.”

            “Royer!” she exclaimed, embarrassed.

            “Wait, Mom, just hear me out.” He proceeded, not wanting to pass up the perfectly ripe opportunity. “I thought it might be nice if you two had a quiet Thanksgiving together, just the two of you, without a fifteen year old moping around and getting in the way. You can drop me off at Gina’s grandfather’s on Wednesday and pick me up on Saturday, and we’ll spend the weekend together—just the three of us.”

            “I don’t know. I’ve never met this girl or her family before and I don’t know if I feel right dropping you off in another state with a strange family.” Despite her words, Royer could see the wheels turning in her head, and he knew she’d taken the bait. He just had to yank the line and reel her in.

            “I’ll tell you what. We should get down there by late afternoon on Wednesday. You can spend a couple hours with Gina’s family. And if you feel the slightest hesitation about me staying there, I will go to Mr. Wilson’s with you. If you feel comfortable with leaving me only a half hour away—we will be in the same state, remember—then you can still make a nice late-night candlelit dinner.”

            “I don’t know,” she mumbled, but Royer knew she was already planning the time alone she would have with this John guy.

            “Great, I’ll call Gina and tell her about our plans. You can call Mr. Wilson and tell him I look forward to meeting him on Saturday,” Royer presented, like a seasoned salesman putting the hard close on a big deal. His heart held steady for a few seconds until she finally agreed to the terms with a simple, “OK.”

            5.

            Gina greeted them at the door. Once again, Roy’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest as if it were trying to get to her before the rest of his body and claim a first come, first served victory of possession. He didn’t know if it was to impress his mother or please her grandfather, but she had traded in her usual ensemble of faded jeans and fringed suede jacket for a beautiful rose-pattern cotton dress. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she had done something different with her makeup, more subtle, yet more alluring. Royer thought she radiated a whole new beauty, like she had in the dream where she appeared to be fifteen years older.

            “I am so pleased to meet you,” she said to Kate Brown as they walked through the door into the living room, where her grandfather remained seated.

            Like Gina, his shoulder-length thin gray hair was slicked back into a ponytail, outlining his sun-dried, leathery complexion . Judging from his attire, Royer concluded that Gina’s new wardrobe must have been directed toward his mother, for he was dressed very casually in faded brown corduroy slacks, a worn, baggy plaid shirt, and a fringed brown suede vest.

            “Poppy, this is Royer and his mother, Mrs. Brown.”

            “Katherine,” Kate corrected as she walked toward Gina’s grandfather. “Please call me Katherine.”

            Royer smirked silently at the fact that even though his mother preferred to be called Kate, she always introduced herself as Katherine, as if it made her sound more sophisticated.

            Poppy stood and took her hand in both of his without saying a word. He stared into her eyes for a good minute, silently, and then finally said, “You look more like a Kate to me.”

            Royer immediately burst out laughing, his mother blushed as her secret was revealed, and Gina shot her grandfather a look, all at the same time, in perfect synchronized harmony.

            “You have to excuse my grandfather,” Gina apologized. “He has a tendency to say what is on his mind, without thinking about whether it will offend anybody.”

            “Don’t apologize for your grandfather,” Royer said. “He speaks the truth, my mother is a Kate. Katherine is just her way of being overly formal. Isn’t that right, Mother?”

            “Yes, yes, of course. By all means please call me Kate.” This time it was her turn to give her son a little I’ll get you later for that look. Meanwhile Royer could sense Gina’s grandfather looking him over. Although he was returning his mother’s glare with a well, you deserve, it you big old phony expression of his own, he felt as if Poppy were standing right behind him with a magnifying glass, examining every inch of his body. What was even creepier was the fact that he could actually feel him breathing down his neck as he did it. The sensation was so real that Roy had to turn around to check and see if he actually was standing inches behind him. To Royer’s surprise he was staring out the window behind the chair he was seated in when they arrived.

            The old guy moves fast, he thought to himself, wondering how he was able to get to the window, in a matter of seconds, without Roy noticing.

            “Just like the wind,” Royer uncontrollably mumbled silently. With that Poppy turned around, looked him in the eyes, and nodded. Royer once again got the case of the chilly willies. He didn’t know if Poppy was reading his mind or if he just had supernatural hearing. But the glance and nod seemed to indicate he knew what Royer was thinking.

            Poppy approached him, never breaking eye contact. Royer smiled back at him nervously. When Poppy got to within arms reach, he placed his hand on both of Royer’s shoulders and squeezed firmly. Royer started to feel a little dizzy, as if he were squeezing his soul out of his body.

            Or sucking it out me, Roy thought. Yes, it definitely is a sucking feeling, he confirmed, thinking how similar it felt to the dream-skipping experience. After what seemed like a good fifteen minutes, but was actually more like thirty seconds, of Poppy standing there, holding his shoulders, and sucking out his life force like a vampire, the feeling stopped. Royer didn’t even have time to stop and think about how drained he felt, because not even a split second after the soul vacuuming stopped, he was hit by what seemed to be a huge blast of fresh air. His energy level was immediately restored, only it came back ten times more intense than it ever was. In fact, he felt so energized he had to check his feet to make sure he wasn’t floating off the ground. Gina’s grandfather released his hand and took a step back. He turned to Gina and nodded some sign of approval. She smiled delightfully.

            “Roy-err. Royer Brown,” Poppy whispered.

            “I go by Roy. But you can call me whatever you like.” He tried to ignore the burst of energy this man had just give him, but in the next moment Poppy took back that energy four simple words:

            “I’ll call you Arby.”

            Roy staggered, as if Poppy had just taken a lead pipe to his mid-section. He immediately became light-headed and took a seat to avoid falling down. The name Arby seemed to echo in his ears.

            “Are you all right, Roy?” Kate asked a little nervously. But Roy was still mulling over the unexpected news that he was actually the man he had been talking to in his dreams. How could that be? he questioned, although it began to make sense as he remembered the way that Gina had talked to Arby in his last dream.

            “Roy? Are you OK?” Kate asked again.

            But why Arby? he thought.

            “I’m Arby?” he finally blurted out loud.

“Yes, of course, don’t you remember? Now for the third time will you please tell me what is wrong with you?” Kate demanded a final time.

            “I’m sorry. I just got very dizzy all of a sudden.”

            “It’s that damn football regimen you put yourself through,” she told him, adding clarification to her hosts. “He eats like a bird, but continues to run himself ragged with constant exercise. I told him he needs to fuel his body and eat like a normal growing boy, or he’ll wind up in the hospital one of these days.”

            “We’ll take care of that,” Gina replied. “I am preparing a Thanksgiving meal that will feed an army. Will you be joining us?”

            “I wish I could, but I have plans to meet an old friend up in Cheyenne tomorrow,” Kate replied. “Are you sure you’re not having second thoughts about catering to old Arby here?”

            “Ha-ha to both of you,” Royer interjected. “Now if you don’t mind, I am a bit curious about the name Arby. What do you mean, ‘don’t you remember’?”

            “I guess you were too young. But your father and I used to call you Arby when you were a toddler. I don’t even remember why we stopped.”

            “Where did that name come from?”

            “It’s not a name, silly, it’s your initials. I always referred to your father as J. B., so I guess it was second nature for us to call you R. B.” She turned to Gina’s grandfather and added, “You have a great talent for knowing a person’s true identity, Mr.—oh, please forgive me, I don’t believe I was given your name.”

            “My birth name is Haa’ Hae’ Ameohtese, but please call me Poppy.”

            “You have a very lovely birth name. Do you mind if I ask what it means?”

            “Wind Walker,” he replied proudly, once again smiling at Royer as if they shared a secret.

            6.

They sat silently, cross-legged, holding hands in front of a warm fire that lit the room with an amber glow. Royer continued to watch the shadows flicker endlessly upon the walls and ceiling, amazed at what he’d just seen. Gina tried to give him a reassuring smile, but the anxiety of what he needed to do was overwhelming.

            His mother had embarked on her rendezvous earlier that afternoon, after a nice lunch and an hour or so of idle, get-to-know-you chit chat. Royer didn’t even think she was in her car yet when Poppy turned to him and said, “So R. B., tell me about your Vision Quest.”

            “My what?” he asked naively.

            “Your Vision Quest,” Poppy repeated.

            “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

            “A Vision Quest is a type of ritual young men go through to find their purpose in life. Traditionally the young man would venture off into the woods or mountains and wait for a sign from the great spirits,” Gina interpreted.

            “A sign?” Royer asked.

            “Yes, it usually comes in the form of a dream. Many times, the boy will not understand it, so he comes back to the village to have it interpreted by the Wise Man.”

            “But I haven’t gone through any ritual or Vision Quest,” Royer protested.

            “Poppy seems to think you have.”

            “Your spirit is enlightened. It surrounds you,” Poppy added. “Tell us about your dream.”

            “I don’t remember any particular dream that would signify a vision from the spirits,” Royer lied, still not sure if he should be sharing the dreams he had with Gina and her grandfather.

            “The vision is not to be kept secret,” he answered. “Those who try to keep the vision to themselves will quickly lose sight of it. But if shared with those who surround him, it will live on forever within his spirit.”

            Remembering his father’s advice to trust the ones he felt connected to, he broke down and told them. They listed intently as he gave a detailed recollection of the dreams and events that he had experienced over the last couple of weeks. After a moment of silence when he was finished, Poppy said, “So you are the Dream Painter.”

            “I thought it was you, but I had to know for sure,” Gina added.

            “I don’t follow. What are you two talking about?” Royer asked.

            “My vision,” Gina answered. “About three years ago I had a dream that I was walking through a thick fog and tripped over a log or something. Only it wasn’t a log, it was  man sleeping on the ground. He was so handsome I couldn’t help but to kiss him gently on the lips. When I did this he awoke with a smile and sat up to look at me with these dreamy powder blue eyes that turned my heart to butter. Anyway, he took me by the hand and we started to walk into the fog, but we couldn’t see where we were going. After a few hours of wandering around in circles I told him to get rid of the fog, and he obliged by lifting his arm up and down in a brushing stroke as if he were painting a house. With each stroke the fog disappeared, and before us lay the most beautiful landscape I ever saw.”

            “So why did you think this man was me?” Royer asked. “My eyes aren’t even blue.”     “Well, I wasn’t sure until now. The man had long hair and a beard and he was a bit older than you, maybe in his early thirties, but since the day I first say you, Roy, those beautiful green eyes of yours seemed to sing to me. Every time I caught them looking my way in homeroom my heart seemed to melt like it did with my dream man.”

            “How come you never looked back at me? I thought you weren’t interested.”

            “Because you were Susan’s boyfriend. And although Susan and I aren’t close now, we used to be and that will always means something to me.” She chuckled nervously.

            “Why is that funny?”

            “It’s not, I was just laughing at the irony. You see, I told Susan about the dream and she told me that I watched too much Sleeping Beauty. That it was just a convoluted fairy tale of a dream and that’s not how it happed in real life. And you know, that’s what I believed, until now. The irony is that Susan was actually with the Prince Charming for the past year and didn’t even know it.”

            “Stop it,” Roy said, blushing. “I’m no Prince Charming.”

            “No, but you are the Dream Painter. And in my eyes the Dream Painter can paint circles around Prince Charming.”

            “So tell my why you called this man, or me I guess, the Dream Painter, before you heard about my dreams and experiments?”

            “That was actually Poppy’s term for you,” she replied.

            Poppy added, “Gina told me about the dream last Christmas and I interpreted it for her. I told her it wasn’t just a dream, it was her mission.”

            “Which is?” Royer asked.

            “To wake the Dream Painter,” Gina answered, “Poppy said that the fog represented the uncertainty that everybody walks through life in. They accept the world as it is and never try to see farther than their eyes will let them. The man, who paints away the fog, will shed new light on the world, showing millions of people the beauty that lies behind the clouded visions that they share. My purpose in life is or was to awaken you to your special gift and to guide you through until you are ready to share it with the world.”

            “So you are saying that my mission is to show the world about dream skipping,” Royer said. “I don’t know if I am ready or even willing to take on that responsibility.”

            “It’s not a choice. You must!” Poppy commanded.

            “What do you mean I have no choice? Last time I checked this was still a free country and I could do what I wanted,” Royer replied defensively, adding, “I mean, I don’t know if the world is ready for this. I don’t know if I am.”

            “Gina will help you with that, but this world can wait no longer.”

            “I don’t follow. This world has been doing fine for millions of years without my help.”

            “Come,” he said, walking into the den, where he lit the fire and sat down cross-legged. Gina followed, taking a seat on his right and motioning for Royer to join on his left. Poppy reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a small bag of seeds, and tossed some into the fire. They crackled quietly, popping every now and then as they heated in the warmth of the fire. Poppy took hold of Royer’s hand with a surprisingly powerful grip. The crackling of the seeds grew louder and more steady, like popcorn popping.

            Royer looked at Gina and then back to Poppy and noticed them both staring intently at the fire, which was now emitting a bluish smoke that seemed to be slithering its way out of the fireplace and up toward the mantle. Royer followed suit and watched the smoke form a screen. He noticed it was denser than just a wall of smoke, almost solid, reminding him of the antiquated movie screen his father sometimes set up in the living room to play his old eight-millimeter home movies on. The three of them sat holding hands, watching the smoke thicken in front of the fire, until the flames behind it were mere shadows dancing joyfully to the rhythm of the crackling seeds. Once again, Royer found himself mesmerized watching them perform their ritual, and once again, he felt the room start to quiver as it did that night he went on his first dream skip. Only this time it was different. Although the fire was calling him, it wasn’t drawing him in like the other one. This one seemed to be showing him something. That’s when he noticed that the shadows of the flames were now actually forming pictures and the milky screen was now an actual movie screen.

            Like before, his sight was glued toward the direction of the fire and his peripheral vision was all but gone. He didn’t need, however, to look over to tell that both Gina and Poppy were seeing the same thing that he was. There on the smoke screen was a vision, or hallucination, that they all saw, as clear as if they were looking at it through an open window.

            It was a city. New York, Royer thought, recognizing Times Square from years of watching the big apple drop on New Year’s Eve. But something seemed out of place to him. His first thought was that the big LED billboard renowned for endlessly flashing brilliantly lighted advertising to countless people who crossed its path each day must be the reason. For it just laid there black and motionless. Must be broken, he thought, or turned off. Yes, turned off. The reason this setting seems out of place is because there’s not a single soul on the street. Very peculiar for what he always thought of as the city that never sleeps. What was even more peculiar was the fact that it must have been midday, judging from how bright the sun was shining.

            The whole situation reminded him of an old commercial, where a man walks out into what is normally a busy city street and can’t find anybody else.

            “Where did everybody go?” he screams, echoing in the streets.

            They went to Betsons,” the announcer replies.

            He giggled out loud at the thought, and Poppy squeezed his hand slightly as a signal to pay attention. With that the image changed as if on cue. They were now looking at a school, very similar to the one he went to when he was younger. He did not recognize the name, Monroe Elementary School, nor the area, although if he had to guess, he would have to place it in the Midwest somewhere, maybe Nebraska or Iowa. Again it was midday and nobody was in sight. As he watched, he noticed the smoke had filled the entire room, forming a 360-degree Imax theater. In fact, he noticed he could look around as if the image were three dimensional, like those virtual reality games Jimmy Fargo played on his computer.

            Royer peered around the corner of the left wing of the school and noticed the shape of a body walking down the road that lead from the school. About 150 yards out, he couldn’t really see the person, but he could tell two things. First, the person was pushing some type of shopping cart. And second, this person, who was hunched over and walked very slowly, had a bulge in his back that made Quasimodo seem fit as an arrow. Assuming there was not a grocery store within walking distance out in this neck of the woods, he immediately hypothesized that the person was probably a bum bringing a shopping cart full of cans down to the local recycling center to collect a few bucks back on the deposit. But there was something that stood out about what he or she was actually pushing in the cart that made Royer doubt that they were cans and bottles. With his curiosity building, Royer imagined zooming in to get a better look, as if he had a pair of high-power binoculars. Once again, this quasi-inactive movie/hallucination obeyed his command and gave them a close-up shot from about ten yards directly behind the person.

            From this angle they could tell that the person was a man, about five foot ten, and very frail. He was wearing tattered painter’s pants and a heavy army jacket that covered the deformity protruding from his back. Royer wanted to see his face, and more so what he was carting around, but before he could even think better of it, the view faded in from his front side. What he saw made his stomach drop like a bowling ball in a vat of pudding. Gina let out a quick scream and Poppy squeezed Royer’s hand even harder. His head felt like it split in two as his left eye focused on this man’s face and the right zoomed in on what he was pushing, until they both snapped shut to prevent horrid sensory overload. His mind, however, continued to rattle back and forth between the two images, trying to comprehend what was presented, and image was more abominable.

            The man’s face was not human. At least not on first glance. It looked more like that of a giant fly’s. Hugh bulging eyes, a big cylinder nose, and a round screened opening of a mouth. It took a few seconds before Royer’s brain could demystify the image and tell his heart not to worry, or least not to worry so deeply. It was not the Giant Fly-Man of some 1950s B-movie. It was simply a man wearing a gas mask.

            Although quite strange, Royer was not so concerned with the man in the gas mask, but more so with what he was pushing. For it was not a shopping cart full of bottles and cans as he originally presumed, it was a wheelbarrow. A wheelbarrow full of…monkeys, his mind interjected, in a last-minute effort to avoid the truth. But it wasn’t monkeys, it was children. Four of them. Three girls and a boy carelessly tossed in there like four sacks of potatoes…lifeless…dead. Can’t be, Royer thought one last time, trying to deny what he’d just seen. He opened his eyes once again in the hopes that he was mistaken. Maybe they’re mannequins or life-size dolls or something. But the image was undeniable.

            They were real. They were young. They were dead. Each had a bluish green complexion, and they had the same expression: mouth and eyes wide open as if they were gasping for air.

            Royer couldn’t bear to look any longer and turned his eyes toward Gina. A swollen tear was slowly cascading down her cheek. She looked as him as to if to ask, Why? Royer just shook his head in disgust. Again, Poppy motioned for them to continue watching. Reluctantly they both stared back at the fire, which was now thankfully showing another scene.

            In this scene the man in the mask was standing next to the wheelbarrow, which lay overturned next to a big pit in the ground. He peered into the pit and then turned away as he brushed his hands together three times, indicating that either he was washing his hands of the situation or that they were dirty and needed a little dusting off. Royer assumed that is was probably a combination of the two. He wanted to know what was in the pit but quickly thought better of it, afraid of what he would actually see down there. But before he could redirect the camera angle, he was now looking down in the pit, as if he were standing right above it. And sure enough, as he had feared, what he saw was pretty disturbing. For there below him was not only the four children who were in the wheelbarrow but hundreds more just like them. They ranged in age from six to twelve years and, frighteningly enough, they all had the same gasping-for-air expression. He could not fathom what had happened to all these precious little kids. He figured they were all from the school up the street, so there must have been an accident. Maybe a gas leak in the boiler room. But even if there was a gas leak, he thought, once it was discovered they would have able to escape. Judging from the size of the school and the area, this must have been all the children who attended, and Royer couldn’t imagine that no one would have smelled the gas. Unless they were trapped inside. But thinking back to what the school looked like, he remembered that there were two wings separated by the main entrance. In each wing there were two sets of double glass doors that led to both the back schoolyard and the front parking where the buses must lineup. He could not image these being locked during school hours with all the fire safety regulations they have in place. And even if some mad lunatic bolted the doors shut and pumped in odorless lethal gas, Royer thought that at least somebody would have opened one of the thirty or so classroom windows that ran across each corridor.

            But Royer thought that must have been it. A crazy man, a real lunatic, probably pretty scary looking like the man wearing the…gas mask? So that’s it. This man carting around the dead children must be the killer.

            Royer focus back in on the hallucination to see what was going on. Again the scene had changed. This time the man in the gas mask was with someone else, who was sitting by what looked like a ham radio setup. The new man was also wearing a gas mask, and had the same large hump in his back. But before Royer could reflect on this peculiar coincidence, the man took off his coat and revealed two ten-gallon oxygen tanks strapped to his back like a scuba diver. The first guy unscrewed one of the tanks from the valve and replaced it with a fresh one.

            Then, as if the hallucination couldn’t get any stranger, they started to talk, and Royer could understand what they were saying. Not actually audibly, since he was still looking at images made out of smoke, but he could intuitively sense what they were saying through some type of extrasensory perception.

            “How much O₂ is left?” the radio guy asked.

            “Not much.”

            “I guess we should move on to County General and see what kind of supplies they have. Maybe we can scrounge up another week or so.”

            “And then what?” the first guy asked. “How much longer do you think we can go on like this? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life searching for oxygen so you can live another day to do the same thing?”

            “I’m hoping just to survive until somebody finds a way to clear the air of this thing. Who knows, maybe it will kill itself off. Viruses are strange things.”

            “Any news on the radio today?”

            “Actually just some amusingly ironic news from a survivor in Israel.”

            “Which was?”

            “They found the Crazy Son of a Bitch Madman. Dead as a doornail,” the radio man replied.

            “The virus?”

            “Yes, a victim of his own weapon. Either a true madman who was on a kamikaze mission to kill off every living being, including himself, or he underestimated the power of chemical warfare.”

            “I’d prefer to think that it caught him by surprise and he suffered a horrible death. Only wish he found a way to survive like us and had to endure seeing the world come to an end.”

            7.

Gina could sense the pain and distress Royer was experiencing from watching the images laid out before them and was relieved to notice it had changed one final time. This time the illusion was real. No more smoke screen or three-dimensional imagery. They were actually a part of this new image. The three of them were still sitting cross-legged and holding hands, but now they were on a large field of grass. Like in his dream skip, Royer noticed he seemed to have control of his five senses, or physical senses, anyway. He could feel the moist, soft grass underneath his jeans and the warmth of the midday sun beating on his shoulders. He could feel, see, and hear the warm breeze gently rustle past his ears. The scent of the summer was also in the air. Assured that they’d actually made a dream skip, he was amazed at how seamless the journey was. No nauseating side effects.

            As Royer looked around, he noticed they were sitting in a crowd of maybe one thousand or so, watching a man speak from atop a hill at the edge of the field they sat upon. The man was set up with a makeshift PA system and had his back to Royer as he walked back to the center of the hill, in a slow, pacing movement. Even through the squeal of his microphone, the treble resonance of the tweeter-only speakers, the man’s voice sounded very familiar.

            “Let go of all you ever knew,” the man demanded, in late-night infomercial style, “and get ready to paint yourself a new dream.” With that the man stopped, looked directly at Royer, and said, “There’s no time to waste.”

            Simultaneously, Royer’s heat skipped a beat while Gina let out a little yelp as they both figured out at the same precise moment that there upon the hill, preaching to thousands, was not just any man, but the man—ARBY.

            “It’s you!” Gina blurted out in confirmation

            Royer just nodded as he watched himself, or future self, suavely address the crowd, who seemed mesmerized by his every word. After a few moments, he finally sat down on the slope of the hill he was standing on and motioned in the crowd for a little girl to come up and join him.

            “Hi, what’s your name?” Arby asked as the girl of five or six joined him, nervously looking back to her mother, who motioned that everything would be all right.

            “J-J-Jenny,” she answered.

            Jenny,” Arby repeated in a soothing voice. “That’s a lovely name.”

            “I know,” she answered innocently, to which the crowd laughed amusingly. “I mean, my Daddy tells me that all the time.”

            “Jenny, why are you here today?” Arby asked.

            “Because my mother wanted to come and she said it would be fun.”

            “Are you having fun?”

            “No,” she quickly replied, causing a rumbling of laughter again.

            “Well, we want you to have fun. Don’t we?” he said, motioning to the crowd, who responded affirmatively.

            “Jenny, if I could give you anything in the whole wide world to play with that would guarantee a fun-filled day, what would that be?” he asked.

            “A pony,” she answered without a second thought.

            “A pony?” he prodded.

            “Uh-huh. A pony with a long white mane.”

            “Like the My Pretty Pony doll you see on TV?”

            “No, a real one. One I can ride on,” she said zestfully.

            “Jenny, a pony does sound like a lot of fun, but where do you think we can find one? I know I didn’t bring one. Does anyone out there have a pony?”

            “A real one with a long white mane,” Jenny reminded. Again the crowd giggled at her enthusiasm.

            “OK, does anyone in the audience have a real pony with a long white mane?” Arby asked again.

            This time the crowd response was an overwhelming “NO!”

            Jenny looked disappointed.

            “I guess we just have to wish for one. Do you believe in wishes, Jenny?”

            “I guess so, but my Daddy says that wishes don’t always come true.”

            “Well, in a way he’s right. A wish will not come true if you do not truly believe in it. However, if everybody discards their doubts and really wishes hard, and believes in that wish, you know what? It will come true.” Again he turned to the crowd and asked, “Raise your hand if you want to see Jenny get her wish.“

            Everybody raised their hands, including Gina and Poppy. Jenny’s pout quickly turned to an exuberant smile that seemed to stretch for miles.

            “OK, let’s get Jenny a pony. Jenny, I want you to sit over here and concentrate real hard on what you want that to pony to look like, OK?”

            “OK,” Jenny agreed.

            Arby then turned back to address the crowd. “Now is the time to put what we have been talking about to the test. “

            He then proceeded to take the crowd through step-by-step exercises of both breathing and relaxation techniques. His every sentence seemed to follow a mellow rhythmic pattern, a sort of lilt that was both hypnotic and very pleasing to the ears. Within minutes Royer could feel his energy pulse back and forth, as if it were being sucked right from his body and then replaced with a fresh new level even stronger than before. Through this energy transfusion, his head grew light and his surrounding grew brighter. He focused in on Jenny and thought of how happy she would be if she could ride on a pony—a real pony with a long white mane—and how disappointed she would be in Arby, in everybody, if they could not deliver.

            We can deliver, we must deliver, his mind echoed in protest, as if it were speaking as a third party. We will deliver, Royer responded silently, and with that he had the clearest vision of a pure white pony. A Welsh pony, he thought for no reason at all. Yes, it is a Welsh pony with neat pointed ears, big bold eyes, and a wide forehead. The jaw was clean cut, tapering to a small muzzle, and it had a nice long neck with broad sloping shoulders. The highlight of this picture-perfect prize animal was its long, beautiful, bristly white mane.

            Royer looked back up at Arby, who was now helping Jenny back up to her feet. “Did you have any problems imagining the pony?”

            “No.”

            “Great. Thank you very much. I hope you get your wish.”

            “What do you mean? I though you were going to help me get my wish. You said that if everybody wished for it, it would happen.”

            “And I’m sure it will,” Arby replied sincerely. “Only wishes work a little more mysteriously than magic. Things you wish for don’t pop out of thin air.”

            “Well then how do you know when they come true?”

            “Maybe you will be driving home with your mother today, and she makes a wrong turn. She pulls into a roadside café to ask for direction, and what do you know, around back is a petting zoo.”

            “With a pony?” Jenny asked

            “Not just any pony, but your pony. The one we all imagined here today.”

            “Thank you Mr.… Mr.?”

            “Mr. B. And you are quite welcome,” Arby replied.

            Jenny looked excited in anticipation of her wish coming true, but at the same time the crowd could sense she was disappointed that the pony didn’t appear out of thin air. Royer felt cheated. They had built up an expectation together; he could feel the energy, and then nothing. He would never know if it ever happened, and feared the crowd would start to believe Arby was a complete fraud. After all, anybody could have said the things he said without delivering the final product.

            “Oh yeah, one more thing, Jenny,” Arby called down as Jenny took her seat next to her mother. “What type or breed of pony did you have in your head?”

            “The one I always wanted,” Jenny responded.

            “Which is?”

            “A pure white Welsh pony.”

            Royer looked at Gina and could see the surprise in her face. She stared back and asked, “Did you?”

            Royer nodded, but before he could respond verbally Jenny yelled, “Look everybody. There it is!” and pointed behind them. Royer leaned back to take a gander. Sure enough there it was, just as he’d imagined, grazing upon the grass in a meadow adjacent to the field they all occupied.

            “Amazing,” Gina whispered. “That’s exactly what I pictured the pony to be in my mind.”

            “I think we all did,” Royer answered.

            They watched as a crowd of spectators walked over to get a closer look. The pony looked up for a moment to assess the situation and then continued its grazing, showing no signs of fear. Soon enough, Jenny and her mother approached and the crowd seemed to part like the Red Sea, creating a path right to the pony. As Jenny reached out to pet the pony’s long white mane, it looked up again, stared her right in the eyes, and then nuzzled up against her. Even from a distance, Royer could see the glow of elation radiate from Jenny’s body, causing a similar feeling to well up inside his own.

            “Can you feel it?” Arby asked. “Enjoy it, revel in it, but most of all remember it, because this is what life is all about. Focusing your physical and emotional energies into a huge pool. The more positive energy you contribute, the stronger it gets, and when you reach a certain point you can raise yourself to another level. a euphoric state beyond our physical dimension. But beware, because likewise, negative energy has the reverse effect. And if this world continues on its pessimistic path of doom and discord, there is no telling what kind of ponies we will wish for. It’s up to us to paint the future. Let’s reach for those pastels.”

            Royer continued to revel in the euphoric state, watching Jenny mount the pony as Arby rambled on. Royer’s eyes were drawn to the milky white complexion of the pony’s silky coat, as it radiated brilliantly in the afternoon sun. In fact, it seemed to glow bright and brighter the more he stared, causing his eyes to well with tears, until it soon seemed as if he were staring at the sun from the bottom of a murky lake. By sheer reflex he closed his eyes and rubbed hard, continuing to stare at the greenish reflection of the pony’s silhouette that seemed to be burned on his retinas.

            When he opened his eyes, he expected everything to refocus, but to his bafflement, everything seemed even more blurry than before. He felt like Mr. Maggo, only able to make out shadows of figures as they moved around. Royer turned around to look at Gina, and likewise she was just a blurry outline of an image. So once again he closed his eyes, this time for a good minute or two, and once again when he opened them his sight was worse than before. For now he could no longer make out any figures, only a deep, thick smoky mist. Without his visual sense, he tried to rely on his other physical senses, but they seemed to be out of order too. He couldn’t hear any voices anymore, not even the muffled drone of the wind, and his sense of touch seemed just as dull. Royer didn’t think he felt numb. It was more a floating feeling, as if he were truly trapped inside of cloud nine, hovering aimlessly over a vast emptiness.

            While he sat there in a semi-hypotonic trance, waiting for something to happen, he reflected back on the visions, or dream skips, he’d just experienced and what they were trying to tell him. Apparently, there was going to be some kind of germ warfare holocaust that was going to wipe out most of the planet’s population, and Royer had been chosen to either stop it, or lead the people to a new promised land like Moses, or possibly both. Even if he was just one of a number of emissaries whose mission was to bring the message to the masses, the burden of such unfounded responsibility was too must to bear, causing a quick frenzy of anxiety to rapidly start gnawing at his intestinal wall. He could feel the stomach gases gather together, as if they were forming an ad hoc community assembly to vote on whether or not it was a good day to start his inevitable ulcer. His euphoric, energetic state of love and joy had quickly turned to a perfect combination of doom and gloom, depleting his body of all its energy . The clincher was the whole uncertainty of time. How fast is all this going to happen? His stomach gurgled loudly as he thought of Joe’s Apocalypse Now party. Could it be true, that the world is to end in less than a month?

            Royer wondered how he was going to do anything in less than a month. Then his mind’s key sense of logic put his newly born ulcer at ease. Of course it wasn’t going to happen that soon. Every one of the images he’d just witnessed happened in the summertime, which kind of answered the seasonal portion of his question. Then he thought of the image of Arby addressing the crowd, showing him as a much older person. Even though he was sure that he’d just aged a good ten years in the last half hour, he was certain that he wasn’t going to gain a few inches or enough weight to fill the frame of his future self in that short of time. He was confident that he was looking at least to fifteen years in the future.

            But still he wondered, How much time is even a decade, when you are talking about the destruction of a race that has inhabited this world for millions of years? And more importantly, how much time did he need for both the preparation and the communication of a message that was of life-and-death proportions to billions of people throughout the world?

            Royer watched the smoky mist fade as he sat there pondering his future responsibilities, and realized he was still sitting in front of the fire in Poppy’s living room. He looked over to Gina and didn’t say a word. She smiled back, but he could tell from her expression that she was experiencing the same apprehensions, which made him think, Either this is the girl your are going to marry or she’s out of here in ten seconds flat.

            He laughed silently at the irony, thinking that usually you would hide these little facts during the dating process, and only reveal to your partner that your life is probably going to be more complex than any guy she will ever meet in her life when you were sure she would love you enough to stick with you for better or worse.