Skylar's Reawakening, Memory 2: A World Black and Blue

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To the store!

One green hill rolled after one green hill after another. Tossed blankets of thick blue clouds shadowed the land in patches, darkening the colors in the grass and trees below. Morning alarm rays of brilliant sunshine pierced through in slanted columns as the landscape yawned and stretched before Skylar, walking diagonally through a furrowed field of cereal grains bordered by milky wildflowers. Thunder rumbled somewhere far off to the north. The rain looked like it would pass him by, for the moment.

The dream traveler dragged his heavy physical body aimlessly through the Waking World. His bare feet sunk into the soft ground, coating his soles with a blend of dew and dirt. The wind fondled his long coat trailing out behind him. He trudged towards a long gray road bisecting the hills and fields, arriving as a lone car with its headlights and windshield wipers still on passed by. Skylar turned and followed the road, flexing his fingers to release the cold and the apprehension of the sun appearing in full out from behind the colander of clouds.

The day had just started, and the dreaded countdown to night had already begun. The sun blazed, cruel, yellow, and indifferent, a deceiver by nature since its movement was only an illusion, and it was Skylar and the world that were subordinate in orbit to it. In and out it moved behind its minion clouds, and its burning presence ticked away the precious minutes.

Skylar had no plan for the night and tried not to think about it. He followed the road for an hour, and the hills leveled out into farmland in the sowing and planting stages of spring, and in another hour suburbs interjected themselves into the mix. Sad drooping power lines sagged between discolored and leaning telephone poles, and transmission towers marched in formation somewhere beyond the horizon. Elm, white oak, and black walnut trees in varying states of budding dotted the lots and yards and gathered in small woods around thinning creeks buried in the bustle of buildings. Billboards encroaching too far into residential zones occupied street corners with invasive weeds and vines flourishing up their stands. Abandoned bus stops with half-torn fliers for community events that had already passed appeared on every other block like the remains of Roman walls in England. The space between lots and structures grew more compressed and constrained the further Skylar wandered into civilization.

A light mist formed through the empty streets as the streetlights powered down. Skylar walked alone, save for a stray cat that skittered out from behind some trash and recycle bins lined up for garbage day. It could have been an opossum or a raccoon. Skylar wasn’t sure. He only half paid attention to his surroundings, as a heavy mental chain kept part of him perennially locked inside his head, and everything he witnessed had to be filtered through it. Being homeless, worrying for survival, it wasn’t safe to leave his head, not completely. He had to plan for an immediate future he couldn’t see, and if he wasn’t he felt desperately that he should be. Eventually his accumulated time spent locked inside formed emotional constructs, cataracts that occupied too high of a percentage his head space, and though he couldn’t see them he could feel them blocking and damming the flow of his thoughts, slowing processing down and keeping tension up. The morning mist thickened into fog.

Small modern houses manifested out of the fog, occasionally buffered by big colonial revival or Queen Anne style residences. Skylar took to the sidewalk, sizing up the houses as he passed, one after the other, boxed lives safe within their established boundaries with no experience or idea that any other way was possible, for better or for worse. He held no delusions that his current way, poverty and homelessness, was in the ‘worse’ category, but nonetheless took full advantage of his uncommon vantage point while he had it, analyzing as much as he could through an outside perspective. Worse as it was, those without often see those within clearer than they do themselves. Skylar’s experiences hatched a theory that that was the primary fear that drove society to shun the homeless, more so than any other force or reason: People simply could not stand someone seeing them differently than they saw themselves.

The fog channeled a chill. Skylar crossed his arms in his coat, wondering how much farther he had to go to get out of the neighborhood. Somewhere a car door slammed shut, obscured by the hanging fog, and an engine started up and faded out before Skylar ever saw them. Someone late for work or school or an appointment, he thought. No other activity occurred on the street, save for the squirrels racing up and down tree trunks. Clean cars and pickup trucks filled the driveways and garages, and flags of sports teams hung from front porches. Skylar had no idea if the Cardinals were baseball, football, or hockey, nor did he care much. American flags and University of Missouri flags were also represented, hanging limply from their posts. Garden gnomes, lawn mowers, and children’s bikes and tricycles littered the short lawns segmented by fencing or shrubbery, each filed behind an identical mailbox.

In one house, a tall bay window revealed a family sitting down for breakfast in a modern gray kitchens without much embellishment or even drawer handles. A woman set down a plate of pancakes on the table, and a man seated at the head looked up from the news on his tablet and smiled. Orange juice was poured. Two kids, a boy and a girl in private school uniforms, were sneaking scraps to a scruffy St. Bernard bigger than the two of them put together.

“Must be nice,” Skylar muttered, then noticed a Confederate flag hanging outside. “Eugh, never mind.”

He left the fearful yet happy family in his wake, feeling sorry for the kids. From the next house hung a MAGA flag in the exact same position as the previous Confederate one. More tribal sigils became apparent, mostly decorating their cars and trucks: blue lives matter prints, a rough-edged Punisher logo overlaid with the Red, White, and Blue, and an outdated Rush Limbaugh bumper sticker from the 90s. All of them, Skylar thought, along with their controlled opposition, no more than willing or unwilling servants of an ultra-wealthy oligarchy merely farming them as a means to an end. Passive consumers convinced they were active citizens, sold identity and ideology alongside their cars and clothes. Borrowers masquerading as builders.

The neighborhood took on a different character, like if Norman Rockwell painted liminal spaces with a twinge of dystopia. Skylar caught himself hurrying his pace. A part of him wanted what they had—a house, a family, a community—and a part of him acknowledged that he could get it if he wanted to. He checked all the requirements to fit in: straight, while, male, and American. All he had to do was sacrifice his principles, his individuality, and blend into the group. He was sure the residents knew of the effects their self-branding had, and that it served its function well: to keep themselves together by keeping people away. To ward off people who were different, and therefore scary and threatening. They did not seek to coexist and were proud of it. No matter how long he spent on the road, Skylar never asked himself if it would be worth it to trade in his current life for comfort and belonging at the expense of his humanity. The people in these houses, he concluded, must have never felt truly alone. Surely if anyone had dealt with and experienced loneliness they wouldn’t be so quick and reckless to burn bridges, especially for such superficial reasons.

Skylar walked away, thinking that they would all be lonely in their futures, but it felt like reassurance from a bygone era, or a moral from a children’s story everyone agreed was right but forgot by the time they came of age. The reality he couldn’t deny, drifting penniless and aimlessly through streets, was that he was the one who was lonely, on the outside looking in. In a broken crosswalk sign hanging from a bent pole, the little green man flashed upside down in his small circle.

The day warmed. The rising sun may as well have been setting. Skylar ground his teeth as its presence, and the approaching night it foretold invaded his conscious again. He glanced down at his right hand. Physically, in his waking body, it was fine, but his dream body’s hand was likely still damaged from overexposure in the Noble Current. Time spent awake would regenerate it—the dream body rested while the physical body was awake, and vice versa—but he couldn’t be sure it would be healed enough in time to hide out in the Current for another night.

Time would tell.

Homes gave way to commercial real estate. The streets widened into four lane roads. Stray shopping carts lay abandoned in boulevard dividers. A sign informed Skylar he was at the city limits of Joplin, wherever that was. He guessed Missouri, going off the eastern rail line he hopped off of coming up out of Oklahoma, and from the university flags he saw at some of the houses he passed. He had no prior experience with Missouri, having grown up further northeast and having never been before. He looked up at the overcast sky and its clouds as heavy as his thoughts, only the latter never had the release of rain.

Plazas bordered plazas full of liquor stores, cell phone service providers, national and local pizza chains, more liquor stores, spa and nail places, the occasional old world small business still hanging on such as a cobbler or locksmith, tax accountants, and still more liquor stores offering state minimum prices. Fast food restaurants broke up the pattern, and gas stations marked intersections corners, their signs mercilessly demanding five dollars for a gallon to get anywhere in a country spread thin. The buildings kept the fog at bay, and pedestrians replaced any ghosts wandering along the narrow designated walking areas crowded out by cars busying the streets. Orange construction signage and barriers closed off the occasional lane or sidewalk.

Skylar found a Cracker Barrel with a parking lot full of old cars that were, he confirmed as he walked in, all driven by old people. He made his way past the vacant host stand and breakfast bar, with its tempting aromas of eggs, sausages, and syrup, towards the bathroom. He closed the door, muting the elderly conversations and plate-clinking hubbub of the kitchen and waitstaff. Skylar pulled a travel toothbrush and mostly-rolled up tube of toothpaste out from his pack. He rolled the tube up tighter, squeezing every last precious bit he could out, and began to brush. The distinctive shh-shh-shh-shh-shh rhythm of the action blended with the buzz of the half-lit fluorescent lights. A laminated hourly cleaning checklist hung on a clipboard beside the sink, initialed by the same employee for the last three shifts.

Skylar stared straight forward into the mirror, his reflection framed in cracked tiles. Dark circles hung under his eyes. The door opened, and an old man with a walker hobbled in. He started slightly at the unexpected sight of a barefoot man in a dirty long coat brushing his teeth in a public restroom, but moseyed on past to the stall. Skylar spit and turned on the sink faucet. He rinsed his mouth out three times, and traded his toothbrush for dental floss out from his pack. It was also getting low, and he made sure to use as little as necessary. The toilet in the stall flushed. The old man hobbled out, taking painstaking care to roll up his checkered sleeves before washing his tremoring hands at the sink beside Skylar. They made brief eye contact in the mirror. The old man looked like he was going to venture conversation, but decided against it, and left without drying his hands. Skylar finished flossing, rinsed his mouth out one more time, and splashed water on his face.

Exiting the Cracker Barrel, Skylar turned down streets at random, noting the sun’s ceaseless countdown as it arced towards noon. Urban density increased, though not by much, as he neared the downtown and the main streets. Another homeless man, older, hairier, sat outside a foreclosed movie theater, and a passing man stopped to throw some money into an upturned hat. Skylar crossed to the other side of the street to go around them. His stomach growled, but no part of his body growled for money. He passed dark pubs and that wouldn’t be open until later, and hip, bustling coffeehouses that wouldn’t be open for much longer. One with outdoor seating had a table with a half-eaten sandwich that hadn’t been cleared yet. He walked by, reached over the rail without breaking his stride, and swiped up the sandwich. No one noticed, and if they did, no one said anything. He stuffed it in his coat pocket and followed signs to a small city park.

The blooming green of the trees stood out amongst the gray sky coloring the city. Skylar found a bench, which he rated above average in comfort, a habit he’d picked up since finding himself on the road. Runners jogged by, mothers pushed strollers, and workers on lunch passed through on their phones. Every now and then someone would squint at the pregnant clouds and hold a hand out to feel for rain. Skylar sat, invisible and anonymous, and pulled out the half-eaten sandwich—a Cuban, now that he got the chance to look at it. He took small nibbles, taking care not to gorge himself and, like with his dental supplies, make each bit last. The Swiss cheese, still warm and melty, exploded in flavor with the mustard, and the wet pickles supercharged the ham and pork. He chewed and swallowed fully, feeling like a small fire was lit in his empty belly.

His enjoyment was cut short, as his eyes never stopped watching the people who weren’t watching him, and he saw a pair of dark-uniformed police officers enter the park. Skylar repocketed his crumbling Cuban and got up, walking briskly in the other direction. There were times he could fly under the radar, and his white skin sometimes spared him second glances, but often it wasn’t worth the risk. Once police sniffed out that he was homeless, he was as at the mercy of their whims—never a good idea in an age where an uncorrupt and fearless officer was as likely as a Bigfoot sighting. He exited the park and resumed wandering the roads of Joplin.

The dark sky deepened and a roll of thunder ushered in the storm. The rain finally started, tentatively then steadily. Not a mist, but not a deluge. Enough to obscure the wide view, cordoning off each street onto its own little island of perception. Skylar sheltered under awnings in alleyways until he was shooed away. His feet, numb and cold, splashed through puddles, sending silent ripples over the city’s reflection in their surfaces. Without the sun marking time, he tracked the day through the digital signs of banks and schools and the occasional analog clock embedded in a tall corner building. The hours moved by fast. He killed time drying off and waiting out the storm in an understaffed and underfunded library. He ignored the librarian’s greeting when he came in, and didn’t make eye contact with the other homeless men and women seated at various tables in near visible fields of body odor. He could have read a book, but his overclocked mind and hazy focus rendered the effort too much, so he sat and watched the indigo rain streaking down, stopping, dotting, trailing and weaving, joining, splitting, breaking and merging together again along the tall windows, until a voice over the PA announced the library would be closing early in fifteen minutes. Skylar left before those fifteen minutes to avoid the inevitable homeless council that was sure to convene to discuss the next shelter. He ignored the librarian wishing him a good day as he left.

Time unraveled. With no structure and nowhere to go, Skylar felt even further suspended from the everyday rhythms of life around him. He tracked less and less features of the city as he wandered further in it as a passing phantom. Storefronts and doors and building facades and windows all blurred. Signs advertised nothing. The rain lifted, only to start again. Drops hit the asphalt then slithered down storm drains. Skylar’s hair matted to his forehead, and his coat grew waterlogged and heavy. Time was still ticking, somewhere in the background. Night neared, but dread gave way to apathy.

One by one the streetlights flickered on. The rain let up. Dusk washed the clouds and sky into one shapeless mass. Skylar sat alone leaning against a waist-high concrete barrier, staring up at a mural lionizing Route 66. The sign said it was a mural park, but it was really just three murals on the side of a building, like any other murals, leaving visitors to wonder about the park part. They were nice and well lit, framed by a clean and netted wooden wall lining the lower fourth. PEARL BROS christened the building’s brick crown, and Skylar wondered if it meant anything to the locals. A sculpture of a makeless, model-less red sports car jutted halfway out of the wall, popping out of a painting depicting a map and terrain of the famed long road’s major stops, where Joplin reached to play with economic and cultural big leaguers like Chicago, St. Louis, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles.

As he killed the last of the day, Skylar wondered about the era of hope and optimism enshrined in the bright colors and fluid shapes on the wall. The ideas, impressions, and imagery of Route 66 was a distant relic even when he was kid, yet its influence was still tangible. There was a continuity between generations, a gold or silver or red or pick-whatever-color-has-meaning-to-you thread connecting the present to the past. Times hadn’t just changed post-Covid. A great severing took place. A deliberate severing from culture, from history, however complicated and messy and real, to a self-contained hyperreality bubble where every day is exactly the same and wrathful hiveminds superseded individual ratiocination. Society became less like an ocean and more like a fishbowl, algorithmically curated, designed, maintained, and enforced by sick minds and psychopaths to placate and decimate we the people. And in that uncanny divide, that strange caesura between a now so far removed from what came before that it was like a Ship of Theseus that didn’t even resemble a ship anymore, doubt reigned supreme. Wary of the trappings of nostalgia, Skylar held no idolization or glorification of the past. All monuments idealized their subject matter to a degree, but usually a small truth, a real memory, was discernible beneath the surface somewhere. He did not wish to live in Route 66’s heyday, nor did he believe that everyone then was picture perfect happy and didn’t have problems. Still, he longed for that continuity he remembered from childhood. For it to touch is life in some way, to confirm that something happened back then. That there was a time before when things were different, in any way. In the 2020s, a decade of amnesia and artificiality, even the strongest minds couldn’t help but wonder, “Was any of it real?”

Night surrounded the mural park. Dithered globes of particley mist hovered around the display lights, and bugs darted in orbit like captured comets. The plume of his breath illuminated by the cold brought Skylar’s awareness down from his thoughts to his physical state. He often thought of his thoughts as a third body in addition to his physical and dream bodies, which brought him to the question that had been circling all day, as it did every day:

Where would he sleep?

He turned his right palm up, trying and unable to sense his dream body’s status. Even if he could, he knew it wasn’t wise to spend the night again in the Noble Current. His stomach curdled at the thought, and then his thoughts ceased, as if a blank but fearful mind could protect him from the inevitable.

He had nowhere to hide.

He would have to sleep.

He would have to dream.

I’m going to need some privacy for this, Skylar released a long sigh and stood up on stiff legs. He stretched out an ache in his back from leaning against the hard concrete and retook in his surroundings. The moon hung camouflaged in a row of streetlights. Slow Doppler effects came and went with passing dark-windowed cars reflecting the city lights. The dream traveler set to wandering again, this time seeking out a cheap motel, but he moved with no hurry. The more time he wasted looking, the less he would have to spend fighting sleep.

An hour or two of night walking passed before Skylar found a place. Ever the ambassador for the neon light industry, the motel sign’s sharp pinks and blues speared the dark. He didn’t bother reading its name, and hardly assessed its exterior quality, littered with cigarette butts, crumpled up Wendy’s bags, and miscellaneous windswept flotsam. He walked past a buzzing, blinding Pepsi machine with decades old logos and vending options long since discontinued. Leggy spiders hammocked in its dusty mouth. The front door, barricaded in enough flashing and colorful LED lights to shame a casino, chimed when he pushed it open, and the textures beneath his calloused feet transitioned from cold concrete to firm yet spongy carpet.

The many signs’ color changing lights cycled through a spectrum of different colors, pulsing in the periphery of the dim and quiet lobby. Skylar approached a vacant reception desk. Framed sepia tint photos of various smiling people along various Route 66 landmarks hung on the wall behind it. Skylar mustered a half-sneer at the wide white smiles shining at him out from the past, but erased his expression when footsteps echoed towards him.

A black cat wearing a jingle bell collar hopped onto the desk, followed by an aged, hunchbacked woman who climbed into a chair that was almost equal in height to her. The woman adjusted her thick-woven shawl and pulled out a pair of glasses that enlarged her eyes to near comic proportions. She blinked at the visitor who came late in the night.

“How long you need?” she asked, curtly but not rudely.

“One night,” Skylar responded, curt in kind.

“It’s by the hour,” she nodded to a sign beside the desk that detailed the LOW AND AFFORDABLE! DISCOUNTED RATES! that were still too high for Skylar.

He didn’t know there were still places in existence that charged by the hour. He studied the sign and performed the futile math, if not just for the mental exercise. The cat nudged his hand and he moved automatically to pet her. Her body rippled like a wave under his touch.

“I have...” Skylar finished the count in his head, “about fifty dollars.”

He actually had one-hundred and twelve dollars and twenty-seven cents, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. She squinted at him, likely able to divine this through a keen sense honed through years of service. She’d seen her share of characters roll through and ranked him amongst them, sizing him up without a word. All the while Skylar made no statement or plea for his case, and just stared at her with restless, listless eyes.

The cat flopped onto her side, purring at him expectantly, and the receptionist’s posture loosened slightly.

“You staying just the one night?”

Skylar nodded.

The pulsing lights completed a full rainbow cycle as the silent negotiation settled.

“Room 33,” she pulled a key out from a drawer and set it out on the counter. “As long as you’re out at sun up.”

Skylar nodded again and shifted his red and green patchwork pack around on his shoulder. He unclasped its yellow buttons and pulled out forty dollars in the form of rumpled ones, tens, and fives, and made another ten out of quarters from a beat up Ziploc bag of change. She slid him the key, then collected his pile of money, spinning in her chair to unlock the till beneath an old computer.

Skylar took the key and turned for the door. The cat sat up at his abrupt departure. The computer screen turned on and reflected in the woman’s big glasses, and she got to work filing his stay into her system. The percussion of the old mechanical keyboard clacked over the late night quiet, punctuated by the door chime’s electronic tone.

Skylar stopped in its frame.

“Thank you.”

The woman offered a subtle smile, then turned off her PC and returned down the hall from where she came.

Looking for room 33, Skylar found the numbering system jumped all over, from 2A to 11 to 24, for reasons likely lost to all but the most diligent local historians, so he checked door to door, following the outside of the one story building around to the back. A parked semi-truck halved the dark back lot, and a red sedan with squeaking suspension rocked in place before the only lit room. Skylar’s search took him past the bouncing car, and he caught an unwanted glimpse of tangled up, junkie-thin bodies through a foggy window. Mercifully, room 33 was further down, the last along the wall. He used his key and entered the unknown interior he’d be sleeping in for the night.

Despite having never seen the specific room before, its standard layout offered the surreal familiarity motel rooms often do, as if different doors in different cities all portaled to the same place. The light switch turned on a standing lamp in the corner next to an armchair with busy patterned upholstery designed to obscure any marks and stains. A heating and cooling unit clung to the wall beneath windows that offered light and heavy curtains, both closed and that usually stayed closed. A full size bed stood against one wall, and a mini fridge, desk, and bureau with a TV on top lined the other wall across from it. A closet and a closet-sized bathroom carved up the back wall.

Tired and sore in his legs and back, Skylar tossed his pack over onto the desk and sat down on the bed. The mattress’s softness and comfort spoke to and tempted his exhaustion. Hastily, he sprung back onto his feet, and stared at the bed like it was a pit of sharks. Decisiveness corralled his panic, and he turned on the TV and hit the volume button until it went as high as it go. He flipped through various pseudo-news channels until he found a sports channel with frequent ad breaks that spiked in loudness. Perfect for his purposes. He went around the room and switched on every lamp and all the lights in the bathroom and closet. The total luminescence still left dark corners untouched, so he unscrewed all the lampshades and cover fixtures to increase what brightness he could. He turned on the bathroom fan and found a small hair dryer attached to the wall that he set on high. From there, he found and activated another fan in the air conditioning unit, set the blowers to high, and finally arrived at the alarm clock on nightstand. A built-in radio provided noisy static between stations, and he set a ten minute alarm.

He paced around the room, staring into the naked lights until it hurt and listening intently to the subtle ebbs and flows in the symphony of white noise. He stopped and tried to think, then thought to stop trying to think. He paced some more, and gasped in alarm at the alarm he’d already forgotten about. He stomped over to beeping clock and set it for another ten minutes. His pacing continued, though he expanded his circuit across the room and walked in and out of the bathroom. The radio static crunched and crinkled. The TV screamed useless information at him. The alarm sounded again. He reset it for another ten minutes.

The dream traveler’s body downshifted and grew heavy. He sensed the reddening of his eyes in real time. The dark bags under them deepened, expanding their boundaries, and his skin buzzed with the dim energy of late night solitude. Each step took him deeper and deeper into a narrower band of perception, each completed lap spiriting him away further and further into his head, aware of his surroundings only as phantom icebergs. Empty space grew tangible, suffocating, and a mental claustrophobia barricaded him far within himself.

The alarm pierced his dark concentration, making his senses rush back with the fury of a cold water shock. Skylar jumped, punched it off, and all at once relented to a deep agony that had been brewing all day. He collapsed at the seat of the desk into an imbalanced and wild posture, with his coat hanging over the back and arm. He didn’t bother to adjust himself. He stared forward and at nothing, intensely, for several high strung minutes, until his pack came into focus in the corner of his eye.

Inside sat a pen, paper, and an idea he still wasn’t sure he was ready for.

A lump of anxiety caught in his throat that he couldn’t swallow down. He turned in the chair and folded his arms, staring at the curtained window until his eyes discerned the beginning and end of each stitch. Not a sound penetrated from the outside, and the fans, hair dryer, and radio and TV static merged into a low ambiance as his brain got used to and tuned out the noise.

This isn’t so bad, Skylar thought. I can make it through this. He looked over his right hand again. My dream body isn’t wounded too badly. If I stay awake tonight, there’s a chance I’ll be okay enough to spend tomorrow night in the Noble Current.

Even as he thought it, he knew it wouldn’t stoke the embers and ashes of his hope. Each time his dream body healed slower and weakened faster, due in no small part to his prolonged abuse and exploitation of the Noble Current as an escape from his own dreams. A dream body’s natural environment was in dreams. The Noble Current was the space between dreams, and the dream body couldn’t stand it anymore than the physical body could survive extreme heat or cold for long. As an exercise in optimism, he supposed he could stay awake for another twenty-four hours, on top of the long day he’d already spent awake, and he made it to the Noble Current’s costly refuge from his own dreaming mind, where any healing on his hand would quickly be undone and the damage would surely double; what about the next night, and the night after that?

I can’t keep going on like this…

His eyes fell onto his pack again. Unconsciously, his hand reached for the pen and paper inside, and he stopped himself as soon as he became aware of it. He gripped his hand limply and shrunk into himself. He tried to focus on his breathing, but with that came rest and with rest came sleepiness, and slowly, breath by breath, he began drifting off. He nodded awake and shifted sharply in his seat, straightening his spine and gripping the arms tight. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered the catch-22 of rest simultaneously being what he needed while not being an option, but this deep in and this long without it, rational solutions eluded him. Vaguely, he remembered rest being something he used to hold as important, but he couldn’t recall why.

A garbled voice surfaced out of the radio static as a passing signal came and went.

Skylar slapped himself. He needed to stay awake. He needed to occupy himself. He glanced at the TV, but it couldn’t hold his interest. He thought about going for a walk, but he’d already spent the whole day walking. There was the pen and paper in his pack. He tried to think of different distractions, but couldn’t get away from the beckoning paper. If nothing else, it would be a way to occupy his mind and kill a few hours. He didn’t have to take what he wrote seriously. Maybe he just needed to get it out of his system. Maybe nothing else could hold his focus and attention until he did.

The digital bedside clock turned over an hour of brutal indecision.

No event marked the point where Skylar’s mind was made up. Hesitantly, like time was a wall pushing—forcing—him to action, he reached into his pack pulled out a pen he had found on the sidewalk, and handfuls of pink, white, and yellow scrap paper of he’d been collecting over the past couple weeks, back when the idea really took root in the back of his mind. Hunched over the desk, he clutched the side of his head and stared at the pen, knowing, unbelieving, of what would flow from it if he picked it up. It beckoned him with an irresistible gravitational force. The blank paper offered a dark sanctuary for the superdense thoughts that had been circling like vultures, following him wherever he wandered throughout the country, and, faced with the prospect of another night alone with nowhere to go, had finally caught up to him. His once fluid future had frozen into a hard, unthawable dead end. Skylar noticed he was shaking. His foot tapped, his knee bounced, and his whole torso convulsed like rattling glassware in an earthquake. Before he could get a conscious handle on it, his hand shot out on its own and grabbed hold of the pen in a white knuckle grip.

The shaking stopped.

Skylar stared at his still hand. He lifted it slowly, and a mind-body delay created a sensation of uncanny force, like an underwater current propelled his heavy weightless limbs. He watched his other hand line up a piece of paper, and he sat there for another long moment suspended in time, at the starting line of ending it all.

In a reliefless surrender, he gave up resisting and let his thoughts flow into ink:

After much consideration, I, Skylar Brown, have determined to take my own life—

He stopped and wrinkled his nose. More so than the thought that he finally admitted to himself his true feelings, his wording bothered him. Why was he writing it like a two weeks notice? Had a year of homelessness not been enough to free his voice from the constrictions of corporate formality? He crossed the line out. If these were going to be his final words to the world, he determined that he no longer had any reason to be afraid to write from the heart.

I have no one left and nowhere left to go. The pain has become too much and holding on no longer feels brave. This world has left me with nothing to believe in. It has only reinforced that hope was foolish, and after so long—

He crumpled the page up. There was no need to provoke pathos. Even if he did evoke sympathy from whoever found this, he wouldn’t be around to care nor would it make a difference in his own emotional state and decision.

I am a lonely soul

He crossed it out before placing a period. He could be more original than that.

Tapping his pen on his chin, Skylar leaned back in his chair, thinking that this was good. He was getting somewhere. Despite the rough start, a new path, however short, lit up his big empty future. Finally, a sign appeared for an upcoming exit ramp off the endless highway of his suffering. Control, however nominal, returned, accompanied by the good feelings that came with a little power over one’s life. It may have been one of the last choices he would ever make, but it was a choice and it was his.

He tried again:

My life has arrived at a point where I can either wither away slowly, suffering all the while as my spirit weakens before finally going out, or I can elect to take matters into my own hands and offer myself the mercy no one else will.

My name is Skylar Brown. Believe me when I say I never wanted this, nor did I think it would ever come to this. I know we all struggle and have intrusive thoughts during dark times. I always told myself that even if the thought of suicide did come up, as long as I didn’t follow it with any plans or visualize any ways I would do it, I was fine and safe. That was my line. Looking back, it would seem I crossed it and fell down the slippery slope a while ago, before realizing it, and there’s no stopping the fall now.

I can’t afford a gun, nor do I know where to get one (a little ironic, given that this is America). There’s always the noose, but I don’t know how to tie one, and I don’t have access to a computer to look up a Youtube tutorial (of which I’m sure the comments are hilarious). While those methods are tried and true, they’re too flashy, too quick. If this is the last choice I’m ever going to make, I’m going to make it my own and do it my way. This is going to have design and intent, people, because that’s just the kind of man I am. It would have to reflect the life I was forced to lead, and the way my soul, passions, and energy were drained from me over time, slowly, but relentlessly and assuredly. For this has been a long time coming, a slow burn of ever dwindling hope, rationing smaller and smaller portions until I realized I had none left. And I started out with so much. Since I was little, I always believed in humanity, in all the stories where the good guys always won, and in a better tomorrow for all peoples. For a while, my faith survived the world’s test in these beliefs. But the young cannot imagine the scale of years and all the cumulative costs of loss after loss. The old have all turned to stone, and can’t comprehend the problems of generations and times removed from their own, and neither seem able to believe let alone face the true scale of evil’s organization and industry against the livelihood of the common man—

Skylar caught himself veering off course. Rambling, at best. He sensed he was about to descend into a mish-mash of hand-selected, half-true conspiracies about the state of the world that he only half-believed in but were all he had to work with since no one would just speak the goddamn truth. The energy left him. What did any of that matter now? He was leaving the world behind, and it was no longer his responsibility, and, with that thought, relief began to bloom in earnest.

He wondered if those who had gone before him put as much deliberation into their notes. Global matters sank back down in his mind, making way for personal ones to rise to the surface. He began to wonder who he was writing this to, and how it would get to them, if it ever did. He started on a new page, the pen tip hovering in place for a long moment:

Aisling…

Her name remained the only word for a good several minutes. Skylar’s hand made a couple false starts, nearing the page before retreating back up. He couldn’t tell if it was log jammed from too much to say or if nothing came because there was nothing to say. Thoughts retreated like spooked prey.

He shuffled her page to the back and started another new one:

Deb, Chaz…

He tapped the pen on the desk. Childhood memories, happy at the time, tainted by future context, passed behind his eyes. Anger and grievance fueled his pen.

…if only you knew how much I once looked up to both of you. If only you understood the responsibility that you had, and the sheer power that came with it, instead of pursuing your own selfish wants and desires. But hey, it’s okay if society says it’s okay. You were my last lines of defense, and you didn’t just fail me. You hurt and betrayed me in a way you’re both emotionally and spiritually incapable of understanding.

If only I could make you understand. I tried, and I know that I tried despite nothing changing as a result. Nothing ever changed. Perhaps there never were any words that could reach you, and I wasted what remained of my heart on a fool’s quest, and now here I am, alone and friendless.

Skylar wondered if he should address the note. While he accepted that his suicide was near, he didn’t think it would be that night. He decided to keep writing, regardless of intent and outcomes, unable to stop the flood now that he’d cracked the dam…

And Aisling…

…and just like that the dam sealed. He took a deep breath. He didn’t reach for anything to say, and just pictured her face in his mind. The image of her stared back through squinting hazel eyes, surrounded by freckles on long features, her cream skin framed by sweeping hair the color of deep autumn leaves. The mental image alone warmed him.

I’m so, so sorry for everything. I know it never meant anything to you to hear that, but it doesn’t make it any less true…

The dream traveler skewed his lips, and sat flipping his pen around for a minute, his face hardening.

...You know, I never heard a sorry from you. Not once, and if you think I was the only one in the wrong, or the only one with problems, then you need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

He exhaled rigidly, realizing how tight he was holding the pen. He leaned far back over the edge of the chair and studied the water-damaged ceiling. Sighing, he continued, and his handwriting softened.

But damn it, I did love you. Love was there. I want you to know that. I wanted things to work and was trying in my own way. There was just still so much I didn’t understand. You don’t seem like you believe that, and I don’t know if it even matters now or what I could possibly even do to convince you of that fact. I wish that I could. For what it’s worth, I do miss…

Memories flooded in, and with them a tension under his eyes and a tightening in his trapezius muscles. He drummed his legs in uneven sixteenth notes, his stare somewhere between wild and vacant.

You know damn well as I do that it was never going to work…

I did care and I still care…

You lied to me…

If I could just hold you one last time…

Karma’s a bitch, so I’m sure you’re in like company...

He wrote in mad spurts, his thoughts no longer flowing but stuck in a whirlpool, circling over and over again in the same place. He got up between pages, either to stretch or pace. He spent an interval lying on the hard floor, which supported his road-weary back nicely. After enough staring into space, he sat back down and a new idea, the solution he’d been looking for, broke through.

Starvation. That would be the most appropriate way for me to kill myself. I have been starved of my needs, starved of community, and it is only fitting that I should be starved of my own life. What’s more, I’ll actually get to experience my death, and savor it, compared to just getting it over with via the noose or a gunshot wound.

I wouldn’t want to starve in civilization. I don’t want anyone to find me, and I don’t want to be disturbed in my rest. I will go out into the woods. Far into the forest I will lie. At least this way I will help nourish the land and animals out there. Give something back in a world where I never had enough to give anybody else.

At least this way… I can…

…I can still…

…give…

…

Skylar found he was lying on the floor again. He blinked, his eyelids heavy. The pen was on the table, and he let out a yawn which he swallowed halfway through in razor sudden alarm.

Had he fallen asleep?

He sprung onto his feet and twisted to see the clock, not that he had been keeping track of the time. It was late and he was tired, and therefore he was at risk. Below the clock, his eyes landed on the drawer in the bedside table, where one last idea to stay awake came to him. His own suicide drafts caught his eye before he moved away from the desk, stopping him like he walked into a web. The surrealness of seeing them there told him that he must have dozed off. He shook it off and moved his backpack over to cover them, thoughts too shameful to admit aloud even when one was alone.

Consideration of the ramifications of the line he crossed would have to wait until morning. Right now all of Skylar’s attention concentrated on the sole task of staying awake, whatever it cost. He marched over the bedside table and ripped open the drawer. Inside was the Book of Mormon. He cocked his head. He had been expecting the usual and ubiquitous Holy Bible, “donated by the Gideon Family,” that always seemed to be there no matter where he stayed.

“Strange times get stranger,” he mused to himself.

He picked the book up and sat down at the desk chair again, facing the center of the room. He hefted the book in his hand, found it suitable for his purposes, and sat with it clasped in his grip.

The noise still ongoing in the background crawled along his skin. He rocked in place, his whole body heavier than when he began the long day. The room won round after round of staring contests, with Skylar only carving bloodshot patterns into his straining eyes. He jogged his memory for anything he could use to stay awake—song lyrics, math equations, old poems—something that would require focus and attention to work out loud. A piece by Robert Browning he had memorized for an old school assignment came to mind.

“My first thought was, he lied in every word,” Skylar recited, pausing to recall each line:

“That hoary cripple, with malicious eye

Askance to watch the working of his lie

On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford

Suppression of the glee, that pursed and—

“…pursed and… pursed and scored…” Skylar drifted. He inhaled sharply and shook his head, continuing,

“What else should he be set for, with his

staff?

What, save to waylay with his lies,

ensnare

All travellers who might find him posted there,

And ask the road? I guess what

skull-like laugh

Would break, what crutch ‘gin write my...

“…write my…” First his voice faded, then his consciousness. Sleep, much like its cousin, death, was merciless and relentless in its courting, and it always found its way in no matter the amount of resistance.

Slam!

The Book of Mormon slid out of Skylar’s loosened hand and thudded against the floor. He jolted awake.

“...epitaph!” he finished the line in a rush, and then glanced around dumb and worriedly as his senses came back to him. He grit his teeth; already sleep was winning. He scooped the book back up and repositioned it to fall again if—when—he would need it.

“My first thought was, he lied in every

word,

That hoary cripple, with malicious eye...”

He repeated Browning’s verses, never getting past the third stanza before having to start over. He honestly wasn’t sure if he could recall the whole poem if he had to, but he didn’t have the energy to switch to something else. The radio static spiked. Ads overpowered the late night programming on the TV. The alarm clock went off, but its sound blended in and faded out with the rest. The book trick saved Skylar a few more times, but sleep once again proved itself the only hunter more patient than humankind.

“My first thought was, he lied in every word…”

Skylar fell asleep.

First, only darkness and unawareness enveloped his consciousness. He slept in its purest form, with all mental operations shut down to rest. No images, no sounds, and no feelings accompanied his state, a peace of nothing and emptiness. There was a slim chance he could sleep through the night, without slipping into the Dreaming Realm, and he found himself hoping that this would be one of those nights. As he became aware that part of his mind was awake enough to hope, the fact forced him to accept that his dream body wasn’t fully at rest. Limb by limb, he became aware of his self apart from his physical self, in a world apart from our physical world.

While his material body lay asleep in an old Route 66 motel in Missouri in the Waking World, Skylar woke up in his dream body in his own personal dream world somewhere within the Dreaming Realm.

Where exactly in his dream, he didn’t know. The first thing a dream traveler usually does when entering the Dreaming Realm is a body scan, to acclimate themselves within their never-the-same-twice surroundings. With his eyes closed, Skylar wiggled his toes, and felt cold bare earth beneath his feet. His ankles, calves, thighs, and pelvis contracted tightly, still half removed and adjusting from the phantom sensation of his sleeping body, and would stay tense until he moved and “stretched out” his dream body. His discolored right hand hung limply and left behind ghostly afterimages when it moved, becoming more translucent as if it were shedding layers. In lieu of breathing, as dream worlds contained no atmosphere or air, he tuned into two continuous full body pulses that coursed through him. Distinct from a heartbeat, one’s epicenter sat near the base of the skull, and expanded outward to the edge of every limb in the space of about five seconds before contracting back inward for roughly seven seconds, as naturally and automatically as breathing or pumping blood. The other emanated outward from the chest in counterpoint, with a cycle of two seconds in and three seconds out on average. Skylar counted three revolutions of these pulses, then rolled his shoulders and, apprehensively, opened his eyes.

He stood on a stormy plateau ringed by a nocturne of snowy mountains. Impossible currents of snaking wind raked up dirt and sediments and whipped his coat around behind him. He shivered, but not from any cold. Throughout the day, his body had carried the painful memories and mental agonies his suicidal ideations emerged from, which manifested in various ways in the Waking World: his poor-postured gait, a tight jaw, brain fog, a general tension and uneasiness across his skin and heaviness underneath. He held it in, however inefficiently. His dream body couldn’t contain those emotions in the same way, and he felt them pouring out and rising around him in an unseen but strongly felt flood rapidly exceeding eye level. His dread, made manifest as purple-tinted, mirage-sheened gales, counteracted against the banshee winds, and pitched battles of competing fronts of force carved shallow ruts and scars into the plateau’s surface. Shrapnel and pebbles stung Skylar’s skin like an angry hornets. Stray currents corkscrewed through the towering storm clouds, parting and dispersing the dense vapors in trypophobic patterns. Skylar’s mental state shaped his world, and the sky, already dark, shifted a subtle shade deeper, like the strange, charged hue just before an eclipse.

Skylar went through the motions of sighing. He didn’t resist as the wind knocked him around or the tossed rocks grazed his skin. An inexperienced dream traveler might have taken or manifested cover. An experienced dream traveler might have attempted to corral their out of control emotions and calm their environment. An apathetic and suicidal dream traveler, who had been through this night after night for as long as he could remember, had developed a learned helplessness, and chose to just wait it out and get it over with. A willingness to try and fight, driven more by automatic reflex than any passion to live, simmered somewhere deep within Skylar’s soul. It ached him to experience it. It jammed painfully against the knowledge that action was futile, and that no matter what the nightmare would get the best of him, as it always did.

The storm turned inward, concentrating around the lone dream traveler on the plateau being carved and eroded down to a thin-stalked butte. The monstrous clouds boiled and churned in the surrounding darkness, dropping the temperature to arctic levels. Skylar stood with his eyes closed, twitching as his dream body sustained the damage. Each hit, scrape, and shove flared the reflex to move, which he tried to suppress, but ultimately failed after a violent gale of the storm threw him off his feet. It hurt more to try, but he relented to instinct and braced himself to fight for control.

Right as he did so the storm winked out. The dream world shifted to a new environment before he was halfway up off the ground. In a blink, Skylar found himself standing in a dark savanna, lit only by a globe of light with an eight foot radius that hovered around his body and tracked with his movement. His mind thudded with the agony of having the struggle taken away right when he allowed himself to fight it. He knew it was a false respite, however, and that his torture was only beginning.

The only other light on the savanna was a small fire about a hundred yards away. Skylar wandered stiffly towards it. The light following him revealed sunken ruins of agora colonnades at the edge of its reach. Unique patterns of moss and cracks scattered small shadows across the decaying stone. No moon or stars occupied the blank space overhead, deeper and denser than outer space. As he neared the fire, a slow tornado of construction materials appeared and revolved slowly around it. Nails, screws and boards combined and mixed with lava lamp chunks of paint and plaster, forming bigger pieces that flew together magnetically in sparking collisions, constructing a massive opera house section by section. The building finished with the front half open, like an acoustic shell or the mouth of a cavern.

Skylar walked through the jagged threshold into the theater, greeted at once by larger than life paintings embedded in the tall archways and layers of the interior dome, all depicting Eden-esque landscapes: deep green gardens intricately woven around delicate fountains, rich pastoral fields underneath warm evening skies, ray-stricken forests with misty, dewy floors, and an endless range of rugged mountains. All were painted to the highest degree of Renaissance realism, verging on illusionism. The perspective of the all the paintings converged in the center by the fire, adding a tangible dimension of depth, so when Skylar arrived and stood there it looked like he could climb into any given one. Balconies of red velvet seating hung below the paintings, about ten feet off the ground, and chandeliers carrying phantom blue flames occupied the intricately detailed spaces between paintings. Horror vacui reigned supreme, and no inch of space was left unflourished, to the point of overstimulation. The stage, true to dream world architecture, overlapped with the ground and clipped straight through it, as if their atoms slotted together. Cranes, pulley lifts, and other specifically crafted mechanisms and devices for lost special effects lined the empty stage, arranged like a still life.

Skylar spun in place beside the crackling fire, hands in his coat pockets, taking it all in. When he lowered his head, ghostly figures seated around the fire that weren’t there before startled him. He stepped back, bracing, then studied the forlorn faces around him. A heavy-browed Neanderthal looked up at him through his dark hair. A chinless Denisovan leaned back on one hairy arm, staring into the fire. Other early species of homo—erectus, habilis, heidelbergensis, naledi—male and female, elder, adult, and child, sat around the fire. They hunched towards it, huddled together like refuges. An elder man rose and placed a large hand on Skylar’s shoulder. He met the dream traveler’s eyes, his own sparkling with the unique intelligence of something trusted and carried up through deep time. Skylar froze, his usual apathy shaken.

The elder raised his other hand to his mouth, formed a “shh” gesture, and then pointed up.

In one of the paintings overhead, a towering city burned in apocalyptic flames. A one-hundred foot tall marble man with glowing red eyes swung his off-white forearm through a skyscraper, and the wreckage and debris added fuel to the fire it created. Attack helicopters shot missiles and bullets that bounced off the goliath that otherwise ignored them, taking them out inadvertently if they couldn’t fly out of his path fast enough. Impotent drones and tanks surrounded him and fired and fired, only wasting ammunition. Screams echoed, and flailing bodies leapt from windows down into the hell fire as the marble man approached. He bore a fist through another building and it collapsed around his tight hand.

Debris rained down out through the painting.

A corner of wall and floor with its steel frame sticking out at the edges crashed down into the opera house, close enough for Skylar and the Paleolithic people to feel the wind of its impact. Another missile of wreckage rained down, lined up with a Neanderthal mother and father shielding their child.

Skylar acted on reflex. He manifested a wave of blackwood rising up from the ground that pushed the family out of the way just as the architectural meteor collided with the ground, splintering into a thousand pieces. The elder beside him formed a line with his mouth. Skylar sensed something off, and saw him shaking his head and backing away. The Paleolithic people all disappeared into the shadows, leaving Skylar alone by the bonfire.

A horrific, tectonic grinding sound came from the painting above. Skylar looked up in time to see the marble man’s glowing red eyes looking out through the frame. Looking right down on him. Their glow intensified, and twin lasers beamed out, shredding the ground within the opera house.

Skylar’s two dream pulses accelerated. He shielded his face. The sustained impact blew him back. He hurtled through the air, trying to curl up to protect himself. He sensed through distance and a change in the atmosphere that he was shoved into another one of the paintings. He landed hard on gravel and rolled to a stop, feeling the rocks poke and jab him all over.

Wearily, Skylar uncurled and lifted himself up, finding himself on a gravel driveway leading up to a red brick 19^th century farmhouse with 20^th century enhancements and cars parked outside. A midday sun blared over the grassy yard, rustling thick leafy trees. Skylar staggered over to the porch, feeling innately drawn to it. He understood the dream was transitioning to a traditional nightmare, the kind he didn’t have any control over. An on-rails mental projection he was forced to watch and experience. He gave himself over to it, which meant his dream body parked itself back in his physical body while the nightmare continued, rendering him a disembodied consciousness watching things play out.

A sourceless, languageless opera sang over Skylar’s journey to the farmhouse, interspersed with simultaneous, competing measures of minor key reggae. Distance distorted. The driveway elongated. Skylar resisted breaking into a run, but not for long. An overwhelming drive, like an ancient longing, permeated his soul that he couldn’t quite qualify. All he knew was that he needed to make it to shelter, any shelter, and quickly. Miraculously, the driveway ceased its treadmill act, and the house grew bigger as he approached. The dream traveler let out a short, relieved laugh through a flicker of a smile.

Suddenly another house, a suburban McMansion, fell from the sky, crushing and replacing the old farmhouse. Skylar didn't slow and slammed shoulder first into the door. Unexplainable panic took over, and he struggled with the door handle as the opera and reggae washed over each other. A Ring camera beside it slowly telescoped its lens towards him until it brushed his ear like a gnat. The door gave. Skylar burst inside into an empty, open-house-ready model home, and discovered he was looking for the farmhouse inside of it. He watched himself tear apart the kitchen, ripping out drawers and flipping tables. He stormed room to room, propelled by some stinging fear, some race against time where every minute docked him another point in some important grand total. The music crested with his rising emotions.

On the second floor, Skylar ripped open an attic cord. The ladder folded out, and through the opening was another yard with a gravel driveway and farmhouse. A pang of hope racked Skylar, and he hated that it did, but he climbed up eagerly anyway. With each rung conquered, the farmhouse grew smaller and smaller and smaller. Skylar’s face sank. He scurried the rest of the way up and dashed for it. The farmhouse, now the size of a bouncy ball, bounced away across the lawn. Frustrated, Skylar chased after it, and the music accented each dive, lunge, and reach for it, almost mockingly. It drew out notes on the strings when Skylar stopped to think, studying the bouncy farmhouse’s movements and behavior to better strategize. When he pounced after it, the music spiked, like a marching band falling down the stairs, and a ringing cymbal dispelled the action as Skylar lay angrily on the grass, his chin scuffed and the farmhouse hopping just out of reach.

The chase could have gone on for an eternity, or it could have been only five minutes. After one heroic leap for the evasive shelter, Skylar found himself inside a dark barn. Or rather, the nightmare showed him a dark barn; his body was no longer there, no longer the nexus the dream gathered itself around. Skylar “looked” around, wondering what happened to his shelter, when a bloodied Union soldier of the Civil War appeared out of thin air. Painful moans rumbled up through his bleeding slit neck and out through his mouth with only two or three yellow teeth hanging by threads from his sickly green gums. Skylar reeled at the sight of the shambling corpse. Gray skin peeled and white hair shed in tufts as he wandered aimlessly, until something caught his attention. With surprising speed, he knelt into a shooting stance and swung his rifle around from his back.

The tension of a combat encounter hammered Skylar’s conscious into a black nothingness, while the nightmare bucked and writhed harder.

A riding mower, riderless save for a light beer can in the seat, sputtered across the lawn of the farmhouse.

Light fell across a kitchen table with five seats, four turned over, under a pendulum of an overhanging light.

A clock ticked in an empty classroom. One desk, askew from the rest, fell over.

A waiting room. A psychologist’s office. A prison cell.

Shadows where light should be.

Nothing where shadows should be.

An empty throne.

Enough.

Foxes circling an unguarded nest.

Plastic, Fischer-Price tools and the Large Hadron Collider.

Pigs talking and playing cards while the butcher works behind them.

Trying to start a fire with the charcoal and ashes of a dead one.

A way to explain the pain dropped into the ocean.

An empty throne.

That’s enough!

A gimp-legged runt unable to keep up with the herd.

A sentimental charm lost days ago through a hole in your pocket.

Christmas is just a Tuesday. Next year it will be a Wednesday.

Hanging from a cliff. No names come to mind to shout for.

Dust before you’re dust.

Deb leaving.

I said that’s enough! Skylar struggled.

Inquisitions scoffed at as UFO sightings.

Investigations stalled for sphexish ritual.

Wonder ostracized, left in trouble, left in doubt.

A wolf on the first cry, still unheard.

Guilty until proven you never existed in the first place.

Chaz leaving.

Stop! Skylar squirmed on the motel bed. Stop! Make it stop!

A child in the war room.

An empty throne.

Aisling’s tears.

Please!

Aisling’s tears, scarring her choking face, beautiful again. Your part in the unbroken circle. The suffering you passed on. Your role as the plague infested rat you didn’t become but always were, too disgusting for even the bottom of society, left skittering, shitting, clawing, at the edges, where you belong, spending all your time sifting around in the past to find the fork in the road you couldn’t get back to anyway, all the while masturbating to misery and tragedy with the nerve to call idle tolerance strength. You are a man. You have to be responsible—especially when no one else is. Everything is and always was in your power. Innocence is no excuse. Inexperience is no excuse. What happened with your family and your friends is your fault. What happened with Aisling is your fault. This crumbling, decaying society. Every dying community. The state of national affairs. It’s your fault! It’s all your—

Skylar gasped awake.

He tore off the covers of the motel bed and shot up in a cold sweat. Heavy breaths sputtered out as his heartbeat blasted in his tight chest. He clutched the side of his hammering head, eyes wild and scared. Slowly, he readjusted to the Waking World, carrying the surreal sensation of the nightmare’s intense experience instantly fading into nothing more than a burning memory.

He did a body scan. All the signs of a fear, but he was awake and alive.

He did a room scan. Quiet hummed. The TV and radio had been turned off. Other than that, everything else was exactly the same as he left it, except someone was in the room with him. A woman sat at the desk, reading. With an elegant hand, she placed a bookmark in her book, closed it softly, and met his eyes.

Next Memory: Ms. Stacey Creed