The dream had started out so real.

He was sixteen in the dream.

Henry can still remember getting up after being called by Alicia, jumping into the shower with his roll of clothes on the top of the toilet, drying off, getting dressed, and finding breakfast ready for him on the table with Alicia. Older, happier,  with a new found family that they had assembled featuring two white and brown maine coon cats sitting on her shoulders laying their heads on her head loudly purring  there was a woman beside Alicia snorting in laughter with her hands on her stomach and her face steaming red with tears coming down her cheeks. Alicia was six years older, her curly hair had the first streaks of gray, and she had baggy eyes. He can still remember how happy it was in the scene as he sat down into the chair looking at the other woman like he knew her and viewed her as a family figure. Then he watched  the two women turn into dust before his eyes taking the cats with them leaving him quite alone.

He couldn't get rid of the image from his mind.

The image of skin losing it's solid aspect slowly taking on the form of pixels that began to fall.

It was happy memory that didn't belong to him. It was a nasty memory. It was a heartbreaking memory that he didn't want. And he had to live with it. He wanted to scream from the rooftop and demand answers. He was sitting on the edge of his bed staring at the wall after he had dressed himself into new, warm clothes. The bed lowered as the woman sat down next to him. A woman in her late thirties with brown, kind eyes. Almost as though she could sense the feelings coming from him when in reality he had sulking shoulders and his gaze fixed down. He had a sigh.

"Got you real good, didn't it?" Alicia asked.

Henry nodded.

"Yes," Henry said.

Alicia looked through the window, contemplating, then gazed down toward the boy.

"Who do you think is going to be directing the Dark World movie for this alternate universe?" Alicia asked. "Because this heavily dark, sad scene in this otherwise up-beat friendship bonding adventure doesn't really fit."

Henry looked up toward Alicia with a laugh.

"Yeah," Henry said. "fridging people the main character cares about just for their pain isn't really a good thing."

Alicia nodded.

"Do you like dogs?" Alicia asked.

"Yes," Henry said.

"I have decided the perfect job that you will love to hang around," Alicia said.

"Oh, what's that?" Henry asked.

"Walking dogs," Alicia placed her large arm on to his shoulder.  "And and and and and it's going to take awhile to get it."

"How long of a while?" Henry asked.

"Awhile," Alicia said. "Only if we don't have a UFO experience, go through a bermuda triangle, get entangled in some mess, meet the guardians of the galaxy before they became a team, open a case of whooping ass, meet god like beings, make new friends, take pictures, be space tourists, and oh, a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a--" she snapped her fingers. "What is the Excelsior guy named?"

"Stan Lee!" Henry said.

"Captain Sulu Lee's cameo," Alicia said, as it took a moment for Henry  to process what she had said.  "That is the worse case scenario."

Henry fell back kicking his legs up in laughter.