Daniel was awoken by a beam of early morning sun passing through a small hole in a curtain, invading his sleep. He rubbed his eyes and yawned. "That's a nice dream. I was a gladiator in an arena, as Dad promised from the video," he said while he defiantly shook his fist in the air, daydreaming about winning a match.

I am glad that Daddy's doing well. He was talking about an engine I couldn't understand, explaining it with scientific jargon. Outer space gave him a whole lot of space. But he is far away from us, far away from me, he thought, looking at the ceiling and allowing his thoughts to drift ahead, planning his daily tasks. Cleaning the solar panels, as requested by his father, was his priority.

The boy felt his spine was not aligned momentarily, so he stretched his arms and legs as far as possible and contorted his back. A crunchy snap released the tension on his spine. "Sweet!" he sighed, "How I wish I could snuggle down in my bed all day." He rolled his lazy body across the mattress and got mummified with the blanket like a burrito. I am too jealous that half the world is sleeping right now, and I am in the other half needed to shake some lazy bones, he thought. He turned another roll but was startled when he plunged off the edge of his bed.

"Ouch!" he fussed, then grabbed the curtain, hoisting him up.

He trailed his palms through the sky-blue drape. He spotted the hole and covered the invading light beam with his fingers. It was again another sunny day, drenched with torturous torrid heat. The curtains split up, allowing in more light, soaking the room with light as he pushed them apart. The piercing golden radiance stabbed his eyes. He turned around and saw his torpid body cast a tapering shadow across the room. Dust particles glistened like the glittery flakes swirling through the water of a snow globe. "Daniel, wake up! Wake up!" he said, convincing his lifeless spirit as he slapped his sleepy face with his palms. "Move your muscles!"

An inch of movement by the toy chest caught his attention.

He squinted. A mouse? Potti? Or maybe just a figment of my spiraling morning imagination, he thought. Then he shook his body and fixed the beddings.

Daniel wore his bold mask on and embarked on his everyday workload, for it was a good thing to divert him from the wound of the past. Distractions by distractions, his mind was frolicking, cutting off from the view of his stupidity—the murder he committed that night. But the wound became cancer, a severe disease spreading all through many parts of his body, metastasizing throughout the insides of the house and poisoning the greens outside. Distractions became his pills to move forward, never to look back.

His persistence and sacrifice were too great when it came to fixing his fractured family. He invested sweat in things he knew could help him mend the bond. Nevertheless, he found his purpose. All these acts of giving up he was doing would someday pay off—a significant tit-for-tat.

The morning sailed smoothly, slipped through the high noon, and went beyond the afternoon. Daniel rushed to the garden, squeezing through a door while hauling a collapsible ladder. He fixed the ladder and climbed, holding the garden hose but was surprised by the thick dirt accumulated on the solar panels. He first tried to squirt water to do the job alone, but it was no use. Thus, he returned inside with a bucket of soapy water and a soft sponge floating like a buoy on the foamy suds. He carefully went up the ladder bit by bit and skipped on the roof excitedly, spilling some soapsuds. He wasted no time scrubbing the panels right away.

The canopy of leafless boughs of the mahogany trees was in some way helping to block the slanting afternoon yellow light, providing him with shade. Daniel was drenched in sweat, and his heart pounded after cleaning the solar panels. The sweat was pouring on his white face. He then wiped the beads of dew off his forehead. He leaned back with his head on one side, gazing to the left, surveying the golden horizon. The suburb was soaked under the sun's supremacy that even the thin feathery clouds kept out of the sunbeams pathway. The beams were like arrows raining down from the cloudless skies, scorching the pavement and drying the meadow. Everything below—tethered on Earth—was at penance, pleading with the source of heat and light.

Daniel lay flat on the solar panel roof, spine comfortably against the smooth glass glaring above. He sniffed a lungful of air seizing the lightness he felt. He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Simply beautiful, he thought.

He stretched his arms out and held them above his head. His legs extended down the slanted roof, wagging his feet free from care. Euphoria was the only word that would summarize his unexplainable heavenly feeling. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts drifted into a dense cloud of mist.

———————

"Hello?" asked Daniel. "Hello?"

He noticed that he was breathing fog out of his mouth. "It's cold," he wrapped his arms around his torso. "It's too cold," he said to himself as he shivered to death.

"Anybody? Hello?" he swallowed a ball of saliva. "I am lost."

He stopped momentarily and remembered his friends, Mr. Lens and Lady Mondragon. With his freezing fingers, he reached into his side pockets, looking for the magnifying glass and hair barrette. Where are you? I need your help! I need my friends, he thought, clumsily yanking his hand out. He slipped his hand into his back pocket and pulled out nothing. "Hopeless. It is hopeless," he coughed, "I am hopeless!"

He forced his stiff muscles to move and ventured forward into the thick haze. The cold was bitter, numbing his extremities, stabbing the remnant of hope glowing faintly inside his icy heart. He rubbed his hands together, thinking it might produce heat—a relief from coldness, a flash of optimism. But it was useless. "Hopeless!" he feverishly barked.

A black feather fell from above, swaying through the maze of haze, and decided to rest gently on Daniel's button nose. The feather surprised him, crossed-eyed, bewildered by the question on the tip of his tongue. Where do you come from? Can a feather help me? I think not, he thought. Then isolation stabbed his back. He felt a sudden itch on the tip of his nose. He sneezed, and a couple of mucus flew out of his snout. And the thick fog oddly disappeared.

When he peeled his eyes, he gasped, for he could not see anything. His feet were planted in the middle of a lightless void, unfathomable, pitch-black everywhere. He waved his arms desperately, hoping to touch whatever was draped in the darkness, warm or cold, soft or rigid, alive or dead—anything. What is happening? Is this the place for sinners, murderers like me? Is this my punishment? Could it be? Yes. It could be, he thought while he trod his way carefully, almost hunching his back forward stupidly.

An ache hit him out of nowhere, torturing his body with sobs. "Mom? Dad? Where are you?" he whimpered, "I am all alone!" Tears pricked the corner of his eyes. Of course, there was only silence, not a voice, even a sound. No one was there willing to save him, offering to sacrifice a life to spare his unripe existence.

Death—the end of life, a finale, the end—of—me. Goodbye, cruel world, he thought.

A long howling caw from somewhere in the darkness had interrupted his morbid thoughts. His heartbeat halted. He quickly made his way across the blanket of darkness, conscious that danger was behind him. He shifted his head from side to side, picking up the sound with his keen ears. He extended his right arm forward, wriggling and stretching his candle fingers. He sensed something and pointed to the void, to a wall of darkness. He didn't have any clue about the mystery in the utter darkness. He could only see a pair of tiny red glows getting bigger or maybe nearer, gleaming, resembling a dying cinder. Daniel was screaming from the inside. There was pain clawing the walls of his stomach. He opened his mouth to unleash his fear, but his vocal cords were gone. He was voiceless, mute.

The pair of red glows in the dark disappeared, maybe it moved, but he knew the master of disguise was there. He peeled his eyes wider, and as he stared longer, the red glow reappeared not just a pair, but now, it was a thousand, countless. A fear-provoking caw made his neck hair stand. A raven swooshed by his head, aiming for his eye. He ducked down to avoid the attack. The red glow from every side approached, heralding an imminent onslaught. A thousand ravens were threateningly cawing as they drew closer. A wave of flapping, clawing, and nibbling drowned the little boy. Caw after caw turned the silence into mayhem.

My eyes! They want my eyes, he thought, covering his face with his lacerated arms. Blood flowed down from his wounded arms, dripping to his tired toes. His knee collapsed, failing to block the torturous torment. He tumbled.

Daniel toppled to his side, locked in a fetal position. "I do not want to die!" he declared.

Luna, please don't leave me. Please help me, he thought.

The discordant cawing ended in a snap. A hush flooded his ears. "The ravens are gone," he whimpered, and for a short time, he was surprised that his voice box worked. He raised his head slowly, peeping between the narrow slits of his overlapping fingers, and discovered daylight. He casually pushed his body up, feeling victorious, a survivor. When he shifted his irises down, another horror crawled on his spine. It gave him quite a fright. He was sitting on the clear endless glass.

Below him, there were some skyscrapers and trees, and above him, there was the sublime dome of starry skies and the splendor of the shattered moon. He noticed that his torn fleshes were healed. He lifted his chin and stood as straight as he could. The sun was peeking over the skyline. It was sunrise, the start of a beautiful day. A breakfast of French toast, crispy bacon, sunny side up, and a glass of warm milk was the kind of stuff best served to be paired up for such a lovely morning. He pressed another step to the transparent glass surface. This is cool. Maybe this is heaven, he thought.

He continued to tread the vast horizon, marveling at it. He closed his eyes, and then he ran a distance. He tripped, hitting something fragile, but he did not lose balance. His gaze landed on a glass thing whirling like a spin top. He drew closer as the glass vessel stopped spinning. An hourglass with crimson sand, he thought while he tilted the empty upper compartment down.

The hourglass on his hand was beautifully crafted, smooth, and simple, a work of art too futuristic. He lifted the hourglass and marveled at the red sand running into its lower compartment.

A pang struck him, flashing memories of his mother bleeding after the accident. He cringed when he noticed that the hourglass's upper compartment was like a womb—a dying womb, ticking, running out of time. The crimson sand suddenly became blood, and in the next second, the hourglass cracked, dripping the rich blood on the glass surface. He dropped the hourglass and skipped back. His face turned pale, masked in disbelief. Luna, I am sorry. I am sorry, he thought.

As the truth sunk in, the fact he firmly gripped and believed that he was the only one responsible for the baby's death, he sat in silence, tucked his knees up to his chin, waiting for the worst. He sobbed.

The wind went insane, swept through the vastness, and sucked out all sound. He surveyed around in a cloudy vision, and at the exact moment, as he faced the rising sun, a loud thud hit the glass. He sucked in a startled breath as he looked up. Numerous black objects were falling from the sky. They were birds, particularly dead ravens, crashing the glass surface one by one. The falling and crashing persisted like a hailstorm.

Each time one dropped dead, another quickly took its place, and it did not stop after five minutes. His muscles were too rigid, but he tried to move, unpeeling his hands from his face revealing his aghast expression. As he got his bearings, he noticed thin web-like lines building up and crawling on the glass floor. I am scared that the glass could shatter at any second, he thought, looking afar at a sea of dead ravens as he tried to stave off rumbling nausea.

A tremor shook the land below, collapsing the skyscrapers and tearing the meadows. The glass floor vibrated, and it shattered into a million pieces. But Daniel didn't fall. Everything was floating in weightlessness—him, the shards of glass, the thousand dead ravens, and even the large chunks of buildings and landmasses. He drifted away from the Earth, ascending further, reaching the atmosphere. This is the end, he thought, looking down at the portrait of an apocalypse.

The air above was thin; he could not breathe. He spun and faced the pitch-black universe, escaping the atmosphere. He was floating all alone, lost in space. "Luna," he whispered with his last breath.

His irises were fixed focally on the shattered moon, illuminated by the sun etching the edges and hollows of the enormous chunks of celestial rocks. His sight was failing, but a small figure appeared before him—a cube. It was a scrambled Rubik's cube twisting alone in greased lightning. In a matter of seconds, the cube stopped turning, solved, unscrambled. And it exploded tremendously with a blinding iridescent light rippling through outer space.

He shuddered. His eyes were charcoaled, his torso was burnt, and his limbs were torched. It was a horrific scene, a miserable, painful death.

Now, everything was in free fall, including the poor boy, pulled by a strong force, a strange force which was impossible to escape, towards the Earth.

Poor Daniel succumbed to dissolution.

———————

A moth straddled the tip of his nose. He woke with a jolt, momentarily disoriented, driving the moth away from his face. His head was aching. He rubbed his eyes and gazed at the skies streaked with the sunset light. His breath was still ragged as he reacquainted himself with reality. He saw sparrows flying homeward just before the sun retired. At least they are not killer ravens, unlike in my ghastly dream, he thought, pulling himself together.

He carefully abandoned the photovoltaic roof and ran down to the collapsible ladder. His mother must be starving and grumpy, bolted inside her desolated room, cursing the world to end. He shook his head and scampered, reaching the front door. He took a quick bath, prepared a simple dinner, served his mom food, and prepared her meds. It seemed as though all he did was play on fast-forward.

The cube, he thought as he walked away from the door. "Where did I hide it?" he asked himself. He ran down the stairs and rummaged through the kitchen. He gave up and decided first to gobble his plate clean.

He tried to recall the details of his dream. First is fog, then darkness, ravens, glass surface, hourglass, earthquake, abnormal gravity, and cube, he thought while counting each detail with his fingers. He told himself never to recall any of it and pretend they were nothing but a bad dream. But the Rubik's cube kept rolling in his mind, distracting him while washing the dishes. And he began to converse with his reflection on the windowpane.

"The bad dream," he began, "It was like saying something I need to know."

His reflection answered, "Two words—bizarre and frightening, that was our dream."

"Frightening, you are right. But I think it was a message sent just for me."

"Really? You? A message just for you? Feeling special now?" His reflection raised a brow.

"Sometimes, I feel I am," he smiled.

"Perhaps, we are."

"I recall I called her to help me... Luna."

"Spirits. Souls. Are they real?"

"I don't know, but I can tell our dream was a vision from her."

Their eyes met. "From her? You killed her. I saw it. And now she gave you a vision? Now, you have become a prophet? Come on!"

Daniel turned the faucet off. "I am not mad!" he snapped, steaming over the insult.

"Come on, Daniel. You are talking to yourself!" His reflection shouted at him, wrinkling his nose.

"The cube! I need to solve the cube."

The reflection on the pane scratched its nape. "You are getting worse day by day, my friend," he paused, "since the day you put your sister in limbo."

"You are not helping, and you forget that you were also an accomplice of the murder."

"I know, but I've forgiven myself. It was an accident," his reflection smirked. "Have you forgiven yourself?"

"No. It was my fault. And it will haunt me forever."

"Even if you forgive yourself, your mother will never forgive you."

A teardrop slid off his cheek. He swallowed. "I know."

"Don't worry, your reflection, which is I, and you—someday shall meet halfway. I know you're in the process of healing. However," the reflection shrugged his shoulder, "if our dream is a vision, it seems we are running out of time."

Daniel lowered his gaze and fixed the plates and utensils on a cupboard. He dried his hands and dredged up the possibility that he had dumped the cube in the laundry basket. He ran to the utility room down the basement. He quickly pulled the light on and went down the creaky wooden stairs. He dug up the dirty laundry pile, searching for the denim shorts he had worn when Nurse Samuel visited. He pulled the denim shorts out and clung to the moment of truth. "Voila! Behold, the Rubik's cube is in my hand," he interjected. Then he rushed to his room.

Switching the lights off in his bedroom brought him delight, a time to reset and to forget. He clambered into bed, wearing pajamas. He was holding the cube while lying flat on the mattress. Daniel kept tossing and turning in the bed, which went on so long that it became too uncomfortable. He turned the lampshade on and tried twisting the Rubik's cube.

He had a hard time unscrambling one side of it. "Ugh, please, I want to crack the white side," he sounded upset.

He twisted a corner up, rotated the top to the left, winded the same corner down, then turned the base to the right, and so on. "Ugh—"

There was an out-of-place color in the middle of all the whites. "This is impossible!" he cringed.

The poor boy set aside the cube by tossing it to his pillow behind him. "Now, I am wide awake!" he dampened his chapped lips. He slid his legs off the bed and tiptoed around the room. His mind was disturbed by thoughts of his bizarre dream and peculiar life. It was jumbled like the cube, a mare's nest. His feet felt the coldness of the floor, and then he froze by the study desk.

A brain wave tickled his mind. He then pulled the top drawer open that held his first letter and some blank papers securely. Perhaps, writing another letter to you will bring peace to my anxious mind, he thought as he grabbed a pencil.