Thursday, December 7, 2017

I

haven't wet the bed since I was a six-year-old. Until tonight. . . .

I had a dream I woke up in a bed double the size of the California king Jack and I had been sleeping in the past week. Not only was it bigger but also it was empty. And I opened my eyes to not the white ceiling I was used to but instead a red velvet tapestry hanging over me like rows of waving ruby drapes. I spread my arms and legs in a well-rested stretch and I thought my stomach to be full. I turned to a bright white light coming through the open windows, and I immediately smiled and jumped out to find a rich blue sky and a clear blue ocean. The windowsill over which I placed my pink manicured nails was decorated with bright yellow sunflower petals circling happy furry brown centers, and I pushed the windows even wider through the waving white curtains and breathed in the sea salt air.

"Hello!" I shouted.

Below I saw a hundred sailboats engaging in a high-speed race around the island mansion. In my white shorts and white tank top, I turned my back to my reflection which I spotted elegantly gleaming in the window glass, and I ran barefoot across the carpet to the bedroom door, raced across the landing and instead of going up the stairs that led immediately to the third floor, I instead did something I never did while I was awake. I passed those stairs and down a set of older, rickety wooden steps to the cellar— the half flooded extraordinary storage space that was the library to a plethora of shiny glass bottles of age old brandies and scotches, vodkas and wines, and I jumped all the way down to the floor to the splashing water and found it to be clear as day. I saw sunlight blaring through the thin slit of a window above in the corner of the cellar, and when I ran to the far side wall of bricks to a heavy locked door which I had never traveled through because it was always blocked by ten feet of tsunami waves, I finally grabbed the archaic metal lever with both hands, squatted my butt between my ankles and shot upward to relieve the lock after all this time.

The door, just like that, opened up all by itself, magically, to reveal a thin path of dry sand extending out as far as the eye could see. Both sides of the yellow sand road were still covered in an abyss of clear ocean that looked like transparent, ambiguous glass.

But seeing the ray of golden sand break ten feet wide toward the morning sunshine, I dashed with joy across the grains as they caressed the skin under my feet in every step, warming them and awakening their blood. It felt so good to run, like I had been in bed sick for a week and was finally well enough, stored full of energy, to go outside and play. I ran across the sand for minutes, when I saw the sandy path coming to an end, and I stopped at the midpoint between the house, and the end of sandy path, where the sand simply disappeared under the white tongue of the shore. I turned and looked at the now distant four-story house standing in its blue and white beach house paint as though hovering in the air as the clear blue ocean reflected the blue sky and white clouds above. The sight was gorgeous, but also made me feel like I was floating in the atmosphere, and this made my feet sweat from the sudden fear of tipping over the edge of my sandy lane. I turned my back again on the house. But all of a sudden, as the edge of the sandy walkway reappeared in my sight, a person appeared with his back to me, wearing a three-piece tuxedo, and staring off over the seemingly bottomless reflection of the blue sky.

"Jack?" I said. The last time I had seen Jack in a Tux was at my aunt Cecile's third wedding. He looked smashing then, and ravishing now. I don't know why, but seeing a man like Jack in a tux made me want him all over again. A smile lit up on me and I ran toward him screaming out. My white sleeping shirt and shorts suddenly extended into a full-on wedding dress that draped from my chest to my feet in a brush which floated across the sand. When I caught up behind the boy, I dropped down with my hands on my knees and panted like I'd run a marathon.

"My love," I said behind him as he stared off with his back to me over the double-sky mirror, "We're saved! The water is clearing and soon this path of sand will stretch us onward, and lead to civilization! We'll retrieve our inheritances from the banks and get to return to the lives we used to live and make the most of it out of our love!" I was standing straight again, chest heaving, but the man I loved did not return his glance to me. He continued to give me his back, and it was then that I noticed, the lightly tufted hair on the back of his head, which, compared to Jack's, was a darker shade of brown, almost black. . . "Jack?" I asked, unsure.

The man in the tux finally turned, and in a mystical gray-eyed gaze, he shed me a smile. It was not Jack. Instead, it was Craig. I gasped as though there was anything to fear in that gorgeous face, which I had only not expected, and he said to me, while sweeping in toward me and grabbing me close around my waist, looking down as I bent my lips upward under his shadow, "Zara, if you believe in heaven, let us now die, and be happy together with the rest of our families and friends in the kingdom of God!"

His eyes lit up all of sudden in a fiery flame that frightened me and suddenly the sky snapped into blackness as the clouds imploded into a solid canopy of darkness, and screaming crows swept over our heads shooting out from the water like tadpoles turning into jumping splashing frogs—and I screamed at the sound of a lioness roar! I pushed Craig off of me and turned my eyes around--

The towering beach house in the dark distance suddenly collapsed like shooting confetti under the wake of a falling black wave the size of the sky—and as my screams were wiped out by the sound—Craig snatched me by the shoulders, pushing me down to the sand, and jumped on me, religiously shouting some foreign prayer with his eyes closed—the wet mist covered us before the wave even reached the hair on my head—and the moment the ocean hit us straight down like a falling ice comet--

I woke up, and I'd awoken Jack too. The bed was wet in my steaming urine.