#in which: jerry gets a boo-boo in dreamland

[greatshell-rider]

21. walking barefoot on sidewalk (sensory prompts)

Jerry knows this is a dream.

Not because anything feels wrong. There isn’t any fuzzy confusion or strange twisted logic or a slight uncanniness to the scene. It feels real. And that’s what tipped him off.

The prickly smooth cement under his bare feet.

The cool still air of evening, just minutes after sunset.

A dandelion growing in a crack in the tar-patched road beside him.

Yesteryear’s leaves layered over a grated drain in the gutter.

Down the street, streetlights blinking to wakefulness, haloing the sloped driveways that border lumpy squares of weeds in front of small crumpled homes.

A distant dog’s incessant barking.

The pale sliver of the moon hanging in a sky too light-polluted to unveil the stars burning in galaxies both near and far.

The hoodie he’s wearing, soft and faded and pilled. It smells like it. Home.

It’s a summer night and Jerry’s standing in the streets of his childhood, of his native ’scape—planet, he means. Earth, he means.

He’s on Earth.

And that is how he knows he’s dreaming. He hasn’t been on Earth in . . . a long time. He knows that much, even if he can’t calculate the exact number of years on Earth’s clock and calendar.

He sets off down the sidewalk, shoving his hands in the hoodie’s front pocket. His bare feet slap against the cement and he doesn’t bother trying to walk quietly. No windows of any of the houses are lit, and there’s no people outside—no one playing with dogs in their yards or working on cars or going out for a jog. Not anyone. It’s very quiet. No wind, just that dog’s far-off bark. The blinking light on the horizon could be a plane though, so maybe it’ll pass overhead and he’ll hear the roar of its engines.

Imagine that, he thinks. Hearing the roar of a flying machine, not dragons. And that was normal once.

He comes to a signpost but when he stops to look at it, he doesn’t recognize the street names. Not a big surprise, not knowing where he is, where these streets lead, why the houses have similar but different numbers. If this dream is structured around his own memories, as he suspects, then it makes sense that a picture so aching familiar feels so alien. He was very young when they were taken away.

He starts walking again but there’s a new urgency to his step. A quickness in his blood that makes him move faster, fleeing from lamppost to lamppost as the night grows darker and the shapes around him become more and more like a stranger. The scene blurs as he runs—whether from the dream’s coding malfunctioning or the tears in his eyes, he doesn’t know—and the ground falls away, the slap of his bare feet on the sidewalk disappearing, the scent of his hoodie fading, the sound of that stupid dog buzzing into nothingness as he just runs—

And runs into something.

A very solid something.

Jerry bounces off it and lands hard on his rear, skinning his elbow on the sidewalk. He grabs it with the opposite hand and begins to wail.

“Oh my!” the something says, and Jerry’s dimly aware of them going down on one knee in front of him. A large hand, palm up, is proffered to him. “May I see, kiddo?”

Jerry clutches his elbow to his chest and shakes his head fervidly. “It hurts!”

“Mmm, I bet you’re right. Let’s see if I have a . . .” The hand retreats and Jerry watches through blurry tears as it slips into the person’s jeans back pocket. it remerges with a folded brown leather wallet, from which they pull out a band-aid. “How about this? Do you think this will help make it feel better?”

Jerry hesitates, then gingerly nods.

The person removes the plastic wrapping and holds out their hand again. “Okay. Should we try it?”

Cautiously, Jerry holds out his arm. He reluctantly loosens his fingers so the person can see the red scratches on his skin. The person extends the band-aid, and, suddenly scared, Jerry jerks his arm back again. “What if it hurts!”

The band-aid draws back. Jerry peers up to see a pair of brown eyes regard him in gentle seriousness. “I promise that it won’t. I will be very careful and make sure it doesn’t, okay?”

Jerry doesn’t think he believes them, but . . . “Okay,” he whispers.

Moving slowly, the person again brings the band-aid in close. Jerry wants to look away but can’t; his free hand flies to his mouth and he bites at his nails as one sticky side of the band-aid touches his skin, then the middle part covers the blood—he gasps, but it doesn’t hurt—and finally the other sticky part is smoothed down by a careful finger.

“There!” the person says, leaning back. “All done!”

Jerry examines his elbow closely and is amazed to find that he can’t see the scratches at all.

“Does it still hurt?”

He frowns and nods. “A—a little less.” He sniffles, then rubs the tears and snot on his face with the back of his fist, trying to get it off. He only smears it around, though. At least Lani isn’t around to see.

“Well, we should make sure it doesn’t hurt at all, shouldn’t we? You know how we can do that?”

Jerry looks up, a little less uncertain now. “How?”

“We get you back to your family! Here, let’s get you stood up—” they lift Jerry up to his feet— “and can you tell me if you have a parent or sibling who can help?”

Jerry scuffs the ground with his foot, not meeting their eyes, but reluctantly nods.

“Do you know where they are?”

He looks uncertainly over his shoulder. “Um . . .” Suddenly Jerry realizes he has no idea where he is and starts to panic, tears welling up in his eyes again.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, it’s okay, buddy, we’ll figure it out, I promise. Uh.” They run a hand through their hair. “Hmm. What do I . . . Well. You were running from over there, right?” They point behind Jerry.

He hesitantly nods.

“Do you want to walk with me back over there? We’ll play a game and try to figure out which house is yours, okay?”

Jerry chews at a fingernail. “Okay.”

The person stands up—they are very, very tall—and offers their hand to him. He slips his much smaller one into theirs and they walk side by side back down the sidewalk, the person pointing out different houses as they pass and asking what looks familiar.

A door painted yellow?

Flowerpots lined up on the porch railing?

Pink curtains in the window?

An abandoned hose snaking through dead grass?

Hopscotch chalk scrawled across the driveway?

A bush with purple-red leaves?

The chainlink fence with a broken gate?

Do you remember? Is any of this familiar? Why can’t you remember your own home, Jerry? Shouldn’t you know it better than anything? If you want to return here so badly, why can’t you even recognize it? How can you expect to call somewhere a home if you don’t know it? Why go back? Why go back? No one you love remains on Earth, why do want to ret—

Jerry wakes up.

He’s swinging in his hammock, deep within the belly of the mechbeast, staring up at dull grease-stained bronze. The hilt of his sword digs uncomfortably into his side, so he shifts, pulling the sheathed blade out from under him and laying it across his stomach, fingers tapping on the battered leather.

How much of that dream was from real memories, he wonders, and how much of it was simply a nightmare? He doesn’t remember running from home and hurting his elbow, or a tall kind stranger, but that isn’t to say much. He can’t remember . . . most things about Earth. It’s been . . . Yeah, it’s been a long while.

Jerry folds one arm behind his head, tapping fingers against his neck. “Just little kids,” he mumbles, to no one. It’s just him in this big hollow contraption. Him and the glues.

Speaking of. Jerry reaches out to the side and digs his fingers into the metal wall, finding a tiny hatch and pulling on it until a square of the bronze slides to the side, creating a tiny porthole in the side of the mechbeast. In pours a dim beam of sunlight. When Jerry squints he can see that no, the landscape has not changed, just the same empty flat plains, dusty and desolate. The setting sun lights the horizon aglow in rich purples and glimmering silvers, making Jerry’s eyes water when he stares at it too long. The glues will be coming for him soon, but until then—

Leaving the outlet open in case a cool breeze happens to blow in, Jerry rolls over, holding his sword so it doesn’t fall out the hammock, and buries his face into his arm. Until they come, he’ll try to get a little more sleep.