What Lucid Dreams May Come

A/N: Okays, so I’ll admit my style has a love/hate relationship with most readers.  When I read and review something, I always try to approach it as what it is, and what it seems the author intends for it to do, not what I’d want it to be if I’d written it myself. That being said, I’m pretty happy with this the way it is. I mostly just want to know if the actual story in this story comes through. It had to be 1500 words or less, so I didn’t have much to work with.  Thanks in advance for reading.



What Lucid Dreams May Come

When she isn’t home, Jordy takes off his wet clothes and worries, but he eats the brownies she made before they left.  The first one’s always the hardest to get.  He tastes her in his mouth, more bitter than sweet, and collapses on their bed alone to see what dreams will come.

*

Jordy kisses her with his eyes closed. Her smell perfumes his pillowcase, fingers ghost across his skin.  She’s there, he knows, real, he believes, and solid as long as he stays wrapped around.  Come morning, he hopes she’ll still be this – forever soft, sparking under his fingertips like static on cold stainless steel, and never brokenbleedingtwisted beside him, the way he remembers her—after the car, after the bridge, after the water.

Forever for young lovers is short.

*

The sun rises and finds him tired, wet, and...alone, until Zack comes.  Zack always comes when Jordy needs him. That’s what big brothers do.

The bridge, the car, the water, the glass, all wash away when Zack takes Jordy’s hand and pulls him from the wreckage.  She’s gone when they look back.

The belief is Jordy’s, and the need is mutual. They’re both broken, missing fifteen years, and neither has anywhere to be but together, for now.

*

Jordy knows the bridge, feels the crush of metal and glass like a memory that’s not a dream. This is where he lost her, but Zack’s here now—a lover lost, a brother found.

Zack is dirty, dire, and too, too far traveling dark, forbidden roads.  Jordy left him alone—ten years old and gasping. Zack smells of sweat, of grime, and days’ haste. He’s traversed most of Hell to get here, and Jordy needs him. Smelly’s okay—better than okay. Rancid is real, like skinned knees, stomach flu, and stitches; all the things Jordy needs Zack to fix. Fixing is what big brothers do.

Right now, Jordy needs to see, has to know.  So Zack takes him to the bridge, and they stop, an eternity above and below.  When Jordy searches for her, she isn’t right there beside him, doesn’t laugh and tell him she’s okay, and his heart runs like dirty water into his stomach, then out into the river below.

It’s a long way down, and Jordy looks to the bottom, or he would, if there was anything to see but fog.  He closes his eyes, doesn’t need them to see brokenbleedingmangleddying below him, doesn’t need her to feel ghost fingertips on his skin.

His voice drowns in the fog, broken with grief and gone. Zack answers.

Zack, beside him where she used to be, is right where Jordy needs him, just the way he sees him when he closes his eyes to sleep. Zack beside him where she used to be, is the brother Jordy’s dreamed about since he was just a boy.

In fifteen years, the dream has never changed. Jordy calls, Zack answers.

Now she’s gone, and there’s wet in his clothes, his bed, his bones. It’s different, but the same, because Zack is still here, and that’s all that matters.

Jordy calls, and Zack answers.  He answers with a hand on Jordy’s shoulder, ghost fingertips on his skin, and leans over the railing beside him, an eternity above and below.

Where else would he be?

*

They bleed together, after the river, after the bridge, crushed against rock and pylons with the car a wreck of metal and glass beneath them and Zack too still in the water.

*

In dreams, Zack saves Jordy, swims down to him at the bottom of the river, in the car, under the bridge, and pulls him out through the glass.

Awake, Jordy watches his brother die—ten years old and gasping—as  Zack pushes him ashore only to be pulled under himself and never come up.  That’s just a dream, though, one Jordy can’t remember when he’s lucid and breathing water.

*

Jordy’s Zack is never dead. He’s only ever here. Where else would he be? Jordy needs him here, and real, and now, so when he presses fingers to the clammy skin of Zack’s neck, Jordy finds a pulse. He never asks whose.

They bleed together, as they should, in dreams and memories. Jordy knows there should be blood, and there is, on Jordy and on Zack.  It’s red. Blood should be red, and anyway, Jordy can’t see grey.

So they bleed together in silence, brothers in blood.  It’s what brothers do, and forever is longer for brothers than lovers. 

After the car, after the river, after the bridge, chest heaving tiredly and water gurgling in his lungs, Jordy sleeps, and Zack doesn’t.

*

Jordy looks for her on the shore when he awakens alone and finds only a little boy—ten years old and gasping—wandering and looking for a little brother.  Neither finds what he seeks, and Jordy goes home.

She still isn’t there, so he takes a brownie from the pan, fights to get the spatula under it; the first one is always the hardest. Then, he lies down to sleep.

The day drains from him, like his memories of her, taking with it the light, until all Jordy knows is darkness. It’s deeper than sleep, his last breath a dream, and Zack comes, the little boy returned safely home.

Jordy needs Zack. Where else would he be?

This is home, where families belong. A brother became a savior here, and a sibling became a hero, became a martyr. Where else would Zack be?

*

Jordy is wet again when he awakens.  Forgot to change his clothes, he thinks, though it’s been hours, and they’ve had enough time to dry. Zack looks smaller than Jordy remembers, sitting in the chair beside his bed, waiting and gasping like he’s ten years old and drowning.

Afloat, Jordy tries to sleep.  Better sleeping than gasping.  Better sleeping than drowning, but the fog is heavy and wet.

*

Jordy almost learns the truth at the funeral. His parents cry, older by fifteen years than he remembers them crying last. He didn’t know they knew her well enough to cry.

Jordy watches as flowers are placed on the grave, sees an urn, a flame, a star upon a headstone moved over to make room for a second casket, larger and newer than the first.

“How many of these symbols and rites are only real because people want them to be? How many are just hopes, wishes for the dead to dream on?”

He never asks, “How many of the people…?” Because, well, he might wear his heart on his sleeve, but that doesn’t mean he treads on eggshells when he can walk around. Not when his whole world is painted on them in shades of Zack.

*

They go on, brothers looking for home. They pass the same landmarks a hundred times, skirt the same issues a thousand. Jordy sleeps. Jordy dreams. Jordy awakens, wet. Zack almost dies, almost breaks, never sleeps, never leaves, and Jordy isn’t surprised at all, because Zack belongs with him. Where else would he be?

“You must be tired,” Jordy says. Zack must be. Jordy doesn’t remember him sleeping since—he was ten years old and gasping—before Jordy went to sleep on the rocks, bleeding. “Why don’t you ever sleep?” Jordy asks.

“Maybe I don’t want to,” Zack says.

What he doesn’t say is, “I can’t,” but Jordy hears it. Zack’s his big brother. There’s nothing he can’t do except not be there when Jordy needs him. So Zack doesn’t say it. He doesn’t have to.  Doesn’t matter anyway, because Jordy always needs him, always has.

*

Jordy needed Zack when he was dying, in the river behind the campground. No one else heard him—five years old and drowning, but Zack was there.  Zack was there fifteen years later, when Jordy’s car went off that bridge, his girlfriend laughing beside him. Zack was there when she survived.

Where else would he be?

There then, and here now, the days and nights, the dreams and nightmares bleed together. All there’s ever been for Zack is Jordy, and Jordy doesn’t see grey, cannot look into the grey blanket of the fog and see they disappear in the mist.

Dreams are black-and-white.  Tulpas are grey.  Jordy's always had lucid dreams.  He can dress his tulpas however he pleases.

Where else would Zack be?  Where else but with Jordy?



*

Jordy has dreams, and sometimes they come true. Zack had dreams once, and they all included Jordy.

Now, they dream together.

The End