Dreams of Light by Patrick Sean Lee (i wanna iguana read aloud .txt) 📕

curtain aside at times. Defy gravity, for instance, but only after a group of disparate scientists and inventors invented machines to launch us into the sky. We simply didn’t possess the body structures of birds, and try as we might, our imaginations always failed us whenever we used our own power of thought to launch ourselves heavenward.

Jerrick, and no doubt Mari, were different.

And then Charles.

When Jerrick had said, “I can help.” we assumed he meant that he could physically help Munster drag Charles’ body—alive or dead—out of the truck. That wasn’t exactly the case. It was Denise who might have been the cause in the end of Charles’ demise. She wanted to scratch Jerrick’s eyes out. She begged Munster—and cajoled innocent Sammie—to hand over a weapon to shoot Jerrick with. Munster for some unknown reason spirited them away and hid them from her.

But if Jerrick intended to stay among us, she made it very clear, she would not allow him anywhere near her beloved, comatose, Charles, despite his pleas to let him into their bedroom. Of course Jerrick insisted that he must be alone with Charles. Most of us agreed, rightly or wrongly, that such a request was impossible to allow. I did not agree.

Mari had let Charles fall after she and Jerrick appeared with him outside that horrible thing they lived in that was once a farmer’s and his family’s home. Jerrick had said something, or done something, that caused Peter to scream. The walkie-talkie had gone silent immediately afterward. Naturally we on the other end assumed Jerrick had done some terrible thing to Charles. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

This is what actually happened.

The second Mari withdrew her hands from Charles and he fell, Jerrick reacted. He fell to his knees to help his old friend. Mari glared down at him and raised her hand over her head, Peter said to me in the safety of our bedroom the next morning when I plied him for the thousandth time to go over that morning again. No one had bothered to ask him what his last exclamation meant, but there it was. Oh, he explained to everyone how he’d dashed toward Charles and Jerrick, but in the confusion of questions fired back by Lashawna and Jude and the rest of us in the midst of his telling—the almost backward and forward bent of his short narrative—the fact that Mari…well she'd intended to strike Jerrick. And on seeing this, that's when Peter had screamed, “Jerrick!”, then dropped the walkie-talkie, and run toward him.

“Amelia, she’s evil. Whatever they did to her, they didn’t do the same thing to Jerrick,” Peter said later, amidst the constant chatter as we sat together on the living room sofa.

“I sensed as much,” I told him. “Don’t try to tell Denise that, though. To her they’re both the same.”

“I wish Charles would wake. I wish he could tell us exactly what went on inside that hellhole, and that he isn’t like Mari,” Peter said low, and probably uselessly.

“Jerrick said he could help, Peter. We have to get him into their bedroom.”

“Easy enough. We just tell her she has to let him in. Really, this is our house if you think about it, not hers.”

“She’d freak again.”

“She can’t stay in there alone with Charles forever.”

“Oh, she can,” I said. “We’ll wind up bringing her food and water, unless she wants to play hermit and die.”

“She has to go to the bathroom sometime. Maybe she already has and we just haven’t noticed. Anyway, that’s not a one-time deal, you know? And the next time we see her leave, we’ll take Jerrick in and lock the door!”

“Yeah…yes. We could have Jerrick hidden across the hall, up in our bedroom.”

“That’ll be the hard part. Look how everyone is clamoring over him. We can’t have the whole house hanging around in the hall upstairs, or in our room. Denise would never come out.”

“We’ll wait. It might take a few days, but they’ll eventually settle in to the old routines they're used to, and then we can do it.”

“Deal.”

 

 

"He Was Bound To Leave The Earth"

I was right (of course). By day two following Charles’ and Jerrick’s return, we all set about the task of keeping our home functioning. Drifting slowly back to normalcy.

Munster in particular was delighted that, at least for the foreseeable future, there would be no classes to numb his brain. Alongside Cynthia, he walked the boundaries of the property twice daily to inspect the fence and the alarm wires. Sammie tagged along, maybe to keep them out of trouble—off alone as they would have been without her at their side. Jude and Lashawna scrubbed and cleaned, checked the stores in the cellar, even though Lashawna often broke the routine to mother over her beloved brother. Peter and I plotted the best way to spirit Jerrick away, though, and waited. Celia…well, more often than not, she and Bernie remained holed up in their love nest. At least they were quiet, doing whatever they were or weren't doing. Correction. Whatever they were doing. If nothing else, the old lecher was single-minded, and so, it seemed, was poor Celia.

I noticed something strange on the third day, just before all of us gathered for lunch in the kitchen. Really weird, and I had to blink and rub my eyes to make certain it was really happening. I was sweeping the boards covering the porch floor, something that seemed an impossibly useless endeavor, because the afternoon and early-evening breezes would just pick it all up again and deposit it on the boards again by morning. It hit me as I worked and looked down that it was time for Munster and Peter to bring varnish and brushes out from the garage to recoat it.

I don’t know for certain just where Munster and Cyn were. Busy, I suppose, inspecting the grounds. Maybe gathering oranges, but Sammie was sitting fifteen feet away from the tower staring at it. I stopped sweeping and gazed out at her, wondering if it wouldn’t be wise to erect a sturdy, tall fence around that hated watcher? Oh yes, just a library. Not keeping its hidden eye on us. Waiting.

I watched, certainly not hated I was pretty sure, but definitely curious. I was about to set the broom aside and go to her, just in case. Before I could move, though, Jerrick appeared almost out of nowhere in the next instant, and he quietly walked to her side. She looked up and smiled the second he neared and she noticed him. He leaned down with his hands coming to rest on his thighs at the knees and said something to her. I was too far away to hear, but she giggled and then said something back to him. He spoke again and then Sammie nodded her head. I nearly dropped the broom when I saw what came next.

Jerrick leaned farther down and picked Sammie up. She threw her tiny arms around his neck the moment he lifted her. That’s when I had to blink. With his hands on her sides, he slowly started to rise. I mean up! A foot, and then two, and then five...up, until their faces were even with the strange script near the top. When they stopped, hanging there fifteen feet above the ground, Sammie fixed her eyes on it, her face hidden from my sight. I could see one side of Jerrick’s face, though. His lips were moving, and I knew that he was reading what it said in that strange alien language. The tip of one of Sammie’s small fingers moved along, right to left as Jerrick spoke, but one of his hands had the pointing finger of Sammie firmly grasped, in case it accidentally came into contact with the tower surface.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. No, not that Jerrick was holding Sammie, or even that he was translating the script for her. It was the rising, and then the hovering. Some new aspect of the reborn Jerrick that was unimaginable.

What else was he capable of doing that we had no knowledge of, and further, whatever other powers he might possess—were they, would they be used for our benefit?

Maybe to break free of the shock that gripped me, I had the craziest thought. Maybe he would teach us all to fly!

Back to reality, whatever that might be in this upside down existence. He wouldn’t let Sammie touch the cursed tower. That said to me that the human side of him dominated.

I glanced around—everyone else was busy elsewhere—and so I laid the broom aside quietly and went to them. Standing a few feet back and beneath them, I hesitated at first, having misgivings about calling up to them. But, I needn’t have. Jerrick turned his head and looked down on me, and then, expressionless, he turned his attention back to Sammie, and began to float down. My eyes were stretched wide, but I faked a stern impression once they touched down and he turned his head again to me. He gently lowered an excited Sammie to the grass.

She was beside herself, wanting to speak, but I cut her off.

“Sammie, go find Munster and Cynthia. Tell them Jerrick and I want to talk to them. After you find them, then find Peter and tell him the same. Hurry.”

“But Amelia! Did you see…”

“Yes. Go now, quickly.”

Sammie squeezed Jerrick’s hand, glanced up at me for an instant, and then ran off. She began to head for the drive leading to the garage at the rear, stopped as if confused, whipping her head left and right, and then turned and dashed down the lawn into the orchard.

“So what was that, Jerrick?”

He smiled at me and motioned for me to sit down.

“She wanted to see the script. She was sitting here looking up at it when I walked over, and so I took her up to get a closer look.”

“Yes, I noticed. Jerrick, how can you do that? I couldn’t believe my eyes!”

He grew excited, quickly sitting down beside me. He reached over and grabbed my hand with his long fingers. Why was I surprised when I felt warmth in them?

“I’m not certain myself just how I can, Amelia, but…well…all I know is that I can, if that makes any sense to you. It’s like you don’t even have to think about it when you want to jump, or take off running, right? The urge or necessity hits you, and you respond.”

Naturally I was stunned. It wasn’t an answer, at least one that actually did make sense, but I let it pass for the moment.

“Jerrick,” I put plainly to him, “are you with us or against us. Please tell me the truth.”

“I was never not with you, Amelia. After they gave me my sight, they told me to go to Mari…that she needed me. And so I left, but I was never, ever against any of our group of survivors. You have to believe that.”

I’d sensed it. Even when she’d smiled, Mari’s eyes were cold. Not so with Jerrick. Even if he were the world’s greatest liar…no, you can see a smile that isn’t genuine. It’s in the eyes. If you look hard enough—and I was at that second—it’s there.

“But Jerrick…”

“I had