A Glimpse Into the Mind of a 14-Year-Old Musing In an Airport "Close your eyes, and I’ll close mine… He thought about his dreams in that space of a sentence, images of her eyes slowly closing as she lay her head on a pillow, then, later that night the feeling of her breath touching his skin, whistling through her nostrils. He had told her that he would close his eyes too, but he didn’t, he couldn’t, not while the pinnacle, the zenith of his dreams lay before him. His face brightened with a dumb smile, the muscles almost forcing his face to do so. Her eyelids suddenly flicked open, and her pupils focused on his face. She smiled too, lifted her head to his, and gave him a quick peck on the lips. That was enough for him, and he soon drifted into a dreamless sleep. Why would he dream, for there wasn’t a better reality than the one he had right here… But it was a dream, and his own eyes quickly focused on the cement surface of the airport wall, returned to his own real reality. Around him most of the chairs were empty, but maybe a school bus length away a pair of old women sat next to a wheelchair, one of them significantly older than the other. The younger one (who was still elderly) appeared to have slathered many types of makeup on her face, and her bright blond hair was curled at the jaw. She was speaking into a cell phone. “No—mother has lunch at noon exactly and dinner at seven twenty, isn’t that right?” The older woman nodded. “So I was thinking of a barbecue when we got there—” “No barbecues,” muttered the older woman, “I can’t cook with a barbecue.” The younger one paused, appearing to seethe with fury but for only a moment, before continuing into the phone. “Forget the barbecue, just have some chicken ready when we get there—” He tuned out from the conversation at that point, focusing his ears on the Beatles music he was listening to. Mother Nature’s Son… He found himself standing in a bright white room, and as his eyes adjusted to the light he found that there were dozens of people clad in tuxedoes and elegant dresses, all of them smiling and clapping. Next to him was the girl, and as he looked at her in what appeared to be a wedding gown his heart skipped a beat and his stomach tightened. She turned to him, and they kissed, a long luxurious one, and the symphony of applause became more intense, the manly grunts of his friends (presumably) fed into the loud noise. It was much later, now, they were both old, she was still beautiful, her hair vanquished by gray and turned completely white. There were wrinkles on her face, laugh lines, permanent dimples, but with it all she was still gorgeous, still the only girl he could ever want, who he hugged and kissed and smiled with. He recalled thinking of such an occurrence a long, long time ago, and again he found himself in the airport, the CD track switched to, of all things, Long, Long, Long. He could hear the steady murmur of voices in the background, the pair of old women still chattering about food or something. “We’ve put all our money into a bank account, for you and your sister, whenever you two find yourselves in a twist or something—” “Dad—Dad this is insane! Do you know what you’re doing?” “It’s been a dream of mine for awhile,” he said, his voice drifting. His son laughed, but it wasn’t a real one, more of a sound to reassure himself. “I’m not letting you go, you know that, don’t you?” “It’s not for you to decide.” His son sighed, tears coming to his eyes. His father hadn’t seen this for almost a decade; back when the girl he had asked to a movie had declined. That was when he was still a wiry little codger, before he had grown… “Dad—don’t go, please, please don’t go…” His son put his head on his shoulder, the tears streaming over his jacket. He lifted his sons face to his own. “You don’t need me anymore, you’re all grown up, have a wife—a baby, money, a job. The list goes on and on. My genes have been passed on, my work, evolution-wise, is finished.” “You and mom will be dead, Dad, by the time you get there we’ll be as old as you are. We won’t live to see you ever again.” “That’s why I hate permanent goodbyes. This is the time, the hour, the minute, for us to embrace one last time, before we leave next week. I don’t want to do it right in front of the launcher.” His voice had grown stern. He hugged his son, and soon the girl (the babe…the bodacious beautician, the titillating tightner, his list of nicknames for his wife went on and on) hugged him too. Their daughter was still young, just entering college. She hadn’t said a word the entire time. They hugged, kissed, said their goodbyes, the father grateful for the decrease in melodrama, and they made their way to their car, speeding off and turning round a corner, the rain spraying off of the tires. He then found himself sitting in a chair, tightly strapped but finding that he was facing upward. There was a rumble, and a scream of an explosion, and soon out the window a pair of fluffy clouds parted to reveal the blue sky. The color faded into blackness, and the stars began to flicker to life. The rumbling stopped, and everything was silent. He looked at the girl, the girl of his dreams from decades ago. They were at relativistic speeds now, traveling as close to light speed as possible, heading toward a distant star. It would take little more than a day to reach their destination, while forty years passed outside their window. Now he was on the planet, his arm around his wife’s shoulder, gazing over the horizon to a new sun, a new sunset atop the indigenous fauna, listening intently to the screeches and hoots of the life of this new world. He had dreamed of this, all this, and it had come true. But the girl was there, and that was all that mattered. Take away the planet, their spacesuits, anything, as long as she remained. She was the life of his life. Beside him was the ultimate desire, the love, and the companionship worth a thousand lifetimes of loneliness. And as his days came to an end he smiled, found himself without a care in two worlds. She smiled, too. It’s been a long, long…long time…" For anyone who wants in, write a picture of your mind here. This is me. I live in a world of fantasy.
here goes.... The two of them stood on the plateau, high above the fields of a desolate solitude. A wasteland, wilderness incarnate, and as if he’d never been to this place- the grey suddenly washed anew with colour. And with the colour came realisation, a happiness that somehow existed in a world that decorated the mind with a single shade of enduring grey. There, through the few leaves on the tree above them- it burst like an apocalypse, a shock of sunlight, spearing the leaves amongst an all too new glow, lighted her face like an angel. He learned her name then- Glory. The light of the heavens sent forth to conquer- for even as desire had no place- emotion surged. Something never before felt, in the middle of the first bud of the first ever flower. A Glory shining forth in the Garden of Eden. A spirit soared across a sky as barren and grey as the blasted land beneath. Saw something new and shining, a hope! In a world that would surely die. The wraith swept its celestial wings and smiled a shadowed grin; one hope was all it took. And then the girl smiled, this time he saw. The blackened and charred ground beneath her feet glowed with light, and still the flash of a forgotten sun beamed across her features. There had been a prophecy, that he should one day feel inside him the birth of a new world, he was named so the Allfather. The emotion compacted, and a beam of light arced through the curving dome of sky, carried them away to a Garden from a dream.
Pollux.........dude.................********........eh.............(Left speechless Jarrod bows in aprreciation of Pollux's writing)..........(feeling a little bit more peckish he speaks for no misunderstanding).................That was one of the coolest things I've ever read.
Here's mine: The doors were huge. A mechna could easily walk through. Off to the side was a small door for people. A peeling scencil on the door stated: CARGO BAY 4. Also on the door was a plaque bearing a quote that they both recognized, he from familiarity and the old man from a physics book. "A monkey on a typewriter would hit keys at random, porducing gibberish. But, if you had an infinite number of monkeys, eventually one would randomly type an exact copy of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens." The old man noted that the quote wasn't finished. "That is the only part that matters. You will soon see why." A lock was opened, and they went inside. The old man was immediately hit by the size. The cargo bay was easily a quarter of a mile wide and at least twice that long. Then he saw what was on the enormous shelves filling the vast space. He followed the young man through the narrow isles between cases, and stared in awe at the miliions of books around him. They were divided by little markers similar to a hanging file. Teh dividers were marked in a strange language. IN each section was at least on book, often several. They were writeen in thousands of languages. Included in many of the sections were plain volumes bound in red leather. The young man stopped in front of a section of books written in English. Books by people he knew. The young man profered the ladder and he climbed slowly, his arthritus forgotten. "Eighth shelf, they should be on your left." Came the young man's voice. There, on the shelf were his books. They were written by him, an addition to the likes of Tolkien, but not so well known. Beside his books were several of the red volumes. Curious, he took one and opened it up. In English, were notes. Things about the world he had created. details he hadn't thought of. Things he han't put in his books. All written in plain English as if the author had been writing a travel log. Unbidden, the young man's voice cam up to him, "Come see how." Now they traveled again through t he labarenthine ship, coming to a small door. runes had been etched in the door and on the wall. Another plaque read "Monky in the Middle." A gesture of the youngman's hand, and the door slid into the wall. The floor walls and cieling were carved with runes. Two things stood out. One was a pool near the center of the rectangular room. The surface was about waist high. The water swirled, dropping into infinity in a whirlpool. Looking into it made him dizzy. At the far end of the room was an arch. The young man was standing in front of the arch, hands palm down out in front of it, the runes on the arch were glowing a dark blue. He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, and he got goosebumps all over. a roaring sound filled his mind, drowning out the ship's great engines. Lighning snapped and crackled between different areas of the arch and between the arch and the young man. The glow of the runes completely enveloped the arch and spread to fill the space formed by the arch. He felt rather than heard the snap that shook his old frame and made him see spots. When his vision cleared, he saw the young man standing in front of th eportal, waiting. through the portal he could see the view from a hill seeing out over a farmers fields. Teh young man lost his patience and dragged him through. Nausea and vertigo overwhelmed him. He felt like something was trearing his body into atoms, and puting them back togather again, but somehow not quite right. Then they were standing on the hill. Teh arch was behind them, showing th einside of the room they had just left. "Now you see the source of my information. While you draem, I wander an infinite omniverse where somewhere, some persons dream is replicated on a universal scale." He laughed, and swepted his arm the indicate the countryside, and a column of men marching at the base of the hill. The old man watched with horror as the dark banner splashed with blood that was the trademark of the evil villian in his books waved above the soldiers as they marched past. "This monkey did a good job, now, didn't it? Trust me, you're not alone, though I show this to few people. You're one of the more graphic writers that I know, and it's difficult enough knowing what you write about a character's love life, and then having to talk to them. Imagine what they would think of your books." The old man's mind spun as they repeated th eprocess of traversing the portal, and the whiskey he found stopped working when he was told it was made in the universe he just saw.
The well-built man said in a funny accent that sounded somewhat Chinese: "Having died before adulthood, you will automatically be admitted to your own personal heaven with 72 virgins. It's your choice which ones are men and which are women." Me: "You mean that stuff was all true? How strange. I do feel sort of lucky that I died before reaching adulthood, else I'd be burning in a lake of fire now. Ah well. So what do I do next?" The man waves his hand in the general direction of a seemingly endless long counter about 100m behind him. "Go over to them, they'll handle you. Give them the reference code AY992133, if you don't, you won't be able to get in." "Alright, thanks!" I make my way over to the counter, at which is seated a short, fat Asian man with an exposed abdomen (he's more "chubby" than he is fat, one could say) and very large wings compared to the man I'd just seen. Upon noticing I was there he put down his bowl of rice and scooted his chair up to the desk. I hand him my reference number scrawled on a small sheet of paper. Taking it from me, he says "Ah, right this way please" and an opening in the counter appears. I walk thru, and I follow him back until we reach a small metal box. "Go ahead, open it!" he says. I remove the top, and there's a flash of light. Suddenly, I find myself in a large "bubble dome" oasis with many women and many men, all of whom are bare naked. The man's there too, and he's smiling. He pulls a small cellphone-like device from his pocket and hands it to me. "You can use this to hear announcements. If you want to go into the lobby area, you can use that door over there. Due to not being allowed in anybody else's heaven without express permission, we ask that you come to the front desk and ask others to be paged if you wish to meet them. Over there, there's a wall panel that slides out and reveals an entry to the next room. The next room is whatever you want it to be at the moment. It'll take a couple weeks for your wings to firm, so don't try to move them or you may get injured. I'll be leaving now!" It then struck me, the man was Lao Zi. He looked exactly like I'd seen him in pictures... I asked him, "If you weren't a Monotheist, let alone a Muslim, how did you get here?" He said, "Generally, if you have good conduct in hell for your first year, you're given reevaluation and if you are shown to have a good heart, then your sins are forgiven and you are allowed to come to heaven. However hell isn't a lake of fire, it's personalised, like heaven. Well, I'll be leaving now. You can see me at the front desk if you need me."
