Fiction

Each and every one of us has a power. A gift. A talent trapped in the abyss of the soul, just waiting to unfold. The majority of us don’t succeed in finding these powers. We don’t look for them because we don’t even know we have them. If these powers within us were discovered, the world would change. One chilly November day, a man discovered one of these gifts. He unlocked the gift of dreams. The dreamer can go anywhere—into distant lands and galaxies, beyond the limits of space and time itself.

It had been three months since seventy-year-old Martin McAllen lost his wife, Rachel. And since her death his heart had remained torn in two. His grief lingered like a fog over the silent graveyard of what was left of his life.

Martin was on his computer, half-heartedly searching for any help. He explored dozens of websites, programs, and even audios. Nothing worked. Martin rubbed his tired, sad eyes with his hands, and sighed. He gave up trying to search, and turned off his computer. He felt tears well in his green eyes. He brushed his fingers through his snow-white hair. He began to cry as he felt the now familiar hopelessness take over.

He sat up from his couch, and gazed around his small house: two blue armchairs where they used to sit, an empty table he had made for her decades ago, and out a large window that showed her dying flower garden. The chill of autumn had begun to put all the plants in the garden into a deep sleep.

He could feel her absence everywhere. He felt like with Rachel’s death, he was the ghost left behind, alone in a house that once belonged to two lovers. Martin could still smell traces of her vanilla perfume. And when he turned to the armchairs, he hoped she would still be there, smiling at him. But he knew she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. He ached as he thought of her now, buried in the soil of Mother Earth.

There was a sudden knock on the door, piercing the silence. Martin walked out of the living room towards the front door, and gripped the brass knob. He opened it, and there stood a young black boy, no older than twelve, with a white T-shirt and fine blue jeans. The boy’s head was shiny and bald.

“May I help you?” Martin asked.

“I am here to help you,” said the boy, his dark brown eyes staring at Martin.

“Who are you?” Martin asked.

“My name does not matter,” the young man replied.

Martin sighed. “Young man, if you’re trying to pull a practical joke on me, I would like it if you would just leave.”

Martin began to close the door, but the boy caught his attention when he said: “Martin, I want to help you.”

He stared at the boy and was surprised to hear himself reply. “No one can help me.”

The boy’s eyes gleamed in the autumn sun. The boy insisted. “May I come in?”

Martin hesitated. Every bit of common sense told him to shut the door, but his soul told him to trust this strange boy. “Very well,” Martin obliged. He opened the door and the boy walked in. He stared around Martin’s house, his dark eyes rolling over the furniture like waves on the beach.

Martin shut the door as the boy took a seat in Rachel’s empty chair. “Sit,” he said as he gestured to the open seat. Martin sighed. He walked over to his chair, and sat down, clasping his hands together. He looked at the boy, whose deep dark eyes were burning into his own. Martin almost felt as if the boy could see into his very soul. “So…how can you help me?” Martin asked.

“Each person has a gift, a purpose,” the boy began. “We all have the ability to do great things. To unlock hidden potentials we never knew we had.” Martin parted his lips to speak, but the boy cut him off. “People today fail to find these powers. No one even stops to feel the air in their lungs, nor do they stop to see the world around them. Many have forgotten what it is to be truly alive. I am here to tell you, that you have the gift of Dreams, locked up tight in your soul.”

Martin began to feel uneasy but he tried his best not to let it show. “You came to my house, just to tell me a fairy tale?”

The boy shook his head. “No, it’s all true,” the boy replied. “I have the gift of Sight. I can look anywhere, anytime. I can also look into people’s souls. That’s how I found you.”

Martin rubbed his eyes. “Tell me,” he started. “How are you going to help me?”

The boy shifted his weight in the armchair. “I am going to help you overcome your pain,” he said.

Martin thought about kicking the boy out of his house. But again, something told him to trust this boy. “Fine,” he said flatly. “Proceed.”

Then boy said softly: “I know that you lost your wife.”

Tears started to well in Martin’s eyes; he nodded.

“When someone dies, they never leave us. They still remain in our lives in a way most don’t understand. Death is an illusion; a trick on the mind and soul.”

He leaned closer to Martin. “Your wife isn’t quite dead, Martin.”

Suddenly, Martin felt a strange tingling feeling spread from his aching heart to the tips of his fingers.

Then the boy sat up. He touched Martin in the center of the forehead with his four fingers, then he started towards the door. He turned back to Martin again. “Before you go to sleep, Martin, think of your wife. Think long and hard. You will see her again. Then you will know what to do. ”

Stunned, Martin only nodded, then the boy disappeared out the door.

That night, Martin lay alone in the bed that he once shared with his wife, staring at the ceiling. The stars shone bright in the sky, and out the window, the moon was a crescent. He thought long and hard about his wife, as the boy had instructed. He remembered when he took Rachel to the lake for a week, how they swam from dawn till dusk. He thought of their life until he finally dozed off.

Martin found himself in a golden field, the grass dancing in the wind. It was warm; everything seemed to glow in the rays of the sun. He remembered what the boy had said. He knew this must be a dream. But the air was so sweet, he could almost taste it.

“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing in the vast meadow. “Is anyone here?”

Suddenly, he heard a gentle women’s voice, like honey being poured from a pot. “Hello Martin.”

Martin turned around; it was Rachel. He began to sob like a little child when he saw his wife’s face again. She wore a beautiful white dress, like the one she wore on their wedding day. Her gray hair was in a ponytail, which danced in wind.

The two lovers embraced tightly. Martin’s felt the weight of his grief washing away, like dust in the river. Joy inundated him like a waterfall pouring into a crystal pond. Suddenly he understood that love can never die, that his sorrow had clouded his vision from seeing the truth that love is everlasting. Love is bigger than him, bigger than Rachel. It cannot be broken, stolen, or defeated by time, death, and decay. Love was never something he had that was taken from him. Love was always something that had him, had her, and had them still.

Rachel smiled wide. “When you wake, do not be afraid of your sorrow. It is a part of our footprint in time. You will walk for us until our steps join together once again. Go now. We are all leaves of the same tree. You are still green and thriving. I have withered away. I did my part. You need to continue yours until your time is done. The tree remains. Soon enough, we will be together again.”

Martin awoke. For the first time in months, he no longer felt alone. Same empty bed, same empty chairs, same lifeless garden, but he knew somehow, the whole world had changed.

Campbell Jenkins is a  fourteen-year-old  die hard fantasy fan, major bookworm, and  aspiring writer.For many years, members of his family have told him he is a born story-teller. He started off with a little comic book (which is not published) called The Adventures of Gus and Emit. As he matured, he began to fall in love with countless books, such as The Lord of the Rings and The Earthsea Cycle, and soon enough was inspired to write his own book. Ever since then, he’s been writing down hundreds of story ideas that come to mind, and  hopes that one day he can publish one.

Smoke hung like a storm cloud over the southern part of the city, thunderous blasts rumbling underfoot. Abandoned cars clogged the road, doors flung open as a pack of looters dug through glove boxes and suitcases. They wore black and gray, careful not to mark themselves with colors. Stuffing garbage bags full of watches and forgotten cell phones and GPS systems, they moved through the blocked stream of cars, smashing windows and whispering. Their eyes twitched toward the south, where flashes lit the dark morning.

“How’s it look?”

“Clear enough. Let’s go.”

Ben reached back and took his wife’s hand. Together, he and Shanna crossed Ridge Avenue, toward the east. They passed posters pasted on old stone walls, pointing to the ports on the Delaware River. UN SHIPS LOADING EVERY MORNING: 7-9, they read. Beneath them, others said MY BLOOD RUNS RED! DOES YOURS? and THEY BLEW THEIR CHANCE, SO GO BLUE! Ben and Shanna ignored those. They had been there for months, all over the city, plastered on top of each other until the walls encroached upon the sidewalk. Nobody thought much of it at first. The war was in other cities, not here in Philadelphia. Until it was here, in Philadelphia, and the UN’s posters covered the walls, helping people escape.

“We need to get to the river and follow it north,” Shanna said. “Then we just go to the first ship we see with people.”

“Almost there.”

“Almost.”

They continued heading east as the sun rose over the colonial buildings, shining on the narrow windows of empty homes. Distant gunfire popped and echoed through the streets. The stench of decaying trash became all too familiar, as was the scent of smoke. It stung their eyes and sent them into fits of coughing as the wind pushed the smoky storm cloud farther north and the gunfire and explosions didn’t seem as faint.

Crossing Broad Street, they saw the cracked clock tower of City Hall, crumbled and coughing smoke from its ornate, cream windowsills and mansards. They saw bodies. Corpses, dozens of them, their arms wrapped in red or blue tags, strewn between cars and near buildings whose walls were pocked and blackened from battle. They were splayed unnaturally, contorted and drooping like forgotten playthings. Some corpses had no red or blue identifications, but were mixed with the fighters, nonetheless. The traffic lights blinked red, but no one was alive to see them. Shanna covered her nose to mask the stench of death. They didn’t linger for long.

The couple passed under a bridge and by a park; they saw the sunlight bounce off the Ukrainian Cathedral; they watched a blue car tear by shouting slogans from its speakers; they saw tracer rounds chase it; they stepped over pamphlets and they stepped over torn, charred American flags. It was an hour of careful, watchful walking– surveying each street, eyeing potential exits– that brought them to Delaware Avenue and the river. Here, the sun twinkled on the dark water while the waves lapped the docks, the scents of war drowned by the odors of fish and seaweed. Ben took a deep whiff.

“Smell that, honey?”

“Dead fish never smelled so inviting,” Shanna said. She filled her lungs and looked north, upstream, where a single ship sat in the water. “There it is! The boat! See it? It has that light blue UN lettering on the bow.”

“Oh yeah, that must be it.”

Shanna beamed.

“We’re almost there.”

“Almost.”

It took another twenty-five minutes before they came to the dock. An old set of railroad tracks ran behind it with dozens of faded loading crates on the other side. The ship in the water was a civilian ship, about eighty feet long, with two main decks that were painted with the UN’s markings. Sailors walked the decks with UN helmets and light blue vests. None of them carried rifles or looked ready for a fight. They unloaded cases of bottled water and pallets of non-perishables. A half dozen people with guns did stand at the cement dock as the UN workers unloaded, but they weren’t wearing the UN’s helmets or light blue vests.

“Shit,” Ben said. He watched them, crouched in a grove just south of the port.

“Who are they? Red or blue?”

“What does it matter?”

Shanna didn’t respond.

“What do we do, now?”

“I mean, we still have to go, don’t we? It doesn’t change anything,” Shanna said.

“But-”

“But nothing. That boat is still our only way out and we cannot stay here. Not any longer.”

“Yeah. You’re right. You’re always right.”

Shanna kissed Ben on the cheek. They shared a shaky smile for a second.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

They emerged from the woods, their palms open over their heads. The crunching under their feet transitioned from leaves to the crackle of rocks and pebbles, but the fighters didn’t notice. As the couple got closer, they saw a camera crew on the sidelines, filming the unloading of goods. A reporter stood a few feet away, practicing a monologue while she looked at her makeup in a mirror, “– and they deliver the goods to those still trapped in the city, risking their lives in order to help the civilians in danger from the approaching opposition–” Their attention was so acutely spent on watching the north, that they failed to noticed the storm cloud lingering nearby.

One of the fighters spotted the couple. A blue band wrapped over his arms, another one tied to his combat vest. He raised his rifle and called out, “Stop where you are! Don’t move!”

“Is this the ship for the refugees?” Ben asked.

“Quiet! Bernard, help me search them.”

Another fighter came to his side. They were stone-faced, chalky from soot as they patted Ben and Shanna down with rough, heavy hands and threw their phones on the ground before declaring they were “clean.” All the while, the reporter giggled and dragged the cameraman closer to the couple, careful to frame the scene so the fighters were in the background. She touched up the powder that caked her nose and wiped her bangs away from her eyes before swallowing her smile and drooping her shoulders as though  carrying a heavy weight.

“Here we are,” she said. “With two refugees from the war, fleeing into the arms of our boys in blue. Tell us, what atrocities have you seen in the streets that have made you run from your home?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Ben said. “I just want to get out of here, okay?”

“Things are that bad, are they? The city defiled by the red horde and their traitorous ways. It is despicable, don’t you think?” she jabbed the microphone back at them.

“Lady, we just want to leave. Can you let us go?” Shanna said.

“Of course, of course. First, just tell me, have either of you experienced any personal turmoil from a family member or perhaps a friend taking the side of the enemy in this fight? A brother at odds with the family or a coworker who took up arms? That would be devastating and the country would be there for you if it happened.”

“Alright, that’s enough. Come on, Shanna,” Ben pulled his wife past the camera.

“Wait, can I ask for a statement of clarity on your current–”

A blast cut the reporter off. Past the railroad tracks, to the west, there was another explosion, followed by rattling gunfire. The fighters reacted like fighters, rushing towards the battle, pressing themselves into cover and shooting their rifles at the sounds of gunfire and the puffs of smoke, into the hazy fog of combat where figures were deformed and unidentifiable, simply silhouettes like the targets they practiced with, raining down shots with thunderous, echoing blasts from their rifles as the storm intensified. The reporter did her own shooting, directing the cameraman to keep rolling, plugging her ears with her fingers and shouting over the roar of the firefight. In the chaos, Ben and Shanna scrambled across the cement like ants caught in a rainstorm, making for their colony that was the ship. They clung to each other as bullets whizzed and snapped past. One of the soldiers called out in pain. The reporter wasn’t talking anymore. There were fewer gunshots and more cries. The bullets still whizzed and snapped. They could smell the sharp, burning air. UN workers shouted for them to hurry. Gunshots got closer. Another explosion. Rocks and debris fell like hail. Then a punch. It felt like a punch, but it was wet and hot and made Shanna scream when she saw the blood draining from her husband’s ribs. She got quiet when a punch landed on her, too. As her consciousness faded and darkness found her, the UN ship left the port and beyond it, across the Delaware, she saw an American flag tearing in the wind.

Joel Troutman is a young student who is far too interested in manga, anime, and hip-hop for his own good. He likes wearing sweaters and ties that make him feel professional, more writerly. His greatest achievement, up until now, is being the only player on his varsity soccer team to have never scored a goal.

The only drama in Poughkeepsie occurred at sundown. Chronic silhouettes of clouds were herded towards the steel cantilever deck of the High Bridge on the Hudson River. Rose-tinted film sketched outlines in the sky. Light scattered blue, hitting the river water and reflecting red-yellow, salmon and apricot. The shoulders of white pine, hemlock and black birch sat on the other side of the river and hummed the colors. Mesmerized passersby could not look away from the spectacle of cloud and color and sky.

Nora Bray sucked on her thumb, nursing a split fingernail, and decided that the sunset was a pathetic imitation of blood and thunder. The colors were foggy liked stained glass or the tracks of her bicycle in the dirt path. She kicked a rock into the water. Good fucking riddance, she thought as the sun folded itself on the wefted face of the Hudson River. She leaned back into the wooden bench, her limbs loose and her skin smoldering in the heat, and wondered whether her twin brother Nick would show up late again.

The twins met at the park down by the Hudson River every afternoon after Nick finished rounds of tennis with the varsity team. Sometimes he appeared seconds before the falling sun hit the water. Other times, he missed it entirely, the spotlight on his bicycle wobbling towards Nora in the night and his voice rolling off apologies for being late. This time, as Nora picked at her nail, Nick came flying around the corner, a racket on his back and sweat bleeding through his white shirt. His bicycle stopped short of the bench, and he drew long gulps of air.

“How was the show?” He asked. One forearm rested on the handles of the bicycle, and the other wiped his forehead.

“It just ended,” Nora replied dryly. She kicked the wheel of her bicycle, lying helpless on the ground next to her, for a melodramatic echo.

Night was blanketing the sky. The sun had finally crept below the surface of the river, fading into the water as though pulled underneath by a dark hand. Streetlights mumbled and chattered above their heads.

Nick yawned and gazed at the Hudson River. “I wish I’d seen it,” he said. Nora couldn’t hear if he was disappointed; she only wanted him to be guilty.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Nora spat. “But you usually miss them, anyway. It was a perfect sunset, just like all the other sunsets here.” Nora nodded towards a bench down the dirt pathway. A young man was pointing a camera lens at a copse of trees to capture the last of the sunset poking through. “Why do people take photographs of a phenomenon that happens every day? The sunsets aren’t going to go away. Only people do that.”

Nick paused and looked at his twin. Her arms were crossed over a black t-shirt, holes littering the bottom hem where her fingernails lingered and pried threads loose. Even if she wore blue or green or yellow, her shirt would have looked dark in the night anyway.

Nick couldn’t quite understand this about his twin sister. The lingering anguish. The immovable dissent. The lamenting. He stared blankly at her during her melancholy outbursts, tinted with cries of Woe is me! She complained when there was only crunchy peanut butter in the cupboard, and refused to try it, accusing their dad of buying it to spite her. Asked a smiling Nick, What are you plotting? Was convinced that a poor grade in European History meant she could never be a museum curator. After fifteen years, he was sick of the pessimism. The misplaced superiority. Happiness was a choice, wasn’t it? Nora, Nick believed, had exercised her right to vote.

“Why do you say that as if it has to be a bad thing?” he asked, leaning away from the handles of the bicycle.

Nora whipped around to face her brother. Stringy dark hair muddled her creamy complexion. Nick thought of the coffee their father drank in the morning, as he tipped too much half-and-half over the rim. Their father was probably sitting in the dimly lit kitchen, placemats and glasses of warm milk spread out on the table, across from three absent chairs. Two were accounted for in the park on the Hudson River. He would be wondering where his children were.

“Don’t you think it is?” she asked.

Her knuckles gripped the edge of the bench seat. They paled to bleach white as the air thickened to black around them, the night absorbing everything around the twins. The river and Nora’s bicycle lost their outlines and fused into the blackness of the night.

Years earlier, sitting upright in her bedroom, Nora once asked her mother where the furniture goes when the lights turn off. Six-year-old Nora pointed to a chest of clothes across from the bed, sheets and blankets swaddled her legs. Her mother sat near her feet.

“They go to sleep,” Nora’s mother said plainly. Her eyes were rust-covered pennies behind her wire-rimmed glasses. Nora forgot if her mother’s eyes were blue or green. She hadn’t seen them in years. “Things just curl up and go to sleep.”

Nora jumped from the bench, brought her bicycle upright, and hit the kickstand.

“Are we skipping family dinner again?” Nick asked. His eyes and shirt were luminous. Nora clambered on the seat of her bicycle.

Nora and her bicycle were rushing away from her brother, near the riverbank, and up the slope towards the High Bridge. Nick echoed her name. Nora! First uncertain, then hysterical. Nora! Nora!

            Nick realized he could not bear to lose another.

Nora could not turn around. She could bear to hear his voice, but would not look at his face. She felt weightless. She felt like she could fly. Nora shut her eyes, the wheels and screws of her bicycle cawing in protest. The air enveloped and enclosed her. She hoped the air around her would calcify into an oyster shell and drop her at the bottom of the Hudson River. Her balance faltered as she moved her hand to wipe away the tears that had dried into her skin, forming grooves on her cheeks. She opened her eyes.

But her eyes weren’t on the road. They were in the sky. Her bicycle had mushroomed from the paved road and was sailing above the heads of cars. She was flying westward. Nora sunk into the seat. Her feet and the pedals of the bicycle were in rotation. The wheels were like a band of light, depositing debris of gravel and dirt to the dark frontier beneath her feet. She heard the clatter of remains hitting the Hudson River. Nora flew above the High Bridge, past the tollbooths and above the city of Poughkeepsie.

A thousand feet below, Nick wheezed underneath the belly of the bridge. His bicycle slept sideways on the ground. He saw his sister’s silhouette fluttering like a burnt-black curtain against the mascarpone moon, and then dissolve out of sight.

Julia Gagliardi is a senior studying English and Sociology at Fordham University and has recently joined as a concentrator in the Creative Writing Program. She organizes live storytelling programs and researches storytelling curriculum as a form of civic engagement and emotional competence. She has been previously published in the Comma and Willamette Writers.