Are you sure you don't have
your keys? Yes, yes. I believe
you it's just that I keep hearing your purse jingle and maybe - no no,
it's fine. I've got the couch it's
a futon. Where else would you sleep? I'm not going to put you on the floor. But
you could try calling your roommate? I know you texted her but - no it's no trouble it's just -
careful of the steps there.
Oh! Okay nope, those are my bits there. Let's let go
of those. No it's okay - no need to say sorry.
But you're sure you don't have
your keys?
----------------------------------------
“Bruce,” the lights blear across his vision.
“Bruce! Are you reading me?” The lights commune, canary speckled crimson.
Bruce shakes his head, but thinking doesn't seem to work. He finally just says it out loud. “Yea, hey spooky voice?”
“Oh shit, you're there! You're there! Thank the stones!” If spotty flashes of light could sparkle with excitement... well they do. “Reception's a little staticky, let me just adjust some things.”
“Damn, I can't even stand straight like this,” Bruce is fast losing his sense of up to an inter-dimensional vertigo, and forecasts project a 70 percent of falling right the fuck down.
“Well don't wake up!”
“I'm not asleep, man, dang.”
“But we're deep into your scheduled night cycle! Why –“
“You're making me dizzy -” Bruce reaches out a hand towards the most lethal, threateningly-near table corner just in case.
”Just... why don't you just lie, uh, down or something?” The lights provide, which seems a sensible and practical suggestion. “Why are you awake this late, you terrestrial ape?”
“Girls, man,” Bruce tremulously and carefully stoops, then slumps, then splays. Back down to the rug, and rest spread-eagle. “Girls. It's super weird I can't decide whether I'm hearing you or seeing you,” Bruce sighs, wiggling his eyebrows and digging fingers idly through fibers of warm ugly carpet.
“Oh I see, yes. Sorry about that. Don't get me wrong it's way better reception out here but I've lost all my good equipment. Got this whole thing patched together with wishes and prayers. Not to mention your language subgroup spans all the wrong parts of your brains. It's a miracle I reached you at all.”
“You scared me for a second there spooky voice, thought I was having a stroke. How about you leave me alone man.” He closes his eyes and finds it's easier to read the backs of his lids than his ceiling.
“Ridiculous. Bruce, you're the only connection still responding!”
“Give me eight reasons to give a shit, brother,” Bruce sings in a hushed halfhearted falsetto. He idly notices that tonight the quality of his echo tastes like the welcome difference between dormancy and absence.
“Because you're my last chance to finally - The kingdom! I can't possibly reestablish... wait. Why... eight?” The light... sputters?
“Because I'll get bored halfway through your list and’ll ignore you anyway,” Bruce yawns matter-of-fact. “You know, I haven't had your dream in a while. What ah, what's up with you?”
There was some shakiness in the motes, like the grunting exertion of a flashlight doing it's first real shift of manual labor. “You wouldn't believe it! I've been having a terrible time. I lost my home, I was on the run! And now I'm living like a criminal, with criminals. Criminal! ME!”
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“That sounds tough spooky voice,” Bruce murmurs, fractionally sympathetic. He thumbs his toes clumsily to slide off his socks one after the other. “Things are pretty good on my end. School's good. Parents are good. I literally have a cute girl on my couch right now. So you know, things looking up,” Bruce wiggles an unused part of his motor cortex experimentally and it brushes against a thread of something appropriately impossible. Pleased, he starts to try to conceive of a way to tug on it. “Super glad to hear from you. Check in 6 months from now?”
“No! Bruce! It's imperative that we correct this course! The device! The device I sent you,” flash the lights.
“Oh the thing. Right.”
“You remember the schematic?”
“Hard to forget.”
“Good! Wonderful! YES! This is going to sound crazy,” the lights gird themselves, “but you must BUILD the device! It's essential that-”
“Dude, of course I'm going the build the thing. Don't be stupid.”
“You... you are?”
“It's the coolest idea I've ever had, spooky dream voice. Obviously, I'm'onna build the fuckin' thing,” Bruce chuffs in indignation.
“Your... idea?”
“Yea, its gonna get me an A fuckin' plus on my Seniors thesis,” Bruce can't quite help but feel proud about that. ”Listen man, I gotta go get the girl some water and a puke-bin. So how about... we have you...” Bruce manages to get a bit of his good brain meat around the string, and Minerva baby-bears a crude synthetic muscle memory whose purpose is solely to yank.
“Bruce, no! What are you doing?”
“...fuck right the fuck off, thanks!”
“If you break the connection on your end I won't be able to -” and as the string gives, the lights kick out and the half-dream unravels. His eyes open to the cool shadow-blue of his ceiling. Bruce is alone with the hum of his sleep-mode computer desktop and the restless air. And his guest.
With a pleased, easy smile, Bruce elbows himself to a seat and then back afoot. He shudders, just to get the last bit of ick out of his system, and pads towards the cupboard in search of his last clean cup.
----------------------------------------
A muffled thrumming headache stirs Kelsey awake, no that's not a headache, that's a voice. Her eyes creak open, sticky with sleep. No, wait it's both. That's a second trimester headache in the making. Major intervention necessary, else an eighteen year misery.
“Ungh,” she groans as her neck seems not to want to pivot her head upright. “Hello?” She sees an unfamiliar ceiling first. Then walls with posters from movies she's not familiar with. No, those aren't movies. They're just... buildings. Like swimsuit pinups but for skyscrapers.
“Oh hey, you should have some water,” says a Boy voice. His face resolves in the dark as he gently guides her hand to a cup.
“Oh, score,” Kelsey murmurs, grasping out with her other hand to touch his arm, sliding down and off to a necessary double fisted beverage security. “I got the pretty one.”
“You like the... cup?” The Boy asks, because he's a dummy.
Kelsey slurps at her Hs and Os grinning ungracefully, her hair a birds-nest, and then squirms luxuriantly into the futon blanket combo. “Mmmm. Thanks.”
“Of course. You doing okay? You need anything?” He asks, putting his hand down on the corner of the blanket.
Kelsey rolls her knee under the cover and over to intercept it. “I'm good,” she croons. “Huh.” It occurs to her that she's got an unfamiliar texture on her torso, and looking down sees a stranger's tee. “This isn't my shirt,” she says without alarm.
Boy blushes intensely. “You ah, you ah, you sort of kept trying to take off yours,” he says apologetically. “We compromised and I gave you ah... one of mine.”
Kelsey nods, that makes sense. “Mmmm, boy shirt,” she says confirming her favor. “Was it sexy though?”
“Sorry? I uh...“ Boy stammers. ”Tell you what. Maybe in the morning, if you still feel like taking it off I can tell you if it's sexy then.”
Kelsey approves. Yes, good Boy. She hands back the cup.
He stands to go back to bed but that's unacceptable. “No,” she commands, grabbing at his arm again. He hesitates, sets the cup aside.
“I can't.”
“Just sleeping,” she demands peevishly, grasping at his hands and his shoulders, and with hesitant flagging resistance the Boy slides up the covers and under.
She wraps his arms around her belly and tucks back against his body. Satisfaction.
“Who were you talking to,” she purrs.
“Oh. I was half asleep, it's just – I just had a weird dream. I keep having it.”
“Like a recurring dream?”
“Yea.”
“I used to have this dream where I'm like, picking up bags of sand.”
“Sand bags?”
“Yea but like little tiny ones. With strings. And I'm like in a library, or like a grocery store, or I mean it changes. But I keep picking up bags of sand and they keep getting heavier. And like, I'm supposed to find them. And I'm supposed to give them to somebody, but there's nobody there. So I just am walking around like aaahhh! With all this sand and it's like omigod. Like I keep going and going until I can't move, and then I'm just like uhhhhhhhhh,” Kelsey finished into a laughing grunting bleat of a groan. She flings out her hands in emphasis. Feels the heat of the Boy's breathy chuckle.
“Dreams are dumb,” Bruce murmurs into Kelsey's hair as his embrace presses more firmly, a brief breath-stealing squeeze.
Kelsey smiles placidly and squeezes shut eyes, nestling to get the barest feel of Bruce's jawline against her temple, and the warmth of him matched to the warmth of her like a promise to morning.
“Dreams are dumb,” she whispers back. Then she sets down all the sand, and leaves it in yesterday.