It was one of those days. My clanky old VW had been bleeding oil again and was in the shop, so I had to walk all the way home after football practice. Normally I wouldn’t have minded so much, as it’s only two miles down the highway. But I’m usually beat after practice, and it had been an unusually rough one today. 

I’d probably have some new bruises tomorrow. The running backs seemed to enjoy plowing right over me, mighty third-string linebacker that I am. I’m on the thin and short side, compared to the other Juniors, and I guess compared to the Sophomores and some of the Freshmen too. A late bloomer, is what I hope. Coach says I’m a scrapper, but you can only scrap so much when the other guy has 50 pounds on you.

I shifted my backpack from one sore shoulder to the other.  A light October breeze stirred up and whispered over the fields along the rural Oregon road, a background to the light gravel crunch of my footsteps along the edge of the road.

I could have bummed a ride from someone, but I didn’t feel like making conversation. Not that I’m antisocial or anything—I get along okay with the guys on the team. Still, I wasn’t really friends with any of them. And my actual buddies, Wes and Shaun, didn’t do football—they were in the marching band.

Several cars and a pickup truck passed by as I walked. The pickup had its windows down and was blaring a Springsteen tune. It zipped straight down the lane without giving me any extra margin of space. Not eager to be clipped by a 55-mile-an-hour Chevy, I had to hop further back from the roadway and into the dried weeds of the barrow pit.

The jerk.

The late afternoon shadows of fence-posts stretched across the road like yardage lines marking my progress. A few minutes later I was cresting a low rise and could see our place not far down the road.

Dad and I lived in a small farmhouse with a well-maintained lawn and white pole fence.  And there was Dad, out in front of the calf weaning pen just past the house. He had started on my chores for me and was hoisting a white plastic five-gallon bucket, sloshing with water, up over the weathered plank fence and plonking it down into the pen.

He saw me as I walked up and cracked his usual smile. “How was practice, Dev? Coach Meadows have you running like last time?”

I shook my head, looking at the handful of red calves dappled with white spots. They came over and nosed the water for a bit, still slow to take to anything that wasn’t mother’s milk.

“Nah, Coach was chill today. He worked with the offense--our receivers just can’t seem to get the playbook down. The D stuck mostly to tackle drills with Stuart.”  I slipped my backpack off my shoulders and set it down. “Any word on the bug?” I asked, stretching my sore arms and shoulders slowly.

The calves started to scuffle playfully, stirring up dust laced with a tang of dried manure. Dad said, “Your VW is still at Rick’s. I stopped by earlier—he still hasn’t managed to figure out the leak. Might could be he has to replace the oil pan.”

“As long as it gets fixed,” I replied. “It can’t be more expensive than all that oil I’ve been putting in.”

“Yup,” said Dad, and turned to me. He was a sun-weathered, round-faced man in his mid-fifties, blue eyes twinkling from under his dusty green farmer cap with the seed company logo. He said, “You look tired, son. I can finish up here and hay the calves tonight. I ain’t done much today except drive a load of wheat to the depot for your uncle. You can go on in and get some supper.”

I nodded my thanks, grabbed my backpack, and headed toward the house. Dad was a crusty, hard-working family farm operator, less successful than his brother Dale who owned the large fields across the road from our place, but still managing to pay operating costs each year with enough for starting up the next year.

He was a good man and a great dad; we’d always been close. He didn’t push me too hard on the chores during football season. If he needed an extra hand and I wasn’t around, he’d sometimes hire some of the Mexican migrant laborers who worked for Uncle Dale and lived in the old trailer house at the edge of Dale’s property.

I kicked up a flittering layer of small, gold-yellow sycamore leaves from the sidewalk up to the front door, and they swirled in the late afternoon sun. I was soon at the kitchen table, eating chili con carne straight from the can.

Hey, don’t judge me. I was really tired.

About a half hour later Dad came in as I was finishing up my math homework. We chatted a bit, and then he settled in front of the TV to watch the evening news and then latest episode of the Cosby show. I joined him, and we chuckled together along with the laugh-track at the antics of the Huxtable family. 

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After the show I went upstairs to bed. Most nights I read for an hour or two, and usually drift off while I read. On my shelf, there was a stack of school library books with a few I hadn’t started yet. I rummaged through the stack and picked Swords and Ice Magic by Fritz Leiber. I'd not read anything of Leiber’s before, though the cover art looked cool—there was a big Conan-type barbarian and a smaller cloaked thief, posing in front of a misty snow-covered mountain.

The book was a recommendation from Mrs. Simmons, the school’s elderly librarian. She had taken to giving me suggestions after noticing how I had read my way through half of the fantasy section over the last couple years. She was pretty cool for an elderly librarian, that Mrs. Simmons.

After changing into my plaid PJs I turned on my bedside lamp, got comfy, and started reading the slightly yellowed first page of the book. I probably lasted all of two paragraphs before I was asleep.

* * *

I woke up with a sudden start, feeling a fierce chill.

I woke to absolute insanity.

I found myself suspended in midair, arms outstretched, floating high up above white clouds. I was flying or floating, my torso and arms held up—suspended in position by some unknown force.

Blinking rapidly, I felt an intense panic mixed with vertigo. There was no floor—I was just hanging there, somehow, in the air.

I croaked out something in a weak attempt at screaming in panic. Wild-eyed, I looked around to discover that I was only one of many bodies suspended high up in the air. We all hung suspended in the blue-white sky, the ground a distant blur of green far below.

I swallowed, mastered myself just enough to choke out a “Hey you! Hey there!” to a woman floating some 20 yards in front of me.  Her back was turned towards me. She had long brown hair—and she was entirely unclothed. It dawned on me that it wasn’t just her—everyone else was without clothing. A quick glance down confirmed that I was too.

I was way too panicked and astonished at the bizarre situation to even think about embarrassment.

I yelled again, trying to catch the woman’s attention.  She didn’t seem to hear me. She looked asleep.

Looking to my sides, I found other people were fairly near me to my right and left, their arms outstretched too, facing the same direction. They were about the same distance from me as the woman. The position we were all in made it seem as if we were all being somehow crucified to the air behind us. Arms out, but heads slumped down and forward, as if we were all asleep.

To my right floated an old man with scrawny arms and a wispy beard. To my left, a portly man hung suspended. He had a thick, jowled face and a sagging gut.

Their eyes were shut, and they were motionless, just like the woman.

We were all suspended at the same height, with what must have been hundreds or maybe even thousands of others, all spaced out evenly in a grid pattern stretching out into the distance as far as I could see.

I yelled a bit more, but no one stirred. It seemed that only I was awake.

I tried moving my arms and legs and found that with enough effort I could, but only slowly. There was a strange resistance, like moving underwater.

It was so cold. I was so confused. I slowly pulled myself into a fetal position and kept looking around, wild-eyed. I started shivering as the chill air continued to bite at my bare skin.

The feeling of vertigo got worse. I blinked away tears from the chill breeze, and noticed movement in the distance, along a row of floating bodies. It was a glowing sphere, a sort of blue neon bubble.

The sphere-bubble looked glassy and shimmered like the haze above a fire. It was maybe twice the size of the bodies, slowly floating down a row which was a couple over from mine.

As I watched, I saw it move up to a body and then right over it, swallowing the person up inside itself. It stopped. After a few seconds it moved again, leaving the person behind and heading toward the next in the row.

It gradually grew closer. Suddenly, it turned away from its path along the row and shifted into higher speed, heading directly towards me. 

I may have screamed in terror. And as I may have been doing so, I realized vaguely that I had marked myself as different. Out of all these floating bodies, I was the only one craning my head around, pulled into a different position, and making noises.

Then the blue bubble was upon me, swallowing me into itself. Everything went a dark azure.

I felt a wave of almost-painful tingles move from my head down to my feet. After a moment, the feeling of panic faded—and all sensation began drained away at a steady rate, like someone slowly turning down a volume knob on a boom box. The cold faded. I started to feel tired. My thoughts slowed and slowed to a stand-still. Finally, my sight faded, a wave of darkness closing in on all sides.

My mind clicked off.

* * *

I sat up in bed, breathing hard, the book tumbling off my chest.

What a messed up dream, I thought.

My heart was beating a thousand times a minute. I forced myself to breathe slowly. I still felt cold.

The digital alarm clock on my bedstead showed 2:36 am. I fumbled for the book and set it back on the nightstand as I reviewed what had just happened – what the hell had I just dreamed?

It was still so clear: there were people in the air, asleep or unconscious. All of us floating in orderly rows. The blue sphere swallowing me… the tingling, and the mind-numbing oblivion.

Just a very, very vivid dream, I thought.

And then I noticed I was not in PJs. They were neatly folded up beside the bed.