Imposter Syndrome | Theland E. Thomas

I turn the key in the door and step inside, greeted by a blast of cool air. The AC’s been left on. Wait. My house is completely empty. Not robbed, unlived. No furniture, no dishes, no pictures. I pace through the living room and the kitchen. Empty. Sterile. Pristine. Not a spot on the counter, not an imprint on the carpet. But this is my house. This is where I’m supposed to be. Like an intruder, I slink upstairs, peering past the railing into the vacant rooms. There’s a car alarm going off in the distance. Slowly, and with trepidation, I turn the knob to my bedroom and open the door. Everything is gone. My bookshelf, bed, desk, disappeared. Only the four white walls stare curiously back at me.

I back out of the room, slam the door, and rush down the stairs. Out the window, I see my mother’s golden sedan approaching from down the street. A slight smile forms on my face when I realize that the horn is blaring from her car. Why can’t she turn it off? As she pulls into the driveway, I take her keys out of my pocket and turn off the alarm.

Something shifts in the corner of my eye, and I turn to see my mom sitting on a tan couch,legs crossed.

“Hi,” I start to say, but out the window, mom is sitting in her car wearing all black, and here she is on the couch in a green blouse. A queasy feeling finds my gut, as I eye my mom. She stares at me oddly, silently. “Hi, mom,” I say. No response. I draw closer, but keep my distance. “How can you be here if you’re in the car?” No response.

There’s something eerily captivating about her, and I can’t tear my eyes away. There’s something a little off, and her shadow is a little too dark. Everything here is so strange, lonely, and unfamiliar. All of the love has been sapped from this house, except for this one piece of furniture with my mother sitting on it. She sits silently beckoning for me to come closer, welcoming me with unconditional love.

Suddenly, I don’t care if she’s a little off, I just want to be closer to her, to feel some love, to wrap up in her arms and sleep. I come closer and lean in for a hug, but she doesn’t meet me halfway or raise her arms. When I try to embrace her, I can’t. An invisible barrier keeps me away. I try to fight against it, but the force is too strong, and I step back. From far away, I hear the car alarm again.

Staring at me, my mother stands and walks in front of the door. Her head is to the side, and she looks from the corner of her eye. Now I can see what’s off with her features. They’re too sharp. Her eyes and brows are angled, her nose is larger and pointed, and her chin juts. A long, diabolical smile splits her face. She is not my mother. She is an imposter. A tingling uneasiness creeps up from behind. Her stare splits my being with a radiant darkness, pulsing in tune with the darkness in me.

Then her features begin to morph and shift, melting into something else. Someone else. Her eyebrows grow thinner, her features softer. Her hair bleaches blonde and, by some unseen force, wraps into a ponytail. This young woman still gazes into me, hypnotizing me with her breathtaking sensuality. I am her captive held in place and drawn toward her. My eyes follow her as she glides back to the couch and sits gracefully. Her body monopolizes my entire field of vision. Her eyes grip my heart, pumping it faster and faster.

Suddenly, I am overcome by arousal, and I rush to the couch. My hair stands on end as my hands wrap around her waist and brush back a blonde lock. I lean in for a kiss, but at the last second, just as I feel her hot breath, I look into her eyes and see orbs of endless black, swirling, undulating, expanding, and caving in upon themselves. Her eyes are a portal to another realm - the bulging gates barely holding back a hungry evil.

Stumbling, I jump back and fall. Outside, my mother’s car is empty. On the couch, the imposter has disappeared. Only the car horn grows louder and louder and louder and louder and louder until--

I awaken with a gasp on the floor of my bedroom, surrounded by a fluid darkness that seems to breathe and move. Before me is my black desk, but I can’t see it in the dark. Behind me, my black bed. I can’t see it, but I know it’s there. No floorboard creaks or rustling wind, only prowling silence. I wonder how long I’ve been sleeping.

Then, my sister opens the door behind me and comes into the room. With her, floats the sound of a video game she’s playing. I want to get up, to turn around and talk to her, but somehow, I can’t find the strength. My limbs and head weigh heavily, holding me in place. It’s like I’m stuck in the middle space between sleep and wakefulness. I start kicking my legs, calling her name. My foot hits my nightstand with each kick, but no matter how much I call, she can’t hear me. She just stands behind me, out of sight, playing her video game. Finally, I scream her name with all my might, but it just comes through as a weak, “Uhhhh….”

My sister hear this and says, “Wake yourself up then.”

As she speaks, I feel the darkness in the room bend and ebb behind me to where my sister stands. Then, I feel in my gut that’s it’s not my sister behind me, but some malicious imposter. The thing standing behind me was not my sister, but a being crafted from darkness with harmful intent. I must wake up!

I kick faster, scream as hard as I can, filling the house with sound, sending the lamp and other objects crashing from the nightstand and the desk. I grit my teeth and close my eyes, but when I open them again, everything is the same. There is no sound, nothing has fallen, and the evil presence still lurks behind me. I scream at the top of my lungs, but all I can hear is that weak, “Uhhhh....”

Drifting again, I open my eyes to see my sister’s feet and pink pajama pants. She is standing over me, but it isn’t her. Panic screams for me to move, but I can’t. And when I blink, she is replaced by shadows blacker than the darkness of the room. The shadows hover over my body, pressing me down, trying to seep in. I feel the material force of malevolence strengthening behind me. Even though I can’t turn around, I can see it hovering in the air, slowly swirling behind me.

Like a fog, the blackness descends, close enough for a kiss. Its limbs wrap around my neck, gripping like a hug, like a noose, constricting my breathing, tightening, leaving me gasping for air. I squirm and scream,  but it only comes out as, “Uhhhh…. Uhhhh…. Uhhhh!”

Imagination Spacemobile | Theland E. Thomas

Finally, the kid jumped up in class and shouted, “I don’t want to do this anymore! I want to be something! I want to do stuff! I want to have fun!” He leapt onto the desk, the students gaped in awe, and the menacing teacher lumbered toward him, monstrous mouth commanding control. He refused to be seated, to fall in line. Enraged, the teacher’s face began to contort, the features of her eyes replaced by a sinister glowing red. She screamed for him to sit, and as she growled, a lightning hot laser beam shot from her mouth. But the kid was too nimble. He danced to the side and karate kicked the teacher in the face, causing the students to rise up and cheer. Slithering on the floor, the teacher started to transform into a giant reptile, tail whipping back and forth under her dress. She stumbled up and spewed lasers indiscriminately, striking students at random. The kid took a running start and smashed through the window.

Torpedoing out with glass and lasers flying all around him, the kid plummeted toward the ground. A deafening roar shook the earth, shattered the windows, and blew the leaves from the trees. And just before he hit the ground, the kid thought, You know what would be cool? A spacemobile! And then was sitting in a pilot seat, and he grabbed the controls, and thrusted upward into the sky. He was free! Soaring in the clouds, untethered, unbound.

Down below, the hopeless students, workers, and slaves, looked up and saw the spacemobile shooting from one horizon to the other. Bewildered, they looked down at their shackles and back up at the child and asked, “Little boy, what powers that spaceship?”

He called down, “The power of my imagination!”

And then they cried, “But how did you get free?”
And he repeated, “Through the power of my imagination!”

And the slaves looked down at their chains and imagined they were free, and their shackles fell off. When their masters come with gleaming eyes and screaming mouths, the freed men imagined that they too had spacemobiles to escape from the deadly laser beams. Under the leadership of the boy, the freed men grew into an army of Imagination Fighters, spreading freedom across the earth. Across the sky they flew, opening the minds of all who saw them.

The masters of the world hated him, for his power was a great equalizer. While the masters would have their slaves toil for their wages, the Liberated men could imagine that they had enough to eat and it was so. While the Liberated went about setting up Heaven on Earth, the masters waged war against the boy and his army.

As he flew, they trained their rockets on Utopia and fired. Red streaked the sky and heat parted the clouds, and all the world stopped for the piercing squeal of missiles headed toward Utopia. But the Liberated could not be so easily defeated. They simply imagined that the great city had a magnificent shield that could obliterate missiles. The bombardment met with an invisible force field in an awesome display of fire and crashing, but the people resided in quiet safety.

Then the boy led an elite squad of Imagination Fighters to the leader of the masters to try to spread the good news of his wonderful gift. At the palace, he walked through halls of gold and white and was led by guards to a throne room. The master of the masters reclined on his throne. His belly stretched against his robes, and his golden crown titled lazily in his grey mane. Sneering, he bellowed, “So this is the child that’s caused me so much trouble! Tell me, little one, don’t you know the order of things?”

“No”, the kid replied simply, “I left school.”

The master of the masters chuckled dryly, then his face fell flat. He approached the boy until his massive body towered over him. Looking down his nose he pointed down at him. “Child, you need to learn this truth and learn it well. Imagination isn’t real and it never will be. This world that we, the masters have created, is the only thing that exists.”

The boy laughed out loud. “That’s not true!”

“It is the greatest truth. You have to abandon your silly fantasies and learn to be practical. Then you can live up to your full potential as a contributing member of society.”

Impassioned, the boy stepped back and spoke expressively. “But your society isn’t fair! With the power imagination, people can be all they can be!”

The master of the master’s eyes flashed red, and a shock of scales erupted across his skin as quickly as they disappeared. “I told, you, you need to forget those child’s fantasies and live in the real world or we’ll have to beat them out of you.” He roared, “Imagination has no power!”

The boy yelled back, “You’re lying!”

With that, the master of the masters let his true colors show. His skin transformed and was covered with scales of grey and gold, and he expanded in height and size until he lumbered over 10 feet. His silken robes stretched and ripped, and his crown looked comical atop his oversized head. His face was no longer human. His jaw protruded, revealing dripping fangs, and his reptilian nose matched his gleaming, angular eyes. And his roar shook the entire palace.

With the roar, a blazing fast laser beam blasted from the monster’s mouth toward the boy, who somersaulted away just in time to avoid becoming a smoking hole in the floor. Shrieking, the cowardly guards scurried away. Then, the boy imagined that he had a laser beam deflection shield in one hand, and a laser blaster in the other, and he ran circles around the master, shooting lasers in every direction. But the lasers only burned through the robes and deflected off the scales, shattering lights on the chandeliers and ruining the banners that hung on the walls.

The master bellowed, “You’ll pay for this disruption, child!” His scaly tail swept back and forth and knocked the boy to the ground. Winded, the boy squirmed as the monster stomped around him, crushing the stone floor. The master spat, spraying the boy with tiny, searing beams.

The boy rolled back to his feet and shot a few useless blasts at the towering humanoid dragon, but the monster just spread his arms and uttered a deafening cackle as the laser bounced away from him. “You’ll never defeat me!” He laughed, “Your imagination is useless!”

Then, an idea sprang into the child’s mind. He smiled, breathing in the sizzling air. “No it isn’t!”

On both sides of the shredded throne room, the walls exploded as two large, red-plated orbs bounced in. When they reached the monster, the orbs unraveled revealing two giant armadillos. The armadillos had bright blue eyes and razor-sharp claws, and they circled around the master, looking down on him and grunting. The master of the masters shifted back and forth and turned around, realizing that there was no escape from his predicament. In disbelief, he cried, “You - you can’t do this!”

The boy grinned from ear to ear. “Yes, I can. I can do anything I put my mind to.” With that, he walked away as the imaginary armadillos began tearing into the monster.

After overthrowing the master, the boy was able to spread the power of imagination to the entire world and establish an egalitarian society where nobody was in want and everyone could live up to their potential. The Imagination Fighters grew in numbers and strength until they were able to use their imagination spacemobiles to spread the power of imagination from planet to planet, slowly chipping away at the iron grip of the masters. Soon, the boy grew into a man - a handsome, formidable warrior and the strongest wielder of imagination known to the Cosmos. Under his leadership, the Imagination Fighters blossomed into an elite army of humans and alien species from all of the freed planets.

One fateful day, when warring to free a human planet, the man found himself fighting alongside a formidable warrior - a woman whose talent was unsurpassed, and whose beauty even he could not imagine. From then on, they stuck together. They married - an unstoppable power-team of strength and love. The childlike wonder that fueled their imagination was also the source of their strength, and it drew them closer day by day, year by year, as they hopped from planet to planet empowering the powerless.

But after years of steadily losing huge expanses of the galaxy to the Imagination Fighters, the masters decided to form an Interplanetary Coalition to put a stop to their antics once and for all. The Coalition formed a sealed perimeter around Imagination-occupied galactic space and started corrupting freed planets again. Soon, entire planets were losing faith in the power of imagination and accepting that the masters were right all along. If asked about their time in Utopia, the reconquered would simply say,

“It was all a dream.”

“A fantasy.”

“None of it was real.”

Losing space fast, the Imagination Fighters had no choice but to attack the coalition head on. The man and his wife lead the Fighters to the frontlines. It was a battle like none other seen in the history of the universe. The Fighters waged war, surrounded on all sides by the evil Intergalactic Coalition, whose sleek, dark spaceships embodied the oppression they cast upon the galaxy. Their untraceable lasers were dark like the blackness, contrasting with the bright yellow beams from the Imagination Fighters. Alongside his wife, the man twisted and maneuvered, his imagination spacemobile, spiraling through lasers and wreckage. All around them, particles of friends and foe, obliterated into smithereens, the heat of laser beams against the unfathomable iciness of space in lightspeed flashes. They fought valiantly, but eventually the spinning and explosions stopped, and the man and woman hovered alone. They were the only Imagination Fighters left.

Around them, an enclosed sphere of Coalition ships trained their guns on them. There they sat in the still silence of space until half of the sphere parted, making way for what can only be described as a demon. It was an enormous, deep purple orb that hovered closer until to took up their entire field of vision. Protruding from the orb, were two humongous eyes that reflected deep space - or nothing at all - swirling streaks of stars flashing at a dizzying pace.

The man tried to imagine any scenario that would get him out of this situation. Any amazing feat, twist of fate, deus ex machina, but his imagination failed him. It was completely stunted in the presence of this monstrous demon.

Over the radio, the woman whispered, “I’m scared.”

The man whispered back, “Me too.”

Suddenly, a voice erupted from the orb, so deafening that they clasped their hands over their ears, only to realize that it blared from inside their own heads.

I AM THE GALACTIC OVERLORD. YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

The man replied, defiant. “I surrender to no one.”

The voice intensified, BY WHICH GROUNDS TO YOU DEFY ME?

“I fight for freedom, justice, and equality through the power of imagination. You fight power and control using fear and oppression. We will never surrender to you!”

The Galactic Overlord paused, as if considering. WHO IS “WE”? THERE ARE NO IMAGINATION FIGHTERS. EVEN NOW, WE ARE OVERTAKING THE FINAL STRONGHOLDS OF IMAGINATION AND ERADICATING THEM FROM THE GALAXY. YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

Tears welled up in the man’s eyes, and for a moment, he was just a boy again. He screamed, “That’s not true!”

YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME.

“You can’t defeat us,” he sobbed, tears streaming down his face. We have the power of imagination on our side! You can never stop us!” He strained to conjure up something, anything, to no avail. The giant orb pulsed, with what seemed like laughter.

YOU ARE BUT A CHILD. YOU THINK YOU HAVE POWER OVER ALL THE IMAGINATION IN THE UNIVERSE, BUT YOU NOT RECOGNIZE IT IN ITS PUREST FORM. BEHOLD THE TRUE POWER OF IMAGINATION.

His wife gasped, “It can’t be!” Suddenly, she was careening toward the demon, blasters firing, then she stopped, as if suspended, flames sputtering uselessly out the back of her spacemobile, yellow lasers hanging in space. A third black space opened up in the face of the demon, this time swirling with the deepest red the man had ever seen. Then, the universe was an ocean of blinding, blazing red. Then. Nothing. His wife… was nothing. Only the demon remained.

The man choked on his sobs, then they came in a long, continuous wail. He screamed as anguish flooded his mind and blotted out his thoughts, but even that anguish was overpowered by the chanting TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER TO ME YOU WILL SURRENDER

***

The master of the masters sat on his golden throne, swathed in thick, opulent robes. His grey beard spilled over his chest, and his dulled eyes squinted across the throne room as two guards dragged in a young boy. The boy wore tattered rags that were the same color as the dirt in which he toiled. But his eyes had a bright fire, and his face a set defiance that declared that, despite the guards’ shoving, he was here by choice.

The master recognized this attribute, and he squinted through his glasses as he approached the boy. Kneeling to the boy’s level, he looked into his fiery eyes. Finally he spoke. “I hear allegations that you’re spreading this imagination nonsense about. Is that true?”

The boy shouted back, “It’s not nonsense! It’s real!”

The master pursed his lips and shook his head. “You’re wrong, little child. Imagination is not real. It has no power. And you’d best stop spreading this foolishness before someone you love gets seriously hurt. Do you understand?”

The boy stared back at him intensely , even as the tears welled up in his eyes. “It’s not foolishness! You just don’t get it! We can make the world a better place! We can save the galaxy!”

Abruptly, the master stretched open his mouth and shot a searing, red laser through the boy’s heart. He sighed wearily, watching the small body crumple. As he strode back to his throne, he ordered, “Find that boy’s village and wipe it off the face of the earth.”

Flatscreen Television | Theland E. Thomas

After work. Sleeves rolled up, collar unbuttoned. The sun beats down, and the air is stagnant. My car has leather seats that burn the skin. I roll all the windows down before closing the door, and I turn the AC on full blast. It’s after 4, and I have to pick my sister up from work at 5:30. I could go home, but I don’t want to because once I do I’ll be there all night. There is nothing to do in this town and no one to do it with. I should get something to eat, as I’ve barely had any food today, but even though my stomach is growling, every fast food option seems disgusting.

This week I told my coworker I wanted to buy a flatscreen TV. I still have the old boxy cathode ray TV I’ve had for thirteen years, and I’ve wanted something with better picture quality for a while now, but every time I consider it, I conclude that I don’t need one. She said, “So? I have lots of things I don’t need.” So do I. I have a computer, a tablet, and a phone. I bought a bamboo plant this week. I have a lamp with a blue lightbulb in it. Hundreds of books. Sunglasses. Netflix. Yesterday, I bought two blueberry-pineapple drinks - one for myself, one for my mom.

In that case, I consider buying a flatscreen TV. Because I want one. But they’re expensive, and I can’t justify spending $200 on something I absolutely don’t need. There is no practical use in replacing my old TV with a new one. I bet I can find a cheap one at a garage sale or something.

I turn the key in the ignition and venture onto the road. Windows down, music blaring out from my phone hooked up to the stereo. If it doesn’t shake the rearview mirrors, it’s not loud enough. Today I want it louder. Hardcore and metal blasts in my face, blasts down the street, windows down until the AC gets cool enough. A black guy in a shirt and tie blasting metal down the street, headbanging, and singing along. Amused, I often wonder if that looks funny to passersby. People never peg me as the kind of guy who listens to heavy music. Jazz, classical, or hip-hop maybe.

Windows up now, and I’m cruising down the parkway, looking for a garage sale sign at the corner. Instead, I see a sign that says FREE LARGE TV. Well, isn’t that something. I turn into the street. Look left, and I see corridor lush with trees and identical suburban houses. Keep going, up the street. Another sign: FREE LARGE TV, with an arrow indicating for me to turn. I turn down another street with identical track houses, every third house is the same with a different HOA-approved paint job. And then there’s me blasting metal through the quiet neighborhood. On the right, a huge set sits before the curb, black plastic and wood eating up the sun. The TV is mounted on a speaker, and the whole thing is much too big for my room. I’ve got a little media stand, which I’m just now remembering that I forgot to measure. And I’m just now remembering I have no cash. How would it look to try to buy something at a garage sale and ask if they take credit or debit? I could stop by an ATM. Yeah, if I see something I like, I’ll just run to an ATM. My bank is down the road, plus they have ATMs at every local grocery.

I’m on the parkway again. No more signs. Go up past the library, past the fast food shops, past the apartments and townhomes, to the boulevard. There’s a garage sale sign on the right. I turn in, and a few turns later I’m there, but they’re packing up, and there’s nothing there I want anyway. I’m only looking for a very specific item in the most inefficient manner possible. I turn back onto the boulevard, and see what looks like a garage sale sign on the left. When I’m in the turn lane, I see that it’s actually an open house. Crap. Illegally, I cross the white line and drive down the boulevard.

Now I’m well on my way to completing the big circle around my little suburb. I’m really hungry, and there are some shops in here. A Taco Bell, a grocery store. I could really use some chocolate right now. Or anything really. They say to never go grocery shopping when you’re hungry because you’ll end up picking up a ton of junk you don’t need. My good friend says an old friend works at that grocery store now. I briefly consider stopping in to see her, but then again things didn’t end too well between us, and I don’t think it would be good for me. Might end up having to go in there if I need an ATM though.

There’s another garage sale sign on the left. As I turn in, I recall long, hot Saturday mornings “garage sailing” with my mom, buying useless junk and trinkets that would eventually just end up in our own garage sale. I never thought I’d end up doing the same thing. A green garage sale sign on beckons for me to turn right. There’s an address written on it that I don’t catch. Another sign, another turn. It should be coming up any minute now. Nope, no more signs. I’ve driven through the entire neighborhood, but they must have packed up without the decency to take down their signs so that people don’t drive around thinking they’re being led even though their path is aimless.

I’m back on another main road, and here the speed limit is 45 miles per hour. I like to speed, so I usually go 49 miles per hour. No one really cares about that. 23 months ago, I got a speeding ticket, and the judge said that if I didn’t get another one for two years, it would drop from my record. But today, I’m going 54 miles per hour, and I don’t care. I see more signs on the right. This road has a lot of blind curves, and I speed past them. The pull on the car as I turn the wheel provides a slight bit of pleasure. My ears hurt from the blaring music, and I should turn it down, but instead I turn it up even louder. Can’t hear my growling stomach either way. After a few turns, I realize that this too is an destinationless journey. I see it’s almost 5 and remember that garage sales are generally a morning activity. I pull onto another boulevard. Whatever. I still have half an hour to kill.

There are surprisingly few cars on the road. Then again, I’m never usually out this late on a Saturday evening. There’s a garage sale sign on the right, and I turn in, acknowledging that this is probably another dead end, or rather the entrance to an endless maze of identical houses stretching forever and ever in infinite circles. A suburbanite sprawl. A suburban wasteland.

There’s a song called “Your Little Suburbia is in Ruins” that I want to listen to. I never paid attention to the lyrics, but I like the title, and in the music video they destroy a pretty nice dollhouse or something. I think it’s fitting to blast this as I pass by the nice, comfortable houses looking for a deal that doesn’t exist in a garage sale that doesn’t exist. A blonde woman scowls her blonde scowl at me as I pass. I smile at her, a small, devious, bowed-head smile. Your little suburbia is in ruins now.

Now, there’s a golf course ahead of me, and I turn past it. Someone kill me if I ever take up golf.

I’m in the suburb next to my suburb now, and there’s a mall down this street, and that mall has a Best Buy, so I figure I’ll just stop in there to check out the deals. In the parking lot, a man stops in the road for seemingly no reason and blocks my path. I almost get mad and honk him out of instinct, but then I remember I have nowhere in particular to be at the moment.

In the Best Buy are bigger and bigger TVs, stronger and faster computers, and newer and sleeker video game consoles. There is a little display about electronic mood lighting for the house or something like that, and I think no one really needs any of this crap. I walk to the back, and there are hundreds of TVs on the walls and on displays, each bombarding me with commercials detailing why that particular TV is the best one. One has the words PURE HAPPINESS in bold, white letters, but the high definition slow motion video is of a little boy, head back, laughing, swinging on a tire swing in the backyard, experiencing life in the twilight of a summer evening, far away from any possible TV. Is this the pure happiness that a new TV brings, or is the pure happiness actually watching someone else experience pure happiness on a new TV? If you buy this TV, you will experience pure happiness vicariously through this ecstatic child. This child has offered up his life force in service of your entertainment. Accept this humble offering and patronize it with your cash. The cheapest 32 inch TV I see here is $159. I can’t make a decision now though because I don’t know if a 32 inch will fit in my TV stand, plus I haven’t explored all my options.

I leave and go down the street to Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. Scratch that I have a some love, mostly hate relationship with Wal-Mart. It’s the only store I’ve ever had nightmares about. Whenever I feel trapped in a situation, I have a dream that I’m trapped in a Wal-Mart, and I’m trying to find someone to help me, but because it’s Wal-Mart, there’s no one in sight. Their TVs are worse quality for the same price, and I think maybe I don’t want a new TV after all. Anyway, I can’t spend a long time in here because I have to pick up my sister. On the way out of the store, I see Fourth of July sales material. Napkins, plates, gross looking red, white, and blue cookies, pastries, and muffins. Poisonous. Wal-Mart flavored. America flavored.

Back in my car. It’s 5:23. If I leave now, I’ll be right on time to pick up my sister. Now I remember that I have a car-warmed apple in my lunch bag. I take a bite of the juicy apple and think that maybe this is what I needed to eat all along.

Home | Theland E. Thomas

And then he goes home, but all the houses look the same, and he’s not sure if he’s arrived at the right one even when he settles into bed. He looks out the window at the leaves swaying in the gentle breeze, and he thinks maybe I should go out, I’ve been trapped inside all day, but then he wonders what he would even do out there, and he’s pretty tired anyway, so he rests his back against the wall. He’s gotta find something to do in the time between now and sleep, so he turns on the TV and flips through a few channels, and then he turns off the TV and tosses the remote away. Then he sits with his hands in his lap for a few seconds. Then he scrolls through a few contacts on his phone thinking there must be someone he can talk to or text, but there isn’t anyone, and that’s when the loneliness begins to set in. All of his friends have gone away and left him alone, and he decides this is not a healthy train of thought, so he goes for a walk to lift his spirits.

It’s too bright, so he wears sunglasses, and it’s too quiet, so he listens to music, and it’s too chilly so he wears a jacket and the sidewalk is lined with trees. He noticed a long time ago that the natural design of this neighborhood is just designed to look natural, and the trees are plotted precisely, and the path winds around and around in one big circle, the perfect length to get your mind off of things. But the music he plays is sad, and it stirs resigned loneliness - a kind of lamenting, languishing loneliness whose pressure compounds and breadth expands with each passing day. A kind that seeks no resolution, only perpetuation. He follows the path left and right, and when he comes home he doesn’t feel better, so he sits down and thinks there must be someone I can talk to, but no one will really understand what he’s saying, they’ll just impose their own reality on his or trivialize him with well worn wishes because they don’t know what to say or it’s the only thing they can say, and he doesn’t really understand what he’s saying or how to say it anyway, so it just remains undeveloped and festering.

He opens up an anonymous app on his phone and thinks about posting something, but no one cares that teen angst doesn’t end in your teens and anonymity is meaningless, and sometimes you’re anonymous even when they know your name. So, he sits thinking about choices, steps, missed opportunities, and missteps, and the girl he should have dated and the girl he shouldn’t have dated, and the girl who’s already dating someone else, and how everything ended with him here alone watching the light outside die again. And then he thinks, these choices don’t matter and maybe nothing matters, but then why does it all matter so damn much? And then he grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes to hold back the wave of feelings, and it works, but it leaves him feeling empty and suffocated.

The light is gone, and he curls into bed, and closes his eyes, but the darkness doesn’t bring sleep, instead it brings the void, so he opens his eyes, but it’s just as black out here, so he closes his eyes again. And he’s so lonely, he thinks he might pray, but God doesn’t hear him, and if he does, he’s not saying anything back, so he stops and stares toward the wall. At night, the other side of the world is awake while he lays still in bed. Night creatures and party animals creep and frolic while he lays still in bed. His phone restarts while he lays still in bed. And he doesn’t end up sleeping, and before the sun rises, he showers and gets dressed and goes to work and pretends to be alive for other people, and they don’t care, and he doesn’t care, and he just thinks about how many hours left until he gets to leave, and then he smiles and waves goodbye, and then he goes home.

No Escape From Reality | Theland E. Thomas

My bed is black, my room is black, the space behind my eyelids is black, but there are shades of light floating, spinning, changing, barely visible in the black. Heavy eyelids are not the cause as much as another state of mind. I feel my mentality shift from processing alertness to the calmness of flowing waves, and in this state, I lose sense of my heavy body and begin to drift out to sea to a new world not quite bound to the one I’m tethered to in wakefulness. I’m traveling on the black sea of my mind, the faint buzzing of electricity crashing about me, moving me deeper into tranquil numbness, silence, sleep.

I travel on the waves with the content knowledge of past experience. I know where I’m going, but I don’t know what I’ll find there. Soon, I arrive on the shores of a new reality. I know when I arrive, I won’t be fully aware I’m dreaming. That it will be just like wakefulness, but with a different set of rules that make complete sense in context. I hear the tick of the clock on my wall distort until each tick is a piercing, metallic ring, like the pounding of steel beams against each other. The black quickly deteriorates from the middle, another scene bleeding through.

It’s a bookstore. I’ve just entered, and I walk past the popular fiction display at the front, the smell of coffee wafting from the shop on my left. I love bookstores. They’re almost too much - a place stacked with shelves and shelves of thousands upon thousands of books with pages upon pages of alternate realities, differing perspectives of life, love, sorrow, and happiness. It’s a place of infinite possibilities. I remember days of youth spent in libraries and bookstores, reading books without buying them, the new book smell, fast food, essays and quietly waving goodbye, the second-to-last person to leave.

I take a step toward the fiction section but for some reason am compelled to look to my left. There, I see a girl I know but am afraid to recognize. I can see emotions battling on her face, eyebrows knitting as she starts to smile, then her face softening with worried, hopeful eyes. She lifts a hand. “Hi.”

This inevitable meeting is something I’ve consistently prevented myself from thinking of, and now, confronted with it, I don’t know what to do. She might disappear if I turn away, so I do that. Everything behind me fades into a blur of grey as I walk around the display Now, before me is a man in a trenchcoat with a hat pulled low over his face. He seems to be smoking, but I can’t smell anything but the delicious new book smell blending with the coffee. The man reaches into his coat and pulls out a container. “Hey, man, you want some hummus?”

“Actually, I do.” I take the container from him, and he gives me a spoon.

“This is going to be the best damn hummus you’ve ever tasted.”

I pry the lid open and eat a spoonful, realizing that this is, in fact, the best hummus I’ve ever tasted. I remark, “You’re right, this is the best hummus I’ve ever tasted.”

“Told you,” he said. “That’ll be just ten dollars.”

I nearly choked on my second scoop. “What? I’m not paying ten dollars for -”

“Look, you took the hummus. It’s ten dollars.”

“I don’t want it.”

I try to give him back the container, but he refuses to take it. “Hey, I offer you some hummus, and you take it, and then you don’t want to pay me. What kind of a person are you?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have ten dollars.” I wag the container in my hand, but when he doesn’t take it, I drop it, turn around, and walk away.

The girl is gone. I escape into rows of bookshelves, keeping my head bent, scanning the spines. What I’m looking for, I don’t know, but I’ll recognize it when I find it. I search thoroughly, scanning each individual title, author. I search row by row, up, down, and across, but I still can’t find it. I move to the next row and stop, startled by who’s standing there.

My heart plummets and races at the same time. It’s my dad. He’s spent eight years avoiding me, and I’ve spent eight avoiding him, and here he is, casually browsing through a bookstore as if he has a life outside of my supposed construction of him. He sees me, and his face lights up. He says my name, and I frown in disgust. He takes a step forward, and I take a step back. I don’t want to deal with this right now, so I turn my back and walk away, hiding a frenetic impulse to run with a collected demeanor.

I turn between the bookcases until I feel I’ve lost him. I slow, along with the thumping in my chest, and turn one more time. There she is again. Ana. I nearly jump when I see her. This time, the hope in her face has been eclipsed with sadness. She utters a dejected, “Hey.”

“Hey.” I stand fair distance from her, an asinine precaution considering that she can hurt me from any distance. The mature thing to do would be to stay and talk things out, but a little, red alarm is screaming in the back of my mind.

“So,” she starts, “how are you doing?”

Ana stands immediately before me, and there are books on either side, but beyond that is a blur of grey. She’s looking at me, awaiting my reply, and I can feel the tension of an unstable reality pulling me at the seams. I need to escape somehow. I need to change the course. Time seems to stand still, and I have the odd sense of the gears in another part of my head turning. I’m thinking, but I can’t access what I’m thinking about. And that’s when I realize that this is a dream.

I turn away from Ana and walk deeper into the store. I don’t want run from her just to bump into my dad again. At the same time, I’m pushing to find a way out. I’m straining to get back to that state of blackness, back to the sea through which I can bubble to wakefulness. But, it’s no use - I’m stuck here. In the middle of the store is the man in the trenchcoat standing behind a small stand that holds canisters of coffee.

Coffee! That’s what I need! Coffee can wake me up! I approach the stand and ask, “Can I have some coffee?”

“Yeah,” the man says from below the brim of his hat, “for twenty dollars.”

“Twenty dollars! You know there’s a cheaper coffee shop right over there, right!”

“But that coffee won’t keep you awake. This one will.”

“Fine.” I pull a twenty from my pocket and lay it on the table. What flavors do you have?”

“Got regular, decaf, and hot water.”

I take the regular and sip it vigorously as I make my way back toward the door, bracing against the searing heat that burns my mouth and raises the bumps on my tongue. The shop grows fuzzy in my peripheral as I approach the exit. Black spots swim in my vision, and, though I’m standing, I feel as though I’m not upright. My eyelids are heavy as I feel myself drifting from the dream and repopulating my body. Finally, I push on the door…

And it’s locked. I snap back to the bookstore with a sense of dread. The door shifts and buckles against my futile pushes. Dread crashes over me, an uneasy swimming feeling. I’m trapped. I turn from the door and scan the building. Leaking coffee slides down my fingers, drips from the cup, and disappears into the stylish, spotted carpet.

I don’t see my dad, Ana, or the trenchcoat guy, so I pick a armchair in the corner and pretend to read a titleless book from the shelf. I hold it in front of my face so I can peer over it, but then I hear a voice to my left. Of course, it’s Ana. I gulp, my throat suddenly dry.

“Oh, hi,” I say, “what a coincidence running into you here.” I look at the book, realizing that no one could have gotten three-fourths of the way through in such a short amount of time. Nervously, I stand, placing the book upside-down on the chair’s arm. I grip the coffee, using it as a barrier between myself and her.

“Hey,” she says. She’s nervous too. She’s wringing her hands and biting her lip. Despite the cold front I put on, something inside of me goes soft. I want to embrace her, to be close to her again. To tell her everything’s okay. To forgive her.

She continues. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but…” she looks down at her feet. I’m not ready for this. I know what she’s about to say, but I’m not ready to forgive and forget or to let go of the acidic pain I’ve been clutching. “...I’m really really sorry for what happened. How I treated you… it wasn’t right, and I’m so sorry.”

The tears welling up in her eyes trigger my own, and I don’t try to wipe them back as they fall. I try to say something, but the words won’t come. I desperately need to get out of here. I take swig of coffee.

Suddenly, a shadow overtakes Ana. It’s my dad, I recognize more through implication than through form. He’s eschewed his human form for that of a shadow that towers tall and spreads wide and bleeds in disappearing currents. Fear strikes to the core of my being, and I turn to run, but the shadow expands, enveloping Ana and everything around me until I’m floating in a completely black space. Before me, I see remnants of my dad’s distorted face hanging in the air, his eyes, nose, and mouth disassociated from any physical body, his features one with the darkness.

“Son,” he says, his voice muted by surrounding black, “We should make some time to talk.”

I cross my arms, and I know if I turn my back or close my eyes, his face will still be right there in front of me. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I say.

“Son, you have to understand. I am a sinner. Will you please hear me out?”

Anger and pain rushes to the forefront, and I hate that it manifests as hot, seething tears. “Why should I?” My sobbing voice can’t convey the hatred and bitterness I feel, though I try to squeeze it into every word.

“Because I’m your father,” he pleads.

“No,” I shout, the anger bursting forth. “You were my father before you left, but you threw that all away. I’ll never forgive you!”

With that, my dad’s face dissolves, and the black seems to swirl to a central point, releasing me into the bookstore. The light blares into my squinting eyes, and I hear a horrible sound - a collective wail, sorrowful, heartfelt weeping from an entire crowd. What’s going on? My eyes adjust, and I see the man in the trenchcoat looking down on me from under his hat, shaking his head. Behind him, is the weeping crowd - my family and friends - my mother, brothers and sisters, my best friend, my grandparents, Ana, and my dad - all crying uncontrollably, all covering their faces. My mother holds my grandma as she sobs, staring at me with the black make-up smearing down her face. My best friend covers his mouth and shakes his head at me. Ana hugs herself and rocks back and forth, unable to meet my gaze, and my dad sits cradling his face, his tears soaking his shirt.

The weeping is horrible and overwhelming. It rattles me to the core until I’m weeping too, crumbling to my knees, and I lose grip of the coffee and shut my eyes as the tears stream and flow like water from a creek flowing naturally between rocks at night, traveling in aimlessly in a direct route going further and further and deeper and deeper and closer and closer until I open my eyes in my dark room with a heavy heart and a gasp.

I roll onto my side and find my phone, prompting its cold light that cuts the night. New message from Ana: “Hey”.

I open it up and type a cautious reply. Then I delete what I was writing. Then I delete her message. Then I delete her contact information. Then I roll over and go back to sleep.