Space Boy

Clouds floated in between the balcony’s banisters shifting the curtains as it entered the room.  The clouds disappeared for a moment with each step of her bare feet until she reached the end of the balcony. She stared out into the starry sky, more clouds drifting close enough to touch her fingers. The clouds had no texture to them, only the thought of them feeling like cotton candy or like a soft pillow kept her reaching out for them, only to be disappointed when they parted from her touch. The breeze touched her gently and she sighed with relief. There was something screaming in the back of her head that she should be afraid but it drifted away from her. 

The stars blinked at her from their places in the sky. They were brighter than they were on Earth, only clouds clogged the sky. She heard a rustle and glanced behind her to someone in the room turning over in bed.  She wondered if it was him. She then climbed up onto the ledge of the balcony and jumped into the clouds. She floated in the air as the stars filled her eyes. 

***

She woke up in a room filled with daisies and roses, lilies and lilacs. She had fallen asleep on a leather chair tucked in the corner, the flower’s perfume filling her lungs in floral. She marked the worlds she had traveled to as she dreamt, two in total, with a sharpie on her wall, adding to the several dashes and crosses she made since she was small. She stretched her tired limbs and pushed her way through the flowers to the window. It was the morning, the sun’s rays blinding her eyes. She rubbed them as the flower mirage faded and she was back in her observation room, one of the scientists shuffling in from a door that used to be the leather chair. The dashes and crosses stared at her, the sun no longer filling the room.

“Results are great, the only thing is you keep missing where we need to go.” He tapped his clipboard as if it would force results for him. She shrugged. 

“Listen there’s only so long I can hold off the board before they try more-,” he paused. “-Effective measures to garner results.”

She nodded, casting her eyes to the ground. To the scientist, she looked compliant, sorry, and sweet. But she was fuming underneath her skin, burning imaginary holes in the concrete ground.

“Back to your room now.”

Her room was a small square filled only with a table and chair where she ate and had meetings with several scientists all on a specific rotation for each day of the week.  She had a small couch to read in, which was almost confiscated when she had dozed off one afternoon. A sandwich had been left on the table along with a note that told her when the next session would be. She had twelve hours to sit in silence. 

***

“Remember your target.” The scientist’s voice echoed somewhere in her mind and soon faded away. Her boat lightly touched the water as she rowed toward the window, the world silent and listening. She could see the lake continue beyond the window, yet she rowed toward it anyway. Surrounding her were pillars of stone of forgotten civilizations, statues of gods that had no names, her boat the only stream for centuries. There was a small candle lit on the window’s ledge. She could see its dim light grow stronger as she approached. The sun sank lower, dying the sky in brilliant oranges and yellows for one final time. She reached the window and lifted the candle setting the boat ablaze, a small star in the dark of the water. She then jumped from the boat and sat in the window frame, watching the sun disappear for the night while listening to the small crackle of the fire. She entered the window.

She was on a set of stairs leading up toward a palace. There were several people of different ages, sizes, races all attempting to climb the stairs but every time one would nearly reach the top they would topple down to the bottom again. There was a man on one of the palace’s balconies, laughing each time a person fell. She watched them in strange fascination. A small boy with familiar eyes landed beside her, she knelt down and brushed off the dust from his hair, and helped him to his feet. He put his hands on her cheeks and whispered, “I’m all alone up there. They found me.”

She shook her head, but he nodded and brushed a tear from her cheek. Soon the tears flooded her face, she could see images and people rushing through her mind, as her reality distorted several of the places she had visited flashed in her mind. Finally, it stopped, she thought she had woken herself up but when she opened her eyes she could see craters under her feet. She screamed. 

***

She was strapped in a chair with several wires connected to her arms and legs. She was breathing rapidly. The main scientist was shaking his head. 

“This close, we were this close and you had to pull something like this?”

The rest of the team was silent as tears dried on her face. She nearly laughed with relief at being back on Earth.  

“The board will be coming in for the final experiment tomorrow. You have shown you know how to get there. Their influence is essential. Understand?”

Her heart felt like it was going to burst from her chest. She was sent to her room with no dinner and with several pamphlets to read and a visit from her therapist. 

“Why can’t you take us there? We have been over this you said you would change. There is this block, but you can trust us.”

Her therapist’s voice was cold honey, his face contorted to look like he understood.

“Have you always traveled alone? I remember that small boy that used to follow you around at the orphanage.”

She shook her head. 

The therapist hadn’t changed since she was ten years old when they met for the first time in the orphanage. Still the same wire glasses, the piercing smile. She had just escaped the familiar whispers of ‘freak’ when the therapist had entered the room and taken her hand. 

“You’re different from the others aren’t you? There’s this place where we can help you, where you can help us.”

The paperwork had been signed before she could blink and she packed to leave the next morning. 

“He's going to take me.” 

“Take you where?” her brother was watching as she shoved her belongings in a bag.

She tapped her head. “Something to do with what’s going on here.”

“Will they take me?”

She buried her head in her arms. Her brother held her hand. 

He sometimes woke up screaming in the night too, clutching his head. She did everything to make the other kids think it was just her so that he could be safe. 

“I have a plan.”

“No.”

“We can do it.”

“I don’t know.”

Later that night as she dreamed she took his hands. Together they found the moon. In the morning he was gone.

“Get to your target next time. Your daily journal for the day.”

She was jolted back to reality, the therapist pushed the journal towards her and rubbed her shoulder gently as he left the room which made her shiver. Tears ran down the empty page.

***

“Today is the day.” 

The board had arrived and stood silent behind some glass writing things down in brown clipboards every once in a while. She wondered what they saw when she opened the portals, she always ended up within them. She was strapped again to the chair with wires and scientists in lab coats rushed around to make sure she was comfortable. There were a few men in spacesuits ready to go. They handed her a blue pill. 

“This will put you right to sleep. We have attached to you several currents so if you take us to the wrong place this will put you back on course.”

She let the pill fall from her hand. They all watched it hit the floor for a moment, then they grabbed out a new one and gave her one more chance. She again let it fall to the floor. One of the scientists held her back as another put the pill in her mouth, she struggled against them trying to bite the pill with her teeth when she had no choice but to swallow. Her eyes grew heavy and she cried as she slipped from consciousness.

***

The craters were already under her feet, she was on the moon. She realized then that the therapist had put him in her mind already so she would know where to go, it was all calculated from the beginning. She only visited the moon when she left him the first time. The stars winked at her, she jumped with each step the gravity taking her off balance. It was so calm up there despite her heart racing and nerves making her wince with every strange sound. She found him staring up at the sky. He had on a strange helmet and glass covering his face. 

“I’m here,” she whispered. 

The men in spacesuits rushed in, setting up a flag nearby, but she wasn’t focused on them. He didn’t move, she knelt down beside him. He was a couple of years older than when she left him there but he was still a child. She lifted the glass from the helmet and screamed. His eyes stared up at her lifeless. He had grown into his face and his hair had grown long, but he was frozen in time. She reached down and grabbed his face.

“I’m here now, I’m here now. Please come back to me. Please.”

The astronauts pulled her away from him. They shook her, asking her to wake up, their mission successful. She felt something pinch her and she was back in the chair, the portal shut, a needle coming out of her arm. The scientists cheered and hugged each other with excitement. She sobbed silently. 

“You found him didn’t you?” Her therapist asked.

She looked up at him in disbelief as the therapist nodded.

“We found him a couple of years after taking you from the orphanage. Thought that twins could be our solution to space travel but he wasn’t as willing as the other participants. After he died, the moon was shut off from us for years.”

Someone called the therapist to help open the champagne. In all the commotion no one noticed her rise from the chair and rummage through their supplies. She found the pills they usually gave her if she wasn’t tired enough for sleep. She disappeared into the hallway and took too many of them. She had been in a coma for months. 

***

Tiny flowers had grown up around him. She sat beside the crater he lay in, picking a flower for herself which she twirled in her fingers as she stared at the bright earth where her body was somewhere dreaming below.