I can't

“I can’t!”

“You can.”

“I said I CAN’T!”

I really can’t, and I swear if she tells me I can one more time…

“And I said YOU CAN!”

Arguing wasn’t working. She wasn’t listening, and I know she won’t listen, no matter how important it is that she does. She'll think I’m making stuff up again just to delay going to sleep but this time I’m not.

If it were as simple as just wanting to watch TV a bit longer, that would be a relief. But tonight, everything was different.

If I slept tonight, there may not be a tomorrow.

Pondles

“Come on, Billy boy, hurry up let’s get home before I get soaking wet!”

But I didn’t hurry because I loved it in the rain, splashing in the puddles, feeling the cool slightly muddy water shoot up the legs of my shorts. Mum hated it because she said I make more work for her when I get my clothes dirty. I don’t know why, it’s actually the washing machine that does all the work.

“Nah,” I said. “You go ahead, I’m gonna stomp my way home.”

As if to add an exclamation mark, I jumped into the dirtiest puddle yet much to my big brother’s disgust.

“Oh well,” Anthony said with a scowl. “It’s you whose gonna be going to bed early tonight with no screen time.”

I kicked water from the pooling dirt patch at him and he ran on ahead. Good. I liked being by myself.

Across the road, I saw Bethany walking with her friend Amber. They were both in my class at school and although they were annoying girls, especially Amber, I did feel a tingle in my belly when I saw them. They were kinda cute.

I tried to be cool and walked through the puddles instead of hopping through like a little kid. I held my backpack straps up by my armpits and walked with a purpose like I had somewhere important to be. When I saw that they’d walked into Amber’s big yellow two-story house, I let my arms fall to my sides and moped my way home.

I wish I was brave enough to talk to them outside of class. Bethany especially, she lived right across the road from me. She had long dark hair that seemed super thick, even for a girl. It was really shiny too, and it fell over her pink and purple punk unicorn backpack like a mane.

My thoughts of the girl I’d been crushing on since year two fell away as I eyed up the biggest puddle I’d seen yet. Even though I was twelve, I could still see a hazardous watery filthy hole from a mile away, and I made a beeline for it.

At the edge of the puddle, which was more like a pond, I knew straight away that I had no chance of jumping over it. Not even a monster truck could jump over a pondle like this one. I had no way of telling how deep it was, I couldn’t even really remember this section of my route home even though I walked it every day, twice!

I decided if I was gonna do it, I’d go hard just like Anthony always said. “Go hard or go home.” Well, I’d do both, I’d go hard ON my way home. I laughed at myself as I pondered this dad-like joke.

I stepped back from the puddle, then stepped back again. I ended up taking about ten big steps back. Grabbing the straps of my backpack and holding on tight, I sprinted toward the pondle and at the edge of the water, I leaped long and high toward the centre.

I wish I could tell you how I landed, but I don’t even know if I did.

Things aren't always as they seem

As I jumped, I closed my eyes tight. It wasn’t that I was scared, I was just unsure of how much water would splash into my eyes. There would be hell to pay if I went home with a muddy body, and mud in my eyes. But my eyes opened quickly when I realised I hadn’t landed in water at all and when I looked down, I saw that I’d landed on thick lush grass instead.

“What the?” I gasped, looking around and realising no one would answer because the field was empty. “Where the hell am I?” I asked anyway.

All I could see was thick multi-green coloured long grass, tiny daisy flowers, and blue sky; it was like a picture out of a baby book. I’d kind of expected the grass to be blowing in the breeze, but there was no breeze. In fact, the air was so still it was hard to breathe, it felt like I had a pillow over my mouth and nose. I started to panic.

“ANTHONY!” I screamed at the top of my voice. “BETHANY!” I yelled, immediately regretting it in case she was there and thought I was being an idiot.

But there was no answer. In fact, my voice sounded like it didn’t go anywhere. Not muffled, but just… flat. Not loud, not as loud as it should have been, and it didn’t carry either. It just went nowhere.

I reached down to the grass and touched it, wanting to feel something real. It felt warm, but hard and sharp, like one of those miniature cactus plants they sell for $5 in the garden centre.

I pulled my hand back away from the grass and noticed small dots of blood on the palm of my hand and fingers. The grass had made me bleed! What in the shit was going on here?

“Things aren’t always as they seem.”

I turned to see that the person behind the voice was my Grandad. But that couldn’t be right, he had died ages ago, right back when I first started school.

Grandad was looking at me intensely, with light blue eyes that had seen so much and shimmered with moisture, but were still sharp and eager.

“Things aren’t always as they seem,” he said again, and as he did his body seemed to melt and fade into transparency before re-forming into a younger, fitter, stronger looking body. A body I recognised; with eyes I looked at every day in the mirror. But older, almost as old as mum was now but not quite. I knew, or at least I was as sure as I could be in this strange world, it was me.

Just breathe

The ‘me guy’ seemed to shimmer in this otherwise flat space. He was the only thing that had substance, even though he was the most unreal thing I’d ever seen. Why was I seeing an old me in this weird place that I somehow landed in? I was going mental for sure.

“You’re not going mental,” the ‘me guy’ said, and my jaw dropped even further.

He tilted his head back and laughed.

“Quite the opposite. Your mind is expanding, not distorting. This is the start of a phenomenal future for you, and for the rest of the world.”

He laughed again at my confused expression, then his shoulders relaxed and he looked at me through my own dark brown eyes and frowned.

“I know this is blowing your mind right now, but we had to get your attention and I think we’ve got it, right?”

Then his voice boomed as his body changed again: “DO WE HAVE YOUR ATTENTION?”

This time, the ‘me guy’ warped, bent, and twisted into various shapes before settling into one, all the while making a screeching sound like fingernails on a blackboard. Its neck began to grow. It stretched much higher than me, and as it reached its limit and pinged back down it became a snake with bright yellow eyes. Then the eyes turned into flames, and I could feel the heat burning my own eyes. I thought my face was going to melt right off.

I covered my eyes with my hands because I was terrified now. I didn’t want to see what he would become. I didn’t want to be here anymore at all!

Silence came first, then the sense of complete loneliness. I felt hollow. I had been taken to the limits of my fear tolerance and now felt like a limp, unimportant rag doll, held up by something other than my own will. I stopped breathing for the longest time, then, before my lungs jolted back into action, I took a long slow breath in and opened my eyes.

Standing in front of me, smiling softly and wearing her favourite long black dress and boots was my mother. I had to stop myself from running toward her and throwing my arms around her begging to be taken away from this place. Because I knew it wasn’t really her. This ‘mum’ could change into anything in an instant. I couldn’t trust her. But I knew I had to.

“I know you’ve been through a lot since we brought you here,” she said, in the same soft caring voice I’ve been listening to ever since I was born. “You're overwhelmed with confusion, fear, and desperation, but I need you to listen to me. WE need you to listen. We will only have one chance.”

“One chance for what?” I asked.

“One chance to bring forth the sun, and the survival of mankind.”

Where there is life

“Before there was life on earth, there was darkness,” she began. “The planets and the star you know as the sun existed, but no light or heat emanated from it… until we came.”

My ‘mother’ continued with a story so ridiculously unbelievable that it could have come from one of my comic books, or some retro episode of The Outer Limits.

She told me of another world, much larger than the one I had been born into. A world where physical beings didn’t exist, where entities traveled through the darkness interacting with each other, forming with one another, and multiplying. I was mesmerised. While it sounded like fiction, I believed every word, I KNEW it to be true. In fact, it was like I knew it already and was simply being reminded.

“All at once, we gathered together on the sun and our force created a spark which gave the star light.”

A look of what I can only describe as fear came over my ‘mother’s’ face, and she continued. “Then the light became a flame, and the flame a heaving inferno of heat given strength by our essence.” She fell silent.

“Umm,” I stammered. “You created the sun?”

“No. The sun had already been created. We just gave it… force. But that force has been fading for millennia. The life that we gave the sun, has been spread throughout the galaxy and it is not renewable, it is not infinite. It gives so much, but it does not receive. It is life, therefore it will experience death.”

My eyes widened as I started to understand where this story was going. Then, the being that presented as my mother, reached out and touched my face with her hand and I felt her lifeforce and finally understood.

The truth and the warning

I know I was still in the strange place and I could feel her presence. But I couldn’t move or speak. Her hand was a conduit, and through it came the truth and the warning, in a rush of realisation that took my breath away.

She took me deep into my own body, through arteries that carried blood to my vital organs, through the synapses of my brain that sparked and shifted, and pushed me beyond my physical self. If I could describe the feeling, I could only say that it felt as if my body was being turned inside out, and as dizzying as that sounds, everything became clear as she continued to show me why I had been brought here.

When it was over, and her hand left my face, my eyes and mind readjusted to the strange place and while I was struggling to focus, I could tell I was now alone.

The exhaustion fell over me like a weighted blanket. I took my jacket off, laid it on the ground, and sat cross-legged with my head in my hands. There was no doubt anymore, no confusion or uncertainty about why I was here. It was simple. Too simple. And I knew what I had to do.

You know what to do

When I had woken, cold and wet on the last day of Spring, I was lying on the damp grass of our neighbour, Mr Chancey’s super tidy lawn. My head hurt and I immediately thought I’d slipped and hit it on the concrete underneath the giant puddle I’d jumped in. But then I remembered the strange place: my granddad, my brother, my mother, and the warning I’d been given. I panicked then and had to pinch my arm to force myself to breathe slowly and regain control. I knew it hadn’t been a dream or one of the dramatic imaginings that I’d often have on my way home from school. It was the truth, and it had been a warning.

The presence in the shape of my mother had told me that we would have one more summer. Not my family and I, but the planet. The whole entire planet.

The sun had just one more summer to give before its force faded and earth cooled to a standstill. I had been shown that on the last day of summer, I would wake up expecting to see shafts of light around my bedroom blind, but all I would see is darkness. And all I would feel was the cold.

I’d asked the presence what I could do to prevent it. Did it want me to save the planet? Why was it telling me these things? Was there something I could do?

“You know what to do,” it said. “You all do.”

And in that moment, I did. And when I woke, I remembered. And from that day until now, I have done it. It’s simple. I knew it already, we all do.

Something changed in the world from the moment I woke on that lawn. It wasn’t just me, it was my friends, our neighbours, Bethany, even her bitchy friend. We all changed. People became… kinder, less greedy, more caring, more thoughtful, happier.

Strangers shared meaningful looks with each other and nods of understanding without speaking a word. It was like everyone knew what was at stake.

The teachers at school actually took time to talk to me, one-on-one, and help me with maths which was my shittiest subject.

Mr Chancey even started a lawnmowing business, and every house in the street was landscaped like something out of a Home and Garden magazine. It was surreal.

Bethany started to walk home with me after school, we even did homework together one night! And my brother hung out with me more, even playing catch after school instead of mooching around with his friends.

News reports from around the world didn’t talk about war, famine, crime, and murder. Instead, smiling reporters standing in the sunshine, covered urgent new methods of environmental protection the likes of which had never been seen before, people were opening their doors to their communities and wildlife welfare became as important as technological advancements.

Everything seemed brighter, and it wasn’t just that it was summer, it was that things were actually better. So much better. Almost as if people were living like it was the last summer of their lives…

“You know what to do.”

Look east

I did know what to do, and everyone else did too. I know they’d been given the same truth and warning as I had. Maybe in a different way, but they had. They must have for things to have changed so rapidly.

But today had been the last day of summer. And now it was time for bed.

I didn’t want to go to bed. I didn’t want to go to sleep. I didn’t want to wake up to darkness in the cold. I didn’t want this to be the end. But I wasn’t sure if we’d done enough.

I decided to pretend to sleep until everyone else had gone to bed, and then wait for the relaxed slow breathing and gentle snoring of my mother. She was always the last one to sleep.

“I won’t sleep,” I whispered quietly to myself. “It’s my decision, and I won’t do it.”

I listened for ages, but I didn’t hear her sleeping. I didn’t hear anything. It was eerily quiet in our house.

I crept quietly out of my bedroom and down the hall to the lounge. I was startled when I saw the shape of a person outside the big glass doors. Then I realised who it was.

“Mum?” I said quietly as I tiptoed across the deck to where she was sitting.

She turned and looked at me and I could see she was about to tell me to go back to bed, but instead, she patted the seat next to her.

I sat down and she put her arm around my shoulders.

“I won’t go to sleep,” I murmered.

“I know, my love,” mum said softly.

“Can I wait here with you, mum?”

“Yes,” she said, squeezing me tighter. “You can wait here with all of us.”

It was then that I looked around and saw that we weren’t alone. Not really.

Next door, Mr Chancey was sitting in a love seat on his porch clutching his wife’s hand. Bethany was across the road sitting on a blanket with her little brother’s head resting in her lap. Then Anthony and dad came out of the kitchen door behind me. They didn’t say anything. They just sat quietly with the rest of us, looking east. Waiting.