Nana's Rainbow Parachute

 Nana’s last words echo in my mind, “Remember boy, all you have to do is remember all I taught you and you will always be fine.” Now if only I could remember what she’d taught me. She never told me if I would be okay if I didn't remember, but the chances are looking pretty slim at the moment. I’m currently falling, increasing in speed every second, my parachute is torn from the Wyvern attacks and the old magician’s experiments didn't exactly give me wings. A painful tail? Yes. Spiky antlers that rip the parachute even more? Yes. But no wings, therefore I am going to die very soon when I hit the bottom of this fantasy grand canyon.

“Nana!” I shout, she died a month ago, so it doesn’t seem probable that she would appear now, but nothing here has ever been probable. I look down and inhale sharply, I’m really close to the bottom! “Nana!” I call out again, closing my eyes and picturing her, flying down in her signature rainbow parachute to rescue me. She was always here with me before, in my upside down world. We would always be falling with a ripped parachute, or dying in some other way and exactly before we would hit the ground, suddenly, she would save us, new parachutes, jet packs, fire guns, anything. We would be safe, and then suddenly  we would be just bouncing on the bed, or jumping into the pool off the diving board. She taught me how to save us, how to suddenly be okay, but I never really got it. I was so convinced that we would die, that this time the magician would win. And now I don't even remember how, and she’s gone. Forever. And soon I will be too. Lost in my grief and sheer terror, I don't realize there’s a person jumping off the edge of the canyon and falling down next to me until she speaks.

“Avery, boy, listen to me!” she yells. I turn to look and see a familiar face. 

“Nana!” I cry out and reach to hug her. “I missed you! Can you help me? We’re about to die!” and she does the last thing I would've ever thought of. She shakes her head. “What?” I scream, even more terrified now. “What do you mean? I need help! I'm about to die!” 

“I can't help you now child.” She says, “I can't go back to reality.” I look at her, confused

“What do you mean, you can't go back to reality?” 

“I’m dead! I can't go back to the real world! You have to save yourself this time!” we’re very close to the bottom of the canyon now, but suddenly it all comes back to me. I look at her and she nods, releasing her parachute and flying far above me. A dream. I think. This is all just a dream, when I wake up and I’m going to be…. Falling off my bed. And then I do. I wake up and CRASH I hit the floor. 

“Ow!” I shout, but really I’m just grateful to be alive. In those last seconds before I came back, I remembered everything Nana told me. I’m special. I think my entire family is, we have such great imaginations that we can create entire worlds that become real, and dangerous. Mine has grand canyons with portals in all the hidden caves, flying wyverns controlled by the magician, who experiments on children and then throws them out of a giant dirigible-airplane-hot air balloon hybrid when his tests don't work. Deserts full of his failed experiments, half human half animal, always out for revenge for their cursed lives. And the worst part is? You can die there. Anyone can die in their worlds. 

Nana always said that she was the only one who managed not to die. That my entire family is dead inside, stuck in that world, frozen atop some mountain or killed by some great foe. Their bodies here are still alive but their minds aren't. They have no imagination, it died in their dreams. We have a split concise, one in the dreamworlds and one in reality. If we die in one, we just go to the other. That’s what Nana did when she died here, and that's what everyone else did when they died in dreamworld. Both are equally as bad.

I get up off the floor, rubbing the bruise on my head and get dressed, I head downstairs to grab breakfast and check the clock. It's 7 am, so someone should be home at least. I look into the kitchen and see my Uncle Thomas eating a hurried breakfast of cereal. 

“Hey, Uncle Tommy!” I say with fake enthusiasm. 

“Hey.” he grunts, not even looking up. “Which one are you again?”

“I’m Avery” I say. At the mention of my name he looks up and hurries to get out the door. I’m somewhat of a disappointment to this family. 

“So I was wondering-” I start but he cuts me off.

“Sure whatever go ahead I'm gonna be late.” which is adult code for, I don't care just stop bothering me. Everyone else is at work or school already so I decide that no one will care if I stay home sick today. No one really cares about me anyway. The teachers already think I'm destined to fail, the kids think I'm weird and childish and my family is too busy with their jobs and money and all that grown up stuff to care about me. There’s been nothing for me here since Nana died, she was the only fun thing.

There is one last thing I don't understand about what Nana had taught me. How do I get back? How does it work? I know I can get back by convincing myself it’s just a dream, but really? Is it? Sometimes I’m not asleep when I go there, but recently It's always been when I am dreaming. I never try to go there anymore, it’s too sad and dangerous. But when I was little, maybe five or six, I would tell Nana stories about the magician and his world and where all the portals went. That's when it started I think, when I started imagining it. As I was telling the stories I remember I closed my eyes and pictured the world. Suddenly I was there and so was Nana. In the beginning the stories always ended happily, the magician was Papa and he would give us fun things like wings and tails and we would run around in the desert with all the other happy kids. 

But then I got older, the stories got darker and darker, that just comes with age, my imagination changed. But then Papa left. That was the last straw. He just vanished, taking all his stuff and only leaving a note that said “Bye Avery Avenue” which was what he always called me. Then the magician turned evil in my stories, the kids were no longer happy and I kept almost dying. Nana would save me every time, she was the only happy thing left. She would hand me jetpacks and then we would fly up and into the sun and suddenly I would be back in reality. She was my superhero.

Even as I got older I kept going into dreamland. Except I didn't have control of when anymore. I stopped telling stories a while after Papa left because sometimes nana wouldn't be enough to save me and I’d almost die, and then sometimes after I stopped telling the stories I would just be in dreamland. It scared me. I was only ten when he left but I was changed forever. And then Nana got sick. I stayed at the hospital with her every day and night. Everyone else just visited but I stayed. I told her stories again, and she never minded if they got dark or sad. When we were alone in the hospital room late at night she taught me everything she knew. I created the world, but when Papa left it turned against me. It tried to kill me, fueled by my grief. It’s still trying to this day, I don't want to go back there, but maybe if I do I can see Nana again. Then maybe I’ll be okay. 

I try, for the first time in three years, to go to dreamland. I tell myself a story. And then there I am. Where I always start, in one of the caves. I tried going through the portal once, but it just led me up into the desert where the magician could find me easier. This time though I don’t try that. I know the magician is going to come by and see me pretty soon, so I climb down a couple caves until I find one with a hiding place. I always tried to be found by the magician before, I always had this hope that Papa would be back and I would get wings and fly around and be happy. Anything’s possible here. This time though I have other plans. I only have one mission, find Nana. 

“Nana! Please come back! Please!” I whisper-shout. And just like that she floats down into the cave with her rainbow parachute. 

“What do you need, boy?” she says. “Back already?” I open my mouth and steel myself to  ask the question I'm not sure I want to know the answer to.

“How can I stay here forever?” She looks taken aback. I can guarantee that she did not expect that. 

“Boy! You have a full real life ahead of you! How could you possibly want that?” I shush her and she looks offended until she hears the faint roar of the magician’s dirigible. “You can't do this so young, you have so much life out there to live!” she resumes in a whisper. 

“So much I could do. But not exactly what I want to do. You and Papa were the only good things, and now you’re gone.” She winces at the mention of her husband and I immediately  feel a pang of guilt, she misses him more than I do. She sighs,

“Okay. sure. I’ll tell you how. You have to die in the real world.” I know this means I have to kill myself, I already knew this, but I had hoped there would be another way. Something less… Permanent. 

“That's the only way?” I ask, suddenly unsure if I have the guts to do this.

“I’m afraid so, boy.” She looks weary. 

“I don't think a Nana is supposed to tell her grandson to kill himself” I say, attempting humor, but it falls short.

“Well,” she says, “It’s like there are two yous, one doesn’t matter and will just keep hurting you, but the other can be happy. It’s like suggesting you move, but permanently.”

“That makes sense,” I muse. “Do I have to do it now?” I still need some time to make up my mind, to see if I can do this. 

“Well…” Nana gets a glint in her eye, and I know she has something up her sleeve, she always does. “How about we have some fun first? Would you like to see my dreamworld?” I stare at her.

“You can do that?” I ask, shocked. She laughs,

“Well I'm in your world right now, why cant you be in mine?” The canyon fades away around us and before I have time to blink we're in a city. It’s night time and the alley is dimly lit by advertisements on the sides of the buildings. Above us people zip around on hoverboards and floating cars and cabs and anything you can dream of, I even see one person floating along in a cardboard box! There’s broken glass and trash everywhere and everything is grimy, but it’s beautiful. I stare at her, 

“Wow. it’s amazing!” I breathe. “I love it!” she nods.

“I stopped coming here after you started telling me stories and going to your world so it hasn't yet been affected by Papa leaving. It hasn't been destroyed.  I was happy when I stopped coming here, I had you, so the world reflects that. But every broken bottle in this alley embodies a tragedy. Whenever anything bad happened I would go here and throw a bottle at the wall. I would’ve needed to throw so many bottles for your Papa. But you needed me to be strong, so I didn't.” I look around and see the broken glass surrounding everything.

“There’s so much.” I say, Nana shrugs

“I’ve had a long life.” she says simply. As we go through the city I have one more question. 

“How come your’s doesn’t have a story? The same thing always happens in my dreamworld, but nothing is really happening in yours. Why isn’t it like that?” 

“I created this so I could just have a place to go, so that no one would be after me here, so I can just chill. All that doesn’t make it any less dangerous though, as I learned. Your world started out as a story land, you created it to have a story. I created mine so it wouldn’t. Your story just happened to get dangerous.” She explains this like she took a college class on it. 

“How do you know all this?” I ask.

“I spent a lot of time here as a kid, and in this past month I spent so much time examining our worlds. I learned all this the hard way, and I’m teaching you so you don't have to.” We sit in silence like that for a moment, her thinking about who knows what, and me processing her words. “Now I think you should get back to reality and decide if you really want to do this.” She breaks the silence. I close my eyes and imagine that I just took a walk in the park instead of a cyberpunk city and now I’m sitting on one of the benches, and then, there I am. I wander through the town until I get to the forest, I climb up the trail and cut into the woods when I get to the rock that looks like a face. Emerging from the trees I get to a place I’m pretty sure no one else knows about. The cliff. Slowly, I walk to the edge until my toes are hanging off the precipice. I can barely see the bottom but I know down there there’s a stream, a stream I’ve swam in many times. So. Is it worth it? Am I doing this?