{Strands}

From my earliest memories I pull out a single dream I had in the summer of 1992. I think I had finished reading HF Saint’s Invisible Man and went to sleep with a feeling of accomplishment for finishing my first 300+ page novel.

I was in an amusement park, being handed a balloon by a monochrome clown when my mother and dad came by. She took me by the hand while he handed me a corndog and we walked toward the flume ride. I was too short at the time, so I watched her purse and his jacket while they waited on line. As they moved forward, they grew younger and I got bigger. I started to complain that I was big enough now, but no one listened. No, that’s not right. I would wave my hands for attention and people would look at me, but seemed to both see through me and off of me at the same time. I then noticed that my voice had changed. Not deeper. The words I was saying didn’t make sense in the order I said them, and some of the words were just not even applicable.

Then it happened. An it that was both unexpected and, to this day, still makes my mind skitter a little bit.

A woman dressed in an evening gown saunters toward the bench I sat on. She had one of those dresses Jessica Rabbit wore. Joining her from the side came a muscular man but not bulky, wearing a suite made out of netting. It made his muscles look tensed and contrasted with his skin mesmerizingly. The continued to walk toward me as I protested having to wait. Closer and closer they came until they ere mere feet away when they stopped. She looked at him, he looked at her and tore off his shirt by flexing his chest. He took her hand and pulled her forward, talking through me. As they passed behind my body, I think my mind was pulled with them because I floated above my childlike frame, or what was supposed to be me. In my shape was a melting mirror that seemed to be fading away.

My parents, wet from the ride, came by and took up their stuff from around my dripping body and left. No one paid attention or even marked that I was there. It was like I didn’t even matter.

What frightens me and gives me nightmares is knowing that there is a possibility that when I am done, voluntarily or no, there will be no sign I existed other than a wet stain someone has to clean up.