The Gift of Getting

Well, the sky hasn’t died yet, but it’s still, bleeding black all over this side of the planet. There’s a boy passed out in a field and dreaming, propped up against a rock and leaning into its ivy which is slowly crawling up his arm.

There’s a war on, and it’s rushing around the field and around the boy. Shell shocked but alert, he stands in the eye of a hurricane of human bodies. He runs. He runs wherever he can find to run. The swell of war is an overwhelming weight on his senses, falling walls of disaster in every direction. Finally, the boy spots an opening, an opening he leaps into before collapsing onto the dirt. He lies still for a moment and forever then picks his head up and, as he does, the air breaks open with the sound of booing. There, in front of him, is the largest, most vigorous group of ex-girlfriends he has ever seen. One, Christine, pulls back her bow and fires an arrow, hitting her target. The boy falls and hits the dirt once more. A flower begins to shoot up out of the wound.

Some new dew, now dying, materializes out of thick air and lies down on the grass next to the boy. The ivy pulls the boy’s body closer, into its body.

The quick drift of friends and family and hospital staff into and out of his room plays before his eyes in fast motion: his mother, his best friend, his roommate, his stepfather, his real father (what rock has he been hiding under?), his nurse, his other nurse, his new favorite nurse, the doctor, the old lady who changes his sheets, people, other people, and other-other people all stare at him, glance at him, read him paeans—though he can see everything and is thankful for nothing—and have conversations over his now immovable vessel.

The ivy is at the boy’s throat.

The fields have emptied and the bed is gone. The boy stands with his hands at his hips catching his breath. The air and his mind are sharp and dense and foggy. He felt as if he was absorbing the fog instead of the other way around. The sky’s gone missing and all that’s left is nothing, and nothing is in order. But the order is recorded for only the briefest moment in his mind as a flash of light fights through the fog and, suddenly, before him stands four horses and a chariot. In the chariot is a man draped in gray and bathed in light, carrying a golden bow. This figure drops the reins and steps onto the ground, holding out to the boy a sack held together by a drawstring. The boy walks toward the light, slow but not hesitant, and reaches for the sack. As he opens it the light rips through him as well.

The boy wakes up, and as his eyes break open there stands before him a universe of colors—dark and loud, light and quiet—all visible just behind the leaves that have finally covered his face.