Dreamland

He couldn’t find himself.

This is one of the three “shorts” that go with “Faithful to Thee, Cynara.” The other two are “Cup of Decaf,” and “Words Made Flesh.” These stories were part of the Starsky and Hutch Slash Virtual Season. Faithful to thee, Cynara, with the three shorts that go with it, is available as an ebook.

There was mist/there wasn’t.

He stumbled across land that went unpredictably up and down, little ridges like a plowed field, but when had he ever been in a plowed field? Or, then, it curved in longer swells like waves, or sudden jolts like stairs he was going down in the dark.

He dropped into the grass as it liquefied, as the land moved freely, turned to water, ocean, sand dunes. He spat sand from his mouth.

He couldn’t find himself. No idea where he was.

“What the hell is going on?”

He needed to find Terry. She would know. Her sun-blond hair, her blue eyes, haunted him as he searched, as he tried to swim in some direction.

Wait. Those eyes weren’t Terry’s, were they? That hair?

He was so alone. He could hear people laughing, people having sex, people’s feet running like hell away, then back–oh, playing basketball.

“Strike one,” he called out. “Hey, where are you?”

The last time he’d dreamed this, he thought, suddenly clear about it, the last time, he’d found the steep corrugated iron of a dockside, and crawled up it, hauled himself out of the water with stains all down his clothes and bleeding from a half-dozen scrapes. Filthy dirty. He had made his way through the dark, smelly streets to the Torino, driven like a madman, found the graveyard, and gone looking for Terry there. He knew she was there. He could talk to her.

But now he couldn’t remember whether he had found her.

Fucking dream. His arms were so tired, and his chest ached, and he wanted out. He heard…

…a voice…

…a voice he loved…

“Don’t!” He put his hands over his ears, pressed hard, and sank, opening his mouth, eager to take the water in because he was crying too hard, had cried too long, and he didn’t want to get dehydrated.

Then he woke.