Short Stories Collection - Dreamscapes

He stared into the fracture, fear written across his face.

“Why me? How can I be expected to save our dying world? How were there no warning signs before now? Can I even do thi—”

“You’re the right man for this. You can save our world!” the general cut in.

His wife broke through, crying.

“Just come back to me. I love y—”

Static.

He stepped through, expecting ruin.

Instead, he found spring.

A path wound through towering pines. Sunlight poured between emerald branches. Wildflowers swayed in a warm breeze.

He walked on, searching for anything. Instead, the sky cracked.

Another world burned beneath crimson clouds. People fled through collapsing streets. One man turned back, disappearing into the flames.

The crack sealed.

Birdsong returned.

Then the question came from everywhere at once.

Why did he go back?

He stared upward.

Another crack.

A city stretched beneath a violet sky, gardens spilling from its towers.

Gone.

Why do you build permanent structures when you are not permanent?

“What are you?” he asked aloud.

No answer.

He continued.

Another fracture.

An old woman held a dying man’s hand.

She cried.

But she smiled at him.

Why does losing someone hurt if you always knew they would die?

He opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

More cracks appeared. Lives beginning and ending.

Then the trees stopped.

Ahead, reality peeled apart in impossible layers. Countless worlds shimmered like memories already being forgotten.

He stared in awe as he finally understood what he had been seeing.

“It seems you’re curious about us. So why not just watch?” he asked the void as he stepped closer.

“Why intervene at all? You’d find your answers if you watched our lives instead of destroying them.”

Suddenly, the layers snapped shut.

A black cloud erupted from the fracture.

It rushed toward him.

He ran, tearing the communicator from his belt and yelling frantically.

“I can’t stop it. Our world is going to—”

Static.

The cloud swallowed the trees behind him.

Then the question came from everywhere at once.

Why do you run when you know you will die?

As he reached the forest’s edge, all he could do was jump.

The water swallowed him.

He fought upward, gasping, looking for anything, for anyone, when suddenly a weathered canoe drifted nearby.

“Yes!” he shouted as he dragged himself inside and searched frantically.

Nothing.

No paddle.

He grabbed the communicator.

“Pull me out! Pull me out!”

Static.

“Please!”

The sky cracked above him.

Beyond it stood the general. The scientists.

His wife.

They waited beside the entrance, staring into the fracture.

“Can’t you hear me?”

Nothing.

“PULL ME OUT!”

Darkness crept across their sky.

His wife looked toward the fracture.

For one impossible moment, it felt as though she could see him.

Then her voice rolled across the black water.

“I love you.”

Their world vanished into black.

A tear rolled down his cheek, and his grip loosened.

“…love you too,” he whispered as the darkness swallowed the canoe.