Man Of My Dreams (SketchyEquine x Traveler)

A wind rushed between the petals of the flower the woman was holding, and they flew off into the great, blue abyss of the sky. There must have been millions of them growing in the empty meadow. Each one brightly illuminated as perfect rays of light bounced off of its surface. Every single flower was a perfect replica of its neighbor and not a single one held any hint of imperfection. Perfect flowers. Perfect leaves. Perfect rolling hills. Perfect blades of grass. Everything around the woman was perfect. Slowly, Emmaline plucked vibrant pink petals from the daisy in her hand and watched them fall. A tear streaked over the apples of her cheek as she plucked. The motion was slow and easy at first, but before she got to the end of the flower she ripped the petals out furiously and crumpled them in her hand before throwing them onto the ground.

“Fuck this perfect flower!” She shouted into the abyss around her before a quiet sob racked her body. “Fuck this entire fucking perfect world!” She screamed.

This perfect world, you ask? It was all in Emmaline’s head. This was some sort of solitary limbo that only the lone coma patient could see. For one reason or another, she was here instead of able to wake up. Would she ever wake up? This world was beautiful, but it was lonely. Every waking day was torturous as she wandered through the motions. An interesting thing, really, to feel nothing. Emmaline could not truly feel the wind in her face nor touch the soft petals of a bloom: this universe was all pretend. She was trapped in the constraints of her mind.

Although this world was beautiful, the woman longed for the real thing again. The closest thing Emmaline had to reality was the voices of her loved ones that would echo through the sky. She could hear them every time they visited her in the hospital. She would sob and scream to them: hoping, praying they could hear her too. They never did. How could they? Emmaline was little more than a trapped soul. She couldn’t so much as move a single finger. Speech seemed damn near impossible.

“Might as well go for a walk in my own head then…” She spoke to herself before hoisting herself up off of her haunches.

Emmaline’s bare feet hit the soil over and over again as she wandered. The best thing about this world is that it was ever changing. Emma could make it whatever she wanted it to be. As she focused her mind, the entire world around her went blank. In every direction was sheer white. Nothing of interest. However, that view only lasted a fraction of a second before blurry images began to form on all sides of the woman. Soon Emma found herself weaving through a forest of monstrous redwood trees. They were exactly the way she had pictured them. A light smile made itself at home on her lips. She had always wanted to travel and see all of these things, but her life had been stripped away from her by a man in a car.

She had always longed to see the world. Who didn't? She wanted to explore all the beautiful nooks and crannies that blessed the earth's surface. That was why she had studied conservation in school. She was kind of a hippie, one could say, but Emma was willing and able to fight for the things she believed in. Well... she used to be willing and able. The plants and animals of the world were one of those things. That's why these giant redwoods were one of her favorite settings to create. They reminded her of the person she had always wanted to be.

She had only been weeks away from graduation when she had been struck by a vehicle while riding her bike home after a late night of studying. Emma only remembered bits and pieces of the accident. She had been in and out of consciousness the entire time before her eyes shut for the last time. She knew he had hit her at a faster speed than she should have survived. She knew that at the time, she had been doing everything right. She had had on bright, reflective clothing and a helmet. She had even been riding faithfully in the bike lane, but she had still been hit. She remembered the screams of pain that escaped her mouth as she struggled to breath or move. Most of all, she remembered the panic she had felt.

At the time, Emma had feared death. Death meant the end of everything she knew. It meant being thrust into the unknown. No one knew what waited on the other side of the rainbow bridge, that was why it was so scary. However, could death be any worse than living like this? This was hardly a life. Emma found herself wishing she would die. That way she wouldn't have to be like this anymore. Her mind could be free. Most of all, she wished she no longer had to be a burden to her family. She knew it hurt them to see her like this; she knew that the hospital bills were expensive. Every day Emma wished that she would just hurry up and die.

"You live in a literal dream and you're suicidal. You're one messed up girl, Emma." She spoke quietly to herself. "Plenty of people wish their life was a dream. Why can't you just be happy?" She scolded herself and slid her back down along the trunk of a tree as she sat.

The young woman buried her face in her palms and just sat there in silence for awhile. That same torturous silence as always. Tears fell into her hands like raindrops. She felt like she was always crying: always depressed. Emma was always in pain that could not be felt by her nerves. Why was she like this? A sob echoed through the trees. Then sounded another, and another. Sob after sob echoed until she tired herself out nearly an hour later. Then, there was that same painful silence again. This really was a vicious cycle, and this was all she had known for two years.

Suddenly, a rustling in the woods tore Emmaline away from her depressed state. Her entire body jolted to life. There was something out there. In all her time here, she had never been able to summon an animal or another human to her limbo. She had tried time and time again, but always failed. If there was something out there, she had to find it.

"Hello?!" She screamed desperately. "Is there someone there?!"

She quickly got to her feet and sprinted in the direction she heard the noise. Her feet couldn't carry her fast enough. Her eyes practically bulged out of her head as her head searched left and right in sheer desperation. She had to find it. There was no choice.

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

She has screamed to two syllable word as many times as she could muster. Again and again, she screamed. Then.. she saw him. She stopped dead in her tracks and just stared at him. A man. There was a man here. Emma couldn't even manage to say another words. Never in her life had she been so excited to see a stranger.

Rubble and smoke, as far as he could see, filled the world. He stood alone in the devastated city. Everything good was gone. Every blade of grass, every leafy tree, had been reduced to dust, and smoke, and despair. Flowers no longer bloomed. Rivers that once ran with clean, cool water now sat dry. Bleached bones crackled in the unforgiving sun, slowly dehydrating and then falling apart, only to become one with the sand below.

He looked down at the ground between his Wolverines. The sand blew with a hot wind that reminded him of those bulbous helmets his grandmother used to sit beneath, when she was waiting for her rollers to dry at the beauty salon. He remembered the way the shop smelled - ammonia and nail polish mingled with cigarettes and cheap perfume. It was an old salon, one that ignored the marching of time and still catered to old women in too-bright lipstick and blue hair, who gossiped about the days when they used to be in the New Yorker's Society Page. Those days were gone, long gone, but the wind brought remembrance of a time when he didn't have the burdens of his sins weighing upon him. Of a time 'before'. Before the party, before the argument that propelled him to leave, to take the keys, to insist that he was 'okay', and to go down the two-lane, rural short-cut between the campus library and the Commons... before the stupid joint and the shaky hands and the OH SHIT that preceded the screams and the horror...

The sound of the world dying around him was loud. Every crackle, every buzz, every slow succumbing crumble, throbbed loudly in his ear, but it could not cover the memory of her screams. He heard her in his dreams. He heard her in the silent hours of the early morning, and in the small stillness that blipped between songs on the radio. He heard her when the TV flipped between the show and the commercials, and it was driving him crazy. He felt like he was barely holding on to sanity, and he wished, not for the first time, that it had been him, not her, who suffered the consequences of his stupidity.

His foot hit something metal. He bent down and turned over the bent rectangle, barely making out the reflective words on one side.

Broadbent Way.

Broadbent Way. The rural short cut that wound along the stream and botanical gardens that flanked the east side of campus. Broadbent Way, that crossed Huntington Avenue, leading to the Commons. Where the dorms were. Where she was headed, according to her lawyer.

He could smell the sweet scent of his joint through the whiskey. It had calmed him. It had helped him to stop cussing out loud at the absent other side of the argument. It hadn't even been an important argument. A roommate was breaking the lease, leaving school early, and he had been pissed. He didn't want to let it go. He wanted the rent, damn it, and he wanted it before the end of the month.

There was a four-way stop at Broadbent and Huntington. Stupid stop signs. No one stopped, unless you counted the slowing pause that preceded acceleration. He rounded the corner, dropped his joint -

Shit! The burn on his thigh still stung.

- dropped the joint, his last bit of weed before payday He reached down to try to catch it, but the four-way stop had come sooner than he had anticipated it and as he zoomed through - how fast did they say he was going? Was it really fifty? - a flash of reflective white and orange crossed his view, and the crash, the 'thump', the horrible OH SHIT that he yelled as the blur collided with his car and then flew away from the intersection, towards the botanical gardens.

He felt his chest tighten. It was happening again. He crashed into the signpost. The car smelled like radiator fluid and burning plastic. He felt the hot, wet, vapors envelope him as he pushed the driver's door open and struggled to undo his seat belt. He vomited in the gravel.

There was a sound. A hissing from his engine. The tires were still spinning, trying to catch ground and move, but the car had been pinned on the curb and against the fire hydrant.

The water spewed powerful and cold and turned the car over just as he crawled away, over his own vomit, to the middle of the street.

The sound again, a scream. He looked towards the botanical greenway. No, no no no no, not again. I don't want to. Please, no no no. He knew that he was going to crawl in that direction, then stand, when he realized he was not injured, then stumble-fall-run towards the bike and the girl. The girl who was impaled on a tree branch, who's eyes were wide and unbelieving, whose face he couldn't remember yet he couldn't forget the way her eyes had looked at him, focusing and unfocusing as her body fought to stay conscious. To stay alive.

Oh God.

I want to die.

I should be hurt, not her. I should be injured, not her. I should have died. Not her. Not anyone. Intent wasn't a defense, though. It wasn't enough, and though he had almost killed her, his clean record and his grades and the pleading letters from his family and loved ones had somehow convinced the judge to give him a lenient sentence. Too lenient, according to some. Certainly according to her family. Too lenient according to him, who felt like he hadn't done enough penance to make up for destroying her. For killing her. The last he had heard she would never wake up; she was brain dead. Her family was considering pulling the plug.

"I want to die. I should have died." He knelt on the sand, thrusting his hands into the hot ground and wiling his heart to stop. Just. STOP. Stop. Die, damn it.

But he was too cowardly to take his own life. He feared hell. He feared being 'nothing'. He feared facing her in the afterlife. He hated himself, and there was nothing he could do to change what he had done.

I want to die.

Hello

I should have died.

Hello!

I hate myself.

"Hello!"

He was standing in the rubble. He turned. The smoke and dust swirled in the distance, as if someone or something was moving through the crumbled road.

"Hello! Hello!"

He shaded his eyes in the glare and saw a figure running towards him. It was slight, slim, and frantic.

Then it stopped and stared. A face with eyes wide locked her gaze on his.

He'd never seen anyone here. "Hello?" He answered, lowering his hand. Behind her the dust parted, and he could see green through the grays of his world. "Hello?" Hesitantly he took a step forward. "Are you real?"

Emma stood there quietly and just stared forward at the man. Just like him, she had never seen another soul here before. She had spent the last two years in sheer solitude, yet here he was. It was like a miracle, but the woman was far from believing in miracles anymore. If miracles existed, she would be either dead or awake by now. Instead, she was here. He was here. They were both here, and somehow they were here together. Why now? Why after all this time was she now being blessed with the company of another man?

"Hello?" She repeated, and her voice cracked in the middle of the simple two syllable word.

Slowly, the woman took a step forward and her eyes searched his. She wanted to be sure that he was real, and that she wasn't just imagining him.

She laughed quietly to herself over the fleeting thought. Of course she was imagining him. This was, in fact, all in her head. Every thing here she was imagining, and she knew that as well as anyone. This was basically a dream, but instead of falling victim, she was able to make decisions and change scenarios. She could chose where she was and what she wore. The only thing she couldn't seem to do was conjure up other living things, wake up, or kill herself. It seemed as if the former had changed now, though.

The slender woman took a step towards the man. Then another. Another. Her long legs were gradually closing the gap between herself and the mysterious man. He was young, couldn't have been much older than her. Emmaline's cerulean eyes skimmed up and down along the figure of the male. If he was in her imagination, he surely wouldn't get offended by her careful observation, right? Once her eyes met his again, she furrowed her brows. He looked so real, and his slight imperfections made seeing him all the more intriguing. Everything in this world was perfect. It was all symmetrical and beautiful. The man in front of her looked like the type of man she would have run into when she was still awake and going to school.

Hesitantly, Emma took yet another step forward towards the man and reached out. Her fingers trailed over the fabric of his shirt only briefly before she pulled her hand away as though she had touched a hot iron. What the fuck? She thought to herself and tilted her head up to look at the face of the man in front of her. Seeing as her hand didn't sink right through him, he had to have been more than a hallucination.

"You're really here." She spoke.

The woman's voice was raspy. The young woman was obviously facing some sort of shock or denial. How on earth could he be here? In the flesh? He looked as confused as she was at her approach, so he had obviously never seen her here either. What had made this the moment that they were to meet? The stars must have aligned just perfectly to allow this, and Emma's mind was reeling over the coincidence. Or was it fate? Previous to being here, Emma had always believed that she built her own future. Everything she wanted she had to work for. However, as she laid there that night, she suddenly realized that it had to of been fate. She had done nothing that would have earned her such a torturous sentence to carry out in solitude.

And then she though to herself that was the first time she had seen a man in a very long while-since the fell asleep in the ER surrounded by crisis doctors. They were the faces of frantic men trying to stop her bleeding and save her life. They were handsome, and that was the last time a man had looked down on her. Until now. Her body was much smaller than his, and she had to look up to see his eyes at this close of a proximity. And then, she thought to her face, what if she would never see a man again after this one. What if she never woke up to see her father or friends. Hell, if Jacob was even still caring to visit her, would she ever see her boyfriend again? If this was the last one, she wanted to take full advantage of the situation.

Suddenly Emma reached up and grabbed hold of the mans cheek in her warm hands. God. He felt warm too. He felt real. She rose up onto her tip toes and pulled his face down to hers where she pressed her lips firmly against his. She hadn't kissed a man in two years, and she may never get to do so again, she she kissed him with all that she had. Her puckered oris pressed hungrily to his for a few moments before she released his face and lowered back down onto her heels. She ten looked right back up at him, half expecting him to disappear now that she had satisfied her urge to kiss someone just once more.

Awkward moments slinked by as she just stared at him before a blush crept over the apples of the young woman's cheeks.

"Oh Fuck..." She muttered before taking a step back. "Im so sorry... I.... I thought you were going to disappear in the blink of an eye." She stammered and buried her face in her hands.

Emma couldn't fathom why she felt so embarrassed. For fucks sake, this was all going on in her head. He couldn't possibly be upset with her, right? But there was something itching at the back of the woman's head tat told her it was appropriate to feel embarrassed. A little voice kept telling her that he was real, but that didn't make any sense. How on earth could he be real if he existed here? Then dread swept over the woman before she spoke once more.

"You aren't some kind of grim reaper or something, are you?" She asked innocently.

She was so slim that he thought she might have been some kind of spirit, some shade of the Slenderman... Slenderwoman... come to punish him finally for what he had done. He expected her fingers to grow knives so she could gut him, leave his entrails on the hot sand, or rake across his face so that he could finally feel what he had done to that girl.

He expected her to hurt him, like he deserved to be hurt, and so when she reached out and grabbed hold of his cheeks he flinched. But then she did the most unexpected thing, and his blue eyes widened in surprise. Her lips were full and hungry, eagerly sliding over his as her tongue seemed to speak to him in a way that echoed the lost, lonely song he'd been immersed in for the last two years.

When she pulled away she took with her the coolness that her touch had given. He had been hot and parched, and she was like a soothing secret pool at the base of a waterfall. He could almost smell the moss and the feel the spray of the mist.

"Oh Fuck..." She muttered before taking a step back. "Im so sorry... I.... I thought you were going to disappear in the blink of an eye." She stammered and buried her face in her hands.

He moved closer to her as she moved away. Her kiss had woken in him a desire that had been hidden for the last twenty four months. His need for it was stronger than any craving he'd had; stronger than his desire for a drink, or a joint, or the escape of any drug. He'd been forced to be clean when he was in jail, and now that he was out he had struggled to resist the call of the addict's siren, but this girl's kiss was his weakness.

"You aren't some kind of grim reaper or something, are you?" She asked innocently.

"No, but this is a dream, and I can do whatever I want in dreams." He reached forward to grab her by the hand. "I want to kiss you again. I want to fuck you. I want to bury myself so deep in you that I can't hear her screams anymore." His eyes darkened into midnight, and his grip tightened. "I need you to make the screams go away. I need you to save me."

His eyes grew moist, but he struggled to fight the remorse that always overcame him. "I can't, I can't--"

The alarm jarred his world and sent shards of crystallized sand into his mind, severing the grip he had on the slim girl. Matthew drew in a sharp breath and his eyes widened in shock. The real world jerked him out of his dream. He felt the coarse texture of his sheets below his fingers, but he remembered the heat of her skin against his.

His body had hardened in arousal and now ached uncomfortably. He groaned, then drew shaking fingers through his dark hair. He hadn't felt that addictive call in almost a year, but somehow the girl in his dream had made the cravings for 'it' return. 'It' was always something different. It could have been a drink, a hit, or the rush of adrenaline that came with street racing. He was easily addicted.

Matthew rolled over and looked at his phone, then swiped off the alarm. In two hours he had an appointment to see his parole officer, then he had to report in to work or risk being sent back to jail... but all he wanted was to go back to sleep and to touch her again. He craved her, and like an addict looking for his next fix, he began to calculate how quickly he might be able to get back to sleep in the off-chance that his nightmare might bring him back to the part where he dreamed about the girl with heat in her fingertips.

Emmaline flinched when the man laid his fingers on her again and things so quickly turned from an innocent kiss to a man trying desperately to fuck her. Whoa... slow down... was all she could thank of as her pelvis came in contact with his. Thee woman's eyes noticeably widened as she looked up at him in shock. Her entire frame instantly became rigid.

Suddenly, before she had managed to say anything aloud, the man was gone. He had vanished into thin air much like things in this realm so often did. He was gone, and immediately after is desert disappeared. It was then that Emma found herself surrounded by the nothingness once more. Her narrow body shrank to the surface under her feet and she sat, with her feet drawn to her chest. On all sides of the woman was white. There was no variation- no shadows, no highlights. It was all exactly the same. That kind of uniformity could drive anyone mad.

Emma didn't bother to conquer up a setting for herself. There was no point. The only place that she wanted to be in that moment was back in that desert with that man. However, she couldn't bring any of it back. It was as tough she had no control over it. How? he asked herself.

How did I get him here?

How did he leave?

How did he exist?

How did I get here?

How do I go back?

The simple three letter word was the only one that echoed through the woman's female. However, she could still feel the ghosts of his hands and lips. He had been there, and she had seen him. Somehow, it had to be true, or she wouldn't be feeling hope for the first time in forever. It couldn't have been fake if she was feeling hopeful again. It had been over a year since she last experienced hope.

With the hope, however, came dread. It was the dread that Emma found purely crippling. What if god was tormenting her now? He would give her the glimpse of another human being and just take it away in order to break her heart. If she never say the man again, she would live out the rest of her pathetic, solitary life without him. She would only have the memory of the handsome man who, for some reason, thought she was the dream.

Emma furrowed her eyebrows at the thought. "Im the dream?" She thought and cocked her head, staring out into the white nothingness.

This was all her dream. There was nothing here that wasnt a figment of her dying imagination. She had learned that after being there for a few months. However, she had also learned that she couldnt create sentient creatures in this realm. So... there was no possible way she could have created the man that she had seen. It was simply impossible. It went against everything she had ever learned about this place. Some how, the impossible had become possible, and there had been a dreaming man here with her.

Her train of thought was then interrupted by voices, echoing from the real world.

"Things arent looking good for Emma. You do know that, right? She may never wake up! Yet here you are. Every damned day sitting next to her and holding her hand. She might as well be dead, Carol! The rest of your family needs you!" Jamie's voice echoed. Emma's father had had enough of his wife's ongoing mourning.

Emma cringed at the words tat boomed through her mind like thunder. They had this argument often. Her father had given up on her, she was no better than the dead family pet in his eyes. Her mother, however, came to visit it almost every day. She was a lost woman without her daughter. She held constantly to the glimmer of hope that her daughter might awaken.

"I wont just leave her alone here, Jamie! God dammit! She might be able to hear us. Do you want your own flesh and blood to know how important she isnt to you?!"[/i]

Emma sighed. She loved them both dearly, but she knew she was nothing but a burden. Her family's turmoil was one of the main reasons she prayed that she would die today. She wanted to die every single day. However, today she felt the urge to die a little less strongly having seen the man minutes beforehand.

He was already offering her the hope she hadn't had in months.

"You look like shit." Sergeant Harlan squinted at Matthew, taking in the sunken eyes and the grey pallor of the kid's skin. Although Matthew McCoy was nearly twenty-five, his parole officer still thought of him as a 'kid'. The guy was broken and had spent the last two years in the state facility for his stupidity. In Harlan's opinion, Matt should have stayed there longer, but the governor was pardoning 'non-violent' criminals (because blowing through an intersection and smashing a woman with your car when you were high wasn't violent) and somehow this loser got picked up on the rotation out.

"I feel like shit." Matthew rubbed at his arms, the overwhelming desire to cut himself feeling like ants crawling under his skin.

Harlan handed Matt a cup and pointed to the bathroom.

"What? Are you fucking serious? I did a drug test last week."

"And you're doing one today. Go piss." He smirked. "And watch your fucking language."

A few hours later Matthew was walking to his job. His hands were shoved into his jacket, the collar turned up to keep the wind from cutting into his neck. His mind kept replaying the conversation with Harlan, angry at the insight the cop had. The hard lined attitude that he was given was enough to keep Matt from screwing up and calling his old dealer - he didn't need to screw up the second chance he'd been given, no matter how much he wanted 'just a quick fix'. But on the other side, it infuriated him that the cop had guessed at part of what had addled Matt.

"So, it's a girl, isn't it?"

Matt had scowled. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You. I can tell that you're miles away from here." Sergeant Harlan wrote a few notes on his clipboard. "Listen, Matthew. You screwed up. You've got a lucky break and now you're out in the world, trying to get yourself back together. Don't let some slit derail you. I don't know if she's got drug ties or she's one of your previous life's whores, but whatever it is, let it go, man. You've only been out a few months and you have five years of probation before you're totally clean of all this."

"I'll never be clean of all this."

Harlan's eyes narrowed. He set down his pen and folded his hands on the desk, leaning forward to look at Matthew more squarely. "That's the kind of attitude that will get you thrown back in jail, and the next time you may never get out. Look - you screwed up. You fucked your life up royally, and now you have to pick up the dregs and try to make something of what you have left. At least you have something left to work with. You're lucky you're not dead."

Too. That's what Harlan should have said.

Matthew had stared at him across the table, and thought about the girl he had hit. She had been broken, but alive. No one would tell him anything about her, but when he saw her family at the hearings he knew that he had killed her. Sure, she was 'alive', but what kind of fucking life was being hooked up to a machine, a vegetable on a slab, until your body shut down?

Shit.

I wish I had died, and not her.

That night he wanted so badly to buy himself a liter of whiskey and just medicate the pain away, but he knew that if his parole officer found it then Matt would be toast. Instead he made himself some hot cocoa and slammed the glass, then opened up every window in his tiny apartment before laying on the top of the covers and shutting his eyes.

"If there's a god... please... let me see that girl again. I don't want to be alone."

The desert was vast. Tiny sprigs of dead branches stuck up through the dunes, looking like driftwood on the ocean. There was no water, though. Not as far as he could see. Matt shielded his eyes and peered across the monotonous distance. The heat felt like a hair dryer, or maybe like the heat from a car engine. He turned his face towards the sun and he could smell the burning oil and antifreeze of his car engine as it spilled it's life onto the pavement.

He could hear her cries in the dark. As he turned his face away from the heat he felt the cool air of the botanical path along the stream bed. He could smell the moss and the grass. He could smell the blood.

Oh god, oh god.... dear God. Please, help me..." He heard the faint sounds of an organ in the distance and a few strains of "Rugged Cross", but it was too far away. He couldn't get to it. He had to go to the crying girl, to the girl he had broken, but the stream was gone and the botanical gardens were far away. Matt started to run across the burning sand. His lungs ached with the strain. "No! Don't go. No, please!"