Flights of Dreams

A twin sister with coffee skin and her brother—his hair looked like a bowling ball when it reflected the sun—lived on an island in the Northeast of what was once called The United States. The sky was still blue in those days, and deep within it the girl fished well with a line tied to a car axle. Her brother was a clown who walked on his hands and performed body contortions when she needed a laugh.

Sister, what pictures do you see when you sleep?

Me you and mom out in the country building airplanes.

Shall we build one, then?

They laughed while scavenging the city of frigid bricks. With flights of dreams they built a useful pile in their backyard. Up grew the mountain of old ketchup bottles, water bottles, headphones, spray cans, mirrors, and sneakers, among other things, all of which were soon to be made into a successful flying machine. The neighborhood helped and cheered them on. On the seventh day they rested and went to see Aunt Candice. Brother and sister came around a corner to see her hat-on-head-silhouette strolling through a patch of wheelchairs, old invalid humans.

In a time before twin sister and brother's newborn eyes ever looked upon the green beauty of Earth, death was something most misunderstood and shunned, in the pursuit of holding on to regrets. After certain miraculous medical accomplishments it was legally ordained that, if in a vegetative state, one's death could be paused, keeping them preserved for hundreds of years, even against their will, if their relatives signed an expensive contract. The terms of the contract were valid for exactly 1,000 years.

Nursing homes burst. The population of mute, paralyzed shells, gaping flesh and ribs, grew fat until there were complications concerning where the living dead, the giant pulsing ginger roots, should be placed. Most of them ended up in fields and pastures. In the cities, they put them, wide eyed and drooling, in alleyways or gardens. Aunt Candice was a gardener.

And where have you been all week, children?

We’re gathering things to build an airplane, Aunt Candice!

Aunt, why are you not smiling?

Don’t do things like that!

Why not?

Children, why can’t we just live and eat and sustain each other, and tend our gardens? Without building airplanes? It’s too ambitious. Ambition was how wars started.

What is wars?

Anyway, it won’t last. There’s no use building it. Wind and rain will destroy your airplane. Nothing humans make can withstand nature. Anything you make will start to slick and rot, and trying to hold on to it just makes it worse.

Like your garden?

The static old people around her sat and stared, ancient and sleepless. Their clear skin glowed against the green brown grass. Red lights blinked on all the patients' wheelchairs in time with their pulses. Aunt Candice sighed.

Look at it this way, she said, spanning her arm out and around towards the vast, ruined city. Someone just as innocent as you had a vivid dream about this city and built it. Now it’s gone. Looks like a waste of time to me. Do yourself a favor and spend time on things that can’t be destroyed. That way you’ll be happy.

*****

The children walked back home and looked, hands on hips, at what would soon be an airplane.

I never thought about it before…she’s right, sister.

Sister pouted.

She always is.

Do you want to build it anyway? To smell the sky and tease the city like we were stars? He said.

What will we do when nature tears it all apart? She whined. That’ll just make us sad. We’ve already lost Mom.

Well, said the boy, running up to the pile of useful materials, when this pile of small things is built into an airplane, and nature breaks it up, we’ll have all these small things to use again!

He put a pair of sneakers on his hands, stuck a rolling pin out the zipper of his pants and walked upside down. She laughed like a baby.

When the airplane was finally built, hundreds of technicolored neighborhood children seeped out and surrounded the beauty. It was a fat airplane with fat wings, dotted with color, mostly red, blue green and white. They had found a real tire for the front wheel. The children jabbered and jumped, ecstatic, all touches and exclamations. Brother and twin waved from the cockpit and started the engines. The propellers were made from old brooms and mops; the fuel was mud.

The engines ran smoothly and takeoff was flawless. Before the airplane pitched upward, there was that gut-kicking feeling that the ascent wouldn’t go through. Brother smiled terrified and looked sideways out of the plastic window, jammed in between a box of crayons and a coffee-table top, as the children below slowly melted, imploding into a miniscule circus of fleas all waving their hands. The blue gray island city morphed into a diorama against the dangling sunrise—a handheld model—and sister took brother’s hand.

I’ve never thought about myself this way before, she whispered.

From the garden, Aunt Candice looked up and saw the plane. She shook her head, pursed her lips, and cried while the bald, freckled old man she was feeding, covered in ivy, laughed for the first time in one hundred and twelve years into his oxygen-mask.

*****

Sister woke up in the fog of her own breath under their shelter on the harbor. It startled her—she had forgotten that it got cold at night. Straight ahead of them the bay wept and danced under a dime-sized moon. Brother was trying to look out through the walls.

Sister... he said.

What is it?

Tonight.

They ran out to the lot where the airplane sat proudly. They shivered and watched: all of the cardboard boxes and cassette tapes and sweaters that made such a beautiful plane blended together under the coat of moonlight to form a crocodile skin. Between them and a city’s skeleton, against the backdrop of the jet black skyline, it was beautiful enough for them to stand outside in what was once called February, staring without blankets, for a few seconds before his teeth chattered and he said,

It’s cold, come on.

Shh.

There was a new sound. A woman’s sighs. They soon saw a bluesilver woman melting down a long, stone staircase behind the airplane, arms held out in sacrifice at her sides, eyes closed, lips half smiling, a crescent. She had once long ago been merely the transparent fear defining the beginning and the end of human effort, but tonight had become flesh and blood with a hunger to use her hands. Her long hair did not cover her naked body. Sister gasped and gripped her brother's arm. The woman danced and sang softly around the airplane cautiously before taking it apart one object at a time. Steam floated off of her shoulders and hair.

Is that nature? Sister whispered.

Soft, hissed the woman, I am Time.

They couldn’t dream of stopping her. All of their airplane’s ingredients landed one by one on the hard ground—guitar, skillet, washboard, flashlight—until eventually the entire pile surrounded the bluesilver woman. She laid on her back and spread her legs to the moon with a smile, before rolling around like a child playing in a pile of leaves. Her hands started reaching and grabbing. She grew into a monster. She bent the skillet, crushed the guitar, tore the shoes apart, ripped the sweater with her gnashing teeth, breathing a warm fog all over everything until it was soaking wet.

*****

Brother shook his head and turned around. Numb, they walked back to their shelter and held each other under blankets. After a moment, Sister spoke between sniffles.

We knew it would happen.

Not this soon…

But I thought we’d still have all the things we started with…gone. Just like mom.

They lay still for a few minutes, staring up at the holed roof. Her eyes froze briefly into marble before she blinked and turned on her side to speak.

I can’t sleep.

What do you want to do?

She smiled a cheshire cat's smile and spoke.

Let’s build a better one.

It’ll just get—

I know.

—like Mom, he said, stolen.

She turned onto her back and closed her eyes.

I know…

Everything he ever did had been for her. He turned on his side to face her. She was fast asleep. He smiled, mouth open, tears trickling out of closed eyes, his teeth twinkling under the moonlight like the keys of a broken piano.