Horizon

The warmth of his bed felt like it was cooking him alive. Body heat had built up a pressure beneath the blankets that had begun to melt him from the inside out. His eye lids were too heavy to lift. The sweat on his brow had pooled to its brim, and the sweat dripped like tears into the well of his eyes and down the ridge of his nose. He struggled to release himself from the cocoon of blankets, but they stuck to his damp limbs and torso, pulling his joints to their limits as he struggled and stretched – desperate for a gust of cool air and to release a bit of the steam. Finally, his toes found an edge in the blankets and a bit of the pressure and desperation was released as he reached his leg out as far as it would go.

The air in the room was damp, and his relief was short lived. He followed the edge of the blanket unraveling himself from its grips and placed both feet on the wood floor. His torso hung limp over his lap still half asleep and melted. The sweat dripped down his body and his arms were still offline, but the tingling in his left hand assured him that both arms were likely still there. The weight of his head was unbearable and seemed to culminate in his eyelids. Nothing he did could keep them open for more than a blip. Images of the room flickered in and out like sonar as he tried to wake up. Slumped onto himself the waves of sleep consumed him again and again. But one thought brought him back to consciousness. Not a thought. A feeling. The uncarpeted wood floors beneath his feet. He was not in his room. This realization shocked him awake into a dimly lit space. His panic was familiar. It reminded him of falling asleep in the car as a child and waking up in his bed. But this panic was not squelched by familiar surroundings and groggy memories of being gently carried into the house by his parents. He had no clue where he was. The sleep stripped from his body, and his eyes popped fully online, taking in every detail of the room at once. Time dilated with his eyes – like the moment before a terrible collision when all senses are sharpened in an instant and the speed of light is accelerated by adrenaline.

He snapped to his feet. The room was spinning. He tried to take a step but lost his balance and found himself sitting back down on the edge of the bed. He took in a deep breath and felt the brine of sleep in his nose and mouth. The instability of his body overpowered him, but with his eyes now open, he could see how tiny the room was. There was truly little to see. Two tiny windows hung opposite each other about five inches above his eyeline as he sat – one directly behind him above the bed that looked like it should never have accepted the length or mass of his body, and another directly in front of him. To his right and left were two small accordion walls separated by a short narrow corridor. The light from the windows was a deep purple tint, but it was just enough to make out small brass handles on the accordion walls.

He reached for the one to his left and pulled it away from its latch. Behind it he found a small closet filled with several jugs of water and a wooden box. He opened the box and it gleamed in the violet light. His heart fell to the pit of his stomach and then leaped out of his mouth with an exuberant yelp of shock and disbelief. He pulled his hands away to catch the yelp, and the lid of the box slammed shut. Kneeling before the box he found himself more aware of his surroundings than he had ever been. The eyes on the back of his head and shoulders scanned the space around him for onlookers who could have witnessed his find. Both joy and fear overwhelmed him. He did not want to be discovered, but he had to be sure. He lifted the lid, and the glimmer of gold coins and precious stones gripped his chest once again. As the son of immigrants who worked hard but never made enough money to feel welcome in their adopted homeland, he had spent a lifetime as an outsider. Money had always been a perquisite to belonging. What looked like twenty thousand dollars in coins and jewels, meant more to him than its value. That amount of money represented the possibility of social acceptance.

Slowly he took a quiet and shallow breath as he gently ran his fingertips over the typography of the treasure. As he lightly shuffled some of the top coins around, he felt a smooth surface just below a shallow layer of coins and jewels. The surface did not shimmer like the rest of the contents in the box. It looked like a hole in the center of the glimmering treasure, but upon further inspection, he found that it was a little black notebook. The binding was soft and thin, and the pages felt worn. Its edges had been rubbed to the point of unraveling its fibers, and something about that texture made him feel deeply isolated. But the light was too dim to read the faint writing, so he tossed it aside.

The trance of his discovery was interrupted by the spinning of the room. He closed the box and the accordion door quietly and sat-knelt in that cramped corridor next to the bed as he gathered himself. Every part of him felt awake and chaotic. Questions and ideas zipped passed his mind as he felt every cell in his body firing off sparks of anxiety and exuberance in a cacophony of mixed signals. Suddenly, two thoughts surfaced at once. “This isn’t mine.” and “I WANT IT!” The thoughts seethed out of the depths of him, from the place he had hidden all his loneliness. Then, everything went silent as he noticed the room spinning again … not spinning but moving. Another thought surfaced, “I don’t know where I am.” He felt the other accordion wall behind him across the room. “Wall … or door?” Either way, he needed to figure out where he was before he allowed himself to be captured by the wooden box in the closet again.

He made is way across the short room to what he hoped was an accordion door, and carefully pulled it aside revealing a short staircase and bright light. He felt his pupils contract painfully, but the breeze that rushed over his damp body made him desperate for more. He carefully took the first few stairs, peeked over edge of the landing, and was stunned to find himself on a boat. The realization calmed him in the way resolving a tiny mystery can offer a small sense of control over one’s circumstances.

He creeped further out of the hull and discovered a modest deck surrounding the small cabin. The boat had a mast but no sail. A few ropes fragments hung tattered from the mast, but the well-kept deck was bare. He was alone, and his mind fluttered back to the treasure. Memories of punishing poverty were being rewritten; the look in his parent’s eyes when the doctor said his medication was not covered, the flavor of government issued peanut paste sandwiches for the kids who could not afford the regular lunch menu, and the endless silences that followed his stories of home when his accent betrayed him. Each one began to shed the sting of hopelessness and take on meaning. He was being made whole by the gust of possibilities.

Excitement began to well up in him, but confusion crept back in. “How did I get here? Whose boat is this? Where am I?” A salty breeze made his eyes well up, and suddenly, his confusion was banished by panic, as he realized that he was out at sea. He looked around in every direction, but all he saw was the horizon. No land, boats, fish, or clouds. Just him, the boat, the sea, and an open sky. His heart sank into his stomach again, and the world began to hum.

Short breaths left him keeled over the side of the boat reeling with anxiety. His thoughts flashed incomprehensibly over the gripping tension in his body. Then, his heart leaped out of his mouth with a whimper, and gently disappeared below the surface of the water. Everything went silent. He looked up, saw a dark cloud in the distance, and the sea stood still.