Lit/Pub #IV - The Wake Up Issue - Spring2024

Fiction
Mr. Smith wakes up at 5 p.m. and looks around for his coffee. After thirty minutes he gets up
and leaves the room. Long hallways lead in many directions. No sign of an exit. He drags his feet to the
end of the corridor. A door shines back into his black eyes. His hands are trembling and sweating. He
turns the doorknob slowly and the door creaks open. He crosses to the other side.
A field of wheat under the disappearing clouds. The man can see, far off into the distance, a
young boy lying on the slope of a hill, electrode in his chest. The boy points up to the sky. The man
turns around and sees black clouds approaching; the boy shrieks and the sound reverberates in the
man’s ears. He walks back through the door once and he feels he is falling into the black clouds far
above the fields.
Inside the gloom, he sees himself. He is very young. Next to him is a woman – he has forgotten
her name – and she is holding his hand.
His feet touch the ground; he is now in a hospital, not the Dream Clinic though. He is in the
operating room and there is great commotion. Then the woman is lying in bed and this time he recognizes
her face: it is his mother. She is fatigued but relieved. To the left he sees the doctor holding up
something tiny and loud. It has a face too but it is blurry and unsettled. The doctor is holding sheets
of paper. There is only one word: NAME. What is his name? He feels like falling again but he remains
standing. The roof splits open and a gust of wind blows into the room and against the doctors. The
clouds are now falling, or perhaps they are ascending. It is difficult to tell.
He closes his eyes and hears the thump, thump, thump… he opens them and sees a misty
meadow and black pupils watching him. What is his name? He unbuttons his shirt. The electrode is
still there. He tears it off. His beating heart is now exposed. It cracks and out of the wound come cold
words. On the calm shores of Normandy, bloody skies come down with acid rain. He would like to be
reborn as a shrimp, and swim with multitudes in the currents.
He turns away and feels the pupils disappearing. In the streams of Hanging Rock he wakes
from his slumber and hears the passing cars headed to the Downtown high-rises; he closes his eyes, and
dreams of wheat, clouds and bloody skies.
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