Dream Big – Part I

Authors, La Fuente and The Shube, have taken up the challenge of writing one story a day (Monday through Friday) for the month of October. Check out their awesome stories on their site, Write, Maniacs, Write. Inspired by these talented fellow writers, I decided to post a short story of my own in two parts.

Dream Big – Part I

by Aud Supplee

Carly O’Keefe was a dreamer who used her imaginings to fill an otherwise lackluster existence as a young housewife to a successful, yet absentee spouse. Sometimes she imagined herself on a sailboat in the middle of a crystal blue ocean. Other times, she raced a shiny black horse through an open field with wind whipping through her hair.

Today’s daydream, however, began with an unsolicited thick white fog. She squinted through the veil of mist to find that she stood, not on a sailboat, not with a horse, but in a long, orderly queue. It didn’t feel like one of her daydreams at all.

Carly tried to wish the scene away by imagining a sparkling blue ocean. The landscape didn’t change. A flutter of anxiety rippled up her spine. She controlled her own daydreams, didn’t she? Uncertainty exploded into panic. Carly gasped and gulped, seconds away from hyperventilation. Thankfully, the line began to move. That small physical act relieved some of her anxiety. At least now she was going somewhere.

As she moved forward, the fog lifted enough to expose a tall white counter. A man, clad in a blinding white suit, stood on the other side. His face, the color of lightly creamed coffee, was clean-shaven, his black hair,close-cropped. The area behind him was still hidden in mist, making it difficult to determine whether he was a bartender at some heavenly-themed club or the concierge at a swanky hotel that used fog-machines for atmosphere. A ledger glowed in front of him. If this really was a hotel then she was in the wrong daydream.

When it was her turn, Carly flashed an apologetic smile. “Sorry,” she said, “I don’t have a reservation.”

He gave her a welcoming smile. “I’m sure everything’s fine.” He spoke with a hint of an accent that Carly couldn’t place. She still had no idea where she was, but his air of tranquility calmed her. “Could I have your full name, please?” he asked. “Last name first.”

“O’Keefe, Carla,” she said.

That’s when it hit her: She just gave her name to an exotic looking man with a ledger, in a foggy, possibly in-the-clouds kind of place. What if this wasn’t a daydream? What if Carly died when she wasn’t paying attention and was now about to face that freaky part where God judged her?

If ever the letters OMG applied to a situation, this was clearly it. Carly stood mere footsteps from the pearly gates. Admittedly, she hadn’t exactly seen any gates, pearly or otherwise, but where else could she be?

She quivered with dread. What life-scenes might flash across God’s celestial view screen? The time she cheated off her best friend’s paper during a math test? All the arguments she had with her big brother? The final blow-up that led to their estrangement? Hmm. She might like to see that one, considering she couldn’t remember what had caused the rift in the first place.

“I hate to ask,” said the gatekeeper, “but could you please repeat that?”

“O’Keefe,” she said. “Um, Carla?”

He consulted his ledger. Was he St. Peter? Carly knew of St. Peter but never properly studied her Bible, a gift from her grandma so many years ago. Wasn’t he supposed to be old? The man perusing the ledger looked to be in his early thirties, the same age as Carly. And didn’t St. Peter have a white beard? Carly’s gatekeeper didn’t even have a five o’clock shadow. At the moment an unsaintly crease appeared across his otherwise smooth forehead.

He flipped more frantically through his ledger. Carly shifted nervously from one foot to the other. This was taking way too long. She heard impatient murmurings rising from the people behind her.

A new horror rattled through her. What if she wasn’t on heaven’s list?

In a flash of desperation she said, “Could it be under my maiden name? Capshaw. Try Capshaw. And sometimes people call me Carly.”

A look of relief brightened his face. “Of course! That must be it.”

He carefully slid a finger down each column. Nothing.

“My middle name’s Isabel, if that helps,” Carly added.

The gatekeeper shook his head. “Maybe if you gave me your last memory before coming here? Were you driving a car? Or riding as a passenger perhaps?”

Carly couldn’t remember where she was when she withdrew into her latest daydream. But who could think with all the restless mutterings going on from the people behind her?

“Do you own a gas appliance?” he asked. “Could you have been lighting it?”

“My stove’s electric,” she said. At least she knew that much. “Just tell me, am I dead?”

The gatekeeper’s hazel eyes bulged. “Of course not. Excuse me just one moment.” He bent over a desk microphone and said, “Ava to the front, please.”

Almost instantly a plump young woman with short, spiked red hair slipped out of the fog. She joined him at the counter and flashed a welcoming smile at the man directly behind Carly. “May I help you, sir?”

Carly’s gatekeeper stepped from behind the counter and nodded for Carly to follow. They walked from the queue to a white bench, also in the fog. He held out his arm, inviting her to sit. She settled into the chilly seat. He sat beside her and pulled a device from an inside pocket of his suit; nothing other-worldly, Carly noted. In fact, it looked like a miniature tablet.

“I apologize again for this,” he said, index finger frantically swiping across the screen. “I’ve never had this happen before, but you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t meant to be.”

“Is this purgatory or something?” asked Carly.

“You’re quite alive, I assure you,” he said absently, still scrolling through the tablet.

“So you’re not St. Peter,” she said.

“I’m Clem. Is it possible you answer to another name?” His lilting accent sounded as if he’d learned English on some British colony.

“But what about those other questions?” she insisted. “Asking me if I was in a car crash or blown up by my oven? That’s what you meant, wasn’t it?”

“Those questions were just from another list I have,” he said.

“So where am I?” she demanded. “In a dream?”

“Not so much a dream as an out-of-body experience.”

Carly frowned. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t people leave their bodies because of death? Or at least a trauma?”

“Or during a really powerful dream,” he added.

“So where’s my real body?”

“You’re the only one who can answer that,” he said, still swiping through his tablet screens. “I can say with utmost certainty that if you were dead, or having some sort of trauma, you wouldn’t be here.”

“Maybe I’m not supposed to be here. You can’t find my name!” she said, about to hyperventilate again.

“Everything’s fine,” he said in a soothing voice. “Obviously when you’re in a dream-state you answer to a different name. Is it possible you have a dream name?”

“The dentist!” she blurted, suddenly remembering. “That’s where I am right now. Are you sure I’m not having a stroke in the chair and that’s why I’m here?”

“I promise you,” he said gently, “you couldn’t be here if that were the case.”

“Okay, so at least we know where my body is,” said Carly.

Clem nodded, looking satisfied. “Now if we can just find your name, we’ll know where your soul is going.”

“Going?” A new twinge of ill ease shot through her.

“You’re here either to revisit an old memory or to travel to a place you can’t reach in the waking state,” he explained. “As soon as we find your name, you can be on your way.”

“But not to like, heaven, right? Since I’m supposedly not dead?”

“Still not dead,” he said with a smile.

She settled into the bench and contemplated. Her family had so many pet names for each other. Where to begin? With her parents’ names for her or her brother’s?

“Here’s something,” she added. “When my brother and I were kids we hated to wait in the dentist’s office. To pass the time, we made up weird names for each other.”

Clem smiled. “That sounds promising. Do you remember any of them?”

“We’re talking weird-weird names.”

He gazed attentively at her as if it were perfectly natural for the occasional roving soul to be classified under a silly name.

She shrugged. “You’ve been warned. Let’s see. There was Birdie McTurd. Blanche Flank-Tanker,” she recited, counting on her fingers. “Petunia Mudflap. Jessica Hornhonker from Knickerbocker Springs.”

“Slow down, slow down,” Clem mumbled as he scrolled through his tablet.

“Oh. Sorry. Jessica Hornhonker. No? Then there was Belinda Bunpuppy. Um … Freda Slugbucket. Hortense Podclopper.” She tried to peer at his tablet. “Anything?”

“I found the name, Mudflap,” he said, head still bent over his electronic device. “Except the first name is Melvin.”

Carly gasped, remembering. “Melvin Mudflap was one of my brother’s fake names!”

“I’ll flag it, but that still isn’t you. Any others?”

“Wilhelmina Wombat,” Carly replied.

Clem checked his list. “No, sorry.”

She took a deep breath. She could think of only one more. “Agatha Bentwhistle.”

A full minute passed. Finally Clem’s head snapped up, eyes aglow. “That’s it!”

“Agatha Bentwhistle?” she asked. “Really?”

His head bobbed up and down. A wide grin spread across his face.

“You realize that’s not really me, right?” said Carly. “It was a joke name.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Clem said, scrolling back through the list again. “Melvin Mudflap is already checked in.” He looked up. “It appears you’re meant to visit with your brother.”

Before she could voice her doubts, the fog in front of them dissipated. Beneath a pale blue sky stood an abandoned carnival in an overgrown open field.

Clem sprang to his feet. “Congratulations! You’ve found your place.”

Carly slowly rose, gazing dubiously from the lopsided Ferris wheel to the dilapidated, and silent, merry-go-round with its chipped paint and broken horses.

“This?” She stared in disbelief at rusty gaming booths and the battered
fun house.

“You’re the creator of your own reality. Feel free to modify it however you wish,” Clem said as his fingers danced over the keypad on his tablet. He looked up. “Provided it remains a carnival. Your brother initiated this scene and is somewhere inside it.”

“Of course he did,” she muttered and took a reluctant step toward Neil’s messterpiece.

“Hey Sis!” Neil’s voice sounded from a distance.

Carly huffed in annoyance. She felt thirteen again, wanting to kick him in the shins for using that unnecessary familial tag. He could be such a pain sometimes. No wonder they hadn’t spoken in years. She turned back to tell Clem she changed her mind, but all she saw was an open field. She returned her attention to Neil’s decaying carnival world.

“I’m in the fun house!” he called out. “Come find me.”

“Just a sec!”

Since Clem said she could, Carly decided to fix Neil’s ghost-carnival. First, remove the tangled weeds that encroached on the shabby amusement rides. Who wanted to walk through that? She closed her eyes and pictured a neatly mown field. When she opened them again the area was as green and trimmed as a golf course. Encouraged, she took on the carousel, using her thoughts to restore the painted horses to their original gleaming pastel pinks and blues. Soon they glided up and down on their shiny golden poles while calliope music tinkled and boomed.

Next, Carly turned her mind toward the Ferris wheel, not just straightening it, but covering it with a fresh coat of cherry-red paint. She revitalized the booths with yellow and red striped roofs. She even added a working concession stand. Magically, the smell of popcorn and cotton candy wafted through the warm air. She nodded, proud of her improvements.

“Carly!” Neil called again. “Are you coming?”

She grabbed a box of popcorn and followed her brother’s voice to the fun house. If he hadn’t already been inside she would have fixed it too, but she didn’t want to accidentally squish him inside a new wall. Once inside, though, she wished she had renovated. Cobwebs hung from every corner and the whole place smelled like feet. The mirrors in the maze weren’t just dusty and chipped, Neil made her distorted reflections appear to ooze greenish goo.

“Real funny, Melvin Mudflap,” she said, hands on oozing hips. “Make me look normal.”

Neil’s laughter echoed around her. His own image, long, lean and normal, suddenly appeared in all the mirrors. “Do I smell popcorn?” he asked.

“I added a food stand,” she said, holding up her red-striped popcorn box.

Neil, in the flesh, stepped forward. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”

She shook her head. “No. I fixed up the place for you.”

“You what!” he cried out.

A direct route to the outside immediately opened. Neil bolted through the exit. Carly raced after him before the route disappeared. From the front of the fun house, brother and sister stood side by side. Carly beamed. Neil fumed.

Continued …