NoThing
Page 2
It may have been a few hours; it may have been a day. Their feet never got sore, they never felt tired.
They made a few course-corrections here and there to avoid oncoming fog walls. But eventually, they ran out of directions to evade other people and passed through two walls of fog that were coming at diagonals on either side ahead of them. There would have been no way to avoid them without retracing their own steps and walking into the path of someone they had already avoided.
Arvan was counting the seconds using the old trusty “one thousand one, one thousand two” method that every kid masters while playing hide-and-seek in worlds that actually have trees and buildings to play around. He was trying to measure how long it took for someone to appear after the fog crossed their path.
It was roughly three minutes by his counting before two people appeared at the far end of their visibility on the left. Then came another on the right, at a sharper angle. As they drew nearer, it was obvious that they, too, were all naked. The two on the left, though, were walking hand-in-hand and appeared to be a man and a woman. The figure on the right was still too far away to discern his or her sex, but another wall of fog was visible, following the person.
The couple approached first and waved with their free hands, obviously very comfortable in their altogether. His hair was just as long as hers, and Penny guessed that if anyone here had any possessions this couple would have plenty of beads and matching tie-dyed shirts on.
“Hello! You guys okay?”
Arvan’s eyes darted back and forth between the guy’s face and the one spot he really, really didn’t want to be looking at but couldn’t help it.
“Hardly,” he managed, “do you have any idea where we are?”
“Nope,” the new woman replied.
“Nope,” the new man parroted. “Was gonna ask you the same thing. I’m Jay. This is Laura.” Laura waved and smiled. The three of them blinked at how lovely she was, and Penny began to feel self-conscious about her body again even with Stacy there to quietly, unwittingly boost her self-image.
“You goin’ that way?”
“We seem to be,” Stacy whispered, trying hard not to stare at the incredible gift God had blessed Jay with when he reached puberty.
“Nothin’ back there, man. I’m guessin’ there ain’t nothin’ back your way either, right?”
Penny, adjusting her arms as if they could possibly cover her a bit more, shook her head by way of response.
“Hello?” This was Arvan, in the direction of the person up ahead on their right
The person approaching from their right was within shouting distance now, his or her sex still up in the air. This was a very large person. Finally, as she approached, it was obvious that she was covering both her waist and a hairless chest, so that answered that question.
She said nothing, and just kept walking. She arced her path a bit to steer clear of them, staring straight ahead as if in a daze.
“Yo! You okay?” Jay called after her, but she continued along, indifferent. Without a word, Laura kissed Jay gently on the cheek, let go of his hand for the first time since they’d arrived and bolted after the woman.
“That’s Laura. She has to save the whole world, you know? She’s a counselor in the regular world. Wherever the hell that is, right?”
They stood in silence for a moment, all but Penny having turned to watch Laura try to get through to the large woman without success. Penny watched the very slow advance of the next cloud that had been following her.
Finally, Laura gave up and returned.
“Wow. She’s like REALLY gone. She’s way in her own head. Can’t say that I blame her with whatever this is that’s going on, but man! Totally locked away, and just walking.”
“The fog that was following her is almost here,” Penny pointed, and they all turned to look.
“Do we keep going, or do we move away from it?” Stacy wondered aloud.
Arvan took it a step further. “I wonder if we experience each other’s fog circles at the exact same times…if they’re all the exact same distance around us. Is that possible?”
“Is any of this possible, really?” The question was Jay’s way of answering. “I mean, we can’t all be dreaming the same dream, can we? I know me an’ Laura are real people who went to bed. We didn’t even take anything before this weird-ass wake-up. Are we all dreaming the same dream? And if we are…how are we all in the same place, having the same dream with each other? And why are we all nude?”
“Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can.”
They all turned to look at Stacy as she said this.
“Lennon,” Penny said. “I was named for the song Penny Lane. My folks loved The Beatles.”
“No possessions, no things anywhere. No things. Not even a world,” replied Jay. “Good call, Stacy.”
The fog strolled past them as casually as anything. Behind it, another wall was approaching at a steady pace.
“That one is probably what’s-her-name’s other wall, the one that would be behind her,” Arvan observed, again forgetting his nakedness and running his hands through his hair. Penny noticed he always did this when thinking. She’d abandoned any thoughts of reminding him about it.
“Well, I’m thinking we’ll probably keep going this way. If that girl ever snaps out of it…she’s gonna need some friendlies around her, y’know?” Jay smiled, and Laura held his hand tight, nodding. Her long, straight hair danced about her face as she did so, and Penny suddenly imagined the girl at a park in San Francisco in the mid-60’s, dropping acid and listening to The Dead launch into Dark Star, dancing with her eyes closed. The visual made her smile, because it had things in it. Things that felt like they’d almost never existed now.
Jay reached out to hug Penny, and she froze as his giant wand brushed against her leg, her body blushing, and her temperature rising a bit as the blood travelled to her face. Stacy got one too, and Arvan got a hug from Laura he wouldn’t soon forget. And then they went their separate ways.