Recap
WRiTE CLUB is a tournament-style competition that runs during the eight weeks prior to the DFW Conference (who is also a sponsor) and it provides writers the opportunity to compete against one another for a chance to win a host of prizes, topped off by a free admission to the following year’s conference. Our writers have submitted 500-word writing samples under pen names and they'll
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That moment before wake and sleep. That beautiful time when people’s dreams paraded themselves in tumbling orbs of liquid images. A bubbling fantasy of pure enjoyment. Worlds contained in a single moment—gleaming, dewy droplets of pretend.
I called it the Land Between. Nothing was impossible in that Land. There, spina bifida didn’t tether me to forearm crutches or worse, a wheelchair. There I experienced things: wind whistling in my ears, slippery mud up to my ankles, and the glorious sun warming my skin. In the Land Between, I ran free, my limbs obeyed my brain, my joints moved with unabashed ease.
And another thing, there, I wasn’t a social outcast.
Most nights, I bounced from one person’s dream to another—a skipping stone in a tranquil pool. I’d keep to the edges of their imagination. People don’t appreciate you mucking about in their heads, but stay in the shadows, and you are golden.
Nearly all were the same, uninspiring snippets of their daily life—a pop quiz, the winning shot of a school basketball game, showing up naked in a crowded waiting room.
But last night something was different.
I’d settled in Birdie’s Land Between. She was my favorite, like a comfy sweatshirt—secure, warm, and snug. Maybe I preferred her dreams because her Land-Between was my first. I’ve relived every one of her birthday parties and witnessed her dreams change from toys to boys, all from a safe distance. Sometimes I searched for her in crowded places. If a girl with a tight ponytail walked by, I’d just know it was her. Except it never was. Which was a good thing, because meeting her in real life, would break my number-one, red letter rule, and I could never visit her again. I crossed that line once, and I would never do that again.
But last night, while I lurked in the shadows, a shining broke through the boundaries of her dream. It rocketed across her fantasy in a blinding display.
She didn’t notice, but I did. A person appeared, like me, who wasn’t supposed to be there.
I saw a boy.
#
“Earth to Piper,” Toby, my seventeen-year-old brother, said as a rubber band stung my chest.
“Ouch.” I yawned. The afternoon sun warmed my cheek from the sunroom windows. I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but I had searched for the boy longer than I’d intended.
“Daydreaming again?” Toby was the opposite of me in every way, good looking, athletic, and charming. Somehow he avoided his embarrassing years altogether, whereas my awkward years pulled up a chair and snickered at me from the coroner of the room.
On the other side of the ring, we have
Main Star’s orange rays creep over the horizon to brighten the nursery. A baby fusses, bringing quick, whispered footsteps. Sedge turns to Nurser. The woman laughs and plucks the swaddled newborn from its incubator. But sharpness flays her geniality, Nurser’s luminous eyes dimmed.
“It’s good to be back after a few days off, Sedge. Demanding little things, aren’t they?”
Nurser carries the tiny being to an overstuffed rocking chair and places its head to her breast, while Sedge finishes diapering duties and gazes upon the newborns. One chews its fist and squeaks.
Only nine this week. Three boys, five girls.
One therm.
Sedge is therm, human yet sexless, nothing to physically denote male or female. Therm is Sedge’s gender, pronoun. Therm skin glows as iridescent emerald from mineral Earth, a vestigial reminder of the home they left long ago. Chlorophyll pumps through veins. Carbon dioxide is plentiful here.
“I wish—” Sedge says. Stops. Therm hates their voice, that of flowers singing on a craggy mountain.
Nurser watches therm. “Go on.”
“I wish my body to create. To nourish.” Sedge glances over their shoulder. “How do I … change? Gain this power?”
The woman’s brow furrows. “You have power, Sedge. Of longevity, of strength. Your body is made for this planet. You’ll outlive me by—”
“I don’t want longevity,” Sedge cries, therm words a painful song, thorns on quarter notes. “I want meaning. I want—”
“Sedge, last week my husband died.”
“I’m so sorry. No one told me.”
“It’s this planet. I’ll be lucky to live long enough to see my children grown. You’ve lived, what, going on four centuries?”
Sedge stares through the window. “You’ve had a life, filled with”—Sedge’s hand sweeps toward the incubators—“joining together to make love, make life, grow life inside your body. You say I’ve lived four centuries.
“You’re wrong. I have only existed.” Sedge’s heart plummets, therm body all lines and hard angles. No curves. No softness.
“There are celibate males and females, Sedge, who never have those experiences. And others who want babies but can’t conceive. Still, they all die young.”
Sedge drops to therm knees at Nurser’s feet. “But they had choices. This body doesn’t let me choose. It gives me no desire. No passion.” Sedge lowers therm eyes to the floor. “I have cared for newborns for as long as I can remember. What good is existing for hundreds of years if I, too, cannot grow? Cannot go … beyond.”
“Do all therm feel as you do?”
“Do all women, all men, feel the same?”
The newborn suckles and tightens a lock of Nurser’s hair in its fist. “Of course not.”
“I want more. Will you help?”
“Maybe I’m selfish, but I can’t imagine this world without you, Sedge.” Nurser’s eyes glisten. “For my children. And their children’s children. With your decision comes eventual death. Too quickly.”
Honeysuckle and rose waft in morning’s orange glow. “But what a glorious life before that moment.”
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