A Dream I Had

I'm at a party. The host is a friend of a friend and the room is full of nameless faceless, all of them recognizable but none of them notable.

I'm off to the side looking out a window. One of many windows. All windows. All the walls are windows. There are no walls. Only windows.

We are very high up. What seems to be the top floor of one of the tallest non-Sears Tower buildings in the entire city.

I'm on the phone. Have been for longer than I later think I was.

She called me. First. I didn't answer, though. My phone was on vibrate. I called her back.

She was sad when she answered. As she always is. No reason for her to be calling me otherwise. If you have nothing to cry about, why call the only guy you've decided you can cry to?

She's cheered up by now. We're talking the way we used to talk, though both ignoring the fact we were ever involved. And doing so admirably well.

The party goes on behind me. Surprisingly quiet.

I rest my forehead against the glass looking down. The people down there are so tiny. Street lights turn on as day light falls away.

She's talking about something else now. I'm not sure what it is. I'm not paying attention. I've never had to. She doesn't call me to have a conversation, she calls me to hear me say what she wants me to say. She hasn't changed. Never will. A part of me is annoyed by this. Another part jealous. But most parts just apathetic.

We're so far apart now, hearing her voice has almost started to not matter.

Outside, the sky begins to change. The dark blue turns to a bright green and my belly prepares for a storm.

Green is bad. I remember this from when I was little. A green sky is bad. A green sky means thunder and lightning and maybe tornadoes that will blow your house away.

Black clouds swirl into view, encroaching quickly from every angle, blocking the green, shutting it out completely. I stare, confused, terrified. All the walls are windows. There are no walls. Only windows.

If your house is blown away, all the windows explode and everyone you know is cut into pieces by the glass.

She has stopped saying words, and waits impatiently for me to take my turn. Read from my script. Make her not sad again. But I don't say anything.

The clouds begin to swirl. A dark ocean hanging in the sky, spinning round and round like black cotton candy wrapping around an invisible paper cone, only this isn't sweet and tasty like regular cotton candy, but scary and unstoppable like death.

Suddenly it opens like a yawning mouth and a pool of green light tries to escape but is sucked back in as the clouds reform and create a thin tube. It looks like a tornado but moves like the eighth leg of an octopus. In a fraction of a second it lunges downwards and scoops a tiny man from the sidewalk and pulls him into heaven.

I watch in silence. Everywhere, patches of cloud turning into black cotton candy death just before puking green and snatching up pedestrians with long tornadopus arms.

Everyone around me has moved toward the windows, watching with slack jaws and wide open eyeballs.

Hello? she says.

I gotta go, I say. We're all gonna die. I gotta go.