The Fairy With The Turquoise Hair

(Part 3)

Here is the dream. It is always summer in this dream. I have known this dream all my life. I am at a party in the backyard. Everyone is happy. Everyone is there. This is the dream. I see someone at the far end of the table. I get up to hug them because I haven’t seen them in a very long time. They look happy to see me. I am happy to see them. This is a dream. I go to hug and I wake up.

I wanted to show you everything in the world and I told you I had missed you and the fairy and our father weren’t awake yet and I asked you if you remembered me and—
“Why is your hair blue?”
“Dreams. You know how it goes. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Did you Dream me this dress?”
“Yes.”
“It kinda bunches up—is it my birthday or something? Why did you Dream me a present.”
“Because I love you.”
“You’re such a freak.”
You hadn’t noticed some of the other things that I dreamed that weren’t part of your person in this world, but you hadn’t seen a mirror yet, so how could you know your hair kinda glowed like halogen tubing in the dark morning. Maybe you were always like this and I just haven’t seen you in a while so it seems new and strange. Maybe I remembered you wrong—. The whole morning I suppressed tears.
“Is it spring outside?”
“Yeah, you’ve been gone for months.”
“Weird.”
“Yeah.”
“Why am I in your room?”
“We have a fairy living with us and you were gone so dad gave her your room.”
“Let’s make breakfast.”
“Yes.”
I can only appreciate the gradient of sunrise when I am happy. When I am full of light and joy, I can name every color laying horizontally as beautiful. This whole family of color with the same surname—beautiful—pink beautiful, red beautiful, orange beautiful, blue beautiful, turquoise beautiful, navy beautiful, yellow beautiful. On happy mornings it is a family I could believe I have some relation to.
“We should have a party.”
“We should have a party!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! A ‘hey I’m back let’s dance’ affair. Maybe this weekend? We could have it in the
backyard.”
“Like a garden party?”
“Exactly! How do you always know what I’m thinking?”
“Well this time of year and all—“
“Just call it twin-telepathy and make me happy.”
“It’s twin-telepathy.”
“Totally twin-telepathy.”
“Totally twin-telepathy.”
“A garden party! A perfect thing. But we’ll have to get rid of that compost heap in the backyard—
not my style.”
I turned my head to a loop to look at the heap of hands in the sunrise and the bricks of
light rising up it revealing more and more and—
“That thing smells terrible! I can’t believe dad put that up.”
And then you headed to the back door. And then you headed off the porch and down the stairs. You walked right up to it. I was behind you. I felt my stomach turn to stone.
“What is this?”
“I’ve been having bad Dreams and we couldn’t—“
The angle of the sun kept rising. The oak tree was bathed in light. The heap of blurring hands were bathed in light. One of them was twitching. One of them was twitching. One of them was twitching and you saw it twitching and you looked at your own hand and your other hand was shaking and—
“I was dead.”
…….
“I am dead.”
…….
And you turned and you looked at me and you cried. And you were shaking so hard that all the hands in the pile started shaking in too. They shook and shook so hard that their molecules began to blur and I could see them blurring and they blurred and shook and then they effervesced into a north wind.
And so did you.
You were dead again.
You were dead again.
You are dead again.
Dad told me the fairy vanished too but left strands of blue hair like cotton candy in an envelope in your room.

*

Biography

Mitchell King is a runaway witch living in Kansas City. Someday he hopes to colonize the moon.