Beautiful Dreamer

I wanted this to be a nightmare.

My pupils fixed to the white-panelled ceiling of a hospital hallway. Fluorescent lights blinded me as they streaked past. People were running around and rattling off information as they handed me from one group to another.

“Fifteen-year-old female. Blood type B. Was T-boned by another vehicle. Suspecting possible brain hemorrhage—”

I’d been in a car accident.

No! This can’t be real. This can’t be happening! Wake up. Wake up!!!

Doctors and nurses in scrubs and plastic aprons surrounded me. A ring of halogens burned my retinas. The last face I saw was a man’s.

“Hey, Ruta. Don’t worry,” he reassured me with an unnerving smile. “Everything will be alright. You’re in good hands.” His name tag said he was a doctor, Dr. Toksvig. But that grin. Why didn’t I trust him?

The blackness overtook me, then there was white.

For the first three seconds, I thought this was great. I had no idea where I was, but there was no way that free-falling was real. What idiot lets kids go skydiving? Wait a second…

I was free-falling at 85 km/h and wasn’t sure where the ground was. Everything was blinding white.

First, I checked my shoulders for a parachute. Nope. Of course not. Nothing can be that easy. Thus, I did the sane thing I do in every dream where I’m falling, I started flapping like a chicken. It wasn’t going to stop me from going to splat into the floor below. I could see it getting closer and closer.

Trying to fly didn’t work. Instead, I reached for something to grab onto, but there was nothing other than the white and grey of some kind of building whipping by. Only sensible thing I could do after that was scream, and maybe if I was lucky, my parents would hear me and shake me awake.

“Eee!”

My howl caught in my throat. I had been caught in something, maybe a net. Before I could open my eyes and figure out what happened, the sinking sensation increased, followed by a mighty tear. And my curses. My imagination wasn’t going to be nice to me.

Then with a smack, I landed on a giant gym mat.

“Ugh…” My voice escaped me in a moan.

These were the type of nightmares that would haunt me for weeks. Jessica and Katie always said I had the strangest ones they’ve ever heard of.

I flicked my wrists. “Tada…!” I survived splatting onto the floor. Ten points. Give me gold. “Stupid, frickin’, messed up, pieces of—”

“Shoot! Did you just fall all the way from up there?”

I had been kissing the fluffy gym mat for a minute, not daring to look up. While the voice of the teenage girl didn’t sound threatening, the mat was safe and warm. I lay where nothing else could hurt me.

“What do you think?” I mumbled through the mat.

“I think you interrupted our practice, and we have a limited amount of time tonight before the Shakespeare reenactors need to use the stage,” snarled the same voice but with a tiny difference in her accent.

“Base jumping without a parachute…Geez, some Rutas are nuts.”

“Tell me about it. Can you, like, move?”

“Tsk!”

Several voices overlapped, and they all sounded similar. Too similar. Curiosity got the best of me and I lifted my head.

Send in the clowns. Somehow this nightmare kept getting worse! There were two clowns and four other girls in the sparkly neon outfits of Cirque du Soleil. Two of them were holding hula-hoops, one a pair of clubs, and the last one was carrying a flaming torch.

I shifted to a crouched position. This situation could change any second.

One of the clowns bent over, scarlet nose next to mine, and asked, “Hey, you okay? The fall didn’t daze you, did it?”

Her eyes had the exact same hazel colour as mine. They sounded the same. They kind of even looked the same. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it due to the makeup. My instincts told me that the likeness was uncanny—like I was face to face with my clone.

“Earth to…Wait, where’s your name tag?” The clown made me aware of the other thing they all had in common. Across their hearts was a name tag, each with a number and maybe a name, but who called themselves Chuckles? They each leaned in to get a good look at the nothing pinned to my t-shirt. I had just fallen from the sky. Sorry, my mistake, the ceiling, and landed in the middle of circus practice. Somehow, the clowns thought I was the weird one.

“What name tag?” I asked.

Even creepier, they blinked in unison.

“You don’t know?” The juggler with the name of Toss tilted her head.

Great, now the nightmare was talking in riddles.

“No, of course not.”

A long pause, then one of them said, “I think she’s new.”

“No way.”

“Does that mean she’s over 85000?”

“Is that why she dropped in from the ceiling?”

“We need to take her to Central.”

No way in heck was anyone taking me anywhere. I didn’t want to be turned into a clown. I bolted for it.

“Hey! Get back here!”

I should’ve looked where I was going. My body went crashing over the stage’s edge and straight into a bush behind it. There were twigs jabbing into my legs, and leaves in my hair, and terror beating in my ears. Someone shouted, the world around me got louder, and the bush was the dumbest hiding place ever.

I popped up from the bush, laser focused on an escape plan. Ahead of me were several glass elevators. The longer I stayed there, the more likely I’d be caught. I dashed across the shiny white marble floors with one clear goal in mind. Elevator! Elevator! Elevator!

A girl left, and I barged inside. My shaking fingers hovered over the metal panel, eyes searching in desperation for ‘Door Close’ and a floor to go to. Buttons, so many buttons. They went from 30 down to -30.

“Come back!”

“Stop her!”

A surge of teenagers ran towards my elevator.

I punched -30.

Move!” I screamed at the elevator. The two seconds it took for the elevator to shut the doors was an eternity, but at least I was safe. “Thank goodness…”

My eyes looked up at the numbers as it counted down. I was an idiot. The elevator was telling those above where I was going.

I sighed, wishing I was as good at Math as I was at Social Studies and English. Time for a plan B. I swiped floors -25 through -29, lighting up an entire row of floors. There! Let’s see if the clowns could find me now.

The world around my pod became dark, concrete floor divides separated the lit hallways of each floor as I descended. It continued until -25. The doors opened, no one was there, it closed and carried on. I had no clue where I was going. As -30 flashed on the display above, I tensed. Maybe I had made the wrong decision. In reality, staying on the ground level was the smart thing to do. It meant I could escape. In a dream, nothing was logical, but still, being in the basement was a bad idea.

The elevator doors opened. I was right.

“I’m such an idiot.”

The one flickering fluorescent bulb agreed. A hallway greeted me with its hissing pipes and blackness that had no end. I jumped at the sound of the elevator doors sliding shut. It was the creepiest place ever to be abandoned in. My overactive imagination constructed horrors that weren’t there, of giant spiders, and haunted armour, and flesh-eating zombies. Nothing moved in the shadows.

There was a rattling noise. I looked down, hoping it wasn’t a huge snake. No, it was my knees. Get it together, girl! All I had to do was put up with this until I woke up. If I wake up, my brain reminded me. Add dying in my sleep as another thing to be afraid of.

I sprinted down a long hallway, eyes peeled for anything that would attack me, or a small space to crawl into. Pipes, panels, conduit cables, and vents covered the walls. There was no place to hide, and I couldn’t keep running forever.

My lungs gave out, and I slowed to a walk.

Because that was normal in a dream, too. Right? Running out of breath? My chest was tight. I could feel the trickle of sweat down my back. People don’t feel things when they’re sleeping. Or maybe it was something else.

I shook my head. This was a dream, this wasn’t reality. The hospital wasn’t real. This couldn’t be neither. I was just psyching myself and panicking a little. Yeah, that was it. I was getting worked up by the killer doctors and crazy clowns.

The pause gave me time to notice the two-foot wide gap between the pipes. There was a perfect Ruta-sized hiding spot. Awesome! I slipped inside. Hopefully, I’d be safe.

“I’d like to wake up now…” I was done. Give me my alarm clock any day. “Stupid nightmare.”

My friends were going to ask how much sushi I had the night before. It was only a few. The avocado in the roll was browning a bit, but that was pretty normal for a grocery store sushi tray. Can people get terrible nightmares from imitation crab meat?

“You okay in there?”

“Yeep!” My yelp echoed.

“Sorry. Did I startle you?”

Given how loud I was, it was kind of obvious.

It was hard to make out her features in the dark, but I could guess she was another teenage girl.

“It’s safe. You can come out.” She outstretched her hand. There was nothing evil about the hand, she had a nice manicure with French tips. “I won’t hurt you,” she reassured. Some part of me said it was okay to believe her. I followed as she led me out into the hall.

“There. Much better,” the girl said. Then she faced me, and the terror returned in a flood.

I had come face to face with me. I mean myself. I mean her? She was me. I was her. Was this a mirror?

“Uh…”

“Something wrong?” she asked. Clearly, it was!

We looked almost identical, except she had bleach blond highlights, a tan, and as I jealously noted, dressed nicer. Her hazel eyes were the same as mine, as well as her highly made up face, but the fluttering eyelashes were not.

“Uhh?” Words weren’t my thing today.

“Oh. My. Gawd. You really are new!” she squealed with glee, hands clasping onto mine. “I thought Giggles was kidding. This is amazing!!!” The girl adopted the pose of a dreaming, love-struck teenager. Okay, she was probably worse than the clowns. “I didn’t think I’d get to greet a newbie!”

And I didn’t think I’d have a dream where I was talking to a better-dressed version of myself with air for brains.

“I can’t believe it. Not even a name tag.” She was looking for the thing that wasn’t there. It was still the better option, given what was written on hers. It had to be a bad joke.

“Doh. Silly me. I should introduce myself. I’m Mall Rat!” She outstretched her pretty hand and flashed a smile. Pure and genuine. The nickname was real. At least she wasn’t an actual rat.

“Mall…Rat?” I winced. Below her title was the number, 20514. I had no idea what that meant.

“Yeah, because my special trait is that I love shopping!” she shrilled with a high inflection at the end. “Well, that, and I’m good at navigating and finding amazing deals.” She added a wink. “You would not believe how many Selves get lost here.” Mall Rat finished with a wave. The girl was a ball of excitable energy. I encountered myself, and she was a valley girl. Still not a nightmare, but it was weirding me out. “What makes you special?” Mall Rat asked. Her eyelashes were fluttering again. A second didn’t pass where she wasn’t moving something.

The best response I had was to shrug and say, “Uh, I dunno. I like…to…uh…do stuff.”

“Stuff?”

“TV, movies, hang out with friends.”

“Can you fly?”

“No?”

“Breathe underwater?”

“No…?”

“Ooh! Ooh!” she hooted. She then proposed the most absurd idea yet. “Can you juggle flaming hula-hoops while balancing on a bear’s nose?”

“Uh. No?” Also, why would she come up with such an insane idea? Did I look like someone who could do that? Last time I checked, my hair wasn’t clown-coloured.

“Poop. No one seems to. Bummer.” Mall Rat crossed her arms and sulked. She then got into her ‘serious mode,’ the twitching and flailing stopped. “Okay then. For realz. What dimension are you from?”

“Dimension? Is this like from sort of science fiction movie or something?” There were a ton of Marvel movies and shows where there were a bunch of different characters with the same name in it. Had to be it. “Then I guess I’m from the primary one.”

Mall Rat’s eyebrow went high, frown matching.

“Seriously. Which dimension are you from?” The giddiness was gone, she had tone, a negative one. Her frigid look made it clear that what I said wasn’t funny.

“The main one,” I countered, going for the logical answer. Hopefully one that would make her happy. To me, it made sense. My shopaholic opposite had to be from a parallel dimension where my allowance was over a hundred dollars, unlike the one where I came from that got twenty bucks a week.

Mall Rat’s eyes narrowed some more. I was starting to take a hint that maybe the number under her nickname had to mean something.

“Okay, so there is nothing unique, extraordinary, or peculiar about where you’re from? So you’re Average? High numbers can’t be Average. You have to be special. You have to be special!” Her shout ricocheted off the walls.

There was silence broken only by the sound of hissing water pipes. I wasn’t special, so why was she mad about it?

“Hey, you doing okay down there?” Two dark forms stood at the other end of the corridor.

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Mall Rat replied.

“There are lights,” one of the shadow figures said. The hall switched from the epitome of nightmares to the standard sci-fi corridor found in every sci-fi movie ever made. Kind of boring and very grey.

The newcomers were another pair of carbon copies, except one was dressed in a work jumper and a hard hat, and the other in overalls and plumber’s cap. This dream was starting to become unsettling. It kept showing me more and more different versions of me doing jobs I didn’t like.

“Thanks, Plumber and Ratchet.”

The two tipped their hats to Mall Rat and carried on. So many questions. Why was I there? What was the deeper meaning behind this Mall Rat girl? Since when could I fix a kitchen sink? Dad blamed me for all our backup problems. Sorry that my hair likes entangling itself in the shower, Dad. I glanced sideways at Mall Rat.

“Look, I have no idea what you’re talking about. My name is Ruta. I come from Earth. I’m just an ordinary girl. Average, boring, normal.” A sound and truthful defence.

“Hmph! Fine. We’ll see what Central has to say about this,” she gave her ultimatum. The one thing this dream/nightmare/whatever kept insisting was that I go and see this Central person.

“Central?” I asked. Mall Rat strode past, heading in the direction the pair of mes came from. “Who’s Central?”

“Come on.” She waved at me to follow. “You’ll see.” Not that I wanted to.