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a prologue by Psyche I had a dream last night that I was in a coma, and when I came out of it, everyone I knew had grown up without me. When I told my friend Tobias's mother this, she told me it was a sign that I felt life was passing me by. Who doesn't feel this way, these days? Tobias hates it when I talk to his mother. She's a psychiatrist, and he thinks that if I spend too much time with her I'll start lecturing him with the same new-age terminology that she's used since he was young. Hippie talk. I've even witnessed it a few times. Both Toby and I know how to deal with hippies, being the children of them. I suppose this is one of the contributing factors leading to our bitter cynicism at such a young age. We're realistic, but we do love to tell stories. It's understood that make-believe is tolerated when created by the two of us, but from any other source it is naive and absurd. Toby always asks me about my dreams. I think this is because for so long he didn't think he had any of his own. The boy was convinced that he didn't dream. I told him that if that were true, he'd have gone crazy years and years ago. Toby wasn't so sure that he hadn't. But last night I had another dream, a particularly vivid, disturbing dream that I would never confide to his mother, lest she think me karmically and psychologically unfit for her son, and I couldn't wait to gross him out with it. I made Tobias promise a long time ago that the sliding-glass door to his bedroom was to be kept unlocked and accessible to me at all times, so when I get to his house I waltz right in to his room, declaring my arrival with an on-the-spot recital of "Sunrise, Sunset." Toby is sitting in the corner with his electric guitar, and I quickly realize my presence is not being acknowledged, due to a pair of earphones on Tobias's blessed ears. Wanting to make as much as an impression as always, I sit in his favorite chair and stare at the back of his unkempt, reddish head until he turns around. His eyes bug out of his head and he nearly chokes. Perfect. "Anne! You're not allowed to scare me like that, " says Tobias in that unnaturally loud voice that people with earphones use. I motion for him to take them off, and when he does, I reply, "Oh, shut up. You know you love it." "I do." We embrace. Tobias and I have the most platonic friendship between a boy and a girl since probably the history of the earth. Actually, most of our mutual friends are relatively romance-free also. Tobias has a theory that the kids of our generation are feeling a collective, subconscious guilt about bringing children into the world when it's so screwed up, and it shows itself from an early age. I teased him relentlessly for using the term "collective subconscious". He's very sensitive to my teasing. Tobias is telling me about his day. "So I walked to school this morning, Anne. Imagine that. I can't even remember the last time I walked to school. So anyway, I took that path that starts at the edge of my backyard and goes down to the ravine. You remember the one I'm talking about?" I nod. "Well, it was just incredible. The ivy is out of control. I was so happy. So I'm walking down the path, and I see this bluebird. It was perched on a twig of one of the oak trees, instead of perching on a power line or a satellite dish or something, and it looked at me for the longest time. I felt like it would just be blasphemy to look away, so I kept walking, keeping eye contact with the bird the whole time. Now of course you realize how muddy it was down there, what with last week's rain and all, so as fate would have it, I walked straight into a puddle of mud. And I didn't just walk into it. I slipped, and fell right on my ass. I was covered with mud. And you know what I did, Anne?" I lean forward. Tobias has this compulsive fear of being dirty. He takes at least three showers a day, I swear. "What did you do, Tobias?" I ask in a sugary sweet voice. "Hey. No calling me by my full name, my dear. Anyway, what I did was I laughed. I looked up at the bluebird, and he was smiling. I swear to God, the bird was smiling at me. I felt....blessed. Like this was some sort of ritual re-uniting me with my backyard." "Wow." I am impressed. "I thought it was a good way to start out the day," says Tobias. I agree. It is a fine, fine way to begin the day. I decide I won't tell him about my dream until he asks me to. "Is all your stuff packed?" I ask him. We are planning to drive away, just for a few days. I think it will do us both some good to disappear, to drop out, to live like we were in a movie. My coma dream had convinced me that this was our day, our golden moment to hit the road. Sometimes I feel like one of those postal workers that went and killed everyone in their offices. I think I know why they killed. I think I know what it was that drove them over the edge. It was the huge blankness that is taking over the faces of people everywhere. Walking down the street, I imagine, was once a far greater adventure than it is today. I imagine seeing faces of such color and character that brilliantly cover the empty canvas of the street. But these days, it seems that all of our color is slowly seeping into the ground, soaking into our water supply, and poisoning us as if it were toxic. Those postal workers must have been so desperate for something new on the faces of their co-workers that they settled for blood. 95Aug21 9:39 pm from Swagman Psyche's Prologue continued: "Yeah." Tobias indicates his backpack. "I filled up the Volvo, and told my mom I was leaving today. She tried to get me to take the map again, and I explained to her that we didn't want any maps, that it would be the greatest of adventures to get lost." "What did she say?" I wonder. "She got all hippie-ish, and tried to relate it to how there were no maps to life, but there were spirit guides who could help you find your way, blah blah blah and so forth." I cringe. "Toby?" "What?" "I love you." We are disgustingly affectionate. "Why?" "Duh. Because you're wonderful, dahling. Let's hit the road. I've got cabin fever." We leave, and we even drove west, into the sunset. It was Tobias who was driving when it happened, I swear. We were cruising along at a cool 75, with Beethoven turned up on the stereo. Out of nowhere a suicidal chipmunk came dashing across the road. We swerved to avoid him, but there was an unmistakable thud as the Volvo turned the chipmunk into road kill. We stopped in the middle of the freeway; there weren't any other cars around, anyhow. I ran over to the quivering heap of brown fur. The chipmunk wasn't dead yet, which was a minor miracle in itself. At least it had only been hit by the car, not smashed into pulp by it. Its blood flowed from the wound into the asphalt, the color of passion and sunsets, just as I imagined my and my human race's passion seeping into the ground. "Oh, God, " I breathe. And then Tobias is at my side. "Christ," he says. Then he is silent. The only sound in the air is that of the chipmunk's tortured, wheezing gasps. We are sitting on hot pavement in the light of the setting sun, and something is going to die in front of me. I shiver, in spite of the summer evening heat, and Tobias instinctively puts his arms around me. We stay that way for what seems like a long time, and the chipmunk is still not dead. "Toby, " I begin, "last night I had another dream that I didn't tell your mom about. I was sitting in my room, reading or listening to the radio or something, when I felt something sticky on my forehead. I went in to the bathroom to wash my face, when I looked into the mirror and saw a small, pale blue, vein-like scab, just above my eyebrows. I washed it off with hot, hot water and soap, and underneath the scab were hundreds of tiny parasites. I washed them all off, but as soon as I washed them, they grew back. I was frantic, and I kept scrubbing my face till it was raw and stinging, and then I realized that these parasites were coming from inside me. I gave up, and let them take over my face, and my neck and arms; they covered my whole body. As I let them take me, I felt myself losing my identity, as if the parasites were sucking up my very self. And then, when there was nothing left of me, the parasites began to die, too, because there was nothing left to feed on. So the dead parasites covered my floor, with the feast of my life still hot inside of them." As I finish my story, the chipmunk finally dies. I turn my head to the side and vomit. Tobias holds me close, and whispers in my ear, "Oh, Anne, it's all right, it's ok," over and over, while I shiver in the light of the dying sun. We are struggling up a steep incline, slipping in the mud of the recent rains. We are trying to reach the top of this hill to have a good view of what is about to happen. The night is cool, yet I do not shiver as I had earlier. My blood is pumping hard. "Hey!" exclaims Tobias, "I just saw one!" "Is that your 3rd or 4th?" "My 4th. I'm a lucky man, baby. Don't mess with me." Tobias is lucky. I wonder if he actually knows how lucky he is. I wonder if he feels lucky, which is almost more important than being lucky. We reach the top. Tall grasses have covered this plain. The last time I was here it was barren and brown, but now the grass is green and long. It moves in the night breeze, making a sound akin to moving water. I look up and spin around in a circle, trying to make myself dizzy enough to fall down, like I did when I was younger. As I am turning, I see one of my own. It happens fast; I barely have a chance to realize that it's there that it's gone. It is a streak of pearly white against the dark sky. A shooting star. I have never seen anything so magical happen so fast. "I saw one, I saw one," I chant gleefully. Tobias joins me, and we spin through the grass. He begins to clap his hands, beating out a simple rhythm. I do the same, and we whirl in time to our music. "Now you're blessed, too, Anne," he tells me. It's true. I am blessed. I feel very young, and very alive. As if on cue, the sky lets forth a shower of falling stars. We clap our hands louder, and turn faster in the milky light. The wind picks up and lifts my skirt up into the air, and we spin among the grasses and the stars, trying to take flight.  
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