big empty sky #1

1.

Heat holds dogs down against parched yellow earth. An abandoned refrigerator is full of children. The mood is familiar to her though the plot feels fresh. The children are her siblings and the house behind them is meant to be her house. Its architecture resonates within her as something from her.
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In the way that facts move through dreams like ghosts, she understands that her parents are in the house. Their violent, angry energy emanates out towards her, so she stays straddling the fridge. Her siblings squeal and laugh. All are younger and wild. The fridge has no door and its plastic is distending in the sun. Losing its box form, it becomes bottom heavy and soft, a pliant beige pear filled with screaming children. Two are small enough to occupy the same crisper drawer.

Houston, Houston, we are past the threshold. We no longer have enough oxygen to make it back home. Houston, do you copy?

The younger siblings don’t fully comprehend what she’s trying to play, and so scream and slap the hot sides of the refrigerator. One begins to cry in confusion. Another, understanding that she is referencing a space mission, holds her breath.

“Houston we got ghosts out here!” [incomprehensible screaming]

That aint the game! You got to act like its real!

She demands of her siblings from inside of our dream.

There’s movement between her dream and ours. This facilitates the sense that both are coming from her.

Her stomach tightens with fear and hunger.

“What’s wrong?"

With the question she realizes that she has been staring at a shoebox for hours, 100 yards away and curling in the sun.