ke up early, make myself up with raccoon’s eyes of kohl and an unflattering shade of bruise-purple lipstick modeled af

. I’d never grown past five foot nothing, even into adulthood. I couldn’t see past them to the

” my phantom

d then tripped over her feet. “Crap! Is someon

is going to suck major ass. Also, aliens are real. Also, your music sucks. Wel

en play guitar. I’m going to be like Courtney Love, minus the dru

you wannabe punk? You’ll break your ankle senior year of high school and never make it as a dancer, your band will fall apart every time you

seems her childhood aspirations were never m

he was looking abov

iery cloud blazed

es coming from the sky. Mom was right. I should have

s not God. This is a dream, my dream,

s if my memory of her was melting away: the disembodied ghost of Death’s grainy hourglass. “Oh?” she said, and then she was gone, her cloth

. It swelled like an omen, swallowing the sky. The heat was intense, and the fields cau

’s sensed our presence. Her mind is tryi

“I’m not mad, just conf

t was, an oven of heat, like the warmth that had flow

ke-off. “Cy!

sn’t working. S

e’ll have t

me. Pl

eted with

midst darkness swirled around me. I was i

sure myself: “It’s my mind. Sc

agine somethi

ek, tree fort, and weeping willow exactly like my memory’s recall of my childhood. I was back in my body, sitting in the weeping willow’s rickety

ibit Wim Hof levels of m

o the revita

the sky. “I hear yo

y cognizant of us.

h but more emo. The Hash Slinging Slasher fro

use. The secon

. He’s still in his biomorph,

bout me like I

ck from the containment ward. Let’s let him deal with the f

with dreams, not common sense. Up the revitadrip. She

igh

d Bowie died, ascended to the stars, and become an alien overlord c

. Darkness flooded my backyard, and I cried out, blinded by the Blackstar. It was like the void behind eyelids, clogged with sunsp

fluttere

nstead, I was alone, lying on a spongy floor, which was matted with something like grass. Dim l

at the base of my spine. I pulled the brown tendril from me. It popped out with a suction

hroat clutched as I realized I had been plugged in and pumped with whatever revitadrip and neurodr

ls were moving with a slow, lush whir, like water swirling in an eddy at the base of San Rafael Falls. The air was warm and moist, like the Amazon, and brown and bluish

-out pumice stone. Had I become a golem? Had Ziggy Stardust descended from Mars to claim me as his bride? What about Michael the Hippie Archangel Incarnate from Stranger in a Strange Land? Was it maybe S