Angels Among Us

Maybe I'm not dreaming, she thought, and on the heels of that, thought, Oh, yeah. Like when you think the flying dreams are real, too, and then you wake up.

She opened a grocery bag. She knew that in her dreams small tangible items tended to be distorted or senseless - written words that could not be understood, or remembered, that changed every time she read them. Everything in the bag looked real enough. She pulled out a box of cereal. The name was right, and the ingredients made as much sense as a mouthful of chemical compositions could. And the polysyllabic words were the same when she reread them.

She tapped the box with her fingertips and returned it to the bag. "But what if...?" she asked herself. She smiled to herself wryly. She had read enough Science Fiction to entertain the idea that she had dimension-hopped, or quantum-leaped, or some such thing. How come it couldn't happen when she was out camping and had a bunch of survival gear on hand? Of course, she hadn't actually gone camping in about four years, but still...

The possibility that she really had traveled to a parallel world or something equally improbable began to sink in. Panic nibbled at her mind. She didn't know where she was or how to get home from here, and her children were waiting for her. She stepped on the panicky thing that was struggling to overwhelm her. I don't have time for you right now! You're not helping.

A sudden alternative popped into her mind. Maybe I'm dead, she thought. Maybe I smucked my head on the fender when I fell, and this is the afterlife. She pondered this possibility for a few moments. But why would I be carrying groceries, or ghost-groceries to Purgatory or wherever? That just doesn't make sense.

Oh, and being in Dimension X or on Planet Wheretheheck does, replied her sarcastic side.

"Either way, sitting here is getting me nowhere, and if I want to find a town or something, I better get going." The sound of her voice gave her courage. Once again, she gathered her plastic bags and set off down the road, taking the long straight route that disappeared in the distance. To her right, the people scattered through the meadow were slowly approaching. Just ahead, a man was climbing onto the roadway.

His heavy overcoat was much too warm for the weather. His balding head gleamed with perspiration, which trickled down his temples and face into his neatly trimmed beard. He reached the top and rested, bent over with his hands on his knees, to catch his breath. As Seren drew closer, he straightened to his full height.

He was easily over six feet tall, and was quite stoutly built, firm rather than flabby, and well dressed. His blue eyes regarded her with wary curiosity. This woman in front of him was not what he had expected to see. He studied her briefly, noticing little details; the deep pockets of her shorts, the bulge in one where something wallet-sized sat, her bare ankles above the leather of her sneakers. He wondered what she represented. Weren't people you met in dreams supposed to have some meaning? He was somewhat bemused by the whole situation, and was more than half-convinced he was hallucinating after having hit his head when he fell.

Still, there was no point in being rude. His voice, when he spoke, was pleasant and cultured, with a hint that it could become supercilious and snobbish at the drop of a hat. He merely smiled politely and said, "Excuse me...but are you from around here?" He indicated the grocery bags. "I see you've been shopping and I was wondering if you would direct me..." His words trailed off as she shook her head.

"Sorry. I came from out there, too." She jerked her chin at the field behind him. He turned, and for the first time realized the situation as he noticed all the people making paths from nowhere. Most were moving toward the road, but some were wandering in seemingly random directions.

"Where did they all come from?" he murmured and looked back at her with a quizzical expression. She shrugged. "Well, then, I don't suppose there's any point in asking if you know where we are, or how, indeed, we got here."

She shook her head. "Nope. I know as much as you. One minute I was in the Foodland parking lot, I tripped over something and BANG! landed here."