Imagination and A Monster Chapter 2

ii.

Your mother swears she was hit by a meteor when she was pregnant with you. 

It’s one of those stories parents never seem to tire telling over and over again, but rather than the usual harrowing tale of how long the labor was and how much blood she lost, your mother instead tells you that one particularly starry evening while she was on her way home, something bright had streaked past the sky, and as she looked up, in awe at the fact that she might have just seen a large meteor pass by up close, another bright streak flew - only it didn’t just fly by. It flew straight at her and knocked her on her ass out cold for about three hours or so. 

It’s also one of those stories no one can really prove or disprove. Your mother, after all, is still very much alive, which would have been an impossibility had she actually been hit by a meteor travelling at Terrifyingly Fast Per Hour and conking her on the head.

But she swears it happened, even when she always does so with a laugh, and says that the only reason no one else saw it was because at the time, she was staying at the house by herself, and it was late at night in a sparsely populated neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. 

That, and the fact that there were multiple meteors shooting past the sky that night. 

One little stray meteor wouldn’t have caught their attention, she says, not when several actually landed elsewhere in far denser populations, along with auroras showing up in places they usually didn’t show up in.

The Meteor Event of December 2020, as that night had come to be known as colloquially, was a combination of a massive solar storm causing a global blackout, followed closely by several meteors flying close by, a couple of them landing on earth. People only remembered the meteor part better due to the fact that it was up close and far easier to freak out about, hence the name.

The blackout had lasted for months, where your mother lived, although it thankfully fared better than the rest of the world considering it was already a very poor, rural area, used to little to no electricity and the challenge of having to walk to the spring to get any water. 

Nothing much had changed in her village, she tells you. People went about their lives, trading produce and helping each other gather water from wells and what was effectively the village spring. In the absence of electricity, everyone turned to sitting outside their porches to attempt to stave off the heat of the day by getting some breeze, and using candles to find their ways in the dark. Coal-heated clothing irons were dusted off the shelves by those who’d been using electric irons for years. Young kids returned to gathering firewood again. The thicker metal pots were brought out to swap for the thin cookware. 

The rest of the world hadn’t been so lucky, scrambling without its wires and lights. There was some dark humor to be found in it, she says, that they lived just fine, with their own poverty weaponized to help them survive the chaos of the coming months that the rest of the world had to suffer through.

It’s certainly something to hear, as a child, the whole world shutting off for so long, so quiet in their inability to communicate. Your mother likes to talk more about the meteor hitting her, fortunately. 

It chafes, though, the more you hear about it. Fascination about the circumstances of her pregnancy fades from awe to boredom to plain irritation, the more she brings it up. A meteor hitting her while she’s pregnant with you is a fun story until she insists, years after it’s supposedly happened, that it’s real. You don’t know if it’s because you find the story insensitive to the disaster or because you feel insulted that she treats you like an idiot. 

There is the fact that, according to everyone who’d actually been around when the December event happened, when the meteors hit, it didn’t really hit anything. 

There had been no destruction, no crushed buildings upon impact, nothing. There was just brightness, light and then, exactly that. 

Nothing.

There’s multiple eyewitness accounts of it, all over the globe. Groups of friends seeing a ball of light hitting a field and then nothing afterwards; no smoke, no fire, no space rock left behind. A fisherman seeing a meteor hit the sea in the distance, but not causing waves or ripples of any kind after a bright flash that he thinks had been the impact. Hell, one of the damn things had landed in busy Chicago, causing people to run and take cover in their panic. 

But with electronics down during that time, there’s not a lot of evidence of the impacts. News only reached everyone after a good chunk of the world got their power back up and people said, hey, remember those crazy meteors? 

They’ve tried to find answers, which has unfortunately led to you having to memorize a shitton of terms for your history exams throughout elementary and high school, but it’s better than the world sitting silent and waiting for something to happen. Aliens, they say. Maybe some space matter nobody has ever heard before or discovered, something from the solar storm. Maybe even a mass hallucination from the hysteria of a global blackout. 

But in the aftermath of the power fallout, the economic crash and the lives lost from hospital machines being unable to run and critical help unable to reach people in time, the world had managed to scrape a few things together that had definitely happened, after December 2020. One, there was a global blackout and it was fucking terrifying. Two, multiple people from all over the globe saw meteors strike the earth but didn’t see them destroy anything. Three, a good chunk of those people who’d seen the meteors had gone blind. 

Four, of course, was the observable rise in everyone’s nightmares. 

-

It’s a funny thing to document, and in fact, you think it might have slid past the public’s consciousness had it not been for doctors breaking protocol and alerting health organizations that some of their patients, who’ve admitted to have witnessed the December 2020 meteor strikes, seemed to have eerily similar nightmares. 

They dream about space, a lot, or what seems to be space to them, anyway. In their words (in the words of your academically-mandated science books), it was like they had been floating in nothing, and they seemed to see the universe begin, grow, and expand. It was like watching everything be born, apparently, but in that bullshit abstract sense that dream logic has. It was like watching the universe take in a long, drawn-out breath, and watching everything in it just rise and fall.

It was also like having a sea of hands reaching out to grab you, feeling nails pinch your skin as thin as it can go, feeling rough chokeholds on your arms and legs, and like having teeth biting into your shoulders, your stomach, your neck, before pulling hard to the point of tearing. 

It was like having your body be ripped to pieces, slowly; skin from blood, blood from meat, meat from bone. 

The general consensus of these dreamers, based on a study, is that everything gets a whole lot blurrier after that. Some think they were tossed into the ocean, some think they were thrown into a crowded city, some think they were tossed onto a field. And then that’s where it ends. The nightmares repeat again and again, but never past that. 

It’s pretty accurate to what you’ve dreamt about.

The feeling of the universe expanding, that feeling of being there since the beginning and watching everything grow, and then the feeling of being torn apart to shreds before being chucked away haphazardly. You’ve lived with it, since childhood, and after the first few dreams of being ripped to shreds left you screaming, you’d gotten a lot more used to it, although you do react badly to being touched to this day. 

You’ve told your mother about this, of course, but she tells you it’s all just because of the things they teach you at school nowadays. They’re playing themselves, she says, by introducing this material to kids and thus giving them nightmares and then skewering the data when they were still trying to figure out what happened that night.

There’s not a lot of doctors in your village. The nearest one is eight hours away, and that’s also by car, which means you have to bear a lot of sicknesses by yourself and pray you get lucky, or have to talk to the local quack. It also means that, even though you can read about the mass nightmares that were possibly kickstarted by December 2020, there’s not a lot you can do about it.

It’s often enough that you know how it goes anyway, and with familiarity comes the loss of terror. 

It’s fine. You just dream.

-

Your town is something out of a child’s storybook. Vast, rolling fields; clear blue skies; starry nights from the lack of light pollution. Almost everyday, after school’s out, there’s kites flying until the sun sets. Anyone who passes by the river before dinnertime sees kids sliding down the hill leading to it on whatever surface they’ve grabbed to ride on. Everyone knows everyone, even if there’s a considerable walking distance from everyone’s houses.

It’s absolute shit. 

There’s nothing to do aside from all of that and nothing interesting ever goes on, aside from the usual gossip that’s just unfounded rumours blown out of proportion half the time. There’s no ‘making it big’, around here, no striking gold from some brilliant idea that captures the eye of the masses, no glass ceilings to break. It’s the dullest jar you could stick a bug into.

You sweat through your high school graduation in silence with this in mind. The last of your academic formalities, at least until college, and hopefully the last time you’ll ever see this godawful school of yours. Your leg jitters as you wait for the speeches to be over, go up on the stage when you’re supposed to and try not to wipe your hand on your graduation gown after you have to shake hands with people. It’s a humid day, and you’re wearing too many layers for this thing. The hours can’t be any faster.

There’s the song, the hat tossing, and then you’re shucking off the gown before you pass out from too much heat and walking home. Your mother still isn’t done talking about how she wishes you had a community college around here so you don’t have to leave home.

You keep your mouth shut. Even if you did have a community college, you still would have shot for that scholarship so you could get a full ride out of here anyway. 

You both stop by for cake at the bakery - it’s the most your mother can do to celebrate with you - and the baker’s son asks you about your college plans, like he always does. He asks everybody that, you’ve noticed from all the times you come here, and there’s always that spark of wonder in his eyes when people talk about moving out to find a job somewhere else, however measly it may be, because city money is a lot more than buckass nowhere money anyway, or when they say they’re moving in with their relatives for school.

His family’s tended to this bakery for generations. The sign outside says since 1889. They haven’t expanded to have branches anywhere else. They haven’t even changed the building since the 40’s. This place is just old.

The poor guy’s dad talks about their family history with the bakery with pride in his voice. The kid’s going to be stuck here continuing the tradition, baking bread for the rest of his unremarkable life, finding some unremarkable schmuck to settle down with, and die in this unremarkable town. 

“I’ve got a scholarship,” you tell him. You’ve told him that every time you come here. He doesn’t seem to get tired of asking it, and you figure it’s more polite to just answer. “Full ride.”

“Wow,” he says. “Where will you be staying?”

“The campus has dorms,” you say. 

“Wow,” he repeats, with this far off look in his eyes. It turns sad not a second later. 

You look away. Had your cards been just the slightest bit different, you would have been in his place too, and the thought of that makes your appetite turn sour. 

You shove the rest of your cake slice in your mouth and say you’re full. You tell your mom it’s a hot day and you just want to change into a clean pair of clothes at home. 

You can’t wait to get out of this place.

-

Your bags have been packed since before graduation, and you don’t have much anyway, so you’re already walking to the nearest highway before the sun is up. Your mother cries, tells you she’ll miss you and do you have to leave so soon? You tell her it’s an hour and a half to the highway and you have no plans to get caught under the hot morning sun for that long and then wait even longer under the heat for a bus to pass by. 

There’s no fanfare for your departure, which is for the best. You don’t want to remember anything about this day, save for the fact that it’s quiet and it’s peaceful, when you finally leave town. The sun’s barely risen when you finally get to the road, and by the time you’re on the bus and falling asleep from how exhausted you are, the day has broken and you’re on your way out of here. 

It’s kind of poetic, if you think about it. You don’t, you’re passed out.

The city is loud and busy when you get there, and there’s so much happening all at once that you have to stop and stare. It’s noisy, it’s crowded, there’s buildings every which way and they’re all glass and steel and blindingly bright when the sunlight hits them. People shove past you and mutter rudely about people stopping in the middle of the street during rush hour. It’s filthy. It stinks worse than anything you’ve smelled before.

You would be lying if you said you loved it. You expected to, somehow. It seemed like the kind of thing to do in a situation like this, for someone like you who’s never been here, but just because the place is a different kind of shithole from your hometown doesn’t mean it’s anything less of a shithole.

Still, it’s not home. That’s good.

Your campus is a little less much, thankfully. The grounds are huge, the dorms are spaced out but not too far from each other, and it’s cleaner. There’s probably a lot more people in this university than there is in your town, but they’re giving you a wide berth, used to new students moving in every year. 

You share a room with two other people. The room is still bigger than your house back home. 

They don’t talk to you much, aside from the usual friendly smiles, and they keep to themselves for the rest of the last days of summer. When school formally starts, you all throw yourselves into your work - you don’t share any classes together - but they start reminding you of little things more, like when you forget to eat, or when you almost leave a folder you should bring to class on your desk. You return the favor every now and then when you can.

Sometimes they ask you if you want anything from the store when they run errands, and you do the same for them. You help around with what you can regarding their schoolwork. When the break rolls in, they even invite you to poetry night at a cafe, and you don’t mention that you’ve never been to one and agree.

It’s comfortable. You wouldn’t say you’re close, but there’s something there. 

You think that’s why you tell them about the nightmares, when they ask what’s wrong, when you’re raiding your shared minifridge looking for something strong to drink and sadly finding nothing since alcohol is against school policy. 

“You witnessed the meteor strike?” one of them asks. “Wait, wouldn’t you be - “

“I wasn’t around during the meteor event,” you say. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Then how’s that possible?” the other one asks.

You snort. “Beats me,” you say, “Mom says she got hit by one of the meteors when she was pregnant with me.”

“For real?”

“For real,” you say. “Her saying it, I mean.”

Your roommates laugh. 

“That would be crazy, though,” the first one says, “Maybe you’re just getting nightmares from reading up on it.”

“That’s what she told me too,” you say.

“What do you think it is?”

“Fuck if I know,” you say. “It’s the only explanation. I wasn’t around for it. I’m having nightmares.”

“Your mom did say she got hit by the meteor,” the other one says.

You laugh. “Pretty sure it’s bullshit,” you say. “Out of everything I can think of, I’m pretty sure that’s the most unlikely explanation.”

“I guess,” your roommate says, and then shrugs too. “It’s not like we can do much about it anyway.”

“Yeah,” you say, because that’s exactly right. For all everyone’s documented about all the people blinded by the strikes and those who’ve experienced dreams that might be related to it, no one’s really found a way to deal with it. People are getting therapy, sure, but it doesn’t stop them from dreaming about it.

“Yeah,” you repeat. “It’s just some crazy nightmare from reading too much.”

-

You can’t say you had any expectations for college, so you’re not really disappointed or surprised by it. You do your work, you get frustrated sometimes, and then you turn in whatever you’ve managed to do. You do it for four years, and then finally, finally, you’re filing in your requirements for graduation.

It’s a lot less gratifying than you expect it to be. If anything it’s just tiring, like all the years have wrung everything out of you and now you’re just going through the motions to finally get this over with. 

So much for reaching your dreams, you guess. 

You file your requirements, you sort out renting fees for your graduation outfit, and then after a week of practice runs, you’re in a room filled with people who are throwing their caps into the air in celebration. It’s over. You’re done with school. You’ve done it, you’ve reached your dream. 

It feels -

It doesn’t feel like anything. 

You always figured, between the sleepless nights and the frustrated arguments with a professor or two, that you’d feel satisfaction when you finally walk off the stage with your diploma. Your mother’s here, even, having made the trip from your hometown to your university. A few of your neighbors are here to celebrate too, on your mother’s invitation. You didn’t invite any of them - the only one you did was the poor baker’s son, so he’d have an excuse to make his way to the city. 

You don’t know why you did that. Some false sense of camaraderie, maybe. Some sense of pity for the fact that you know how fucking terrified you feel whenever you think about staying in your godforsaken town for the rest of your life, and this poor bastard would just let that happen to himself without even thinking about clawing his way out of it. Maybe. You’re not too sure. 

But aside from that pity, there’s nothing else you register in the moment. Not elation, not satisfaction, not even that faint, faint stirring of pride, like when you’ve won a game of chess, or when you’ve stolen the flag from the opposing team even when you’ve almost gotten taken down, or like that time some guy in class decided it would be funny to snip the ends of your hair for a joke and you broke his nose. 

It just feels like you want to sleep, it feels like that same feeling you get when the sunset catches you on the way home.

You should just sleep it off, you think.

You let your mother usher you to the nearest fast food chain - it’s the only thing she can afford, even if she’s been saving since you’ve gone to university, especially with so many guests around - and you let them congratulate you. They ask you if you were nervous, if there were ever times you thought you couldn’t make it, and you nod and try to say what you think are the appropriate answers. Yes, you were nervous. Yes, you thought you were never going to graduate. Yes, you thought about your mother every time you felt like giving up.

When they ask you if you’re proud of what you’ve done, you smile, with all your teeth because maybe, just maybe, they’ll find it even more convincing, and you say, “Yes.”

After you’ve finished your meal, you excuse yourself to go to the toilets. You take a detour instead, going outside - out back the store, to sit on the sidewalk in your graduation gown, and watch the streetlamps come on. The sun’s set about an hour ago. 

You’re not going back to your hometown. If you can help it, you never are. You decided this a long time ago, and you have worked too hard to go back now. That was the whole point of fighting tooth and nail for your scholarship, and the whole point of you nearly passing out multiple times throughout your college career to keep your grades up. You’ll wire your mother money, sure, but you’re going to rent an apartment in the city, the cheapest but most livable one you can find, while you’re saving up cash for a house. 

You feel resolute with that, at least. 

“Why’d you lie to them?”

You look up. It’s the baker’s son. You hadn’t noticed him follow you. 

“About what?” you ask.

“You know what,” he says. 

You snort. “I’m a bad liar, huh?”

“No,” he says. “I just lie a lot too.” 

You laugh a little at that. He moves to sit beside you.

“Fuck, that’s cheesy,” you say. “What, you see the same face in the mirror every day when you lie to yourself?”

“Pretty much,” he says, smiling. 

“Fucking hell,” you say, looking out onto the street. Cars are speeding by, trying to beat the traffic that’s going to build in a few hours. “You could be peddling pocketbooks.”

“I’m not good with words,” he says. “And I wouldn’t know the first thing about writing anything.”

“Fair,” you say. You leave it at that and let the silence hang.

After a while, he says, “But really, why?”

You don’t owe this guy anything, not even if you grew up in the same town together. You barely know his name, and you barely even saw him back then. He was just someone you saw at the bakery and that was it. 

But you did invite him to your graduation. And you know you’ve read, somewhere, that it’s easier for people to open up to strangers about their feelings because strangers are transient. They’re not fixed points in your life you have to answer to eventually. You can tell them something and then you both go your separate ways,and maybe they’ll even forget it, which wouldn’t matter in the long run. 

You lift a shoulder. “Didn’t wanna be rude,” you say. “They’re all very proud.”

“But you’re not.”

“‘Course I’m not,” you say, “I have a piece of paper that says I went through shit several other people also went through, but from here on out, I’m on my own. I don’t have a scholarship anymore. I don’t have a dorm I can stay in for sure for as long as I’m still studying. It’s either I’m thrown out on the street any day or I land a decent job, and getting thrown out’s a lot more likely.” You lean back on your hands. “It’s all fucking advertisement, is what it is.”

He nods. You don’t know if he understands. He’s got a bakery to return to, and even if he’s sure to be miserable, it’s something sure to return to. It’s the only bakery in the neighborhood, so people are sure to buy there. It’s been a successful business for a reason. 

Except you’d be a hypocrite if you told him that, so you don’t.

“What are you gonna do?” he asks. 

“Live here, try to find a job, save money, work something out,” you say. 

“No big dreams?”

It hits you then that you said nothing about dream jobs. You laugh. “Guess not.”

“Well, you did just graduate.”

“I thought you were onto something when you came out here to talk to me,” you say. 

“I’m just saying,” he says, raising his hands up. “But - good luck.”

“Thanks,” you say. “What are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and you sit in silence for a while after that. 

You stand, eventually, dusting off your gown. “I’ve spent too much time away to be at the toilets at this point,” you say.

“I told them I needed some fresh air from all that new food,” he says. 

“Shit, I do need to get better at lying.”

He laughs. You think it’s sad that you didn’t get to be closer friends when you were younger, because maybe if you were, you would have told him to try to save himself too.