Space Station
i was with my teacher at an isolated pond in a little woods. the area around the pond was clear for a few yards down to the water’s edge. we’d been given all sorts of sporting goods to try out and there was an empty red kayak floating in the pond. it had a strange design, a stumpy, cut off back end. i was playing around with it at the water’s edge and kept dropping all my stuff into the water. i dropped something, then my notebook. i stepped out into the kayak clumsily and fell loudly across it to reach my notebook, thinking i could keep it from getting wetter if i got to it fast, as if that would help since it immediately sank to the bottom of the fairly clear water.
when i stepped out of the kayak i stepped onto the far shore. tho it was a small pond, this wouldn’t have been possible, but i was now across from my teacher, who was reclining and reading or writing on the other bank. i reached into the water and pulled out my cell phone. it was an old style, blue and heavy with big messed up buttons. i drained the water out and watched it drip, thinking it would be fine after it dried.
my attention was drawn by a man emerging from the woods ahead of me. he was heavy and older and held a shotgun in the crook of his arm, had a hunting dog near his feet. preceding him marched a proud young male turkey. it walked over in my direction, about as far ahead of the guy as it was away from me. i stood and admired it as its head and developing wattles turned bright blue and it had that open eyed/open mouthed turkey stare. i was afraid the man intended to shoot it.
the man called out to my teacher and i, telling me about a red haired kid who wasn’t going to make it. he’d had a premature heart attack and was in the hospital. the kid was from an earlier dream where i’d been working with nursing sort of students. i barely remember it but i remember the kid he was talking about. he had a big red afro. the older guy annoyed me and i wanted him to quit talking, quit telling me bad news. i’d gathered up my things and walked back to my teacher’s side of the pond as he’d talked.
my teacher began walking too when i arrived on his side and he started off ahead of us and disappeared. suddenly i was with my mom and brother and the older guy was still talking, tho now on a walkie talkie i had. i also had a rope in my hand and at the other end was a very small fawn with a loop lightly around its neck. i walked it gently over to my family and just as suddenly now my brother and i both had ropes and we each had a full grown deer on the other end. the deer walked side by side and looked very much alike. they had abnormally thick legs. actually they led and we followed. it was growing dark.
my radio crackled and the guy wanted to know whether we had males or females and which was which. my brother said at the same time it occurred to me that the one with the thickest ankle area was probably the male since they have scent glands. so i told the guy this and that i believed mine was prolly female then cause she had thinner legs but he seemed frustrated that we couldn’t absolutely verify this to be true. it was too dark to look, if you know what i mean, to establish gender.
i let go my rope. we’d been walking back over a series of low rises. i crested the last alone, tho my family seemed farther back, away. i came out into a grassy sort of parking area, an open field of low grass where i could see the sky and another longer rise off in the middle distance. it was fairly light out but not bright, tho i didn’t see the moon.
i was looking up at the sky peripherally as i walked and my attention was grabbed by a flash off to my left. i stopped and turned and looked up to see the trail of what looked like a long orange shooting star. followed by another. and another. there were at least three on the same track, maybe more. then i noticed there was a pinpoint of orange light in the center of where the flashes had occurred. then i noticed there was a cloud around the orange light where there had been no cloud before. the sky was clear otherwise. more flashes seemed to come from the small light (about planet sized comparatively). it seemed to me then as if i’d seen the shooting stars from the cover of the cloud, tho it hadn’t been there at that time. then the cloud was gone and the light was gone and the sky was clear for a few moments.
next i saw a small, moving constellation. and i thought, uh, those aren’t supposed to move…i was trying to figure out which one it was. it looked like the volkswagen stick figure guy, kinda, like a seated figure of arms and legs, sorta. formed by white stars in a cluster about the size of the little dipper, it moved across the sky from west to east, roughly, as i watched it facing south. i kept trying to figure out what this could be and finally i realised the quality of the light was unusual, artificial. then i got it. it was the international space station! i knew you could see it fly over if you knew where to look but i’d never seen it before and i had no idea it was so huge and hard to miss.
i hollered to my mom that i could see it and i kept watching. it stopped moving left (east) and began to head back to the west. it seemed easier to see. brighter. wait a minute…closer. it seemed closer. and closer. and Closer. i began to get a funny feeling mostly disguised by awe. i couldn’t get into my head seeing something so large suspended in the sky. as it kept getting closer, blotting out more of the night sky, i began to get excited and nervous and more odd feeling.
i could see yellow light coming from the interior. i could see inside. i could see ppl inside! i saw them all working busily in business attire, many squeezed into each cubicle, on phones and working. i could see them really well. and then i got scared, very badly scared, realising that it wasn’t right that the space station should be so close that i could see the ppl inside. my mom had come up and was standing beside me. finally i couldn’t take it any more. i grabbed her hand and i ran as hard as i could back into the little woods. i didn’t stop until i was over a long hill past the pond. there was an old concrete wall exposed there, supported by the hill behind it and i sat with my back pressed against it, shivering and very upset and frightened and sure something horrifying was about to happen. terrified to think it could as easily have been happening to me.
i looked around and we were encircled by televisions set off in the trees. i knew something bad was about to happen, that the space station was going to crash and kill all those aboard and kill many many more on the ground where it fell. i kept seeing a highway in my mind, six or eight lanes, ppl with their cars stopped, standing outside their open doors, watching it come down on them and still not comprehending what was happening. i didn’t want to close my eyes and see this and i didn’t want to open my eyes and see the tvs either. they were all tuned to the same news broadcast with the sound nearly off but the newscasters weren’t covering the story.
i looked to my mom for comfort. she seemed very neutral and unaffected. and then i looked back to the tvs and saw that they’d cut away to a diagram of the space station and i knew it had happened and that i didn’t want to see what else they’d show and i woke myself up.
Related Reading:
