Rhys and Lucy made plans to explore Bearstone ave, s903 over the weekend. Neither Lucy or her mother had gone through the basement, they had no reason to worry or care about it. Lucy also thought it appropriate to explore the nearby woods, after they had roamed around the city. Her own atypical idea of a date probably.
At 3 p.m. on Saturday, they met in the local park. Rhys found her sitting beside the fountain. She looked captivating in her dark-clothed outfit. She wore a comic-emblazoned short-sleeved black shirt, a leather skirt that stopped above her knees, and black platform boots. Rhys wore a purple hoody over jeans and casual sneakers.
Lucy idly watched the different people going about their business around her; kids played, adults chatted among themselves, the teens had their own little congregation on the other side of the fountain. Rhys sat beside Lucy, who paid him no mind as she continued to take in the sights before her.
Rhys sighed. "Ever just wonder what its like to be someone else?" he said to her. She looked at him earnestly.
"I haven't quite been myself lately. I don't think I've ever really been myself my whole life," she replied, her gaze fixed on the up-and-down of children on a seesaw in the distance.
Rhys' eyes urged her own, but she wasn't looking in his direction. How long has she been looking away? Why? Where had she been in her absence? Rhys remembered the initial loneliness when Leah didn't want to play with him all of a sudden. The strange, clear-headed bewilderment he felt.
"Why is that?" Rhys asked.
She slowly shook her head, her eyes grew teary. "I don't know," She whispered. Her eyes met Rhys', her mouth quivered as she sniffled.
Rhys drew her closer to him and put an around her. "What's wrong?"
A tear rolled down her cheek. "My mother. I— I'm sick of her. I wish she would fucking die."
Rhys held her closer. She in turn held her arms around his side. "What did she do?"
Lucy kept quiet, she couldn't bring herself to speak. She just sniffed her tears back and held him tighter. She rested her head on his shoulder, her coffee-brown curls smothering her face out of his vision. Rhys couldn't see her face, but he could tell that she had calmed down considerably as her body against him eased and was a lot less tense.
He ran an idle hand through her hair and sighed. "You're not ready to talk about it, are you?" She shook her head.
"Wanna get out of here?" Rhys asked in a bid to cheer her up? She nodded.
~
Rhys and Lucy walked some distance away from the park and were now heading towards the Middlehazy's business and leisure district. It certainly helped her feel better, and they had since started talking again.
"So, you're saying you've never dreamt before? Ever?" Rhys clarified.
"No. It's almost like I die in my sleep. As I was dreaming, I wouldn't have even thought I was actually asleep. When I woke up, it finally clicked for me, I was dreaming. Safe to say I had a dream to dream one day." She chuckled.
They crossed a congested road that had its cars bumper to bumper, jaywalking between them. "Well you popped your dream cherry, what did you dream about?"
"Geez, I dunno if I can remember." She absently touched her temple. "There was a beautiful garden, like, fucking gorgeous. I saw two kids, maybe 5 or 6 years old. They're putting flowers in these really large cups until they fill about six of them. So then they suddenly see me, I thought they couldn't. They ask me if I want to join them."
Lucy and Rhys arrive at the entrance of an arcade, enter, completely engrossed in conversation. "You did?" Rhys said as they reached the cashier.
"I was going to. I said 'sure' then before I could, I see a really big sculpture in the garden behind these kids. I know for a fact the sculpture just appeared behind them because it's huge, maybe 20 meters or something."
"Welcome to dreams, friendo," Rhys remarked.
They trade money for tokens at the counter before making their way to the play-area. "The sculpture," she continues, "is a man in medieval clothes, he has flowing hair and is holding a sword. The sculpture though, is upside down. The sword is jammed into the platform, and—"
"It's unstable," Rhys chimed in.
"Uh-huh! I realize too late to save the children playing in the garden. It fucking crushes them, and destroys the cups they're putting their little flowers into." Lucy and Rhys settle at a vacant Street Fighter arcade deck.
Rhys raises his eyebrows. "Wow, so much for a first dream. They'll get better in time."
"You think?" she said, "What if I don't ever dream again?"
"You will, trust me. Dreams are important, especially in your case, the first one you remember. They're our unconscious minds speaking to us, the nonsense is its own entity," Rhys said as he looked for a slot in the machine for them to load they tokens in. He found it on the side of the machine and loaded 4 of his tokens for his tokens in for 4 versus matches.
He held his arms fairly wide. "This is our world. There's music to listen to, art to see, a lot of interesting people to talk to and things to do. Sadly, there's only one you. You only have one mouth, two pretty eyes, one cute little nose, and two ears. This is how much of the world we actually take in." He made a small circle with his index and thumb.
She laughed at his not so subtle flirt, her pale cheeks filled with colour. "Whoa, I actually like that. It also adds a lot of weight to our experiences and what we choose to shape us. That dream, do I just ignore it?"
"It is your dream," He said. "Yours."
Their attention narrowed to what was on the screen in front of them. Rhys realized that the arcade around them was actually very loud. He just happened to be totally absorbed in his conversation with Lucy. They button mashed away and bantered away, the world around them faded away. It was just him and Lucy, like it was meant to be and always had been. Nothing at this point could convince Rhys that this wasn't 'Leah'. He had a lot questions, he wasn't sure he wanted to find out. He didn't want to taint the moment, it was far too precious.
~
The sun had retreated behind the horizon by the time Rhys and Lucy left the arcade. Rhys led Lucy to the record store, he knew every backstreet and alley in Middlehazy. Lucy seemed to like the sleepy city streets of 'hazy, and was having a grand time. Rhys enjoyed himself too, he was smitten with Lucy and was dreading having to go home soon.
"Do you have a curfew?" Lucy said as they walked ambled along in the warm juvenile night, "Please say no," she whispered just loud enough for him to hear.
"What?" He laughed heartily. "I do. To hell with my curfew. I'll tell my pops I went on a date, he'll forgive me in a second."
"A date, huh?" Lucy beamed. "Is that what this is?" she punched him on the shoulder playfully.
"If you want," he cajoled, "But no, it isn't."
"If I want?" she said, leaning into her I.
"Yeah… you do?" Rhys implored.
She furrowed her brow and folded her arms in mock defiance. "No!"
He sighed. "Oh, I can go home if that's what you wa—"
"It's a date!" she said, interrupting him.
Rhys cupped his ear. "What? I didn't catch that," he said sarcastically, "can you say that one more time?"
"It's a date," she conceded. "You're staying," she then said, more as a statement than anything else.
"Permission to hold your hand, m'lady?" Rhys asked, extending his own and performing a little bow.
"You're so awkward," she said, entwining their fingers. He could just about see that she had rolled her eyes, and the smile playing on her lips.
"You like?"
"No."
Hand-in-hand, they turned into a dark, seemingly deserted alley. According to Rhys, this route prevented them from walking a much longer distance to the record store. Almost halfway through it, Rhys stepped on a what he thought was a discarded tree branch. The 'tree branch' emitted a sick, throaty groan, making him realise it was actually the bony leg of a man, or at least what was left of him. The man reeked of piss and vomit. He smelt like death and decay, it wafted up in the air around him, making Rhys feel uneasy and Lucy to hold onto his arm tighter. They walked on silently, like they would instantly forget about him if they did.
"This is probably his last day on this earth," Rhys said sadly.
"Good for him," Lucy said nonchalantly.
"Good? He's dying in the street soaked in piss."
"He won't have to pay his fucking taxes anymore, we'll give him that. He's good until he has to come and get milked by the government again," Lucy said.
"You believe in reincarnation?" Rhys asked.
"Yes."
"Hmmm. I've always thought we just disappear when we die. That would be nice. To kick your little bucket and never look back, because you can't now. You're just a shitty little skeleton now with no consciousness to even know how shitty of a skeleton you are." Rhys absently kicked away a little pebble in his path.
Lucy nods as she takes in what he says. "That sounds nice, very nice. THAT there is the problem, see? It isn't supposed to sound nice. Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell. It's comforting because deep down in our hearts, we know nothing and don't want to accept that we are essentially fucked. We jump on the bandwagon because finding the answers to everything is depressing. Reality is way more complicated than we want to accept."
"Well, you said it yourself; we don't know anything. So, why reincarnation?"
Rhys looked over to see her expression in the dark, her hair fell over her face, giving her a beautiful mystique in the dark fluorescence.
"Part of being human is being able to associate ourselves with different people, things and places. To feel empathy for a stranger, to love a brother or sister or spouse, to love the scent of roses or old books. To feel safe in certain places and listen to our favourite love songs. We're human because we have souls. Souls that connect to the unlikeliest of things. Souls that are being constantly in transition as they are being made anew, die, break apart into a dozen pieces and bind together. Many people are the same in one way or another, but in the end, everyone is who they because of their unique wandering soul."