Whispered

Chuck Wendig issued a challenge to write a short story inspired by a song lyric. This is what happens when that challenge mixes in my mind with a Tweet from MagicalRealismBot.

Last night I dreamt about a koala whispering inside a mountain. It beckoned me close with its dainty dagger-tipped paws. I stepped into the fire-lit cave, careful to dodge the scatter of toothpick-thin bones strewn around the fire pit.

I stopped two feet away, hoping that was close enough. Hoping even more that it was far enough.

Staring at the mouth of the koala didn’t help me separate the shushing hiss of its whisper into actual words. I leaned forward, strained my ears to filer the popping crackle of the fire from the furry voice.

I flinched when a paw lifted toward me. Even dream-me wouldn’t get any closer to this unknown.

“Could you speak up?” Dream-me’s voice was surprisingly steady and clear. The koala coughed and took in a big breath, then let the air out in a long, weary sigh.

“You’ll see him tomorrow, dear.” The scary furry, it was a she. An old she. A granny with a creased, worn voice.

“Him?” I asked after a pause long enough to reveal my surprise.

“Your one true love.”

“Oh.”

Then I woke up.

My hand snaked out to the far edge of the bed, finding clean cold cotton. Not warmth. Not him.

Apparently I believed the words the mysterious granny koala uttered about a man who didn’t exist. Not in that moment, anyway.

I hate dreams that linger after I wake, that make me question where the line is between dream and reality, between night and day. I hate dreams that are just freaking weird.

A koala whispering in a mountain.

Right.

I closed my eyes again and pushed the koala away, trying to wrap myself up in the promise of him, the him that I would see tomorrow. I imagined him there, with me in the dark, his body cushioning me, the warmth of his flesh draped over me.

But he wasn’t there. The sleep, the deep dark calm that I so desperately needed to return to wasn’t there either.

I threw off the covers and moved on. Returned to the real reality. A very him-less reality.

I didn’t spend my day looking for him. I didn’t spend my day searching the periphery of my vision for a glimpse of a sliver of him. I spent my day deliberately not thinking about the koala in the mountain.

Her voice kept echoing in my head, forcing me to look up, look around. Look for him.

Sometimes you don’t find what you’re looking for. You search and wish and hunt in vain.

Sometimes you don’t look at all. You refuse to search and wish and hunt in vain. And you end up finding what you weren’t looking for.

Sometimes you pretend that you’re not looking so well, so fiercely, that you finally really do forget to look. In that moment, when you accept that you won’t find the thing you can’t allow yourself to want, it drops into your lap.

Or walks through the door.

Sometimes the second you find it, the second it finds you, you wish you had never wished at all. Because it’s not right.

It’s perfect. It’s exactly what you imagined, exactly what you remembered, down to the curvy curl of the deep brown hair around the delicate arch of his ear. The smell of his body wash. The flash of green peeking through the brown of his eye. The flirt of the dimple high on his right cheek. It’s him.

He’s impossible.

And completely wrong. Wisps of hair don’t hide the patches of scaly red scalp. The musk of the body wash doesn’t cover the rich, ripe aroma of rot. The flash of green battles the milky white of cataract. The dimple has poked through, revealing raw flesh and bone beneath.

The koala told me I would see him again, my one true love. She didn’t lie to me. She just left out the rest of the story. She didn’t tell me that seeing him again meant I would have to kill him.

Again.