The Change

Closing my eyes, I slip into that space between dreaming and waking.  That ethereal plane where the power of the mind, of wishing, of simply thinking holds power in the supreme. 

My hands hit the ground on either side of my seated position, back leaning against the side of my bed.  They hit palm down, fingers spread through the carpeting, gripping white tufts as my mind sinks within into a different plane.  The pounding on the ground invoking an old structure anchored into the floorboard of my room.  The anchor actually lies roughly in the center of the room or whatever I had then perceived to be the center of the room, but really it should not matter where I was to enter that space, especially now that the power of my mind is stronger than it had been.  My entry into the plane space was met initially with a little bit of resistance but a firm reminder of its creator and nudge that is more of a cicular swirl led to easy entry to the old space.

It had been originally created as a place for peace, where calmness could prevail.  A blank platform, circular in nature such that in later years after its initial creation I would sometimes prevail upon a dome overhead to shield the space from all sorts of disturbances, of bad things. 

I am standing in the middle of the platform, looking out all around me.  At the edges of this space I see there is a beyond, a non-abyss at the edges of the plane.  Even as I realize this the surface of the plane is shifting right beneath my feet.  The white surface ripples and then swells up around me, like an ocean wave reaching up to swallow a lighthouse atop its higher ground, except this white material, exactly the same as the material of the plane, slid up my body, wrapping me like a cocoon.  Transforming me into a me with short white hair, long dangly arms, and awkwardly long legs.  I had not changed physically really, but mentally.  I had on some sort of white jumpsuit, well fitted to my body.

As the transformation completed itself, the rest of the white wave sunk back into the surface of the plane as if it had never reached up in the first place.  Then, from the still melty liquid of the white plane rose a figure dressed entirely in black.  Like a jumpsuit or perhaps tightly fitted leather, very tightly fitted. 

She rises up in front of me, staring into my eyes.  She looks pretty in a way I have always wished I could be.  Her black hair is long, flowing out behind her to some eternally fluttering wind.  She stares at me as the white is sinking back into the ground.  I am thinking "Please wait, I will catch up with you.  Who are you?" 

She smiles slightly, more of a twitch of the mouth than a real teeth filled expression. 

"I am you." 

The thought echoes through the short distance between us, reverberating somehow.

Then she reaches out with her right hand into my chest on the left.  Her fingers entering my body as if the surface is nothing but water, to be parted with ease.  She pulls out my heart and I stare at her in surprise.  She promptly puts it into her own chest, into its proper location to the left side.  I stare at her a bit longer, except my awareness has already been hovering outside of both bodies, watching the entire pantomine from just above and at the same time watching through two sets of eyes. 

Now looking through the eyes of the dark haired one, I see the other, the former container of mine collapse, like a bucket of water whose bucket had suddenly been removed while the water itself had remained in the same location.  Without the bucket the water-benders split off and the shape loses cohesion, splashing onto the ground in a heavy fall.  Forming a puddle of white liquide like substance in a pool at the center of the plane.  And I am her, the dark figure that had rose up from the white in front of me, in front of the white me.  Except now standing upon the plane, there is only the dark haired me.

At first I am a bit confused.  This me is more dangerous than the last.  This me is willing to act, to act out whereas the white me only wanted to be what everyone else wanted me to be, to forever play their act, to be perfectly good.  Yet this was not truly me, or at least not all of me.  I was missing all of the in between.  So then it hit me, all I had to do was eat the snow, to take in the white substance pooling upon the ground into myself and confirm both parts.  And so I drink it in, much like one would inhale something.  For a moment the clothes I am wearing try to shift color, from black to some sort of white.

And I thought, this is a change.

Reviews

[Tim H]

You create a good metaphor for good and bad, with a twist as good is defined as what you are expected to do and bad as asserting yourself. Perhaps it would be good to proved the reader with the internal conflict that is the impetus of the story before the character goes to sleep as the dream resolves the conflict. You change tense throughout the piece going from the present continuous to past tense. Such tense changes tend to confuse the reader. You may want to consider adopting one tense throughout. You have some nice imagery -like an ocean wave reaching up to swallow a lighthouse atop its higher ground,- I enjoyed your story.