When I was a little girl the doctors told my parents that I had quite the imagination. I didn’t know any better so I believed it to be the truth. They told me my dreams were just those… dreams.

It wasn’t until I returned, that I had even considered otherwise. I awoke in a tattered tent on the edge of a crater. The excavation team was waiting, ready for my instructions. They knew me. It was the first time I’d returned to a universe. Since then I’ve returned to many more than once, some five or six times.

I’m not sure why it happens to me, but then, I’m not one to question the nature of things. I simply live life like a game, a challenge, playing my best move and continuing forward. Every night when I sleep, my dreams are actually me living lives in other universes. Whenever I blink, I shift to another parallel universe.

I’ve gotten pretty good at not blinking, especially given I’m sleeping, but I can’t seem to manage to suppress the instinct to blink completely.

If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve been to nearly 200,000 different realities. Some are dark, grim and barren. Others are lively, vibrant and animated. I’ve traveled to steampunk worlds, cyberpunk worlds and diesel-punk worlds.

But through the hundreds of thousands of universes, I’m still waiting to return to one. The one where I met him.

I was a famous actress starring in a movie I can hardly remember. The details usually fade quickly; I don’t bother trying to remember everything as there’s often not much of importance anyway. However, I do remember him, approaching me in a well-tailored suit and offering me a coffee.

He smiled warmly and said something that made me laugh. I don’t remember what he said or did, I just remember the way his smile lit a light inside me. A golden glow, a warm and fuzzy feeling that took over. He was handsome and gentle… and elegant.

I tried, I really tried to not blink, but I knew it would happen. I told him to wait, that I’d be back. I told him I hoped we would meet again. I remember the last look of confusion on his face as my vision went dark and I appeared somewhere else.

I still think about that today. A long time ago, I read that “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” And a decade later I am still hoping, waiting, jumping from reality to reality every night, searching for the one.


435 words
July 25, 2021
all-stories