Dream LV

I was a part-time superhero (though only a pretend one) and I was driving to work on an overcast day when I got a call that I was needed at a local school.

I slowed my car to take the call. Behind me, a truck impatiently swerved past me as it began to rain.

I turned onto a long winding dirt road that went along a cliff overlooking the ocean. The rain was fairly mild but steady. Eventually I got to the top of the cliff and I parked outside the school. Both the road and the wooden path that led to the door began to ice up, causing me to slip once or twice.

Inside, no one was there. I looked around the small schoolroom and decided to wait to find out what might be required of me.

There were several pages of the local newspaper on a large cork board. One page was devoted to a particular new car, which had an LED screen for an odometer.

Suddenly the lights on the close-up photo of the odometer began to flash, just as some other people entered the school room.

The lights flashed the word "Amra" and a woman said that was her name.

The odometer told her to look at the photos on the next page. Those photos, which were other images of the car and some pictures of people admiring it, began flashing orange as well.

Words appeared on the other photos which told Amra to take a certain homeless orphan to Chicago via the train. She was instructed to prepare two hours of stories to tell on the trip there, and to prepare three hours of stories for the trip back, though it seemed pretty clear she would be by herself on the return trip.

Outside, the car featured in the newspaper story was sitting beside the school house. I walked passed it, and a bright light beamed on my face.

I passed my hand over my face and the light wasn’t blocked at all, it never wavered in intensity. The light wasn’t coming from the car but from elsewhere, from somewhere within me.