Peter Hoppock
You are running down the middle of a street. Blacktop. Gently sloping curbs with adjacent sidewalks. You are inside your body; you are not watching yourself. The trees you are passing are full and green. There are dogs and people who don’t notice you. Slow-moving cars, bicycles passing them.
The air is thick, but breathable. Your arms and legs push through it like water. You are fully aware of this anomaly—air cannot be this gelatinous and be breathable. Colors mix, then separate to reveal the magical nature of light. Thick brushstrokes of deep orange and purple extend across the entire sky, a thin ribbon of scarlet sandwiched between them. Higher is the hint of pitch-black, an inky line in a coloring book, a sliver of the past. You pass by houses, familiar rectangles. Sloping, tar-shingled roofs. Chimneys of rust-colored brick.
You are wearing jeans and T-shirt. Your sneakers grip the pavement with each footfall, until you dive forward like a swimmer off the blocks. You begin the breaststroke as your chest falls towards the pavement, and you pull yourself parallel to the road. Your arms push in wide arcs, breast-stroking against the air. Your chest scrapes the blacktop—then rises. Stroke. Legs hanging slack, you arc skyward, slowly. Stroke. The air ahead of you. Stroke. Then behind you. Ahead. Behind. You swim above the treetops.
Passing a familiar water tower you level off and tread the air, legs gently scissoring, arms sweeping in figure eights. You hover and observe the earth below. People move in fits and starts, rebounding off invisible barriers and changing direction. They enter cars, drive a few miles, stop—then exit and resume their nervous walking patterns. Some enter buildings, passing people who are leaving.
The dogs are the first to notice you, noses pointed skyward. Then children, their mouths forming little o’s. Finally, a few adults start pointing at you.
Noiselessly you push aside the air. Observed, you allow yourself to feel joy. You can fly! For show, you dive close to the earth, then swim circles above rolling hills, colored by invisible crayons: green patches of land, yellow and red flowers, white dash-lines on blacktop roads with grey cement curbs and sidewalks. You strafe a crowd that has gathered to witness the amazing man whose arms push air aside like water. Your heart beats loud as thunder, and your eyes tear from the speed. Your arms tire, and you look for a place to land, treading air.
You alter course and propel yourself upwards, to broaden your view. Higher, the air thins; your arms move more easily, but more strokes are required to keep you aloft.
Time feels like a rip tide. The light casts shorter shadows, as the sun muscles its way skyward. Houses, trees—objects of all kinds—are flattened by the brilliance; shapes disappear. The noon-high sun stalls. You are growing fatigued and anxious.
Your stomach feels it before your other senses—a harsh curl upward followed by quick drop, then another climb. You are a roller coaster without wheels. The noon-bright colors fade. The landscape, stretching as far as your eyes can see, loses form. The sun bleaches everything.
You swoop down, arms fatigued. There—there is the road where you began, only white now. White, with tiny wrinkles. Your arms pull and claw at the thinning air. Your clothes are stripped from you as you fall. Everything is pure white. White cotton. You close your eyes and wait for the impact.
Your cheek feels cool against the sheet. Your naked body is face down, spread-eagled against the bedsheets. In the split second between flying and crashing, your stomach sends you the message that you have fallen to the bed from a great height. There are no sheets on your back.
Your wife says: “Whoa!” and rolls away from you. “What was that all about?”
“I was flying.”
“I’m going to have a bruise,” she says, sitting up.
“Where?” you ask, reaching out to her.
“Here.” She guides your hand to the fleshy part of her upper arm beneath the shoulder. She is too calm for you to believe a bruise will form. “Ow,” she says, smiling.
“It was a dream. I can’t apologize for a dream.”
She stands up and grabs a robe from the floor, wraps it around herself tightly. She sits back down on the edge of the bed. “Still, your arms were out wide,” she says, stretching her arms out to each side.
You explain: “I do the breaststroke when I fly.” You demonstrate, swinging your arms. She laughs, of course. This is not the first time. “I don’t dream I’m flying very often.”
“Thank God for that,” she says, with a smile.
“This time, I think I actually was above the bed,” you say.
“Really?” Sarcasm. You don’t blame her.
“It was the way I landed. I tried to keep flying right up ’til the end. I really felt it in my stomach, you know? How when you drop really fast, your stomach rises up? I felt it. And I felt I hit the bed hard.”
She may be angry with you. “Look. I understand,” she says. “It’s like our dog dreaming he’s chasing a rabbit, legs pawing at the air.” She gets up and walks over to the dresser, looking at her arm and then her face, in the mirror. “Jesus,” she mutters grimly.
You sit up on her side of the bed, close to where she is looking in the mirror. You reach out to her. “I started in a neighborhood I knew,” you say. “Like where I grew up. But then I lost track of where I was. And the air got thinner—”
“Honey?” She interrupts you, which she does not normally do. She retreats from the mirror and stands next to you, grabbing your head gently with both hands around your ears. She tilts your head up. Slowly her head lowers towards yours. She kisses you on the top of your head, and says: “When are you going to stop dreaming you’re flying?”
“I don’t want to stop, actually,” you say, leaning forward and up to kiss her on the lips. “It’s such a great feeling. Until the end, that is.” She feigns rising away from you, but relents, and when your lips touch you close your eyes. Her lips are the thin ribbon of scarlet in your dream. There is a sweet taste of cherries in your mouth. The kiss is too short.
She moves back to the mirror again, and combs her hair.
You ask if she is coming back to bed.
“I’ve heard that people who have flying dreams are unhappy with their lives. Flying represents a desire to escape, to have more freedom.”
You walk over and stand behind her as she continues combing. You look in the mirror at your two faces, side by side. She closes her eyes. “No no no,” you plead. “I’m happy. I’m happy with you. With us.”
She lays down the comb and opens her eyes. She looks at the reflections in the mirror, and smiles, lips curled up at the edge—a very sexy half-smile she has used, since the first time you met, to beguile you. She puts her arms around your neck and continues, “You’re happy with our sex life? What little we have these days?”
Now you can smile. “Of course I’m happy,” you say, ready to kiss her. “I don’t need more.” If you were lying about this, she would know. Your noses touch.
“Let me tell you about my dream,” she says.
“Do I want to know?” The kiss will have to wait.
“I’m going to tell you anyway. For the same reason you told me about yours.”
She walks back towards the bed. “You woke me before it was finished,” she says, calmly. You remain near the mirror, admiring her form, framed by the window, visible through the thin nightgown, a streetlamp providing the backlight. She lays down on the bed facing you . “You were making love to me.” Her eyes open wide. So, you imagine, do yours. This dream is also a familiar one. You feel a tremor of anxiety.
“But?” you ask. You walk back, and lie down beside her. You look at one another, your faces in close proximity. Hers in shadow. Her skin appears blue. How is that possible? You lean up on one elbow, cupping your ear.
“But then suddenly, it wasn’t you,” she says, reaching out to touch you. You pull yourself closer to her.
“What did you do?”
“I kept touching him. Like this.” She strokes your shoulder, your cheek, all the features of your face—with the back of her fingers. Gently.
You are not aroused. “Even though it wasn’t was me?” you ask.
She pauses, increasing your anxiety, before saying, “It was just a dream.”
Her touch on your skin does not tingle or excite. This is your failing, your flaw, which you have learned to ignore. Her unbuttoned nightgown has fallen off one shoulder, exposing the gentle outward curve of her breast. You want to touch her, but hesitate. You both know that only when you do touch her—only then—will you become aroused.
She shimmies her gown further down, revealing a red mark that could become a bruise. “I’m sorry,” you say. “For the arm swing, I mean. I had no control.”
A tear suggests itself in one eye. “While you were flying, he was pressed against me.” She is not being cruel, just honest. You know this, but still…She closes her eyes, then opens them wide. “I was ready. But he was waiting.”
“Waiting for what?” you ask, your free hand poised above her hip. She is all beauty. All the beauty there ever was.
“The right moment, of course,” she says, exposing her neck. She sighs and you pull her to you with one arm, gently adjusting her position to allow her nightgown to slip off. Her body becomes the familiar territory you were looking for when you were flying, the earth you’ve known for so many years. Her curves and twists, hills and valleys. Her sweat is morning dew.
You hover above her, just inches away, then press your body against hers. “Like this?” you ask her, knowing the answer will be yes. You realize this is what your flying dreams are really for: to prepare you for this precious view, to experience the weightlessness of love, to guide you home.
The air thickens as you kiss her.
PETER HOPPOCK has published numerous short stories and novellas in a variety of literary magazines, both online and print. Among them Adelaide, Curbside Splendor, The Write Launch, Dillydoun Review, and more. His novella “Mr. Pegg To You” was one of two finalists for the 2013 Press 53 novella Award. Most recently, his short story “Blues For Rashid” was selected by Palasatrium: substack.shortstory for their June 2023 publication.