One for All — Part One
By Resa Nelson
Happy New Story Sunday, Daily Tomorrow readers! This week, we have a fabulous fantasy from the fantastic writer and novelist Resa Nelson. This one takes a couple days to come together, but stick with it and I promise you’ll be rewarded, one and all. —The Editor
One for All
By Resa Nelson
I don’t understand my life anymore.
I plunge neck-deep into the Kentucky bluegrass of my backyard.
Impossible. It can’t be a sinkhole, because I’d be falling through the earth instead of watching my bluegrass stretch to the horizon. It hasn’t rained for two weeks, so the lawn is dry, aching for water. The ground would have to be saturated to form a void in the soil beneath me.
This shouldn’t be happening.
A lifeboat thrusts up from the same bluegrass twenty feet in front of me, bobbing and weaving through the grass.
Screams from those still trapped on the Titanic echo from a greater distance, drowning out the sputter of the automatic sprinkler and the chatter of a nearby squirrel.
I shudder.
With a start, I see Molly Brown standing at the lifeboat bow, wearing a golden breastplate engraved with “4MSKTR”. She shouts, “There’s plenty of room. We can save more!”
Here’s what I know for sure: I’m not dead. This isn’t some kind of hell or limbo or purgatory. I’m sure I’d remember dying, and I don’t.
I also know that I’m not dreaming. When people dream, they think it’s real life. The trick is to question anything unusual. For example, one might say, “Wait a minute. It’s impossible for my backyard to turn into an ocean of grass. And the Titanic sank eons ago—it can’t be here now.”
Once you figure out that a dream is a dream, you can control everything that happens inside it.
In the real world, I never bite my fingernails. But here, in this unknown place that I know is not a dream, I’ve chewed them down to the quick. I now bite at my cuticles instead, even when the pain forces tears into my eyes.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to get out of this not-death/not-dream, which feels like it’s been going on for years. I’ve attempted to change the scenario but failed every time.
I’ve tried the stages of grief. I’ve blithely gone about my business in denial. I’ve shouted in anger. I’ve bargained. I’ve wallowed in depression. I’m now giving a shot at acceptance, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
Sometimes, life seems normal. Then out of the blue, something weird and inexplicable happens, like a lifeboat drifting into my yard.
Through trial and error, I’ve learned what to do.
I shift my attention to the family tattoo on my wrist. The number four preceding the letters MSKTR. I don’t know why, but focusing on my tattoo will usually flip the script of whatever situation I’m in and shift me into a new one.
The earth beneath my feet trembles and cracks apart.
I tumble backwards, backwards, backwards, swallowed by the impossibility of a life that somehow shifted out of the ordinary before I realized it.
I land with a splash in a river. No longer autumn (was it autumn when the lifeboat floated across my lawn?), I’m startled by the warmth of the sun on my skin and the sharp coolness of the water that soaks it.
“Mom!” my teenager Greta cries out. “Don’t let your tube get away!”
Resa Nelson is a member of Science Fiction Writers of America. She is also a graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop. She has sold more than 20 short stories to magazines and anthologies, including Clarkesworld, Science Fiction Age, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXIII, Women of Darkness II, Future Boston, and 2041. She was the TV/Movie columnist for Realms of Fantasy magazine for 13 years and also wrote articles for SCI FI magazine. She has published 24 novels. Visit her website at resanelson.com.
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