The Slide

Chapter 18 | Unstuck, in the Recent Past — (continued)

Part 2: A Science Fiction Story

Caution: Contains upsetting scenes of violence which may be triggering

A Memory Recovery Session

“How could I have survived a gunshot like that, and who could have done it?” Farha wondered aloud in a moment of breakthrough clarity in a session with healer Tommy.

“The police report said the projectile was a blank,” Tommy said in a casual voice, without forethought.

“I want to know more, I want to know it all,” Farha bemoaned.

Meeting “The Man-With-The-Sun-for-his-Head”

After many hours of having been awake, the claws of sleep took her. The shattered glass fragments of memory sprayed through her sleep in a chaotic kaleidoscope of color and conflict. It stopped on the side of a mountain drenched in sunlight, boulders, red scrubbed bushes, tall deciduous and eternal trees. Farha saw him. It was the man with a small sun which covered much of his head. She waved to him from a distance of thirty feet or more. He did not wave back. She heard his smile.

How odd, she thought.

Not really, the sunheaded man responded in thought.

I have felt you watching me… all-my-life. Watching-me-all-my-life?

A question?

I don’t know, really.

The sunheaded man displayed a thin-lipped smile in her mind.

You’re not going to tell me what I want to know? Farha thought.

What happened to Sophie? Where is she? She continued.

No answer. Frustrated, and she laid out her thought again:

What happened to Sophie after I was shot?

The sunheaded man was gone along with the mountain, boulders and trees. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the light. It was the apartment they stayed at in Paris. Farha looked down to see herself lying on the floor. The distinctiveness of a fired gun filled the air with acridity. The door was ajar.

Farha was standing on the landing along the circular balcony amid a blur of a fast-moving person or persons. Then a person blurred up over the railing and in a freeze-frame, Farha was aghast with recognition.

She awoke strapped to the hospital bed, remembering the last image of her dream. It was her own face she saw in horror as she leapt over the side. In drowsy delirium she slipped back onto the ground floor foyer of the building, expecting to see her the face of her suicidal body. It was Sophie on the ground, breathing as blood pooled around her.

A blur of police and paramedics entered the building. Farha was frozen with indecision and the images of the personnel, Sophie’s body and public on-lookers in a still-framed snapshot. Police investigation, the thought came.

Initially inconclusive for foul play or suicide. The thought came from an on-scene police inspector. Follow Sophie. A message appeared in her mind and she turned it over with quick recognition of the man-with-the-sun-for-his-head.

Farha was in the ambulance and while holding Sophie’s warm hand she was pulled inside of Sophie’s world of horror, implanted memories and manipulations. She was regurgitated.

Thrown far into a future of swirling dust, sand, and tentacles of spinning cyclone fragments, accompanied by lightning strikes. Farha reached into the depths of her being and found the eye at the center of all storms within the Slide and calmed them. Collapsed and sitting, propped up by debris, metal, she created a space for her consciousness. It was still.

The sun was shining.

Farha was in sitting, her back against a tree, in tall green grasses, waving in a warm breeze, listening. The grasses and the orchard trees were laughing, giggling as if tuning up with an orchestra of small murmurs, getting ready. Apple trees bent their branches down low, laden with fruit, ripe, sweet, red apples. Each tree glowed in a warm golden light.

She rolled over, laughing. A young boy was there without clothing. His deep brown skin seemed familiar to her hands. He touched her so lightly and she knew she belonged with him. They kissed, a long sweet luxurious kiss. Their bodies blended together in love. A sphere of golden light with two infants inside rose from their ecstatic bodies into the sky. The sphere drifted in a spiral over a hill and was taken upwards –

A shot fired near her head, and she struggled for the gun. Her arms seemed to know what to do without the conscious control of her mind or senses. A part of her was with the young boy in a profound place of peace within her being in that special atmosphere. The other part of her fought her assailant with skill and precision. The gun fired again and her attacker collapsed and bled out.

Farha was pulled back into the apartment with Sophie. She saw Sophie with a revolver. Farha found herself on the floor and in blackness.

When she opened her eyes, she saw a familiar face of an erudite older man that she thought had passed. Behind him, above him was a dark sky of tightly swirled funnel tentacled clouds behind an octagonal grid. She was relieved to see him alive and well. She felt comforted and smiled up at him.

It was morning, and she woke to sun shining through a slit in the windows. “The dreamtime,” she whispered to herself.

Thank you for reading. Longer works of fiction on the Medium platform are not widely read. I applaud your perseverance to keep up with all the chapters.

Chapter 14 has an index of all chapters in part one and some in part two.

Chapter 19:

Rebecca Romanelli | Spyder | DL Nemeril | Elle Beau ❇︎ | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Melanie J. | Joseph Lieungh | madmess’s thoughts | David Price | Camille Grady | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Norman Chen | Ravyne Hawke | LM | Marcus aka Gregory Maidman | I. Trudie Palmer | Mark Tulin | George Blue Kelly | May More | Blaine Coleman | Orla K. | Winston | Diana C. | Lee David Tyrrell | Margie Willis | Noorain Ali | Nombuso Makhubu | Libby Shively McAvoy