[ part 1 ] - [ part 2 ]

Avis put down the phone. He was shaking in disbelief. Elizabeth was here, in the city. On some kind of business trip. And wanted to meet up with him. They hadn’t seen each other in years. Hell, he hadn’t even thought of her for quite some before today, when she’d shown up – in that chemically induced memory. Of course, he hadn’t told her about that. Not exactly anyway. He still wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of taking memory pills. Instead he told her he’d had a dream about her.

“Oh yeah?” She said. “Was I doing anything weird in it?”

“No,” Avis told her honestly. “In the dream we were all back in a bar, like in the old days. All of us together.”

“That sounds like a really nice dream,” Elizabeth told him.

“Yeah, it was…”

She was staying at a hotel by the airport. Avis sometimes did work out there, so he knew a couple places they could go for a bite to eat and maybe a drink. He was still not totally sure what to make of her appearance. It seemed unusually coincidental. But more than that, he was now extra nervous, since the memory of her was so fresh in his mind. Seeing her there, and knowing how many chances the two of them had thrown away in the past for reasons he could no longer really remember.

Avis put on his coat. The fall air was crisp and cool in the darkness. Soon the leaves would start falling. He was both looking forward to it and dreading it, like always. He stood in the little yard for a moment, just taking the moment in before he drove to meet Elizabeth. He tried to steady himself, but couldn’t. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and when he opened them everything around him was lit up. Nighttime had suddenly given way completely to day. The trees around him had already started to shed their leaves. His car was gone. He turned around in confusion, and his apartment building had somehow morphed back into the house he’d lived in as a child. Avis was completely stunned for a moment until he realized what was going on. The pills must have thrown him into another flashback spontaneously.

He took another deep breath, closed his eyes and opened them again, hoping that would cure it, since that’s what had brought it on. But it didn’t he was still there. The wind brushed fallen leaves across his shoes. He looked down at them. Sneakers. He was a little kid again. His body had shrank back down to what it remembered. Without really intending to, Avis suddenly found himself running across his yard, kicking leaves wildly into the air.

“Zachary!” He heard a woman call behind him. He stopped and turned. It was his mother, calling him from the porch. She looked young and beautiful and seeing her like this made Avis so happy. He began running towards her, but never reached her. He inhaled sharply and felt his body shake itself awake again. And the night, his apartment, his cars, his adult-sized body were all restored.

Fuck, he thought. What the hell was that? He hadn’t realized the pills were still affecting him. He wondered whether it was really such a great idea to drive out to see Elizabeth. What if he blacked out while he was driving? But then he started to play out the alternate scenario in his head. He imagined himself going back upstairs, and calling Elizabeth back and canceling on her. Just like he had so many other times in the past. Passing up all kinds of chances he’d been given. He couldn’t do that to himself again. He had to see her. He decided to risk it.