Pip's Ophidian Book 1: Beatlebug & The Provider

Chapter 17: A Dream

Pip bled until he wasn't there anymore, was floating, distant. Then, he dreamed.

He dreamed of Mel as a very small child, skittering fast across a lush green landscape, climbing a palm tree in a few short leaps. Looking up, and in the sky above, there was The Provider. Distant. A gold speck. Mel's head was tilted upwards and he watched it pass. Even then, he felt it: a tether, the lightest thrumming string between them.

He dreamed of Jesse on Beatlebug, growing up fast, watching her family go crazy. Watching them die off, minds deteriorating until they couldn't hold their bodies alive anymore, Mel holding her close, and thank God she had had someone. He dreamed he had been that someone. That they had grown up together, on Heven.

He dreamed Ma had read the book on autism. Had held Pippa in her final moments, and held Jessica after that. Had held him.

He dreamed his Ma read him a bedtime story, except he was himself, this age, and even before he'd been nearly grown, she hadn't ever really done that. In the story, children fell asleep, one by one, until only one remained. The child then realized they weren't sleeping, they were dead. The child was alone, with the great maw of responsibility widening before her. The end.

He dreamed about a sea of banana trees, bending and breaking in the breeze. He dreamed them all aflame, and his Da's relief, and his Ma taking fruit from the offered basket and trusting it. He dreamed of a small round stone, carved with an eye and wings.

He dreamed, in a bizarre twist, Jesse was kissing him forcefully, blowing him up like a balloon.

Then he realized that wasn't a dream, and that someone was pushing on his chest so hard he thought it'd cave in, and Pops was rapping claws rhythmically against the floor in time with the breaths and the pumps. That Lil was sobbing as she pushed against him, and Mel felt distant as The Provider had been, flying over him when he was small.

Everything was so far away and painful. He could feel them all pleading with him though, so he breathed anyway.

Lights passing overhead. His stomach bandaged tightly, the wound only a distant twinge, now. Mel holding him like a baby as they all ran through the halls, his Ma left behind them, face torn apart. Sprawled and still.

No one stopped them.

Of course they didn't. They had been ordered to stay inside until commanded not to.

Beatlebug loomed, dirty yellow on the outside, with, he realized as they approached it, geckos painted on its hull. Sharp was holding Jesse, Pops was holding Lil, and Jesus lead the way as they all blipped through that hull and inside, and the air was warm and lovely again, and Pip ached. Home. They were home.

How did it already feel like that?

He needs blood, Pops. A transfusion, or he'll die anyway.

Heneeds onlya certainkind, he realized abruptly this halting, muddled new telecast was Lil. She was sobbing shakily, drenched in his blood. Crazy, that there could be so much useless blood. I'mnot it.

Mel's fear was a song he couldn't stop listening to. Sharp and Pops had put down the other humans, but Mel clutched him hard, as if he could hold Pip's soul inside with just his arms. Maybe he could.

"Stick me," Try me, Jesse snapped, holding out her arm, and Pops rattled a cabinet and came up with two needles and tubes, and they were all of them silent as he hooked them both up to a machine, him and Jesse tethered together. It seemed right. Right, that her blood would either kill him or sustain him. Sharp was at a panel and abruptly the whole ship lurched. Pip felt consciousness slip, as if it had been tipped out of him.

He felt a needle pierce his arm. He felt Mel, pleading, still holding him: Just live. Live.