Blink

My desire to capture the feeling of normalcy was slowly waning, plane travel was rather boring comparatively. There wasn't any guarantee that I'd get there any other way, so with one eye open I watched the caverns and crevices pass below. Soon we would land and I would be able to make the trek toward my final destination.

The League would be curious, but wouldn't do much looking into it. I was by far their least eccentric member. My thoughts wandered as I closed the left eye in favor of the right, dark shapes of dots and squiggles greeting me. I had to be as careful as I could, there was no controlling it any longer. It was too hard to read a book on the plane with one eye so I carefully took scans of the other passengers to pass the time. There had been two children running up and down the aisle a moment ago, dear old dad doing nothing to silence the pesky gnomes so other passengers might reflect on their lives in peace.

The gnomes took me to a place in my mind that I hadn't visited often, my childhood. Did I always have the abilities I have now and they were somewhat dormant? When was I approached by a member of The League at Papago Park after chasing after a wayward baseball my cousin had launched way too far with his supposed "skills"? My twenties were my heaviest active period so I knew I had to have had all my training completed before then, I can't imagine I was much more than thirteen at the time of recruitment.

"Dylan!" A loud male voice shouted as my thoughts were interrupted from the grade school weapon of choice: a paper ball. "I'm so sorry sir, can I ge-" the man jumped back in startled amazement when he realized he was addressing an empty seat; I had blinked.

Trees and foliage surrounded me, if I wasn't so ticked off, I might have enjoyed the sight. I sighed heavier than I probably ever had and got marching into the forest. This is somewhere Sarah would have dragged me if she had the chance. She loved cutting through dense jungles on our downtime. After all, when I was in better condition I could take her anywhere we wanted to go at any time.

Often, she'd be on the couch flipping through a magazine and she'd hold up a picture of some landscape. "I wanna go here, you can do that right?" With a beaming smile that could match any supernova, and I'd start packing a bag right then and there much to her delight.

I guess I could count myself lucky for something, I wasn't travelling as my persona and that costume all together was not something you could walk through a wooded area with. Even on the man-made dirt path I had recently discovered, the light turquoise boots would have ruined my even pacing. Not to mention the tight fitting maroon pants would have been torn to shreds by the trees and brush because the material was so cheap. The League certainly wasn't big spenders on the outfits we wore to hide ourselves, seeing as their identities were so important to them.

Horton Creek Trail, good, I wasn't as far as I thought I was. I couldn't come to grasp what this new terrible affliction was. Why shutting my eyes to sleep was suddenly having me wake up in Siberia. Or that a common sneeze sent me to Timbuktu for the remainder of my lunch. The other members of The League worried that I was acting up because of the situation we were put in. I assured them that everything was fine, my seemingly random bits of vanishing were just jokes that sometimes didn't land, or, never landed.

They accepted my rouse mostly, comforting themselves that I needed to grieve in my own way. They never once realized that I wasn't in control anymore and didn't know why. I opened my left eye as I closed my right, each one presented me with a memory of Sarah. She wasn't one of us, she didn't deserve what she got.

Have you ever cried without closing your eyes, without shutting yourself away from the world for the briefest of moments? It sucks. Being mindful of not shutting both of your eyes at the same time sucks. Not that, for any amount of time, did I want to take my sight off of the spot. I'd found it, I walked through the night and made it here without blinking.

Sarah and I used to hike out to this exact spot for years and years. When my powers were in complete control, we came here instantaneously many times whenever we needed that moment to reconnect and remember who we were for real. To her I wasn't a man with the power to take her anywhere, I was just the man that made her feel like she didn't have to go anywhere at all.

Memories of the finest restaurants, biggest parties, and life events we faced together revealed themselves in the stone as I slowly climbed to the top of Nature's Skyscraper. "And where should we go today, love?" I said aloud as I struggled to get my footing again, almost shutting my eyes. I snapped them both open wide as her delicate arms wrapped around me at the kitchen table. "How about we stay right here." The building winds answered as I reached the top.

Tears streamed down my face as I sobbed, and crawled to the far side of the plateau. I looked down at the bottom, and focused with everything that I had, when everything was fine, when Sarah was still here, all I had to do was focus. "Give me that focus, work the way you used to work before, dammit!" I shouted and rolled myself over the edge, focusing intently on the ground below. The wind hit my open eyes, I blinked, but I didn't go anywhere that Sarah wasn't already.

Cover Photo Credit: Wojtek Paczes
Visit them here: https://www.pexels.com/@wojtekpaczes/

Dedicate to the friend who challenged me to write something again: Dylan Zachary
Visit him here: https://www.instagram.com/dylanandcompany/