A dark-haired boy and what appeared to be his father were sitting next to a water-filled channel running across the descending edge of a sand dune. Beyond and below them was a flat beach upon which a few dozen bathers lounged. As I was walking up the mound toward them the boy climbed onto the rim of the channel, which collapsed, sending him tumbling head over heels into a trough of water at the bottom of the dune. I yelled at the father to alert him of his son’s plight, but he never turned to look, instead sat facing away from us the whole time. Swallowed instantly by the trough’s quicksand-like substrate material, the boy disappeared until only the very top of his head was showing.
Clawing into and digging away at the golden liquid sand, my efforts hampered by freely-flowing water, I managed to free the boy’s head, then finally after more frantic excavations his whole body. His eyes were closed and his face and neck were turning blue from lack of oxygen. Gathering his rag-doll body into my arms, I picked him up so that his head rested to the right of mine and his limbs draped around the right side of my torso. Standing up, I shouted down to the lounging bathers, who seemed unable to understand me. I tried different languages, saying things like Police, Polizei, Polisi, call for help, ayudame, rufe einen Krankenwagen, and tolong sakit.
Then, the scenery changed and I was ascending a tall tower of glass and steel, still holding the unconscious boy, mounting flights of stairs and riding upward in elevators, climbing ever and ever higher into the sky. Upon reaching some sort of top-floor control center packed with blinking computer terminals and walled in with slanted slabs of glass, I was approached directly by a small blond woman who finally offered to help me revive the unconscious child in my arms.
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]