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I sat up and gazed out of the tent, scraped my hair back out of my eyes and ruffled it back with my fingers to keep it in that position. Some of it fell back onto my forehead; I didn't care. Looking out, I could see the disposable BBQ with remnants of burned-out charcoal logs and branches that were now grey and white. The faintest of smoke came from its ashes. BB was fast asleep in the camp chair. I could tell his mouth was open wide by the sound of his snoring. His arms hung down either side of the camp chair. Empty cans were crushed and then strewn across our camping area.
We always cleaned up afterwards, when packing up to go home, but during our drinking fest, it felt manly to crush our cans and throw them when we had finished before cracking the next one open. As I was about to get up and head towards my empty camping chair, I saw something move from the corner of my eye. I sat still and waited, then I saw a brown rabbit run off into the undergrowth and out of sight.
I yawned, unzipped my sleeping bag, and poked my head out of the tent. I took a deep breath stood up and stretched, reaching upwards to the sky as far as I could until I could hear my back crack. I needed to pee. So, looking around just in case some walker was nearby, I walked around to the back of the tent. Picking up a few empty cans, and throwing them in the empty cooler, I carried on walking towards the tall tree that shadowed the tent.
As I stood there watering the shrubs and grass weeds growing from the base of the tree, I had a sudden flashback to my dream. I could hear Metatron in a loud overpowering voice as if he was stood right next to me, “Feel your higher self. Be your higher self. See your higher self.”
I finished mid pee and zipped up quickly; I honestly felt as if somebody was stood behind me.
“What the...” I said as I turned around half expecting BB to be standing behind me, joking around at my expense. No-one was there.
I looked around the area to see if I could see anyone else. Thoughts were running around my head, I thought to myself, ‘I bet I was talking in my sleep and now someone is making a joke of me'. But there was no one in sight. Nothing. Just silence, apart from a bird chirp coming from the tree above. I got out my iPhone just to check that my YouTube app wasn't playing or something. It wasn't. I unlocked it using my facial recognition and checked the time, it was only 8:58 am. I'd had just enough sleep to get by for the rest of the day. It would be an early night for me though. I had a double shift again tomorrow at work.
Scratching the back of my neck and squinting, I thought to myself, “How on earth did I just hear that sentence from my dream? Am I still dreaming? Am I still drunk?”
I repeated the phrase back to myself, “Feel your higher self. Be your higher self. See your higher self.”
I chuckled and walked back to my camp chair, throwing myself into it. I fell back into it without giving myself any support. I sat there and wondered about my dream, flashbacks of Metatron, my pixelated living room. I reflected on how weird the experience was. I reached for a bottle of water from the cup holder in the chair. I’d already opened the bottle last night and taken a quick drink from it to take two paracetamols. I always took paracetamol before drinking, or during drinking, alcohol. It's preventative; for the hangover.
My friends would call me the paracetamol king as I always had them to hand and would take them even if I had the slightest bit of pain. I unscrewed the plastic top from the water bottle and took a swig of the water. Again, I started thinking about the dream I had just had. It had created thoughts that would linger with me all day.
I closed my eyes and remembered the part of the dream when I was in what felt like space, with all the colours swirling around me. At that precise moment, whilst I was thinking about being in the air, I felt like all my cells had come alive. I felt a glowing both surrounding and becoming me. It was like I was on fire again but with no pain.
I opened my eyes, and I did have this luminous glow surrounding my body. My hands, my legs, my arms. I was encircled within this glow that shone brightly. The light was a brilliant gold, with yellows and golds shifting outwards like the sea hitting the shore. I felt my energy, my frequency, had synced with the universe. It was happening at the same time I was thinking of being in space in my dream. Without warning, without a feeling, or even a knowing, I was floating up out of my chair.
I tried to grip onto the only thing I could, and that was the plastic water bottle in my hand. Water spilt out all over me. Was I still dreaming?
I did, however, feel safe. It was a weird feeling to have when I was floating above my friend surrounded by an orange glow. I could not control what was happening, but I didn't feel frightened or scared.
I was now above the treetops. I could see the bird that had watched me pee.
I still felt like I was in the dream. I had a little laugh to myself, I did a flip in the air, and I felt like a child let loose for the first time on a trampoline. I took in the view, I could see for miles. I looked in all directions. In the distance, I could see the building where I worked. Redgrand District Hospital. It was about eight, maybe even ten miles away, but it was the tallest building in our town and stuck out like a sore thumb. It was always the first building you would see, set back in the distance, if you were driving back home on the motorway.
I looked at the building. I tried to focus on it. Suddenly, my vision started to zoom in, like a TV show where the camera would slowly zoom in on an item. Only this was in double speed, and my vision zoomed in within seconds. I could see the building as if I was stood right outside it. I looked up to one of the wards where my friend worked. Leigh Clark was one of my closest friends. I'd go as far as to say she was my soul mate. We became close after studying French together in high school, we both failed the exam after two years of supposed study. We didn't care for it, but we cared for each other.
I zoomed in on one of the windows, which I knew was the floor where her ward was. I could see her as clear as day. She was taking a blood pressure reading on a patient. I could not hear the conversation, but I had this feeling that if I'd have wanted to be there, I could be in an instant. Leigh was a beautiful person inside and out, hence I think why she studied hard and became a nurse. She was always caring for others, putting them ahead of herself.
Leigh had a round figure that suited her personality. She was lively and bubbly. She had the most exceptional laugh, that had the power to make you fall into laughter too. Even if you were not in on the joke, you would laugh out loud at her raucous laughter.
Leigh looked out of the window, not one of those looks where you take in the view. One of those looks where you look to see if somebody is watching you. Right then, without warning, I could see her look directly into my eyes. I did freak out a little and screamed out loud. Suddenly, the video camera that was my eyes, zoomed back so fast it nearly made me sick. The golden glow that emanated from my body had gone, and I was falling.
I landed in the camping chair, which on impact spread out with all four legs akimbo. I did not hurt myself. I was astonished to say the least. No words came out of my mouth. Barkley woke and saw me flat out on the floor on top of the crumpled camp chair and started laughing so hard he nearly wet himself. I could see the tears in his eyes running down his face. I began to laugh with him, realising that he had just witnessed the chair collapsing and not the height from which I had just fallen.
Just then a bottle of water came landing down on top of me, bounced off my stomach, and upon impact, forced the remaining water out of the bottle up into the air landing all over my face. Barkley was laughing more than ever. I have never seen him laugh so much. I was in shock, but I was still laughing with him. Just then my iPhone alerted me to a text; I slid out my phone, I clicked into it. It was a message from Leigh. It read, “Just thinking about you - love you, pal.”
We packed up, collected the rubbish, and poured water on the BBQ. We threw it all into a black plastic bin bag along with the wrecked camping chair and put it into the back of BB's Mini Cooper Sport. It wasn't his car. It was Kim's; his girlfriend. But he used it more than she did. It was practically his, just not by name.
We got in the car and set off for home. I didn't speak all the way home. BB would usually call off at a garage and top the car up with petrol, and I'd offer half payment, but he didn't this time, he just drove. Radio 2 blurted out it was nearly 9:30 am and Zoe Ball was just signing off her breakfast show. She was talking to Ken Bruce, the presenter of the next show. She asked him if he slept well last night, it must have been a running topic of conversations she had had during her show.
“Strangely,” he said over the car radio, “I slept very well thank you.”
With that, BB turned the radio off and said, “I slept well last night as well, even though I only probably had about two hours of sleep. I feel as if I have slept for weeks. I feel so revitalised, full of energy, I feel as if I could run a marathon.”
Silence fell upon us again. I didn’t engage with his conversation. I couldn’t stop thinking of how I saw Leigh from eight miles away and how it felt like she saw me. I couldn’t comprehend that I was floating above the trees. My mind was racing away with itself. I thought to myself, “I'll see Leigh tomorrow at work. I'll ask her if she saw me, or I'll ask her why she sent me the text.”
“You’re quiet,” BB said.
“I slept well too,” was my reply.
We pulled up outside my house, and I said I'd take the trash out from the boot of his car as it was my bin collection day tomorrow; living on my own my bin is hardly ever half full. I gave BB a nod and a slight wave as his driver’s side window wound down and his right arm rested on the ledge, “Cheers BB. I'll message you later mate,” I said as he drove off.
I live on a new-build estate, well I say new build, my house is five years old now, and I am the first person to live in it. It's just big enough for me. You could call it a two up two down. It is semi-detached with no front garden, only a drive off the road leading up to my house from the main street. My back garden, however, is a different matter. That is my retreat, my quiet zone where I often go and sit by my pond and listen to the water fountain, watching the fish swim around. It’s where I go to reflect and zone out on world matters. Inside my house, I would say my decor was quite trendy, minimalistic, everything has its place.
One of my friends Charlotte Kallel, or 'Lottie' as she likes to be called, has been a part of my life for many years. We used to work together during our teenage years in a care home as healthcare workers. We have both moved on since then, our lives took different paths. Lottie has done a lot with her life. She got married and had three children, two of them are twins, they are now thirteen years old. Even as our lives changed, we stayed friends. She would often invite me round for a meal with her family. I'd usually return the favour, and I can hear her now calling me a ‘Clean Freak’ or she'd say ‘I'm sure you've got OCD’. I wouldn't go that far but living on your own for so long, no kids to make a mess, I guess she just sees my house as a bit tidier than hers.
Next door attached to my house lives a lovely old gentleman, called Mr Williams. John, as he insists I call him, even though I still call him Mr Williams. He is a retired music teacher, a reticent man, down to earth, and you can sometimes hear him tinkling away on his ivories now and again. I think his wife must have died sometime before moving into our new build houses. I could not ask for a better neighbour. He would often drop me a note and ask me to get him some groceries. I didn't mind at all. I've always liked to do my best for people.
I took the rubbish through the house as it was easier than walking around to unlock the back gate. I opened the back-patio double doors, walked through the garden and placed the black sack and crumpled camp chair in the big grey wheeled bin. I fed my goldfish and sprinkled the feed across the pond. Twelve hungry mouths came flooding to the top, each one splashing as they opened their mouths above the water's surface. I watched for a minute or two as they swam up, took the food, and swam back down, repeating until there was no food left floating on the water. For those two minutes watching the fish, my mind was at rest. For the first time, my mind was not thinking of how I floated above BB. I didn't know if I had finally lost it, but it didn’t feel like I’d been hallucinating.
My rapid thoughts soon snapped back, and with my mind racing again, I returned to the kitchen. I poured some filtered water into my kettle and flicked the switch to make myself a coffee. I needed a coffee. I needed a strong coffee.
I used two scoops of instant Nescafé Gold instead of the usual one spoon. I added the boiling water to my Superman mug and then poured in some milk from the fridge, choosing to sit in my favourite armchair, in the kitchen. I didn't even put the milk back in the refrigerator. My mind was on other things.
My armchair was another one of my safe zones. It was a high back retro-looking chair, in Queen Anne's style with the high back curving inwards at the top. When I first bought it, Lottie called it my 'nursing home chair'. You could always count on Lottie to wind me up. Sat in my so called 'nursing home chair’, positioned facing the double patio doors that looked onto the garden, I could see and hear my fountain in the pond. I had a little side table where I would put my book or drink just to the right of me. This was my thinking chair. I loved it. Come rain or shine, this chair was my indoor relaxing place.
I sat down with my strong coffee and tried to make sense of what had happened earlier this morning. Was I going mad? Did I need to see my doctor? Did it happen? Was it imagined?
I remembered the dream, and I remembered 'Metatron', and the feeling of love that overcame me again. I remember seeing my living room as it was when I was a child. The things Metatron had said to me. I thought to myself, ”I could not make these things up even if I tried.” I have a limited imagination. I don't have any form of artistic intelligence of any state. Where, in my imagination, did I pull out this dream? So many questions remain unanswered.
I took a drink from my coffee cup and saw the Superman logo. I laughed at myself. “Don't be stupid!” I said out loud. I was not a superhero fan; it was not my genre of entertainment. I liked an excellent psychological thriller, if I ever did watch a movie, or a good James Bond. But not comic books turned movies, especially not Superman. The Superman mug was a housewarming gift from Leigh, she bought it for me as this was my first house purchase. She thought I was all grown up and now a responsible adult even though I was thirty seven when I bought the house. The mug came with a pair of Superman socks, which went straight to the charity shop, and a beautiful card calling me Superman for being all grown up buying my first house. Bless my mate, Leigh.
Looking at the mug, and then to my hand holding it, I put the cup down and held both of my hands up in front of me. I turned them back and forth and then I had this daft thought, “Okay, let’s see.” I imagined gold coming out of me and surrounding me like it was when I was floating above Barkley this morning. Nothing.
I closed my eyes, thought about the gold light coming out of me, strained my face as if pushing out something that wasn't even there, opened one eye to take a peek at my hands, nothing.
I shook my head in disbelief at myself, “Aaron, what are you doing?”
I put my hands down and looked into my garden. I admired my flowers, not that I am green-fingered or anything, but this summer my garden had taken on a life of its own. Right at the bottom, leaning up to the fence in a rockery patch that I had created last summer, I had some yellow Little Dorrits which had just come into flower. Little Dorrit is a dwarf variety of sunflower, growing to a height of only 60cm. I could see a bumblebee flying around, with a distance of about twenty meters between me and the flowers.
I looked closely at the bee which had landed on one of the flower heads. I can't believe I was going to try, but I did, I tried to zoom in. I tried to get a closer look, focused my eyes on the bumblebee, I imagined a camera lens turning so my zoom vision would zoom in. I strained my eyes so hard I could feel my veins pumping out at my temples. I tried this a couple of times. Nothing. Zilch.
I finally said to myself, “Aaron, you have lost it; you have finally gone and lost it.”
I drank my coffee, looked at my iPhone, it had a red battery symbol. I plugged it in and left it on the kitchen worktop, “Time for a shower,” I thought to myself.
The day went by pretty quickly, I did a few odd jobs around the house, watered my indoor plants, nothing too strenuous, it was after all my last day off for a few days. I ironed a couple of my uniform polo shirts for work. It was a royal blue polo neck t-shirt. I made sure I got the iron right into the nooks of the embroidered logo. It read 'Redgrand District Hospital' in yellow embroidery at the top in a semi-circle, above an outline of the hospital building. At the bottom, it read 'Portering Services' in red lettered embroidery.
I was a porter at the hospital and had been since I was eighteen. After twenty five years, everyone knew me, even the regular patients on the various wards. I don't want to sound pretentious because that's not me, but I was popular. I didn't need to feel popular, or require it, I guess because I had worked there for so long, since being a teenager, everyone knew me or knew of me. Twenty five years was a bloody long time. I was a part of the furniture. Everyone knows Aaron Abbey; always happy to oblige.
Redgrand Hospital was all I had ever known. The portering department used to be part of the NHS. However, the estate's department, which the portering services came under, was privatised after three years of campaigning to prevent it. Since the privatisation, I took voluntary redundancy. Since then, I’ve worked as an agency worker, still doing the same job, same shifts, but 'agency work' which means I do not have a contract with the National Health Service. I can pick and choose the shifts I work. I get roughly the same income; actually, I do get slightly more, as I can choose to work the weekend, or after 8 pm into the night shift, as these shifts pay more. The more hours I work, the more I accrue paid annual leave, so basically, I got a tidy lump sum of cash from my redundancy, which I put straight into savings. Now, I choose when I want to work, deciding my hours as and when. A-Lex services is a global agency, and I could, if I wanted to, work anywhere in the world, as long as they had contracts with the hospitals. However, I have never worked anywhere else, but who knows, maybe one day I might head down south and work a week in Brighton and then take a holiday. I'm full of these little ideas, but never actually do anything about them. Twenty five years I've been in the same job, I've had more managers than I have years worked there, but I like it. I still wear my old NHS royal blue porters' uniform; no one says anything. The agency uniform is bright red with the agency's name embroidered on the left side chest. 'A-LEX SERVICES', in bright yellow embroidery offset against the bright red polo neck t-shirt. I'd gotten my agency uniform when I started work with them three years ago, but my NHS ones still had plenty of life left in them.
I prepared my packed lunch, ready for work tomorrow, brown bread, cheese, and ham, no butter just a dry sandwich. I had never liked butter as far as I can remember. I placed it in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge. I checked on my iPhone, I'd had three missed calls and three unread text messages. My battery was on one hundred percent. I took my phone upstairs and jumped into bed. I set my alarm for 05:00 am. I checked my missed calls. They were all from Leigh, no voice message left. I read my three messages; again, all three were from Leigh.
13:03: “Are you ok?”
15:56: “Just on my break, ring me!”
20:45: “In bed, Pal, I'll see you at work tomorrow.”
I thought about my dream last night with Metatron. The feelings I felt of euphoria, the empowering words he spoke to me; it felt so real, more than just an ordinary dream. I let my mind wander onto this morning's events. It was clear to me now that this morning was a dream as well. It must have been.
I took a quick look at my Facebook. It was kind of a ritual, it would be the last thing I do most nights. Scrolling up and seeing everyone's life flash past me with a swish of my thumb. It just seemed to put me in a relaxed state. I might update my Facebook status on the odd occasion but I don't usually post loads of things. I'm more of a Facebook lurker than anything, but I decided to post just before I went to sleep.
Aaron Abbey
What's on your mind?
'Yet another amazing getaway break with my mate BB. Again, we put the world to rights, moaned, and got very drunk. Here's to the next one - Night Peeps!'
I then uploaded a selfie of us both to the status and tagged BB in it, with our tent in the background, BB holding up a can of beer, with big grins on our faces. There was a purple and gold shaft of light vertically running down the picture right next to me. It must be a lens flare.