These are hard times for dreamers

A hot July afternoon. It's 28 degrees of blinding bright sunshine out there, but inside, it's cool. The closed curtains flutter in the breeze as warm air blows through the open window, bringing in sounds of traffic, snippets of conversation, wailing sirens on the main road, echoing down the houses.

We see inside a decent sized sitting room, a boy at a computer screen, leant back in an office chair, features illuminated by a desk lamp and the white glow of the monitor. Scattered around him on the desk and on the floor are half-finished projects; a plastic model army, stacks of photographs waiting to be sorted, shoe boxes of trading cards awaiting some semblance of order. To his right is a bookshelf filled with sci fi novels and comic books, magazines stacked in binders leaning to its side.

He takes a swig of water from an oversized coffee mug, and wonders what to write next. His fingers dance across the keyboard, eyes half focused on the words appearing on screen, a vacant expression painting his features. He wonders how to put into words the thoughts and feelings flitting through his mind, how to describe the dull ache of ennui, the dissociation slowly driving him insane.

An amusing recollection of a thought occurs to him, a half baked imagining on how to explain the fuzzy state his senses and being seem to be trapped in. He recalls reading an article on gravity, how compared to the other forces it should be stronger than it is, how scientists were reaching for a theory to explain its relative weakness. One idea was that perhaps gravity was leaking away, perhaps through black holes, to an alternate universe as yet undiscovered, perhaps folded within and around our own, encased in undetectable strings and unnamed dimensions. He likes this theory. It tickles his mind as it lies in bed at night, spinning around and around like the celestial bodies on their ancient orbits.

Perhaps that's what's happening to him. Perhaps his consciousness is leaking away to another dimension or plane of reality, slowly ebbing away like air seeping out of the rubber of a blow up toy. He sometimes imagines, on a windy day, some invisible force leeching out of him, the wind whipping around his body and it not being strong enough to hold together, its outer layer drifting off like smoke from a bonfire, floating into the sky.

He wishes he could drift away to somewhere else. Away from here, away from this half dead state of dulled senses and sluggish body, sludgy blood slowly percolating round his veins like a clogged coffee filter. Or the other way, come back to life, swim up from underwater and break through the surface, as the sights and sounds come rushing to his senses, bright and crisp after their muffled submarine echoes.

But he can't. He's stuck here, wherever here is. Not really in this world, not really anywhere else. A ghost, drifting through the crowds, sunlight and chatter passing through and around him. A shadow of a man, an echo of a voice heard at dusk as the ghosts come to play.