An apparition appears at my bedside sometime in the wee hours. I am only vaguely aware of something cold set to my forehead, and something wet set to my lips. The ghost is a woman I know I love. Her long hair brushes my cheek in a good night kiss, and the world dissolves back into sleep.

.....

"What did you dream of?"

"What?"

"Tell me about your dreams. Last time you said you flew. Do you still fly?"

.....

The first order of business today is a shower. Run the water a little too hot, and it's not long before the bathroom is a sauna. The shower feels like a luxury, though. It is a cleansing; a much needed and well deserved one. So, I stand, and I imagine my problems spiraling down the drain, but the water changes from clear to black and white and I can't turn the faucet off fast enough.

It's not real it's not real it's not real. It's not—

Then there is a pounding on the door, and I had forgotten I had a houseguest.

"Just a second!" I scramble to pull my shorts up. I'm sure I look ridiculous as the door creaks open, but I'm really thinking more about all that cold air rushing in and stealing the warm fog.

"Is there a problem?"

"No. No problem," I say, hoping I've managed to keep the edge of panic from my voice. I attend to the business of taming my hair, but it's not really working. "Just give me sec, okay? Be right out."

.....

I grumble out a "Good morning," before I actually enter the kitchen. The sound of my voice somehow dropped the temperature in the kitchen by about ten degrees, and I see Rorschach, his back to me, freeze solid. He turns to me, and in a single fluid motion, tucks his journal into his jacket. On the table, I notice my wallet is laid out like a pinned butterfly. I pick the wallet up and begin rifling through it. There doesn't appear to be anything missing. He wouldn't flat out take money from me. I know this about him. Or remember, or something. He takes things, small inconsequential things. He lives as a scavenger scraping by, and I know this… but he doesn't steal. There's too much pride for that, too much self-determination, and then I remember the journal.

"What's in there. What did you—?"

There are limbs, suddenly, arms and legs twisted and somebody lets out a sharp yelp, and it could be me…I'm not sure, but now there are dodges and weaves and I connect an elbow to his gut and… He wheezes a bit. Somehow, I think this shouldn't have been possible, but it was, it really happened, and I am able to reach into his coat and pull out his journal. Open it up and a small white card flutters to the ground like a leaf. I pick it up. A cheerful cartoon blue jay is depicted on one side. Non-sense scribbles and lines on the back.

"You are misinterpreting what has been happening here. You are confused. Wanted to keep this from you, tried—"

I can't look at him. I turn around, and I can feel…something, frustration or anger or pain or something welling up, and I know a blue jay is somehow very important.

.....

We both dive to the floor in a battle to be the first to scoop up the fallen business card, and it may as well be pushing and kicking and shoving, but of course nothing so dramatic as that. He comes out the victor, but there is no outward display of triumph, no gloating or bragging. He only studies it, turning it over and over. For some reason I have the visual image of a stage magician vanishing the card with simple sleight of hand.

"Why do you want that? What do you care?"

"You fail to consider my investment in this situation. Have often wondered what it would mean if you had access to this. If I then cease to exist."

What the hell kind of thinking is that?

"I'm sure that's not true," I say.

"Are you? Are you sure? Not sure of very of much these days."

"How the hell can I be? I just—"

"Now you understand my position."

"Okay. Now that's bullshit. Remember on the way back here? You gave me this whole speech about how no one can steal your sense of self and how you had all this conviction? Now you have doubts? So, what. You just made all that up?"

"Doubt. Yes. Not…not proud to admit that." He looks first at his feet, stares at them for a long moment before tilting his head up at me. He continues. "You wonder if I only exist in your mind. I wonder if the reverse is true."

"There's a way to find out."

"No." He growls out my name, and it's a warning, something feral and dangerous, and all I want is to know. I reach out and he pulls away, but it must not have been too spirited a withdrawal because I am easily able to pluck the card from his fingers. It's a key, somehow. A code or… The scribbles and lines must be words. Numbers, too. Then, the non-sense mess moves and shifts on the card. Coalesces into something readable. Words. An address. A phone number. And then I remember.

.....

I bolt for the living room; I have every intention of being the first to reach the telephone but he is chasing after me fast, he might be angry, or he may simply be determined to best me, but either way he is scary as hell as he runs after me, more like an underwater predator than anything else, sleek and streamlined and very very vicious. We both reach for my desk simultaneously. He is groping over me, pulling at my clothes and connecting elbows to ribs and I scoop up the telephone, index finger slotted in the number two finger hole, and he snatches it away before I have the chance to dial. We struggle for control. This time there is pushing and shoving.

"Why are you fighting?"

"Why are you?"

Neither of us succeeds, though. Neither have control here, so neither win. The telephone spills out from our hands and tumbles down to the ground, but it feels like forever before it gets there. As it makes contact with the floor, a bell clangs from somewhere inside. The words time's up! spring to mind from someplace. For reasons I can't quite explain, I find the constant monotonous drone of the dial tone disconcerting.

Rorschach picks up the fallen device, gently places the receiver back on the cradle, and just as the receiver makes contact, the phone rings.

I may or not have jumped.

"Jesus."

He makes a sound that could be a growl, or it could be a laugh.

He hands me the phone. I put it to my ear. I say nothing. Simply listen.

"Hello? Anyone there?" A man says. There's something familiar about the man's voice. Paternal.

"…Dad?"

The voice on the other end laughs, though it's a nervous laughter. "Perhaps in the spiritual sense, kid. Saw your airship overhead last night. I was just calling to check up on you, is all. Make sure you're all right."

"Oh," I say. "Uh. Yeah. I'm okay, I guess…"

"Glad to hear it. Say, Laurie didn't make it out with you, did she?"

.....

"Laurie?" I say, confused. Rorschach jerks his head at me. I shrug. I don't know.

"…Laurie. Sally's girl," the man on the phone says. "You sure you're feeling all right, kid?"

"Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I didn't realize…"

"I told her mother you're good people, Danny."

I close my eyes tightly. "We were planning on going back anyway?" I clear my throat. "I mean, you can tell her mother we'll do all we can."

A pause and then, "You boys watch yourselves."

"Yes, sir."

.....

"Guard here," Rorschach says with a stab of his finger on his hand drawn schematic. "And here."

I place my hand on the back of his leather seat—the co-pilot's chair—and lean over his shoulder to see where he is indicating. He elbows my bare abdomen for my effort.

"Hey!"

"Finish getting dressed," he says.

"Fine," I grumble, as I reach for the top part of my outfit, sitting on the pilot's chair. It's silly, I know. I probably don't need my costume, but it feels important, somehow. Like a reclaiming. After dressing, I set my glasses on the control panel. They stare back at me. I ignore them and instead set my attention to the business of flying. The orange lights from the city below look like points of starlight, and I find myself thinking about warm summer nights lying on my back in soft damp grass, looking through the pair of binoculars I would often 'borrow' from my father.

"Do you worry," I hear myself saying.

He looks up and at me. Says nothing.

"About what we'll find, I mean."

"Concerned errand may be a trap," he says, slowly. He picks up the page he was studying, folds it before stuffing it into a coat pocket. "A Possibility."

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, we don't even know why," I say. The density of the city lights are starting to thin out. We are moving away from the center of the galaxy, out toward the unknown universe. "They know all about," I gesture at myself, my surroundings. "You know." I adjust a dial here, punch in coordinate there; make a slight course correction. Outside, the city lights have completely vanished. There is only a smattering of lights now. A grid of suburban street lights, an outline of farmland. "This could be exactly what they expect of us."

"Won't give them the satisfaction of the expected," he says, as he points out the window. "There. Eleven o'clock. Three miles?"

I look at the instrumentation. "More like five, but yeah. We're here."

.....

Just at the horizon, wispy clouds catch a riot of pink and orange against a powder blue canvas. The sun is rising. "I wish I'd done a better job of surveillance," I mumble, as I look at what I think may have been my window from when I was detained here. We are currently crouched behind a row of tightly packed juniper bushes, along the perimeter of the compound. There are two guards. One stationed at the main entrance, and the other pacing the perimeter. We have to wait for the one walking along the bushes to pass before we can bolt for the front door. We probably could take this one out, but we don't want to tip off the other guard unnecessarily. We need him. "Quiet," Rorschach says as he jabs an elbow at me.

"Again with the ribs," I say.

He snaps his forefinger against his thumb, like a powerful jaw slamming shut. Quiet, it means.

I roll my eyes at him, but it's a wasted gesture behind the goggles. I hear them before I see them, voices coming up along the garden path. Here they come. Three figures. One male, two females. The two women seem engaged in conversation. The shorter one is wearing blue slacks and blue and black striped knit top. The other one is closer in size to the male, both of similar coloring. They look a matched set. He seems distracted. Next to me, Rorschach pulls out his journal from an inside pocket, begins scratching something into it with his stub of a pencil. The male of the trio whips his head around. Looks right where we are. Shit. I think we're busted. I hold my breath. He leans in to whisper in the ear of the smaller woman. She nods, and all three turn and make their way toward the building.

A drab olive colored goldfinch flits from birdfeeder to oak branch. The coloring suggests either an immature male or, more likely, a female.

The guard walking the perimeter passes past our position, and we make a break for it.

.....

It's only about five hundred feet from the juniper-lined perimeter to the main door, so the guard there can see us well enough, but he doesn't seem alarmed or anything by the sight of two charging costumed vigilantes. I'm sure if I saw something like that rushing right for me, I'd probably shit my pants. Although, I know I can handle myself pretty well. Maybe that's what this guard is thinking, too. That he can take us on, no problem. Well, we'll give him a run for his money, at any rate.

He still hasn't moved by the time we meet up with him at the door. I'd expected resistance. A fight at the very least. Time to try a different approach.

"Open the door," I demand. He does so, without question. I shoot my partner a quizzical look. He very vaguely shakes his head.

We slip inside the building, and the guard follows us in. Locks the door behind him. While he has his back turned, we run. We pound up the three flights of stairs to the floor where most of the patients are roomed. We start systematically checking each room; he takes the even numbered ones, while I take the odds. Surprisingly, many of them are empty.

"In here," he calls.

When I follow him into room 350, I see her. Standing there by the window and looking out at the oak tree. Before I have the chance to say something cheesy, like "We're here to rescue you!" she turns to me. Says, "You like birds. What are these ones called?"

I look. They're our pair of resident goldfinches. I tell her so.

"They're nice," she says, distantly. "Pretty."

"They're always in pairs," I hear myself saying. Why am I telling her this? "While one feeds, the other keeps lookout for danger. They watch each other."

"Are you danger?" she asks, teasingly.

"Me? Oh, no. No. Actually, I'm here to—"

"You're not here to rescue me," she says with a bored detachment. "Dan, you're sweet. Maybe with a bit of a hero-complex, but you're sweet."

"What do you mean by 'hero-complex,'" I ask. I sound more defensive than I mean. "And what happened to R—"

She smiles, more with her eyes than her lips, and lifts my goggles off my face. She then pecks a chaste kiss on my cheek.

"What was that for?"

"It's for luck," she says, grinning.

"Um. Okay," I say, feeling somewhat foolish. "Thanks, I guess. We're going to need all the luck we can get. Come on. Let's get you out of here."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," she says, in a tone that suggests disbelief and maybe a little pity. I chuckle. Yeah, this was me not so long ago, huh.

"Look," I say. My heart is pounding and I feel out of breath. "I was the same way. I had trouble, uh, accepting it, too, at first. You start off confused, but then something clicks and it all fits in place." Then the image of the doorjamb's wood grain and warm earth tones of my kitchen pop into my mind. "Especially once you get out of here. I think once the drugs got out of my system…"

"Oh, Dan," comes a voice from the doorway, short and clipped, like someone scolding the cat for clawing up the couch again. It's the woman in blue from outside. No. I know her. She's…My mother. No. Oh, god. The Doc.

"Dr. Jay," I say. Now I feel like the scolded cat. She's going to try to trick me somehow. Trap me into her way again, convince me I belong here. It's kind of sick, actually. This whole operation. Where do these people get off? Who do they think they are? Taking people? Drugging them? To what end.

"You. You keep away from me," I say as I move toward Laurie to take her wrist. She's quick and pulls away, jerks her hand back as if it had just been burned. "I'm going to take Laurie back home to her mother…"

As I'm speaking, she puts both hands on her head. "My mother, now. Oh god."

"What?" "I was always a little flattered that you included me, but now you've involved my mother?" she spat.

"Okay, Dan," Dr. Jay says, palms up at me, placating. "You need to calm down."

"I'm calm. Who says I'm not calm?"

"If you want we can go to my office? I'll make you some of that tea."

"So you can drug and brainwash me, right? Yeah. I don't think so."

Just then, Rorschach appears behind the doctor. I look up at him, and the doctor's body language stiffens into something a little more hostile.

"There's something you need to see," she says, eyes narrow.

She's trying to intimidate me. Distract me from this right now, divert my attention elsewhere. It's not going to work.

"No." I grab Laurie by the wrist and push my way past the doctor. She's thrashing and kicking and punching and yelling, and I realize this is way way out there for me, but I'm fucking desperate. I need to get her out of here quickly and safely. I made a promise. The doc turns and runs for the door. No. She stops at the wall next the door. Pulls a red handled lever. An ear splitting peal calls out from seemingly everywhere, and all I want to do is get away from that god-awful sound.

Then, as if all at once, security men surround me. At least four men are holding me in place, and I am squirming and trying everything I can think of to break away, but it isn't doing any good. The doc comes over with a syringe. "I'm so sorry," she says before the world goes black.

.....

The world seems hazy and out of focus. I'm probably dreaming. I can't tell anymore. That probably should be worrying, but god, I'm actually feeling okay about it. I am lying in my own bed. Well, my own bed at my parents house. My mother is dabbing a cold washcloth to my forehead, and encouraging me to finish my water. I'm so very hot.

"What do you dream of?" she asks me. "Last time," she starts, as an encouragement. "You said you flew. Do you still fly?"

"Sometimes I fly. But more like I'm a pilot than a bird. But somehow I'm a bird too. It makes sense, in context, I guess." She laughs. "You always wanted to fly. Do you remember the first time you saw one of those old World War II dog-fighters?"

"Yeah," I say. "Yeah, I do…"

"I'm sorry you father doesn't understand…"

"I know," I say quickly.

"I have something for you," she says. She gets up and moves to the windowsill. When she returns, she hands me a round box.

"What is it?"

"Open it, and see."

Inside the box is a brightly colored painting on a flat circle.

"It's Pennsylvania Dutch. The birds mean 'good luck.' We can always use whatever luck we can get."

.....

I feel so beat up and just plain exhausted when I wake up. Rorschach is still here, which is odd. He is slumped in my rocking chair next to the window, fast asleep. Doc comes in the room, now and nudges him awake. "Come on," she whispers. "Let's get you back into your own room."

"Haven't finished my coffee yet," he mumbles.

She hauls him to his feet and leads him out of the room. "Be right back," she whispers to me.

I nod. I get up and look out the window. There aren't any birds out there this morning. I feel a deep sense of loss at this for some reason. I'm not sure why. She comes back in with one of those familiar tiny plastic cups filled with several different pills. All of different shapes and different colors. She sets the cup on the counter before sitting down in the rocking chair.

"Ha. You only kicked him out so you could have it."

"Guilty as charged," she says quietly. "So, what do you think happened?" she asks.

"I." I look at the floor. "I don't really know."

"It's okay. I'm not blaming you. You know that."

"Yeah."

"I called your parents."

"Oh, god."

"They agreed."

"Really?" I say, truly, genuinely shocked.

"Mm-hmm." I take a deep breath. "Okay."

"There's no need to be nervous. We'll be able to handle it. Don't worry about it.."

"Okay."

She gets up to retrieve the tiny cup, brings it to me. I look at her with butterflies in my stomach, but she just nods. Go ahead, it means.

.....

.

.

.

Have you ever woken up somewhere, without knowing just how you got there?