Before the Fall

Six Months Earlier…

I didn’t land.
I didn’t wake.
I just… opened my eyes yet again.

Not in my bed. Not in the street.

I was behind a school.
My elementary school.

Not exactly how it was—but how it made me feel.

The pavement was cracked and wide. The old wall where we played dodgeball leaned in like it remembered things too. Two tetherballs twisted in the breeze, even though I couldn’t feel any wind. The parking lot stretched off to the left, just like it always did. And I was standing there. Alone.

Except—there was a line of trees across the cracked pavement.
Where the grass was supposed to start.
That wasn’t there before. Not in reality.
But there it was now. And it felt… expected.

I started running.

No reason. No one chasing me. No finish line. Just—forward, toward the trees.

Halfway there, something changed.

I wasn’t running anymore. I was lifting.

My feet still moved, but the ground wasn’t beneath me. My chest tightened. Not from exertion. From that other thing. The creeping thud that sits between your heart and your breath.

I rose. Just above the tree line.
My eyes slammed shut.

It didn’t help.

There was a jolt—like something grabbed my collar and yanked me backward through myself.
And then—

I was back. Same spot. Same cracks in the pavement. Same tetherballs twisting.
Only now there were kids.

Some I knew. Some I didn’t.
Teachers.
Noise.
The sounds of a place you don’t remember missing until it shows up again.

I didn’t say anything.
I just ran.

Again.

This time the trees came faster. The sky brighter.
The ground didn’t wait as long to let go.

I rose again. But now—no panic. No tightness.

I wasn’t afraid.

The trees dropped away. The kids vanished. So did the school. Even the wind left.

I looked out where the high school should’ve been.

It wasn’t there. Nothing was.
Only red earth. Flat, cracked, endless.

A desert where memory used to be.

I looked down.
Far, far down.
The trees were gone. The pavement was gone. Even the sky felt far away.

And then—

I fell.