The waiting room was warm and soft, its couches clean and inviting and untouched, framed on either side by perfectly balanced pillows. A series of muted landscape paintings decorated shadowless walls, interrupted only by a single door. A sole occupant sat in an armchair smiling at the wall. For the first time in over 20 years, Jay did not feel like he was waiting.

His gaze was lost in a painting of a wooden porch, a pair of rocking chairs, a distant road stretching through a field of swaying grasses, and a tall oak spreading into the sky.

It reminded him of the trees he had climbed all those years ago behind his aunt’s rural home, tucked away at the end of a winding gravel road. He would lie with his back against a giant limb, right leg dangling against the bark, listening to the leaves flutter in the summer breeze, and watch flecks of sunlight dance across his vision as they crackled through the shimmering canopy.

His aunt would fuss about his climbing, even though he never ventured more than two branches high. If he carefully turned on his stomach, twisted his legs to the side, and then hung by his hands, he usually felt confident enough to drop straight to the ground. He’d done it at least a hundred times, and he’d only hurt himself twice, once escaping with barely even a twisted ankle after landing on a debris-covered root.

“And what if your ankle had been your head?” his aunt had scolded him, propping an ice pack atop the swelling. She’d tucked another pillow under his foot, adjusting his body on the couch to make sure the injury was sufficiently elevated. “You can’t sprain your skull!”

All things considered, the risk still seemed worthwhile to gaze into the filtered sunlight, to scrape against the rough bark, to listen for the warbling birds, and to smell the flowers and the forest carried in on the breeze.

His aunt was much older now, healthy and seemingly at peace, but she moved slower than he remembered. She’d long since left that harrowed home, and her face was creased with grief she’d learned to mask but not repair. He had not spoken to her for quite some time. His memories of her were more abstract feelings and movements and shapes than a defined connection to someone he once knew.

A small, elderly woman opened the waiting room door with a welcoming smile, eyes bright and skin smooth and glowing. Her hair was tied behind her head, and the ceiling lights threw a slight shimmer against the gray streaks.

When she spoke, her head bobbed slightly, a few loose hairs waving slowly on either side of her face. “Hi Jay, we’re ready for you, dear.”

The young man stood and took a few long strides across the carpet to pass through the door. The floor looked lush and soft, but he could barely feel his feet against it. After all this time, he didn’t think he’d ever get used to that feeling. Then again, he wasn’t sure he remembered the sensation of standing on solid ground.

The woman held the door as he passed, and then stepped through after him, pausing for the muted hiss of the closing hinges and then the gentle, slow click of the door shutting behind them.

“This way.” She shuffled around in front of him and stepped down a long hallway. Jay had briefly wondered what was behind the waiting room door. As he suspected, it wasn’t worth wondering. Just a stretch of more beige hues, landscape paintings, and repeating doors, each like the last. The woman’s formal shoes tapped along a smooth surface beneath them, the sound echoing down the hall. Even this floor felt absent beneath Jay’s feet, the tapping like a performance of how a hall should sound. Performance aside, Jay found it soothing.

The woman glanced back over her shoulder at Jay, who followed a polite half-pace behind. “Are you nervous?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“That’s good.”

“…should I be?”

“Not at all, dear. I’ve been working with the team here for a few decades now. We’ve done this thousands of times. You’re in good hands.”

“That’s good to hea—”

“—Of course, I can only speak from my place of valediction.” She came to a stop in front of another door. Jay glanced the way they’d come, trying to remember which door they’d first come through. “I suppose I can never truly know what it’s like to be in your shoes. None of us can ever know what it means to live unless we do.”

“You call it living,” he observed.

She smiled at him, in no rush to usher him through the door. “I call any choice living, dear.”

He wondered if she’d ask why he was here, or what he hoped for, or if he’d know what to say. He didn’t know why, after 20 years, he suddenly felt ready to leave. Most others left much sooner. Then again, few others arrived so young.

Instead of probing, she simply held his gaze. “My brother was actually here last year. In some ways, you remind me of him. He was young too. Arrived much younger than me and was much wiser by the time I came. By then, he knew what he wanted.”

“Where is he now?”

“He lives in Southern California. A town called Malibu, just outside of Los Angeles. It’s supposed to be a beautiful place now. Has been for a while.”

“I’d never heard of it before arriving. Newcomers say a lot of rich people live there.”

“That would be just like him—to be rich!” She winked as Jay smiled. But as she turned to open the door, Jay’s smile dropped, and he felt himself jerk forward slightly.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” He hesitated. “Have you talked to him?”

Her focus faded down the hall. “To be honest, I tried once. But I couldn’t reach him. I suppose it would just upset him anyway.”

“I tried contact once too,” Jay admitted. “My aunt, shortly after I arrived. She’s still there. I think it made things worse.” He swallowed to loosen the tightness forming in his chest and throat. The woman was still looking off into the distance, and Jay wished she would turn back to him. “Do you… ever want to go home too?”

Her eyes returned to meet Jay’s. “Life was hard for me, dear. I spent too much time hiding. I felt more than my share of fear. And I’m blessed here. At peace. I don’t see myself letting that go, at least not anytime soon.”

“I understand.” He looked down at his hands, turning them over. “I’m ready. Even if it’s just for a while.”

She reached out towards his arm, the gesture recalling a memory of his aunt’s comforting touch. “Well then, that’s all you need to know.”

She opened the door to another simple, windowless room containing only two armchairs and a small table between them. On the table waited a glass filled with clear liquid that seemed to swirl and spin as if being constantly mixed.

Jay stepped inside, then turned around to see that the woman had extended her hand, filling the space with the closest thing to affection she could provide. He couldn’t resist a small laugh at the farewell. Jay set his hand within the space beside hers, imagining the feeling of shaking her hand. They nodded to each other, and she beamed, erasing all traces of their prior solemnity. “Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “When you’re ready, have your drink, and Mr. Cullen will be in shortly to guide you through the effects. He’ll stay with you as long as you need, and answer any of your questions before you begin. Good luck, dear, and good living.”

Alone, Jay saw no use in delaying. He nestled into the chair facing the door, sipped the cool, sweet liquid until the glass was empty, and closed his eyes to savor the tranquility while waiting for Mr. Cullen. With a few deep, slow breaths, he felt himself shift and settle into the cushions. He felt them slightly curve against his legs and back.

A few moments later, he opened his eyes. The room was pitch black. Jay could not even find an outline of light from the hall that might otherwise frame the door.

“Hello?” Jay called. His words melted away, echoes forgetting to return.

“Um, ma’am?” He realized he hadn’t learned the woman’s name. “Can someone help me please? I think the lights are off.”

No one responded. He assumed the woman had moved far down the hall by now.

“Hello?”

“Hello.” A young man’s voice. Direct, yet soft and unassuming. Jay did not recognize it and could not tell where it was coming from.

“I can’t see anything. Can someone please turn on a light?”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you—it’s pitch black in here! Please turn on a light.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Is this a joke? What is happening?”

“I don’t think anything is happening currently.”

“Where is the woman?” Jay stumbled to his feet, waving his hands in front of him, cautious of the table, reaching for something to orient himself.

“Do you mean the woman with the gray hair?”

“Yes, the woman with the gray hair!”

“She is there.”

“Well, can you ask her to turn on a light?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“A light. So I can see. There has to be a switch around here somewhere.” Jay’s breath came fast and shallow. He moved his arms about more frantically, searching for the door or a wall. “You’re clearly fucking with me.”

“So I can see…”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Ah, I understand now. There is light, but there is nothing for it to show.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There is nothing to show.”

“Did something go wrong? Where is Mr. Cullen?”

“Is Mr. Cullen the man with the gray-haired woman?”

“I assume so.”

“One moment.” A brief pause. “He is there.”

“Well can you get him please?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Jesus Christ…”

Jay stepped backwards until he felt the end of the armchair, sitting down heavily. There was no use stumbling around in the dark.

He kept repeatedly squeezing his eyes shut, then opening them again, hoping it might make a difference. But all it did was strain the muscles in his face and leave pressure on his eyes that sent little flecks of light across the blackness before him.

“What are those?” The voice asked.

“What’s what?” The little specks did not fade away, instead sliding across Jay’s vision, pushed further each time he tried to look directly at them.

“The black. Something changed.”

Jay sat up straight. “You can see those too?”

“Yes.”

“But how?”

The voice did not respond. Jay readjusted in the chair, uncomfortable with how it seemed to be thinning beneath him. As unhelpful as the voice was, he didn’t want it to leave him alone here. “I think I just squeezed my eyes too hard. They need a moment to adjust.”

“Adjust…”

“It’s like looking at a bright light too long, or glancing near the sun, then looking away.”

“The sun…”

Before Jay could respond, several flecks of light suddenly moved together, condensing into a single glowing ball and growing bright enough that Jay instinctively lifted his hand to shield his face. But his hand did not appear before him, and it did nothing to block the light, which instead began to pulse and swell in a radiant swirl of white and yellow.

“Is this the sun?” the voice inquired.

Jay whispered, “it looks just like I remember.”

“Is it hurting you?” The voice seemed to echo Jay’s curiosity and fascination.

“No… no… are you doing this?”

“I am not. Are you?”

“I don’t know.”

In the light of the orb, a mound began to form before Jay, swelling and crumbling into roiling dirt and debris, from which an oak tree suddenly burst forth, chasing the rising light higher and higher, bark twisting and shifting like pieces of an expanding puzzle. Limbs burst from the trunk high above, soaring out in a flurry of branches and leaves.

“It’s just the same.” Jay could smell the earth and the grass sprouting at the base of the tree. The orb was still rising, a beacon radiating down through the tree’s interweaving frame.

“The same?”

“This is where I used to climb.”

“Can you show me?”

Jay could not reach out to the tree, his hands lost in some other place. But his mind jumped and climbed and flowed along the crevices of the trunk as if he were eight again, leaping higher than he’d ever dared before. He could feel the roughness of the bark and the strength of the core beneath.

Nestled in a high limb, he looked down to watch a world unfold. Confusion and fear forgotten, he told the voice of his adventures. Of darting from a school bus just down the road forming in the distance. Of returning to his aunt’s crawfish boil. Of the time when he’d brought his classmate Zeb to this tree, and how he’d pushed Zeb to the ground after he threw a rock at a bird over there. Of tears streaming down his face as he climbed too high after learning his dog Pepper had disappeared in the night. How it was all his fault. How he missed his step on a bending limb.

The voice gasped and marveled with Jay, asking questions at every turn. “Did you ever see Zeb again?” “Did it hurt?” “How did Pepper get out?” “What is the little flying creature that just landed on a leaf and tucked its tiny wings beneath an armor shell?” “Do you think the tree knew you were here?”

The tree creaked and swayed in a gust of wind, which gently lifted and carried Jay and the voice away from the branches. They laughed together, drawn by the breeze across an evolving landscape. Grass and shrubs expanded in waves before them, spotted with tiny wildflowers that opened to color their new home. Far beyond, countless more oaks rose and interlocked to build a canopy against a brightening sky.

Jay and the voice found themselves pulled to an open meadow, where bricks and strips of lumber began to coalesce and stack upon themselves, as if laid by an invisible, hypersonic hand, collecting into foundation, scaffolding, walls, and ceiling. Shingles topped the home, already lifting slightly at the edges.

At the front door, a man handed a woman a set of keys and shook her hand before heading down a gravel road in a rickety pickup truck. As he drove off, the woman danced with glee throughout the home, tracing her fingers along the doorframes between each room. She spent seconds, or months, or years painting walls, repairing a bent gutter, attaching a screen to the rear door, laying concrete pavers to build a patio, then decorating that patio with chairs and strands of light and a bowl of fire that sent thin wafts of smoke up to greet Jay and the voice hovering in a tree above.

“Is that the woman?” the voice asked. It had taken on a more distinctive tone, high and bright, eager and unguarded.

“Who?” Jay’s voice was more diffuse now, mumbling and slow.

“In the home. Is that the woman you asked about before? The one with Mr. Cullen.”

“I don’t remember a woman.”

“From before! With gray hair. You asked me to find her.”

“I don’t know anyone with gray hair.”

The woman below seemed to speed through life, coming and going in cars, welcoming friends and lovers to drink in the yard, cooking elaborate meals that simmered in the kitchen, corralling a large, shaggy dog inside after sending it chasing a small red ball back and forth across a section of grass she kept short before the fields resumed.

“Ah…” Jay sighed. “It’s her. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize before.”

“Who is she?”

“It’s my aunt!” Jay’s voice spread throughout the yard, coming from the house and the flowers and the wind itself. “It’s her! And it’s Pepper! Hello, Aunt Mindy! Hello, Pepper!”

The woman darted across the patio and through the screened back door. Time slowed to meet her as she rushed to answer a bright yellow telephone mounted on a kitchen wall. Her face was bright with perspiration as she spoke. It became scrunched in confusion, then quickly drooped. She slid to the floor, shuddering in great, sudden heaves that left her lying there for quite some time.

When she rose, her jaw was set and firm, her posture tall. She wiped her eyes with the sleeves of her shirt, then moved surely to gather a few items into a small bag. After fitting a leash to the dog’s collar, they walked quickly out the front door. Jay and the voice watched her car speed away along the gravel road, kicking dust and debris into the air.

A small wooden swing rocked gently in the breeze, its chains groaning against the rhythmic movement.

“Should we follow her?” The voice wavered slightly.

“Hmm?”

“The woman in the car.”

“Oh, right. No, no… I want to stay here.”

“I hope she’ll come back soon.”

The woman must have been gone for a while, because the grass and plants she usually tended grew wild and began to blend into the surrounding fields.

But then her car returned. She stepped out, closed her eyes, and steadied herself before gingerly opening the passenger door. A school-aged boy quietly jumped to the ground, Pepper at his side, and they each grabbed a set of bags from the car and moved them to the front porch.

Before stepping inside, the woman knelt before the boy. She looked at him, holding his shoulder. “This is my home. It’s yours now too, okay? You will always have a place here with me, and with Pepper.”

The boy stared at his feet on the ground. “Okay.”

The voice brightened. “Is that you?” Jay did not answer right away. “Jay?”

“Hmm… what?” Jay’s voice was fainter now, spreading and fading into the rustling trees.

“The boy with her.”

“The boy?”

“Heading into the house with her.”

“I… I don’t see a boy.”

But the boy was surely there, becoming more and more animated as the days passed quickly again, telling the aunt about a dragonfly he saw underneath a tree behind the house, laughing for the first time as he ran across the again-tended yard with Pepper, darting inside through the screened back door as the sun began to set.

“There, there!” the voice cried. “You forgot to latch the door!”

The boy felt the words before he understood them, forming on his lips. He stopped suddenly.

He could hear.

A chorus of cicadas.

Pepper’s paws padding through the kitchen and down a hall.

His aunt laughing at the garbled sound of the television coming from the living room.

A clock ticking slowly on a counter beside him.

He cocked his head towards the wall, then held out his hands, staring at them for a moment, flipping them back and forth, squeezing them slowly into tight fists, and then stretching them wide. He touched each of his arms, then his chest, then his face, a crooked smile slowly possessing him. “Cool.” He spun around to latch the back door shut. “There we go.”

Later that evening, when coyotes howled in the distance, Pepper barked fiercely at the back door, but she did not slip through.

The next afternoon, the boy and Pepper sat under a hot springtime sun as it gave life to the grass in the backyard. Pepper lay beside the boy, head resting on his lap, watching a bee through half-closed eyes as it floated between clovers dotting the edge of the yard. The boy slowly combed his hand through his dog’s shaggy fur, savoring the soft texture against his palm. The air smelled of fresh-cut grass, mowed by Mindy that morning. Wisps of swollen clouds meandered lazily through a clear-blue sky.

A bed of tulips and daffodils decorated the side of the back patio, framing the pavers in pink and yellow and orange. Three small brown wrens chirped sharply, shooting from the flowers to the safety of the roof, disturbed by nothing more than a small twig that twitched under the weight of their fragile steps. The boy’s eyes darted along with the birds, then fell back to the flowers, where he noticed a bright red ball had rolled within the new growth.

“Do you want to play, Pepper?” The dog’s tail began to thud against the ground, and her eyes turned to watch the boy. She flopped over clumsily as the boy stood, racing to right herself while he skipped across the yard to the ball, then waiting patiently beside him, tongue out, panting slightly, while he bent to pull it from the rows of color.

The boy rolled the ball between his hands, its slippery texture sliding against his fingers. He tossed it slightly to test its weight.

“I’ve never thrown before. Do you like to play fetch?”

Pepper responded with a sudden hack.

“That’s gross, girl.” He patted her head gently. “C’mon, let’s try.”

The boy spent the next half hour lifting his arm at different angles, swinging forward clumsily, and hurling the ball in every direction except the ones he intended. He tried his left arm and his right, never truly believing he’d found the proper way to throw. Each time, Pepper trotted across the yard, returned to him, and dropped the ball back at his feet.

Nearing defeat, he moved slowly for one final try, each step intentional. He bent his right arm, pulled it far behind his head, and then muttered to himself. He swung the arm forward, releasing the ball just as it extended fully, and watched the red soar clear across the grass and land at the start of the field.

“I did it!” He laughed and jumped and pumped his fists. “Did you see that, Jay?!”

He stopped jumping and looked up at the tree that watched over the house, his smile lingering a moment, then becoming slowly muddled.

“Jay…?”

The wrens chirruped as they fluttered between the limbs of the tree.

“Hello?”

***