Perchance to Dream Box Set

A Haunted Love-2

There’s a slight breeze rustling through the bare-limbed trees like a sigh. The mild winter gives us nice weather during the day, and faint pink buds already bloom on the tips of the branches like dots of icing decorating a cake. At night, the temperature drops but not much, bringing in a thick fog that clings to the buildings as if it rose from the empty cobbled streets themselves. In the stables a few yards away, the horses neigh softly and farther down the street comes Greg’s steady step, even though I can’t see his light yet.

It grows colder now the sun has set. My bones ache from another long day spent tending the horses and cleaning stables. How colonists managed to eke out a living is beyond me. I couldn’t do it if I didn’t have the luxury of a well-lit, heated apartment downtown to return to each night, or weekends away from all this. It’s hard work even if it’s only play-acting.

Slipping off my bench, I stretch out on the damp grass beneath one of the large oaks around the square. The last bus into town leaves a little before midnight, which is hours from now so I have some time to unwind a bit…folding my arms behind my head, I stare up at the sky through the fog-laced branches. The breeze breathes into my open shirt, tickling its way around my chest and hardening my n*****s to make me shiver as it cools my sweat. Wisps of clouds scurry across the moon, chasing the stars. When I close my eyes, I imagine it must have felt like this hundreds of years ago—the sounds of the city don’t drift out here, so there’s no noise, no music or traffic or people to disrupt the illusion. I don’t hear anything but the leaves and the horses and Greg’s footsteps, distorted in the foggy night.

At times like this it’s so easy to pretend this really is a colony, a whole new world with the rest of history stretched out before it, all the wars and the politics and the stuff we learned in school yet to come. With my eyes shut, I feel the years peel back, layer after layer. I see myself lying on a colonial knoll, not some grass covered spot in a historical park. We haven’t explored beyond the Mississippi, haven’t discovered gold in California or oil in Alaska. We’re still British subjects, aren’t even America yet. Here on quiet nights, alone, the past melds with the now and I’m not even sure what year it is anymore. It could be the 1800’s as easily as it’s the 21st Century.

I’m not wearing a watch, but my shift ended at seven and when I closed my eyes, there was still a tinge of rosy sunlight clinging stubbornly to the horizon. If Greg has begun to light the street lamps, one of the last tasks before the colony shuts down for the night, then I guess it’s probably a little before eight o’clock. Time enough for a quick nap.

I know Greg will wake me up when he passes. He’s done it before, when I fell out after work. Marie in HR would have a fit if I stayed the night at the colony, snoozing on the bench like a homeless bum. Greg has warned me about it many times. But it’s so peaceful here after dark and suddenly I’m so damn tired, I can’t move if I try. I feel myself drift in and out of consciousness as intermittently as the breeze blowing through the leaves above me. A few minutes of shut-eye, that’s all I need. Plenty of time left to catch the last bus into town.