11th Dimension Ascension
an excerpt

“Trust me; I promise I won’t let you fall.” The voice of the Unknown echoed softly through the tops of the sycamore trees. A runway of purple and silver stars stretched across the moonlit sky. “ If you open your heart I will show you extraordinary things. If you open your mind you will be free to see things as they really are. If you listen to the offbeat you will hear the pulse of the Universe. Close your eyes and you will see everything clearly. Come Tom, let us soar like wild condors.”

The rumble of a distant passenger airplane rumbled across the sleepy London suburbs as the darkness handed over its shift to the dawn. The stars disappeared one by one as they were plucked from sight by the strings of light breaking through the clouds.

As the light streamed into Tom’s bedroom window through a crack in the curtain, the hum of the town began to grow. The beam of light illuminated the side of Tom’s cheek as it rose over the cold grey concrete forecourt of the tower block. As the rays warmed the side of his face through the glass, he snuggled deeper under his soft lavender scented duvet.

The blackbirds that were perched outside the flat whistled flute concertos back and forth to each other. They might have been whistling the answers to the riddles of the universe, or simply having a tuneful conversation over a breakfast of plump and juicy garden worms. It was impossible for anyone other than the birds themselves to know what truth lay behind their twittering. The only other sound to be heard over the birds was the occasional clinking of the glass milk bottles being delivered to the row of houses across from the flats where Tom and his mother, Lucy lived.

As the sun crept even higher in the early morning sky the intense beam of light on Tom’s face began to tickle his nostril hairs and make his nose twitch. The light glowed orange on the back of his eyelids. Tom was smiling in his sleep. Inside his dream he was still flying. He was as light as a feather and as sleek as an arrow from a crossbow. Tom soared high above the post-war council estate and the broken tarmac roads below. He had no wings yet he confidently glided on the breeze like a condor as he circled the skies peering into the gardens belonging to the houses lining the road. He could see everything from his bird’s eye view.

He could see the rusty, old, white milk float crawling slowly down the middle of the road emitting a virtually silent electric whir as it went. He could see into the back garden of the semi detached house at the end of the row. He could see the inflatable ringed paddling pool with a circle of browning leaves floating on the surface. The orange sunlight shimmied off the scummy bug- riddled stagnant water. The pool sagged around the edge where the air had slowly escaped. The next door neighbours’ garden contained a chunky bright-blue plastic slide and a sand tray table with a wooden lid. Next to it was a girl’s pink bicycle lying on its side with a rusty chain that had come off the gears. The grass was growing tall in between the spokes of the wheels. A speckled blue hose pipe snaked around the garden, trailing into the undergrowth at the edge of the lawn.

Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, Tom noticed movement in the privet hedge running along side the worn wooden perimeter fence. He circled over the spot until he caught another glimpse of the rustling leaves. Then he spotted it! Out waddled a big, fat, grey, black and white stripy, nasty looking badger! It looked up at Tom with its beady little black eyes and twitched its large black rubbery nose in the air to try to catch a better scent of Tom. Tom zoomed in for a better look. He hovered over the badger in the air as delicately as a hummingbird only feet above the badgers pointed snout.

“Hey, little creature- don’t be afraid. I don’t want to hurt you.” Tom said reassuringly. The badger edged closer to Tom and studied him with curiosity. A flying boy with huge brown eyes and a round kind face with rosy cheeks looked back at him. “I’m Tom. You’re not as nasty as you first looked, are you?”

Tom carefully hovered even nearer the ground. Suspended in the air like a wingless angel, his light brown locks of wavy hair fluttered gently in the Autumn breeze. For a frozen moment Tom and the badger locked stares. A strange empathy rose between them.

Tom looked closely at the badgers face for a long unblinking moment. Suddenly a look of sheer horror appeared in a glint of the badgers eye. “Look out!” the badger squealed to Tom’s surprise. Then the badger turned its cumbersome body as quickly as it could for its size and scurried back into the hedge from where it had come.

“Wait! Come back!” Tom called after it. But it was no use, the badger was long gone. Tom turned around in time to catch the edge of a sharp stick in the soft flesh of his shoulder. “Ouch!” Tom winced and immediately grabbed his shoulder causing him to tumble from the sky to the ground with a thud.

As Tom lay there writhing on his back like an upturned stag beetle, he could hear his name being called.

“Tom! Tom, wake up! Tom please get up! Something bad has happened.” The familiar voice of a girl rose up from the empty air beside him.

Tom slowly prised his eyes apart. They began to water and sting from the glare of the rising sun poking into them. Tom felt disoriented as he tried to focus his blurred vision. He peered out through the slits of his eyelids. “What the..? mum..? Oh.. It’s you. I..” Tom squinted in concentrated thought trying to remember what he had just been dreaming about. “ …I was having this dream and I was flying .. And there was this badger..” He rubbed his eyes with sideways fists until they cleared so he could open them. He looked over to the bedside table at the time on his clock. It shone out a bright neon blue: 06:01.

Tom rubbed his shoulder and looked up at the girl who had been poking his shoulder to wake him. She was a tall thin girl with a bronze complexion. She had thick, straight, long, light-mocha coloured hair which fell neatly down her back like a packet of uncooked spaghetti. Her fringe was cut straight across her forehead at the exact same height as her eyebrows. Her dark green eyes were wide open and Tom could tell by their furrowed expession that something bad had happened. He sat up in his bed and folded the duvet down over his lap. “Maya? What’s going on? It’s not even time for me to get up yet.” Tom looked again at his clock to double check he’d read the time correctly. “ My alarm hasn’t even gone off.. Did my mum let you in?”

Maya began to speak anxiously as she paced quickly back and forth in front of Tom’s bed. “No, she didn’t let me in. Your front door was wide open.”