Source: bestgemfun.blogspot.com

The Wishing Map is a full-length fantasy that is being posted episodically at this site. To read the previous episode, click here. To read the entire novel, begin here.

Zack was plunging to his death! He’d somehow fallen through the Map on his sister Gina’s bedroom floor, and now he was falling. Really falling. Not dreaming, not pretending. Falling. And there was nothing he could do about it.

He let out a series of guttural yelps, like an animal in a trap, half moan/half screech, and began clawing at the air around him, nearly dislocating his limbs in the process. He gnashed his teeth, sobbed, clawed some more, then finally managed to choke out a few semi-coherent words:

“Oh, Gah…I don’t under…why…please…oh, Gah…!” The words shot away just like the previous ones had. Zack tore at the air for a while longer, irrationally hoping it would slow his pace the way it might have if he’d been tumbling down a grassy slope.

He screamed louder and longer than he’d ever screamed in his life:

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllp!

Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssse!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllp!”

He repeated these words at least a hundred times until, after what felt like days, he had to stop because his throat was so raw it actually made him forget about falling.

The moment he stopped yelling, he thought about the absurdity of screaming for help. What could anyone do, catch him? Grab him out of the air? He began to laugh, but it wasn’t a real laugh, it was a string of primitive barks full of aching loss over the all things he would never do: never publish his Zachary Zinn comics, never travel to another planet, never stare pure evil in the face and laugh at it, never see his sister again, or his parents, or…

“God?” he sobbed. “Why?”

And then he just fell…

…and fell…

…and fell…

…and fell…

Was he really falling? It didn’t feel like falling anymore. How long had he been falling? Two hours? Two days? His whole life? He’d lost the strength for terror.

Zack tore into a cloud, the ten-thousandth since he began falling, but this one was different, solid somehow, almost as if he could grab hold of it. So he did, and for a moment he actually slowed down! But then the bit he’d grabbed tore loose and he continued falling with it in his hand. It was fluffy like cotton candy, but not sticky…

So he ate it. This is insane. I should be freaking out. I’m about to die, and I’m eating a cloud! It was insane, but everything was so surreal he couldn’t think normally anymore. The cloud dissolved into pure luxurious water in his mouth, the best he’d ever tasted. It was amazing. How could water taste so good? Well, at least he wouldn’t die thirsty.

Just before he broke through the bottom of the cloud, he saw a face, an almost human and decidedly female face, curious and sweet. But then the cloud and the face were gone. He must have imagined it. It couldn’t have been a girl, could it? A girl in a cloud? Oh, come on, how could that be? But then how could he be falling for, what…

A year?

To read the next episode, click here.

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Thoughts: “To die would be an awfully big adventure.” ~Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)