Plane Jumper

by Marshall Bowles

Donald was born on a Sunday in the summer. His parents had planned it well. There was no mad rush to the hospital. The epidural came right on time. His mother went through very little pain. Baby Donald popped out into the waiting arms of the doctor. A normal, easy birth to what seemed to be a normal, healthy boy.

But Donald was not normal. He had a gift. That's what his grandmother told him, for as long as he could remember. "Your gift is rare," she said when he was five years old. Donald was at her house and pulling weeds out of the flowerbed while grandmother swept the porch. She made him do chores whenever he visited her. "It's disappearing from this world. Everyone I know who had it is dead now, except you and me."

"Are you sure I have it?" Donald said.

"Yes, sweetie," his grandmother said. "Sensing the power in others is a small piece of the gift."

She made him promise to keep it a secret, which was hard for Donald. He desperately wanted to brag to his parents about how special he was supposed to be. He stood by his mother's side while she stirred vegetable soup in the big black pot, rocking back and forth on his feet. "Nana said I'm going to have adventures!" he wanted to say. "She says I can do stuff nobody else can." But he kept it to himself, the special secret just for him and his grandmother.

"They'll think you're crazy, Donald," his grandmother said. "No one will believe you if you tell them." She flipped through the channels on TV, skipping past the cartoons that Donald wanted to watch.

"Why?" Donald asked her. He laid on the shag carpet of the living room floor with a couch pillow under his chest.

"Because they don't understand," she said. She flipped to a nature show about bears. She stayed on that channel long enough for Donald to get excited, and then she changed channels again. "They can't see what I see, and what you will see when your gift is ready. People don't believe in what they can't see."

"But what about Jesus," Donald said. "They can't see him."

His grandmother laughed. She flipped to the news channel and stopped.

Donald stared off in the distance, ignoring the images playing on the television. He imagined the adventures he would go on. He would be the first person to explore places where no other humans had ever been.

Donald tossed a baseball with his father in the yard behind their two-story house. "Good catch," his father said. "Do it just like that in the game on Thursday." Donald tossed the ball back. He wondered if baseball existed in those other worlds. He made a mental note to ask his grandmother about it later.

"Nana, how will I know when I'm ready?" Donald said. He dipped a hard-boiled egg into a dish full of blue dye. The basket on the table was halfway full of the eggs he had finished.

"You'll just know," his grandmother said. She rinsed the soap off of a plate and put it on the drying rack. She reached into the soapy water in the sink and grabbed a coffee mug. "It will happen suddenly, and it will be different than anything you've ever felt before in your life."

"Will it be soon?" Donald said. He used tongs to roll the egg around in the bowl.

"I don't think so, honey," she said. "You're only eight. It happens when you become an adolescent. I was ten at my awakening, but boys tend to mature slower. So probably not until you're twelve or thirteen."

"Aw," Donald said. "That's forever."

His grandmother laughed. "If you want to do something," she said, "you can practice your concentration exercises."

"Those are boring," Donald said.

"They're important," his grandmother said. "You'll need to be good at them to use your gift."

"Oh fine," Donald said. He sat down on the kitchen floor, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes. He slowed his breathing like his grandmother had taught him, and he tried his best to listen to his body. Donald had trouble understanding what his grandmother meant for him to do, but he tried the best he could.

Donald stared out the window at the pine trees swaying in the wind. He should have been focused on finishing his math assignment, like the rest of his classmates. They hunched over their desks, furiously scribbling down numbers. Donald wondered if trees were the same in other worlds.

"Donald!" Ms. Hemsworth said. "Quit daydreaming and do your work." Donald frowned and looked back at the paper on his desk.

"How can I come back and forth between here and those other places?" Donald said. His grandmother looked up from the tablecloth in her hands. The red thread stretched tight between the needle and the partially repaired rip in fabric.

"Donald, I've already told you a hundred times," she said. His grandmother was doing the thing where she pretended to be annoyed with Donald. He knew she was trying not to smile at him. "Anything I tell you won't make sense. I have to show you."

Donald stood up from the table with the half-finished jigsaw puzzle, unmatched pieces spread out across the polished wood. He bounced over to his grandmother. "Then do it now," Donald said. "Go somewhere! I'll watch you, and maybe I will be able to see it."

His grandmother shook her head and set aside her sewing. She smiled softly. "You've watched me jump before."

"Pleeeeeease," Donald said. "I'm older now."

"All right, dear," she said. "But it won't do any good."

Donald held onto her hands. He could barely contain his excitement. Every time his grandmother made a jump, she would come back with fantastical stories. Each time was new and different. "Where are you going?" Donald said. "The fairy land? The world of flying giants?"

His grandmother tapped her chin with a gnarled finger. She was stronger than her gray hair and wrinkled skin made her appear. "Hm," she said. "What about the place with the purple crystals that sing?"

Donald shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so," he said. "That one is kind of boring."

"It wouldn't be boring if I took you there," she said. His grandmother looked at him for a long moment. She bit her lip, and Donald knew she did that when she was trying to make up her mind about something. "What if I bring something back with me? Something from that place?"

"Really?" Donald said.

"Yes," she said. "We can't keep it here for long, but I think a few minutes will be okay."

"Yes!" Donald said.

"Okay," his grandmother said. She laid back in her recliner, closed her eyes, and started taking slow, deep breaths. Donald could feel her heartbeat pulse through the soft skin of her hand. He tried to match her breathing, and he tried to feel her with his heart. He hoped he would sense some spark of energy when she jumped, and then he would be able to jump on his own.

Her body suddenly tensed, and her eyes opened wide. Donald expected this, because of the many times he had watched her jump in the past. Deep black pits of emptiness filled the place where her eyes should be. Looking into that darkness made Donald feel like he was looking down into an old well where it was impossible to see the bottom because there was no bottom.

Just as soon as it began, it ended. His grandmother's body relaxed. She blinked, and her eyes were back where they should be. She looked at Donald.

"Well?" she said. "Did you feel anything?"

"I think so," Donald said.

His grandmother laughed. "You wouldn't answer that way if you had." Donald pouted. "Don't you want to see what I brought back?"

Donald forgot about his disappointment. "Yes!" His grandmother pointed to the coffee table behind him. Donald whirled around. Right in the middle of the table was a large purple crystal. A soft light flickered in its center. Donald slowly stepped toward it. He reached out but stopped short. "Can I touch it?" he said.

"Yes, honey," his grandmother said. "It's safe."

Donald touched the crystal with his pointer finger. When he did, it hummed. Donald giggled. It reminded him of the sounds that the hummingbirds made while they fought over the feeder his parents put out in the summertime.

"Is it alive?" Donald said.

"Not in the way that you and I think of things being alive," his grandmother said. "But it has thoughts and feelings, so I'd say that's close enough."

"Can I keep it?" Donald said. "I won't show anyone, I promise. You know I'm good at keeping secrets."

"No," she said. Donald started to argue, but she cut him off. "It's not because I think you would tell anybody."

"Then why not?" Donald said.

"It doesn't belong in our world," his grandmother said. "You saw how I never went fully across to the other place, because my body stayed here the whole time."

His grandmother picked up the crystal from the table. Its hum was different when she touched it, deeper and slower. "I've never brought something across," she said, "but I wanted you to see something with your own eyes. Its body is here completely, and it doesn't belong."

Donald started to tear up, and his grandmother gently patted him on the head. "Don't cry sweetie," she said. "In a few years I'll take you where this crystal comes from. You and I will go together. I promise."

She leaned back in her recliner. Donald watched the crystal in her hands when she made the jump. One moment it was there, and the next it was gone. Vanished in the blink of an eye.

His grandmother opened her eyes and sat up in the chair. "Nana," Donald said. "How did you do that? You just sat here the whole time and didn't move."

"Because when I jump," she said, "I'm in both places at once."

Donald's grandmother died on a Sunday in the summer. It was his thirteenth birthday. She was driving her car to Donald's house, his birthday present neatly wrapped up in the trunk. A truck driver fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the center line, and hit the driver's side of her car at full speed. Donald was helping his mother clean the house when the police knocked on their door.

The church pews were full, forcing some of the men and women dressed in their mourning attire to stand against the walls. Donald sat in the front row, sandwiched between his parents. He had so far kept himself from crying in front of others, and he fought the tears back now. Donald wanted to leap out of his body, leap out of existence. Why was this happening? He ground his teeth to stop his lip from quivering. Why couldn't things go back to the way they were a few days before?

The priest stood at the podium, towering over the polished oak coffin where Donald's grandmother lay. The priest opened a massive Bible and read scripture, but to Donald the words were an unintelligible sound droning in the background. Donald started shaking, and his mother reached over to grip his hand tightly.

Donald looked down at his lap and tried not to cry. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. He slowed his breathing. No matter how hard he tried, he could feel the tears rising up from his chest. He bit his lip and tried to force them down. Donald wanted to scream. Why did you leave me Nana?

Donald felt a draft of freezing cold air brush against his face. His mother was no longer holding his hand, but he did not remember her letting go. He realized that the priest had stopped talking, and the room was unnaturally silent. There were hundreds of people at his grandmother's funeral, but they made no noise. Something was wrong.

Donald opened his eyes. He was in a church, but it was not the same church. The warm wooden walls were now pale concrete, stretching up high to a shadowy vaulted ceiling. There were no stained glass windows, but large clear windows holding back heavy gray mist. The pew on which Donald sat was burnt black wood.

The podium and the priest were gone. A flat concrete alter stood at the front of the chapel. Resting in the middle of the alter was a fleshy lump. Donald stared at it for a moment before his mind could understand the shape. It was a human eye the size of a watermelon.

The eye twitched. Tentacles extending from the back of the disembodied eye flopped like a fish out of water, in its last desperate moments of life. Donald gasped. Stale air filled his lungs, carrying the scent of a coffin buried deep underground.

Donald realized there were others in the pews with him, though no one close by. To his right, several feet away, sat a hunched figure covered completely in black. The woman wore a dress and a thick veil hung down over her face. No part of her body was visible. Even her hands were covered by black gloves. Her head tilted downward, so that she must have been staring at her lap through the veil.

Donald looked over his shoulder. Feminine figures almost identical to the one beside him sparsely filled the pews in the large sanctum. Every single one wore the same black clothing, and they were all the same height and build. Every single one of them stared at its own lap.

Donald heard a creaking sound from the front of the church. He jerked his head back around in time to see a large man enter the church through an arched doorway behind the alter. The man had to be at least seven feet tall, and he wore thick red robes that were long enough to drag along the floor. His face was covered by a mask that looked like a goat, except the mask split at the bridge of the nose down to the snout, much like a forked snake's tongue.

The man carried a dark red staff in one hand and long slender blade in the other. He approached the alter with his arms raised above his head and his head looking up to the ceiling. Donald was petrified. Something about the man in the robes terrified him so badly that he was too afraid to shiver.

The man stopped at the alter. The forked mouth of his mask started moving, and the creaking sound intensified. That was when Donald realized that the man was not a man, and it was not wearing a mask. The creaking sound was its voice.

The creature looked down at the disembodied eye on the alter in front of it. It gestured towards the eye with the weapons in its hands, and it spoke more of its unintelligible creaking speech. The creature raised its arms high and looked out across the black-clad congregation. That's when it noticed Donald.

The creature stopped speaking, clearly surprised to see Donald. For a long moment, Donald stared into those strange goat-like eyes. The creature's arms were frozen in the air, the wet nostrils on its forked snout quivering. Donald could not breathe.

The creature broke the silence with a scream that sounded like metal grating against metal. Donald felt like he was in his grandmother's car and the speeding freight truck was running over him. From the corner of his eye, Donald saw the black-clad woman closest to him raise its head. Donald turned toward her, and he could see the others in the congregation looking, all staring at him.

The woman closest to Donald raised her hands and pulled aside her veil. Donald's hands started shaking when he realized that this was not a woman – at least, not a human one – because she did not have a face. Its pale lumpy skin was shaped like a human head, but there were no eyes, nose, nor hair. A wide mouth stretched from ear to ear. The thing opened that mouth and shrieked, baring multiple rows of pointed teeth.

Donald tried to stand up, but he stumbled and fell flat on his face. His legs were paralyzed out of fear. He heard rustling fabric and could see the dress of the mouth-faced thing coming closer to him. Donald started hyperventilating. He tried to get his hands under himself so that he could stand. The thing was almost on top of him, and he knew he would not get away. All he could hear was the sound of his own heart beating.

Donald closed his eyes and screamed. He felt hands grab his shoulders, and he screamed louder. The thing grabbing him flipped Donald over onto his back, and he heard it scream. "Donald! Donald!" It was his mother's voice.

Donald opened his eyes and looked up into his mother's face. Both of his parents were kneeling over him, and his mother was holding him tightly by the shoulders. He was lying on his back at the front of the church. The priest looked down on him from behind the pulpit.

Donald cried, his tears a mix of fear and relief. His father picked him up, and Donald buried his head in his father's chest. He sobbed into the wool suit coat as he was carried out of the church and gently placed in the back of the car. The ride home was silent.

His parents assumed that the episode at the church was anguish from his grandmother's death, and Donald did nothing to make them believe otherwise. They finally tucked him into bed and left him alone. The fear that he would get sucked back into another reality kept him up all night.

His next jump happened a few days later during history class. His teacher was talking about the Battle of the Bulge, and Donald was nodding off. It was his first day back at school since his grandmother died. The sleepless nights had been piling up, and Donald was having trouble focusing.

"The Germans moved their troops at night," Mr. Todd said. He ran his hand through his gray hair and became more animated as he spoke. The syllabus showed that they should be studying the Renaissance movement, but WWII was Mr. Todd's favorite subject. "The Allied forces were completely unaware of the advancing Germans, and they were completely surprised by the attack!"

Donald forced his eyes to stay open. He tried to focus his attention on Mr. Todd, who was waving his arms in the air and pacing across the front of the room. The words washed over Donald like a warm bath, and he could feel himself drifting back to sleep. His breathing slowed, his eyelids grew heavy, and his head nodded forward.

Donald jerked himself upright and opened his eyes. He was in a classroom, but it was not his classroom. A brick wall was the only view through the windows, but it let in enough pale light to illuminate the destroyed room. All the desks, including the one in which he sat, were old and rotting.

It looked like the building had burned long ago, and years of water damage and mildew slowly rotted the once pristine furniture. The warped chalkboard at the front of the classroom still showed remnants of some long ago lesson, in a language that Donald could not read. He thought it might be German. An upside-down crucifix hung on the wall above the board.

"No, no, no," Donald whispered. His body started shaking, and he grabbed the sides of his desktop to steady himself. The rotten damp wood squished in his grip and fell apart. He jumped out of the seat and rubbed his hands on his pants to clean off the slime. It left black streaks on the front of his jeans.

He started breathing quickly, and he could feel the tears welling up in his eyes. "Please," he said to the empty room, "I just want to go home." He slid out of the seat and onto the floor. "Nana, I need you," he said. There was no answer. Donald curled up into a ball and cried.

His stomach eventually growled. He had lost track of time, but it felt like he had been in the burnt room for hours. Exhaustion had replaced his fear, but he was worried that he was still in this place. He had hoped that he would just go back to his world all on his own.

Light still came in through the windows, but it was not as bright as it had been before. Donald needed to figure out how to return home, and he wanted to be out of this place before it got dark. He mustered up his strength, and he left the room.

Piles of moldy debris littered the hallway. Each pile was a child-sized lump of brownish-gray goo. They looked wet, and Donald did not want to know what would happen if he stepped on one. He carefully picked his way around the piles, only stepping on clear spots on the tile floor.

Long scorch marks marred the walls, and they looked strange to Donald. Each one was a groove dug into the wall, with burn marks extending out along the wall from the center. It did not look like what he expected fire damage to look like. They reminded Donald of scratches made by claws.

He came to a spot where he could not easily step onto another tile due to a cluster of moldy piles blocking his path. Donald spotted a clearing on the other side. He crouched down and leapt, but he landed short. One of his feet squished down into the middle of a pile. Something inside the pile crunched, and then it screamed.

Something wrapped around his foot, and Donald yanked his foot back. A small child's hand held onto his ankle. It was pulling him, trying to get his foot back under the moldy surface. Donald kicked free and screamed.

"Why did you hurt me?" said a voice. It was coming from inside the pile of mold. "Come play with me." The glob of mush quivered, and it slid an inch across the floor in Donald's direction.

Donald was on his feet and running. He leapt over pile after pile, terrified to touch another one. Every one of them was moving now, and they called out to Donald as he ran by. The things moved in slow, jerky motions, creeping along the floor like deformed slugs. Donald had a vision of himself lying on the floor and the things slowly crawling on top of him where they would force open his mouth and crawl inside. He ran faster.

Double doors at the end of the hallway were open to the outside. Donald sprinted down the last section of the hallway and out through the doors. He came out into a small courtyard paved in concrete. The sky was overcast, but it was much brighter outside than it had been in the building.

Donald looked back. The piles of mold crept up near the door, but they stopped short of coming into the light. He could hear the childlike voices calling out, "Come play with us." Donald hunched over and vomited the bile from his empty stomach.

He wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and stumbled away from the building, the voices fading away behind him. The brick walls of the school building twisted and turned, leading him on a winding path away from the entrance. Just as he was wondering if he had walked into a maze, the path opened up in front of him.

He was on top of a small barren hill, with the remnants of a city stretching out below him. Shells of bombed out buildings covered the landscape, with a few still intact buildings sprinkled in between. Giant tentacled shapes moved amongst the streets of the ruined city. They were creatures with a form that he could not recognize, but a primal part of Donald's mind knew they were dangerous.

Something scraped along the asphalt to Donald's right. He looked in that direction, and saw a rusted out car nestled against the side of the school building. The car door screeched open, and a person crawled out onto the ground. It could have been an old woman wearing a dress, except that its bald head was barely more than a skeleton. Thin gray skin stretched tight over the skull.

The woman looked up at him and smiled. She had no eyes and no teeth. Her nose had sunken into her face. She looked back at the ground and crawled faster toward Donald. He could hear her bony hands scraping against the asphalt. "Get away!" Donald yelled, but she just crawled faster.

She was getting closer. Donald turned to run, but his foot caught the lip of a pothole. He tripped and fell hard onto his side, knocking the wind out of his lungs. Stars danced in his vision, and he could not move. As the stars danced in front of his eyes, he screamed silently to himself. Run. I have to run!

Donald felt a hand close around his ankle.

He woke up in the school nurse's office. He tried to sit up, and the paper liner covering the bed crinkled under him. The nurse looked up from her desk, where she was filling out paperwork. "Donald," she said. "You gave us a fright."

The jumps came randomly. Donald could not predict when they would happen, and he could not control them. There was no warning and no chance to get to a safe place before he jumped. The places he found himself were nothing like the worlds his grandmother had told him about. They were horrible, each one a hell worse than the last.

While he was playing video games in the living room on a Saturday afternoon, he jumped into a gigantic cavern that was packed with mountains of garbage. Reanimated human intestines crawled out from under the trash and tried to eat him.

During an afternoon walk in the park, Donald jumped into a WWII era B-17 in mid flight. The empty plane flew itself without a crew, dodging anti-aircraft fire launched from the mist-shrouded ground below. One of them hit the plane, ripping a hole in the side and caused the metal hull to bleed.

On a summer afternoon while swimming in his friend's pool, Donald jumped into a desert. The sun above gave off red light, and the sand dunes shifted even though there was no wind. A spider made of human bones tried to drag him under the sand.

Donald slowly stopped doing active things. He had to be aware of what he was doing at all times, in case he jumped. Just walking down the stairs made him anxious. The worst jump happened while he was riding his bike, and it ended with him to the hospital with a broken arm and a concussion. The doctors struggled to diagnose him, and the best they could come up with was epilepsy.

He tried to find the pattern in his jumps, desperate to discover how his power worked. As best he could tell, his life had to be in peril before he could return. This was because he had never jumped back until some monstrosity was actively trying to kill him. He could not work up the courage to test out his theory. If he was wrong, then his first test would be his last.

The years passed, and Donald slipped into his own corner of darkness. His parents sent him to a therapist for several months. The poor woman tried to help, but there was nothing she could do. The sessions ended because Donald's parents could not afford the cost.

His friends slipped away. The other kids did not want to talk to the weird brooding boy, and Donald made no effort to reach out to them. His life in the normal world slipped in a dull haze, broken by periods of madness where he fought to stay alive. He became an animal driven to survive by pure instinct.

It was a humid Sunday in the summer between Donald's sophomore and junior years of high school. Donald's mother had cooked meatloaf. She and his father were talking about the weather, and Donald silently picked at his food. The meatloaf reminded him of a wormlike creature he had encountered when he jumped the previous day. It had crawled out from under a television in an abandoned house and tried to eat him with its very human-looking teeth.

"Donald," his mother said. "There's a new youth group that has started meeting on weekends at the church. I talked to the priest, and he thinks you would fit in really well."

His parents looked at him with forced smiles on their faces. Donald was disgusted by them because they were able to live normal lives. They didn't understand. "Not interested," said Donald.

His mother frowned. "I think it would be good for you. Getting out and doing something social would make you feel better."

"No, it wouldn't," Donald said.

His father looked away and sighed. His mother leaned a little toward Donald. "You have to stop acting like this," she said. "You're wasting your life. What would your grandmother think?"

Donald threw his fork down. It clattered against his plate. "She wouldn't think anything," Donald said, "because she's fucking dead! And unless you can teach me how to control the jumps, then you're useless too."

Donald's mother looked scared. He had tried to tell them both about the jumps long ago. Just like his grandmother had warned him, they thought he was crazy. Donald hated them for not believing him. "We talked about this," his mother said.

"I'm not making it up!" Donald said. He jumped up from the table and ran upstairs to his room, ignoring the yells from his parents. He slammed his bedroom door and flung himself face down on his bed. He laid there for a long time, until his anger finally faded and the tears came. He cried himself to sleep.

He woke up in a hospital. The ceiling tiles were white, and a curtain hung by his side. He must have hurt himself again because of a jump. He tried to remember what happened, but he did not remember jumping. The last thing he could recall was lying on his bed after the fight with his parents.

Donald sat up and realized that he was not lying in a hospital bed. He was sitting in a chair beside the bed. A small vase sat on a table between the bed and his chair, and all the flowers in it had wilted. Donald leaned forward to peer around the vase so that he could see the person lying asleep in the bed.

It was his grandmother.

Donald started shaking. Had he finally lost his mind? He felt normal, but what he saw in front of him could not be real. He stared hard at the woman lying in bed, thinking that at any moment she would evaporate and he would wake up.

Donald stepped up to the side of the bed and looked down at the woman. Everything about her was exactly what he remembered. Gray hair with a few dark strands still hanging onto youth. The laugh lines at the corner of her eyes were just part of the many wrinkles of her skin.

She must have sensed Donald's presence. She opened her blue eyes and looked up. "Nana?" Donald said. A single tear ran down his cheek.

His grandmother yelped in surprise. "What are you doing in my house?" she yelled. "Help! Help! I'm being robbed."

Donald stepped back out of instinct. This was not right. She looked the same and sounded the same, but something about her was different. He could not describe it, but the feeling was certain. This woman was not his grandmother.

A nurse whipped the curtain back. "What's going on in here?" the nurse said. She was a short stocky woman who gave off an air of strength.

"Officer," Donald's grandmother said. "Arrest this man. He's stealing from me."

The nurse rolled her eyes. She looked at Donald. "Who are you?" she said.

"This is my...." Donald said, looking down at the woman in the bed. "My grandma." He felt the lie in his stomach. This stupid woman was only an imitation of his real grandmother.

"Liar," the old woman said. "Filthy lying shit. I'll shoot you with my gun. Don't think I won't."

The nurse walked around the bed and grabbed Donald just above the elbow. "Don't you worry, Mrs. Harrison," she said. "I'll toss him in a cell and throw away the key. He won't break into your house again." She pulled Donald. He tried to resist, but the woman was stronger than she looked.

"And bring my red dress when you come back," his grandmother said. "I'm attending a party at the mayor's house tonight."

The nurse pulled Donald out of the room and down the hallway. She led him to a spot where the hall widened to make space for a small sitting area. A few chairs sat on a brown carpet, and tall windows took up the entire wall. "Give it a few minutes," the nurse said. "She needs time to calm down. Once she forgets what happened, you can go back in a try talking to her again."

"What?" Donald said.

"This is your first time visiting her in here?" the nurse said.

"I haven't seen her in years," Donald said.

The nurse put her hands on her hips. "When you're dealing with someone who has dementia, it's best if you humor them. You'll just confuse them otherwise, and make them upset." She crossed her arms. "Like what happened in there."

Donald felt woozy. He put his hand on the back of a chair to balance himself. The nurse grabbed him by his shoulders and steered him into the seat. "Now, promise me you'll wait thirty minutes before going back." She pointed to a clock on the wall. "I'll make her take her pills, and that should calm her down a bit."

"Yeah," Donald said.

The nurse nodded and said, "May you be blessed by the Starving Gods." She walked away.

The starving gods? Donald watched the nurse until she disappeared around a corner. The only possible explanation was that he had jumped, but that seemed even more impossible than his fake grandmother in the other room. As many times as he had jumped, he had never, ever been to a place with normal human beings.

He looked around. The long clean hallway had polished floors and white walls, broken only by doors leading to rooms for patients. The clock in the sitting area had two hands and twelve numbers. The chair he sat in was made of wood and fake leather. There were no deformed monstrosities hiding in the corners waiting to eat him.

He glanced out of the window and saw it – the thing out of place. A giant metallic orb hung in the sky, suspended by nothing. He was sitting on one of the upper floors of the hospital, which put him almost level with the center of the orb. It floated in a clear space amongst skyscrapers, in a city that Donald could not recognize.

The orb was the size of a football stadium. The top half of its mirrored surface looked perfectly smooth, reflecting an image of the sky and buildings surrounding it. A dark red fluid streamed out of the bottom half, coming out of hidden pores and merging into large streams that traced the curved bottom half of the sphere.

A thick waterfall of fluid rained down from the very bottom of the orb. A large copper basin had been constructed on the ground below to collect the fluid, taking up an entire city block. People gathered around the edges, as small as ants from Donald's perspective because of the distance. He watched the people for a while, and it looked to him like they were worshiping the orb. Some of them seemed to be drinking from the basin.

Donald stared out the window until a half hour had passed. He stood up and walked slowly back to the room where he had woken up earlier. He hesitated outside of the door before he went into the room. The old woman was awake and watching the news on the television. She smiled when he came in. "Hello there," she said.

"You're not my grandmother," Donald said.

"That's nice," she said. "Remind me of your name again. I'm old and my memory isn't so good."

"It's Donald," he said. He forced his voice to be steady, but he could feel his stomach churning. Talking to this woman was making him angry. She did not deserve to look like his grandmother.

"Come in and have a seat," she said. She gestured to the chair beside the bed. "You don't have to stand there in the doorway all day."

Donald shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked over to the chair. He did not sit down. "This is a mirror of my world, isn't it?" Donald said.

The woman looked confused. "You need a mirror?"

"No," Donald said. "This place is so similar to my world that it has some of the same people in it." He pointed at the woman. "You're this world's version of my grandmother. Maybe there's even a copy of me out there somewhere."

The woman smiled politely and nodded. "That's nice," she said. Her gaze drifted to the television where the local weather report was playing.

"Hey," Donald said. The woman was transfixed by the television and did not look at him. "Hey lady!" He snapped his fingers in the air, and she looked over at him. "If you really are some kind of copy of my grandmother, then you should be able to jump between places too. Tell me how to control it."

She looked confused for a moment, then she smiled. "Hi there," she said. "What's your name again? I have trouble remembering names sometimes."

Donald leaned forward in his chair and placed his hands on the guard rail of her bed. "Listen, I need you to concentrate. Think back to when your memory was good. You had a gift, something powerful that only you knew how to use."

She squinted her eyes in a moment of confusion, and then she smiled again. "Herbert gave me a nice gift," she said. "He's my husband, Herbert. It was a beautiful blue bicycle. It had a little white basket on the front, and I would ride and ride and ride..."

"Goddamn it!" Donald said as he pushed away from the bed and threw his hands in the air. He grabbed the vase with the dead flowers and threw it against the wall. It shattered, sending bits of glass flying across the room. "You're useless."

He stomped across the room and out of the open door. The moment he turned the corner into the hallway, everything shifted. Donald blinked while the world resolved itself. He was lying on the bed in his room and staring up at the ceiling. A flood of adrenaline pumped through his veins as the realization of what had happened dawned on him. He had jumped without his life being in danger.

Donald stood up and paced around the room. How had that happened? What was different this time compared to all the other times? He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to latch onto any feeling inside his head that might be what had allowed him to jump.

He closed his eyes and sat down on the floor, forcing himself to take slow deep breaths. He looked inwards, doing the exercises that his grandmother had taught him as a child. He focused on his chest, searching for a trigger between each heartbeat. Nothing. He concentrated on his stomach, the base of his neck, and every recess of his brain that he could find. Donald stayed up all night trying to figure out the secret. Nothing worked.

His next jump was the following morning while his mother was giving him a ride to school, and it occurred against his will like all of the other jumps. He was stuck in a maze of hallways where the walls were made of seashells. A one-armed bear chased him, hobbling after him on its hind legs. It slashed at him with a rusty saw blade that it carried in its single front paw. He returned just in time for his mother to stop the car in front of his school.

The encounter with the mirror version of his grandmother had changed nothing, except Donald now knew that he could travel without his life being in danger. He just didn't know how. He could not stop thinking about her in that hospital bed, with the knowledge he needed locked up in her broken mind. If he could only get back to her.

"You could have at least said something," his mother said to his father. Donald sat in the backset and tried to ignore his parents arguing. "I don't care if it's true, she had no right to speak to us like that."

"Jesus, it's not like we're a normal fucking family," his father said. Donald noticed that his father was accelerating while he yelled. "You act like I'm not suffering through this too. I work to earn the money that pays for the psychologists and meds."

"Well it's a lot easier to come home, drink a beer, and watch sports." A little bit of spittle flew out of his mother's mouth while she yelled. "I'm the one who at least tries to put in some effort to have a relationship with our son."

Donald's father turned his whole body toward the passenger seat to yell at Donald's mother. His father was so caught up in the argument that he forgot that he was driving, and the car started drifting toward the side of the road. "Uh, Dad," Donald said, but his parents were too caught up in the fight to hear him.

"What am I supposed to do?" his Dad yelled. "I can't get through to him."

"Dad!" Donald yelled. "The road."

The front tire slipped off of the edge of the pavement and onto the dirt shoulder. Donald's father panicked and twisted the wheel hard. The tire reconnected with the pavement, but the SUV kept turning. Donald's father tried to straighten out the car. It was too late. They tipped and rolled, and Donald lost consciousness.

When Donald opened his eyes, he was in a hospital. The same hospital where months ago he had seen the woman who looked like his grandmother. He bolted upright. He was sitting in the chair, and the old woman was in the bed beside him.

He leapt to his feet and leaned over the bed. She was awake, and she yelped when she saw him. "Oh," she said, and patted her chest with her wrinkled hand. "You startled me."

"Do you remember me?" Donald said. He was breathing fast. "I was here before."

"Of course I do," she said and smiled. She reached out and patted his hand. "Just remind me what your name is again."

"I'm Donald," he said, not trying to hide the frustration in his voice. He dropped down into the chair beside the bed and rested his hands in his face.

"Young man," the lady said. "You could work on your manners." She smoothed out the wrinkles on the blanket covering her. "I'll tell Herbert that he won't be allowed to associate with you anymore if he wants to keep having sex."

"Gross," Donald said.

The lady looked around the room. "Where am I?" she said. "This doesn't look like my home." She whimpered softly for a while. Donald listened to her until she stopped. He grabbed a book from the beside table and flipped through it without reading. They were silent for a while.

"Hello," she said. Donald looked up, and she waved a feeble arm at him. "I didn't see you there. What is your name, young man?"

"I'm the president," Donald said. He ripped a random page out of the book and folded it into a paper airplane. "I've come to award you a medal for fighting in the war."

"Oh joy!" she said. She clapped her hands together. "I killed those Greens real good. They didn't know what was coming at them."

Donald shook his head. He tossed the paper plane, and it flew a few feet before crashing into the wall.

"You know," the lady said, "I had a secret weapon. I can go to these other places. Dark places. And I brought things back with me, and I let them take care of the Greens for me."

Donald dropped the book. "You can go to other places?"

"I can," she said, "but I haven't done it in years."

"Show me," Donald said. He stood up slowly and walked to her bedside. His hands were shaking.

"Oh my, I'm not sure that I can," she said and waved a dismissive hand in the air.

"Please try," Donald said. "I'd love to see it. You know," Donald lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned closer, "I can do it too."

She rolled her eyes, and he could tell that she did not believe him. "Oh, alright," she said. "Not that you will notice anything."

Donald nodded to give her encouragement. She laid her head back and closed her eyes, and her breathing slowed. Donald was focused on her with every part of his being. He could sense something... different.

The lady tensed, and her body started shaking. Deep within Donald's brain, hiding in the primal part below the conscious and the subconscious, a switch flipped. It felt like the twitch of a muscle that Donald never knew he had. So small and insignificant, it was no wonder that he had overlooked it during his meditation exercises. But now he knew exactly where it was.

The lady opened her eyes and smiled. "Did you see anything?"

Donald laughed. "I sure did, you old fuck!" he said. He kicked the torn book across the floor. "Thanks, and fuck off!" Donald saw the brief moment of outrage on her face before the world disappeared.

He jumped. He was standing atop a tower overlooking a forest of trees with pink leaves. Giant bats flew in a sky with two moons.

He jumped. He stood inside a large cavern. Stalactites made of gold stretched from the ceiling to the floor. Living jewelry crawled across the floor like bugs.

He jumped. He stood in the middle of a square in a modern city where the skyscrapers were made of cookies. Sentient gingerbread people walked the streets on their way to work.

He jumped again and again. The worlds flew by at a blinding pace. Now that he knew how it worked, it was easy to control where he went. He just had to concentrate on a feeling, and he would jump to a place that embodied that mood. His years of jumping into nightmares had been a reflection of the anger he felt inside.

Donald fell to the ground laughing. He was exhausted from the effort of jumping so many times, but he felt better than he had in years. The weight had been lifted.

He sat up and looked around. He was in a small clearing surrounded by a lush forest, with towering trees providing a canopy high above. Bright green ferns and moss grew on the ground around him, but Donald could focus only on the purple crystals jutting out between the plants. He had seen one once before, so long ago.

Donald reached out and touched the tip of the closest crystal with his finger. It hummed the moment he touched it. The sound was soft and gentle. The vibrations flowed like water down Donald's arm and into his chest, where they swirled in a spiral inside his body.

He crawled closer to the clump of crystals and ran his hands across them. Each crystal's sounds blended with the rest like an orchestra in perfect harmony. He leaned his body against them, trying to get them to make as much sound as he could.

His smile faded away. Donald reluctantly let go of the crystals, and their songs faded away one by one. He walked to the center of the clearing and brushed himself off. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and jumped.

When he opened his eyes, he was standing back in the hospital room. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have—" The bed was empty.

He ran to the side of the bed and lifted up the sheets, as if she might be hiding underneath. Donald was sure this was the same room in the same world he had been in earlier. He looked around and spotted the book from earlier. Someone had picked it up and placed it on the bedside table. He flipped it open and found the spot where he had ripped out a page.

"You're still here?" the nurse said. Donald almost dropped the book in surprise. She was standing in the doorway.

"Where is she?" Donald said.

"She's been taken to the Basin," the nurse said. She walked over to Donald and took the book out of his hands, being careful not to damage it further. "She may not be in her right mind, but even that doesn't excuse desecration of the Great Book."

"The basin?" Donald said. "What's that?"

The nurse looked at Donald like he had said the sky was made of cheese. "The Basin," she said, speaking slower and louder. "At the Bloodstar." She held the book in one hand and grabbed Donald with the other. She walked toward the door and pulled him behind her.

"You shouldn't feel too bad for her," the nurse said. "She didn't have many years left. And since her memory is so bad, the pain of the Suffering won't be as bad as it is on other sacrifices."

Donald looked at the book in the nurse's hands, noticing the cover for the first time. What he thought was a Bible was something much different. Embossed in gold leaf on the leather cover was an image of a humanoid skull. Its teeth were fangs, and instead of two eyes, it had one large eye in the forehead. The eye moved and looked at Donald.

"Her sacrifice will benefit us all," the nurse said as she pulled him out into the hallway. "The Starving Ones demand the flesh."

Donald ripped free of her grasp. He ignored her yells as he sprinted to the end of the hall. He paused at the windows farther down the hall, and looked at the giant floating orb. People still gathered around the edges of the giant copper bowl below the orb. The Basin.

Donald took the elevator. He sprinted through the drab lobby at the ground floor, and he burst through the front doors to hit the street running. His lungs burned, but he pushed himself to keep moving. He caught glimpses of the orb between buildings, making it seem like the thing grew larger as he approached.

He turned a corner, and the buildings gave way to the massive orb. Its imposing form hung unsupported in the air above Donald. He felt a vague sense of dread somewhere in his lower stomach. Donald gulped and looked away. He searched through the mass of people standing in the shadow of the orb, trying to spot the woman.

There were so many people. The crowd was larger now that Donald was a part of it. He moved closer toward the basin, dodging people. Some were walking toward the basin with him, and others were leaving. Many of the people leaving had streaks of the red fluid running down their chins from where they had drunk from the pool. Donald thought it looked like blood.

He climbed a set of steps and looked over the raised edge of the basin. Thick red fluid swirled and bubbled. The smell hit him, and he realized it actually was blood. A giant lake of blood, pouring out of the thing above.

A young boy came up beside Donald and leaned over the copper rim of the basin. He cupped his hand and dipped it into the blood. The boy brought his hand to his mouth and slurped. He smiled and yelled, "Praise the Starving Gods! My flesh is yours!"

Donald tried to ignore the boy. He looked out across the basin, and he noticed a platform that extended out over the pool. A group of people in silver uniforms stood on the edge of the platform where it connected to the side of the basin. They looked like soldiers, and the civilians kept their distance

The line of soldiers parted, and a man was pushed through. The man stumbled and fell onto his knees. He stood up and tried to rush the soldiers, but they knocked him on his back. One of the soldiers pulled out a cattle prod and zapped the man. The man backed away, and the solder stepped forward, herding the man out onto the platform.

As the man neared the end of the platform, Donald noticed a stream separate out from the rest of the falling blood. It solidified into a tendril and snaked down to the platform. The soldier looked up at the tendril, and he turned and sprinted back to the edge of the basin. The other man turned to look up just as the tendril touched him. The man's scream was cut short as a film of blood enveloped his body. He squirmed in a cocoon of blood before being lifted in the sky toward the orb.

The soldiers parted again, and they led the old woman who looked like Donald's grandmother onto the platform. Donald started running, pushing people out of his way. He knocked someone into the pool of blood, but he did not bother to look back. He kept his eyes on the soldier who was pointing toward the end of the platform and trying to convince the woman to walk out on it.

By the time Donald reached the edge of the platform, the soldier had convinced the woman to walk to the end of the platform. The soldier was already walking back to join the rest of the men at the edge. Donald shoved himself between two of the soldiers. They were focused on keeping people on the platform, so they were not prepared for Donald trying to get on it.

The one solider still on the platform grabbed at Donald as he ran by, but Donald was able to dodge to the side. He stepped too far aside, causing one foot to slip off the side of the platform. Donald fell flat on his face, but luckily did not fall into the pool of blood.

Donald looked back over his shoulder. The soldier reached out to grab him, but the man froze and looked up into the air. The man forgot about Donald and turned to run back to the edge of the basin. Donald looked up. A tendril of blood was snaking down toward the woman. She was looking around in confusion, trying to figure out where she was.

Donald scrambled to his feet. He sprinted. The tendril was moving fast. It was almost to the woman. Donald reached out with his right arm and he leapt into the air. He closed his eyes and jumped.

He tumbled to the ground and skidded, uprooting the green moss. Donald rolled onto his back and spit the dirt out of his mouth. A shadow fell over him, and he looked up to see the old woman. "Who are you?" the woman said.

Donald let out a deep breath. "I'm Donald," he said as he stood up.

The woman looked around the clearing. The purple crystals stuck out between the bright green plants. "This is such a pretty place," she said. She walked over to an old tree that had fallen long ago. "I need to sit for a bit," she said. "I'm very tired."

Donald walked to the log and sat down beside her. The woman touched a large crystal that grew out of the ground beside the log. It emitted a deep humming sound. "Oh," she said and jerked her hand away, but she was smiling. She turned to Donald and laughed. Donald smiled.

"I'm sorry," the woman said. "My memory isn't so good anymore. Can you tell me who you are again?"

Donald reached out and held her hand. "I'm Donald," he said. "I'm your grandson."