Day 265 - Lost-and-Found Story

Lost-and-Found Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

Bryce had a dream and in his dream he traveled to another place. He jumped in time and space and people transformed around him. Things weren’t what they really were, but he knew what they were supposed to be. Some people didn’t look like they did in real life, but he knew them as well. He traveled as he would in a dream. He was just suddenly somewhere. All the interconnected moments and places were missing, yet in his mind it worked – he understood he was traveling from one location to another as if in a linear fashion. He was suddenly teleporting, but it didn’t feel that way. In its way, it all made sense.

He was in an office building. He was in a hallway with many doors. He stood in front of one door – the entrance to an office or a department of some sort.

Bryce opened the door and walked inside.

There was a waiting room with a counter at one end. A woman sat behind the counter talking to another man. Bryce looked around the room. There were chairs to his left and to his right. Most of them were full. If he sat, he was going to have to sit next to another person. A monitor hung from the ceiling in one corner with a series of numbers and names. Next to the door was an end table with batches of magazines and other reading materials.

Bryce suddenly thought of the DMV. He wondered if his license was expired or not. He couldn’t remember. He stopped to take his wallet out and check, but when he pulled it from his pocket he accidentally spilled the contents all over the floor. He had some loose change and a toy car in his pocket. He didn’t remember having those before, but it was a dream, so he wasn’t sure what was happening or why.

Suddenly the man at the counter raised his voice.

“—But it’s my soul in there. I know it’s in there. I can feel it in there.”

The woman behind the counter shrugged indifferently.

“You need to lower your voice.”

“I’m sorry, but—“

“Do you have your paperwork? I need to see your paperwork.”

“If you could just go and check. It would look just like me. I swear.”

“I’m sorry but you’re going to have to fill out the proper paperwork. I suggest you take a seat until you have it ready.”

“But—“

“Next!”

The man sulked away defeated.

Bryce blinked and he was suddenly at the counter. He had a ticket that read 7E. The woman behind the counter waited impatiently.

“7E?”

Bryce looked at the ticket in his hand and then at the woman and nodded.

“Well? What are you looking for?”

Bryce didn’t know. “I don’t know.”

“Let me see your paperwork.”

Bryce started to say he didn’t have any paperwork, but just as he opened his mouth to speak he looked down at his hands and saw that he was holding some paperwork. He handed it to the woman.

The woman looked it through and flipped between the various sheets. She nodded and mumbled to herself as she read. For a moment Bryce was worried that something was wrong, but then the woman got up and told him to wait there for a moment.

The woman reappeared and handed Bryce a book. He didn’t recognize it.

“There must be some mistake.”

“Not on my end. This is your paperwork, right? This is what you requested.”

“But this isn’t my book.”

“It is now.”

She stamped the proper stamps and put his papers into a bin of completed tasks and handed the book over to Bryce.

Bryce tried to read the title of the book, but it was a mess of jumbled symbols and numbers and letters. The title made no sense, but he had read once that you couldn’t read during a dream, so that made sense. Suddenly a phone began ringing. It rang over and over and over. It rang endlessly. No answering machine. No voice mail. It just kept ringing.

Bryce woke up on the floor next to his bed, still dressed from the night before. He was slow to rise. His head was still cloudy. He could hear his neighbor’s phone ringing and ringing. It was terribly annoying. The man never ever answered his phone. Bryce wondered if maybe he was dead inside his apartment and no one knew it. Maybe he should call the police. Or maybe he should kick in the door and tear the phone from the wall and break it. That might be a better plan.

Bryce stood up and walked towards the kitchen to make himself some coffee. He mindlessly reached into his pocket and took the contents out and put them on the top shelf of a bookshelf. Amongst the contents were seventeen cents, a few receipts, and a ticket stub. Bryce didn’t look at any of those. What little of his mind that could focus, was focused on getting caffeine into his system. He was already forgetting all about his dream from the night before.