Nick pretended to be asleep when his mom got home. She came into kiss him and noticed the Band-Aid on his cheek. Turning her phone’s flashlight on, she inspected it.

“You asleep hon?” she asked quietly.

He thought about answering, but by the time he had made up his mind, he was sitting in the chair in the room, in his dream.

Something had stirred him into action. Maybe it was the zit. If he could do things like this, then why not finish his dream? Figure out where the moths went? Yeah.

He was sitting in the chair. He got up and went to the hallway. There was no sound, as always, so he went downstairs. The walls were recessed wood, the kind you find in old movies, with photos on the wall. he couldn’t make out any of the photos; they were all blurry, which was really weird. He walked to the front door.

It was huge, maybe as tall as a basketball goal, and the knob was almost too tall for him to reach, but he reached up anyway and turned it. It was locked. Screw that. Maybe he could go outside thru like a window or something. He didn’t know what made him want to go outside, he just needed to.

Michael W. Smith’s “Open the eyes of my heart Lord” went through his mind as he pulled open the dining room window and crawled up on the ledge. He didn’t know why this song came to him just then… It just did.

The air was not cold, like it looked, it was the same temperature as the house. Perfect. But it was too quiet. The ultra-green grass was almost glowing as he stepped down onto it. Perfectly manicured. Perfectly mowed. It even smelled like it had been mowed today, that crisp green smell came up to my nose like a wave. Almost delicious.

To the left and right of the front of the house was green grass. There were two poles with mounted lights on them, but off in the distance, down what looked like a trail or a driveway, was some sort of red glow. He woke up.