He stood in a crowd. The bars were letting out and people were laughing, teeth exposed, carousing, stumbling, and rushing on their way to further parties abnormally fast. Faces blurred by him, unnoticing, their features hardly distinguishable. He tried to move forward, but the Earth pulled him back. It was trying to claw him into the ground. Fingers of asphalt, rocks and dirt twisted up from the ground. They penetrated his shirt and went into his back and out through his ribs and chest. He lost his breath though there was no pain, just a dull push on his insides, the fingers hooked around, grew fatter, and started to pull him down.
He clenched his fists and closed his eyes. He was almost horizontally parallel with the ground when there was brightness behind his eyelids. He opened his eyes and say three tiny balls of blue light, stationary, just inches from his nose. He reached up and touched one of them--they slid down his body and over the asphalt that was engulfing him--the fingers crumbled, retracted, released him, and fell to the ground. The lights dissipated, and he noticed the first hint of dawn in the skyline.
And he was free of the Earth. He floated upward, above the crowd. Several feet above them he slowed down. He thought of the danger, and he sank a few feet, but he held out his hands to his sides and his descent stopped. He was stuck. He tried moving up again, but could not do it. He tried to fall down slowly, but his position remained still. He pulled his knees up to his chest. His clothes turned to dark colors. The fabric grew looser, and threads came apart and grew longer. They swirled and looped around him as they increased. They began to cross paths with each other, and started to knot up. He kicked out and tried to untangle the threads with his hands but just knotted more. They became tighter. They wrapped around his throat. His face flushed with blood and he thrashed out.
The dawn suddenly became dark and night returned. He felt blind. Then light came directly from his body. It burned away the dark knots and weaving threads. He was naked but he felt warmth. The light dripped from his body, and the sun rose. He floated higher up, above the city. He found he could navigate his ascent and descent with the slightest motion of his palms. But a pain was forming, in a line down the center of his body, from the top of his head to his pelvis. The two sides of his body wanted to travel in opposing directions. They cancelled each other out until the pain was unbearably sharp--then his body snapped, and there were suddenly two of him, mirror images. The pain formed again, and then there were four. And again, there were eight, then sixteen.
The sun rose higher, bathing the city in warm yellow light. He and his others formed a circle in the air. They all looked at each other with fear and confusion. They all looked over their bodies to find any hint of seams or scars or other physical evidence of the process that just took place, but nothing was found. He tried to speak, but could not say any words, and could not even open his mouth. The others looked like they were trying to speak at the same time. A hazy white halo began to form around each of their heads. As he tried harder to speak, the halos grew larger, encompassing their bodies. Tendrils of white light formed from each halo, thousands of tiny points, extruded outward. They intertwined with one another. Finally they connected.
He felt larger than himself. His mind was put at ease. They all raised their hands in unison, and the sun emitted an intense luminescence that washed over the city. When the light faded, the city was cleansed of people. The buildings transformed to clear glass and light. Grass and trees replaced roads. Flocks of exotic, brilliantly iridescent, unearthly birds plied the sky. A gentle wind ruffled leaves and the long grass. He found himself on the ground, as one, not many. With a wave of his hand, he grew a building by several stories--it just stretched itself into the sky. He turned the building an opaque, brilliant white, then turned it transparent again.
He recreated people. They came out of the buildings, out of their walls, formed of glass. They left oval openings. They walked slowly towards him. He waved his hands and they became flesh. And they smiled at him. He waved his hands, and they became to live their new lives.
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