Think of a Wonderful Thought [Patrick]

[Winifred May Cresswell]

It had started out with a dream. A nightmare, really. It had been vivid. Extremely realistic, cutting too close into her mind, triggering something that she hadn’t been ready for. There she was, standing--well, hovering--in front of Big Ben, her limbs flailing helplessly in the air around her. She had no control over her body and was at the beck and call of the wind and the sky around her. Something swept around her and every muscle in her body contracted, warning her of oncoming danger but she knew that she couldn’t escape it. There was no where for her to go. Her breathing sped up as she looked around the midnight sky. Then something grabbed at her ankle and-

Winifred awoke to the sound of her alarm clock blaring into her ear: she couldn’t have been happier. Crisis averted, She thought to herself and quickly turned the beeping off. She rolled over and pulled her covers up to her chin, not quite ready to leave the warmth of her bed, although, more than happy to leave all thoughts of the nightmare behind her. Had it been her Spirit communicating with her through her dreams? She wondered for a moment. It seemed to her that almost everyone else in Memory had at least a small inclination as to who their Spirit was, but here Winny sat, completely in the dark, her mind left to explore the possibilities.

She groaned and turned over again to face her clock. 7:05 loomed ominously on the light up digital face of the clock. She squeezed her eyes shut and then opened them quickly, seeing if the time would magically change. In Memory, magic was just an every day part of life. Why couldn’t it just cut her some slack now?

Winifred finally managed to drag herself out of bed, through the shower, and into some decent clothes for work before she sat back down on her bed and pulled on a pair of her oxford shoes and laced them, making a mental note of the rhyme about the bunny rabbit going around the tree and through the loop. She would have to teach some of the younger students that so they weren’t always constantly begging her for her expert shoe-tying ability. She smiled at the thought.

Winny finally made it out the door of her apartment after 10 more minutes of stalling. She was carrying a bagel in one hand and her school bag in the other as she walked toward the brick school house that was down the road. She nodded politely to all the other residents of Memory that she passed, flashing them a grin as she was incapable of shaking hands with the amount of stuff that she was carrying.

Someone held the door for her as she approached and she trotted forward grinning, “Thanks.” She said and walked down the hallway toward the classroom where she spent most of her time. She reached her desk and dropped her bag onto the ground in front of the desk. It was weird for her, being so young and teaching at Memory. She felt like she was a square peg being forced into a round hole; a child being forced into an adult role already. Not that she didn’t enjoy her job.

She sat down in her chair and grabbed her notebook out of her bag and began jotting down ideas for the next story that she was going to write. She tapped her pencil on the table and then began writing, Pirates. Talking animals. Swords Fights. Peter. Peter. She had written Peter. She stared at the name curiously and then shook her head, not sure where it came from. She got that prickly feeling on the back of her neck again, her heart beating a little too quickly for comfort.

She craned her neck to look at the watch and took her chance to go for a walk around the school. She had about an hour before school officially started.