Dream or Reality
by Greg Soter

     As I was walking down an empty side street of Wyandotte, I stopped to really see what was happening. The sorrowful gray clouds covered the sky like a blindfold of heaven. There was a bitter wind coming from the old contaminated river on the east side of town. The bare trees of late fall swayed in the wind like a ghost sways in agony. The manufactured houses all looked the same, dreary and cold. Down the road I could see my old elementary school. The sadness of the day confined my thinking to only the bad memories. These bad occurrences are what make me glad that elementary school is a one-time deal.
     I had thoughts of my friends getting hurt on the playground before my very eyes, visions of getting in trouble for not having an assignment in on time, and chills from standing on a corner with a fever in below zero weather because I had a safety post that morning. All of these memories were a rush of pain that went straight to my heart. Of all these not one came of my siblings who were in school with me, nor that of a fight I got into on the front lawn of the house to my left.
     On the very street I grew up on and now grew sad on, came a dog. Across the way was a mangy homeless dog that seemed not to notice me but was running away from something. It was something I could not see but something the dog sensed. I could feel it too as the damp sky turned and eerie green. The color I saw was the green which a toad comes from on an algae covered pond. This was the green of the lampshade in the window of the witch on the corner’s house. Only one thing could come of this green, a tornado.
     As I thought of this ominous color a swirling mass of wool textured destruction came down from the heavens and touched the mortal lands. It acted like the finger of God wreaking havoc on anything and everything it touched. The monstrous cylinder came closer and I felt no fear because, for some reason, what was about to come was fate. I felt that my fate was to stand tall next to the most destructive force on earth. It lurched closer and closer, and the only thing I could think about was to be a part of something so big was the only way to die.
I was sucked into the devil’s vortex not knowing what to expect. I never found out because at that moment, I woke up. I realized that to be a part of something big didn’t necessarily mean being a part of something evil. There are objects of evil and there are objects of good. We choose which to be a part of. Only on the day we choose will we know in our hearts whether it was a dream or reality.