Billy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Billy stood in the dream world and squeezed a color that had no name. It burned soft blue and gold at once, a color the waking world had never held. He wanted to bring one home. Every clown said it couldn't be done. Billy had tried. He'd hidden a color in his pocket once, walked it through the door, and opened his hand to find plain red. Fine, but not enough. His pockets flattened dream-stuff into ordinary matter on the way out. Nothing survived the crossing. Tonight he meant to fix that. A laugh popped behind him like a cork. Billy turned. Notim leaned against a house made of grinning toast, their jester's cape shifting through colors that argued with each other. Notim was his uncle, though the word felt too small. They hopped dimensions the way Billy hopped puddles. They also hoarded secrets and handed them out like riddles. "You keep pouring the ocean into a cup," Notim said. "The cup is the problem, nephew. Not the ocean." "My pockets kill the color," Billy said. "Every time." "Because your pockets belong to the waking world." Notim grinned. "They know the rules. Between you and the void, rules are just habits that got famous." Notim reached into their cape and pulled out a pocket. It was not sewn from cloth. It swirled with stars and impossible patterns, stitched from the fabric of reality itself. Notim tossed it. Billy caught it. The pocket felt warm and slightly wet, like holding a held breath. "This one forgets the rules," Notim said. "Stuff a color inside. But careful. A pocket that forgets the rules forgets all of them." Billy slipped the nameless color inside. The pocket drank it and hummed. Then the ground under his feet turned to sound. The toast house folded inward like paper. Colors leaked from the pocket's seams and ran up his arm. Reality stuttered around them, skipping like a scratched record. "That's the glitch!" Notim clapped, delighted. "Hold on. Or don't. Both work." Billy ran for the door between worlds while the dream came apart behind him. He hit the door and burst into his waking room. His heart slammed. His hands shook. He forced the pocket open. The color was still there. Blue and gold at once. Alive. It glowed in his palm, a real thing from the dream, breathing waking air. Billy laughed until his eyes stung. He'd done it. The forbidden trick worked. Then the color spread. It crawled off his hand and stained the wall. The wall softened. His floor rippled like water. The pocket had not stopped forgetting the rules. It had carried the glitch home with him. His waking room began to melt at the edges, and the melting was growing.