Sexeteria

I lifted my head and woke up to find I had been dozing on cement steps flush against some sort of old-style movie studio type of building. There was a black metal railing on the side. It didn't seem odd to me I'd woken up there; I knew I'd dozed off there after a good, crazy, eventful night.

The sun hit my eyes, very-early-morning bright. And he was standing there, a few yards from me, but different. We were both different; in our late 20s, felt like; but it was us. I was wearing a vintage 1940's swing-era kind of dress--one with a tailor-fitted top, cinched waist, and wider skirt. My dark hair was loose and tousled from sleeping outside. I could feel the morning breeze against it. And him--he had his back to me, but I could tell it was him. It looked like him, though younger. But his hair was '70s long and fine and very, very blond, a way I'd never seen it in life. I could see his hair swinging, reflecting sunlight as he moved.

I realized he was holding a paintbrush, and motioning with it urgently. He was finishing painting a big sign, hurrying. My eyes tried to focus in the light.

I pushed myself up on the steps and looked around, blinking. The city we were in was one I'd been to before. It is a city of billboards; they pepper hills and highways all over town. And I realized suddenly that something about them had changed. Every billboard had been painted over in white. And then there were black letters painted on top of the white backgrounds.

I scanned the skyline. Everyplace I turned there was a new billboard, covered in this writing. I read and read. They said amazing things. Secrets. Things that only I could understand; things that spoke straight to my heart; moved it with some strange, undefinable emotion; something deeper and more primeval even than love. Love--that was a child's toy; a rough simulation of this. This...this was something different; older. That thing you know you're searching for but can't really get to. The middle of the black hole. The end of pi. It was that, but a feeling. There is no other way to describe it.

It is that thing you know, but that you are certain no one else knows, because even you can't put it into words.

And now it was on billboards all over the city. I was stunned.

And then, I looked back down and he was standing just a few feet in front of me, facing me. A thick paintbrush covered in black paint hung limply at his side. He seemed slightly out of breath, anxious. The air was still, waiting. He looked at me. Straight at me. He looked anxious, almost pleading, like he desperately wanted me to understand something.

"I did it for you," he said.

And then suddenly, reality tore into me like a knife slashing through canvas. I woke up, but this time I was no longer on cement steps.