We stopped somewhere to rest and smoke and re-fill our skins. Wizard sang a song about bygone days,...

We stopped somewhere to rest and smoke and re-fill our skins.  Wizard sang a song about bygone days, and Amler drew pictures of movie stars she remembered from whatever country it was she was from.  They were glamorous and beautiful, and she spit into her fingers and rubbed it on parchment to make them blush.  We got drunk on our own exhaustion— the narco-high of our body’s tissue turning toxic inside us.  And each of us, on our own terms, found our thoughts turning to the Kingdom of Dreams.  A place where no one is jailed or exiled, and everyone gets to live.   Harris said he’d seen it once.  He was only a kid then.  His parents were driving past on their way to Vegas.  It was a dark time in his life, he said.  His aunt lived in Vegas and she was very sick and he remembered his mom being on the phone all the time, fighting and arguing, and surrounded by sheets of paper.  They were driving through, he couldn’t remember where, and somewhere along the way he’d seen a door.  It was twenty feet high with gold filigree.  And he knew one day he would come back, place his hand on the slab and push through.   We asked him how he knew this was the door to the Kingdom and Harris started to get angry.  He kicked dirt over the fire and went into the corner to sulk.  Amler tried to keep thepeace, but he ignored her.  That night I took first watch while the others slept.  I was thinking about how far we’d gotten, how much we’d lost getting here.  I didn’t tell them but I’d seen the door too.  It appeared once in my house in the back of a pantry.  Under the slab you could see the light moving, feel the lace of cold air on your toes.  And I knew, being in its presence, what was behind that door.  You could feel the weight of your life pressing against you.  The thing is I wasn’t like Harris, I wasn’t going to tell anyone.  It was mine and I was going to keep it that way.