Meet Abernathy Franklin

It was a particularly warm evening in August when I had a most intriguing, scarcely believable experience. Life altering, I suppose one might say. I had readied myself for bed, brushed the pearly whites, donned the pink pajamas (or they may have been coral or persimmon, it’s not important) and switched off the lamp. I was on the point of dropping into a pleasant sleep when I heard a sound. It was a sort of sudden shuffling or scuffle coming from the direction of the kitchen, as if a body of some kind had abruptly stopped itself on the edge of a chair, shifting it an inch or two. I sat up, holding my breath and listening intently, wondering why I did not routinely take a carving knife to bed. More softs sounds of covert movement...

But wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

It may be an imposition to my audience to back peddle at this moment of suspense, but I feel I would be doing a disservice not to mention the nights preceding this incident. For three or four nights prior, I had been having the most vivid and unusual dreams. I often, throughout my life, have been a colorful dreamer and did not think much of it at first, but I had been dreaming repeatedly of a green light. Amidst dreaming of some other mundane subject, arguments with my mother and dogs getting loose from the yard, my dream would be interrupted by a small sphere of glowing green light. It would start in my periphery, arrest my attention and I would begin to follow it. As I followed, the green sphere would grow larger and brighter until it was the only thing I was able to see.

From the last of these dreams, prior to the night in question, I had awoken to find myself standing in my garden, barefeet in the mud with my right arm outstretched as if I had been trying to catch the floating orb. Not a little unnerving as you can imagine. And all the next day, before my life became rather more interesting than a night on the town in Bangkok, I found myself musing on this somnambulatory experience with less trepidation and more eager curiosity. What was this green light? What did it mean? Would I dream of it again? And ought I lock the back gate and bar the front door to prevent potential sleepwalking through the neighborhood? Or perhaps, simply elect to wear shoes to bed?

Now we return to our nocturnal intruder. I was attempting stealth of my own, feeling silently on the bedside table for my mobile phone in hopes of dialing for help, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a green glow. Or did I sense it? I turned to look in time to notice the kitchen light being switched on.

“I’m not a burglar, you know.” said a strangely familiar voice.

“And why should I trust you?” I responded despite myself.

“Come out and see.” the voice tinkled in a jovial sort of way.

I rose from bed, switched on my lamp and quickly snatched my mobile off the nightstand. No sense in giving this seemingly friendly owl all of the benefit of the doubt. I peered around the door frame down the hall to see the intruder seating herself at my table with a smile. And at this juncture my curiosity from the day before overtook me completely.

“But you? No, no,” I said, approaching the table and doing my best to shake the webs of insanity that had clearly overtaken my little grey cells. “Who are you?”

“Abernathy Franklin, pleased to meet you.” While I admit that this figure did, in what appeared to be every detail, match my own visage to the proverbial ‘t’, I was not entirely prepared to accept that my own doppelganger was seated at my kitchen table.

“I am Abernathy Franklin,” I replied, with as heavy an emphasis on the “I” as I could manage. This imposter may well have my face and general shape, but to also claim my name? I mean, I say, the nerve!

“Yes, you are.” Her airy demeanor was pleasant enough. If we had met at a coffee shop or some little boutique, I might be inclined to rather enjoy it. However, in present circumstances, I was finding it a trifle irritating.

“Then who are you?”

“I’m you. Well, I’m one version of you.”

“I’m calling the police.”

“Mmmm...I’m not sure that’s the best idea. If I’m not mistaken, in your reality, the police have a tendency to shoot to kill first and ask questions, or not, later. It would be a shame to stain those lovely pajamas, they are some of our favorites.” She leaned forward on the table putting her chin in one hand and looking me up and down as if wishing we could exchange ensembles. She did have a point. Or I had a point.

“Well dammit!” I spat, now fully annoyed with this baffling intrusion and my guests evident pleasure in my confusion. “Don’t sit there grinning at me like some fairy mischief maker, explain yourself!”

“Oooh!” She sang and danced out of her chair. “It really is much more fun to be on this side of the table. I have been on yours, of course, quite properly ticked off, as I’m sure you are now.” She had that correct. At her jump and wiggle from her chair, I confess, I had to suppress an urge to hurl the phone in my hand directly at her, or my, happy head.

“I am Abernathy Franklin,” she bowed theatrically, “Abby to family, Frankie to friends, everlasting weirdo to one and all, and I am you from another dimension.” She smiled brightly and paused for my response.

“You’re insane. Or I’m insane and you’re my hallucination. I’m calling...”

“You saw the green light, yes?” she interjected. Her eyes betrayed the sort of excitement you might expect from a child on Christmas morning.

“How do you know about..? I suppose because you’re me.” I said sardonically.

She squealed and did another little dance. I couldn’t help wondering, is that what I look like when I do that? I’ve always imagined that my energetic eccentricities were endearing, but I did worry that any moment she might knock over a tea kettle or send some other stray object crashing to the floor.

“Exactly! I dreamed of a green light before I met me. And I’ve been following it all about the cosmos, you’re going to love it!” Her excitement was, if I’m honest and not too self praising, intoxicating to a degree. I suppose I have always quite liked myself, not in a vain sort of way, more of a, well why not, sort of way.

“What is it? The green light?” I asked, that pressing desire to explore creeping upon me.

“Remember you dabbled a bit in studying ancient Vedic teachings, Buddhism and that? The chakras. Your heart chakra is green, so, near as I can tell, it's a sort of following your heart. And ours has always been a heart looking for adventure and mystery, so it’s led us here!”

“But how? What? So chakras are real and...but how can it be outside of me for me to follow?” Questions were coming faster than I could articulate them. Was her excitement this contagious?

“Oh, I don’t have the answers! How dull would life be if we did?! It’s consciousness, it’s the universe, it's the ‘we are the creators of our own reality,’ all of that! It’s energy and magic!” Her flamboyant movements around the table were giving me a hint of how my family and friends must feel when I started on my own rants about energy and consciousness. She had the distinct air of the town madman on a three day bender. Could I possibly be this perfectly potty?

“So then how did you get here? And where do you come from?”

“I come from my dimension, of course. Just follow the green light. It’s not a science, or maybe it is, or maybe it’s magic. You just have to…” she was making waving motions with her hands, as if trying to pluck accurate instructions from the ether. “...you just do it!”

“So I decide to travel to another dimension, think about this green light, and just do it?”

“Yep!”

“Right. I think it’s time for you to float back to wherever you came from so that I can wake up in my garden again.” I said, shooing her towards the back door.

“You’re going to try it. You won’t be able to help yourself, the possibilities are just too delicious!” she clapped her hands in ecstasy. Then she grabbed me about the shoulders, and for the first time since beholding her at my table, I felt myself believing that she was real, that it was all true. I mean to say, if she was real enough to touch me…

“Don’t be afraid. I know, we’ve always been conditioned to be afraid, but I’m telling you, there’s no need. Just trust yourself. You’ll find out.” She released my shoulders and stepped back. Instinctively, I looked down where she had touched me and raised a hand to touch my own shoulder, held for a moment in a reverie or shock.

I shook my head. “Now really, you need to..” But she was already gone. Evaporated, discorporated, disappeared into the night, simply no longer in existence before me. I looked about the kitchen and adjoining living room. No sign. No intruder. No other me.

I stood for a long while, or it may have been no time at all, who can say, contemplating this waking dream, this impossibility. “But I believe anything is possible.” I said aloud to myself. And at that moment, a green glow arose in the corner of my eye.

I turned to see the light, a small sphere, suspended in my living room. I moved towards it slowly, almost as if approaching a skittish animal I didn’t want to frighten away. It pulsed and grew, but this time it remained still. I moved closer. The bright glowing green light became as large as a doorway, and from it’s unseen depths I heard laughter.

“Frankie, Frankie,” I said to myself with growing anticipation, “the possibilities really are too delicious.” And I stepped through the light, through my doubts and fears and into an entirely other world.

And that, dear readers, is the first time I traveled to a dimension outside my own. But that is a tale for another warm August night.