Duck Soup (A Dream)

Duck soup. I didn't know how to make it. I had no idea!

"Go, Kevin! Make it!" they yelled at me. I was holding an aluminum foil bag, packaged in the shape of a ramen packet. Inside, presumably, was duck soup. I cut open the the top of it, and saw the yellow-orange pre-cooked broth. It was disgusting.

"I don't know how to make it," I whined to their glee. The more whiny I sounded, the funnier it seemed to them. "I don't know how!"

I could feel something forming in the bag, but it felt like it was supposed to be there.

"Someone get it away from me!" I whined. They continued to laugh. I began to feel the thing inside the bag hardening into a shape. It was the skeleton of a duck.

"I can feel the bones!" I whined. They laughed. The duck began to move inside the bag, sloshing around inside the uncooked, pre-made soup. I set it down in a cabinet. They laughed.

I was the duck, I thought, and I was forming, and I am different parts, but they're all jelly-like and separated, and I'm forming now, and I am almost solid now, the jelly parts coalescing together, and I need to get out of this water, and...and... I'm Kevin Arnold, a character from the hit sitcom The Wonder Years, and I was walking along in ocean water, sand beneath my feet. I was walking maybe knee-deep in water at night, but as far as I could see, there was no beach. There was just that area on a beach where you're about knee-deep in water, except there was no deeper end and no shallower end. Waves were coming from...somewhere.

My best friend Paul was with me. We were walking together, and we see Natalie Portman, but she looked really young, like she was our age, about 12. No girl should be walking alone, this young, without someone to walk with her. Her hair was so beautiful, too. It almost didn't look solid so near to the water. It looked gelatinous. If I touched it...no. It wasn't my hair to touch.

"Are you lost?" I ask her. "I'm Kevin. This is my friend Paul."
"I'm Natalie," she replied timidly.
"Come with us. We know where we're going," I said. We did? Where were we going? Why am I Kevin Arnold?

We could have taken advantage of her in her fragile state. She really was quite beautiful, and honestly, no one is around. We could have, but we aren't men like that. Still, she seemed oddly inviting to men in her vulnerability. We walked along the beach that wasn't a beach for a few miles, three 12-year-olds, one almost angelically beautiful and vulnerable, like she had fallen from heaven and was left to the whimsy of Man. Except as far as I know, things didn't look like the land of Man.

We were in a restaurant, the three of us, and Natalie was crying and falling in the arms of every man around. She must have kissed many of them, but promised nothing more. She didn't seem like a 12-year-old, I thought, but then again, neither did I. Maybe she was 18, I thought.

I pried her away from a middle-aged man.

"I'm so sorry," she said, and I knew it wasn't her fault. She was just too beautiful. It's okay, though. I was there to protect her from being temptation for men. We left.

I called my dad to pick me up when we were on the beach that wasn't a beach. I sat in the back seat, and she sat in the front. My dad was driving and talking to her.

"So, you're a friend of Kevin's, huh?" he said in his distinct tone. It was flat and inviting at the same time.

"Yeah, Kevin's real nice," she said, smiling back at me. I returned my own proud smile.

"Aren't you a little too young to be walking around?" he asked. Don't embarrass her, dad. Don't make this poor angel uncomfortable.

"Well, aren't you a bit young to be a father?" she countered coyly. My dad chuckled. Was she flirting with him? My dad was an old man. Why would she...

"I guess you're not that young after all," he chuckled. He figured out what took me a few hours to figure out. This Natalie Portman lookalike was definitely not 12, even though at a certain light, she could look like it. She might even be as old as her mid-twenties, I thought. How old am I?

They talked for a few more hours as we drove in the waters of the beach that wasn't a beach, no surf nor tide in sight. We saw a few trees and large rocks, but they served as monuments to me, not necessarily indicative of a natural road. It's okay, I thought, my dad always knows where he's going. She probably told him.

"We're here," he said abruptly.

"Oh, thanks, Jack," she giggled.

"You know, you have a gift," he told her. "You could look as young as 12 and as old as 30 all in one glance."

She just smiled. That hair of hers, like the slimy skin of an eel, so elusive and yet shimmering so beautifully. I just wanted to know if it felt like it looked. But I didn't. I'm a gentleman, I thought.

The three of us walked along the beach that wasn't a beach some more, miles away from where we were.

"He's right over here," she told us.

He? I thought. She must mean her boyfriend or something. Eventually, we see a middle-aged man. His pants were rolled up to his knees to accommodate the water. The three adults talked together, and I followed, not knowing what they were talking about. They seemed to be getting along, I thought. She was much older than I thought she was, this angel I found wandering. It's a good thing I protected her, I thought, but I couldn't help but feel a little betrayed. She was supposed to be my age. My friend. My angel. I could feel the pangs of youthful jealousy sprout in me, but I suppressed them.

"Here," the man said after we walked a few miles. He was much older than I thought at first, his hair graying and frayed. She was old too, and her hair was so beautiful and long. I honestly couldn't tell where her hair ended and the water began.

"Just lay down," he instructed my father and me. We complied. These people were nice. We laid down in the water.

My body felt...distant from itself. Slowly, I could feel parts of my body separating, becoming more dissolved in the water and more gelatinous. What was happening? Let me stand! I thought. I tried to get up, but my body wasn't under the same control anymore. Let me stand! I shrieked in my head. I was in full panic. Where was my father? I thought. He would know what to do.

I somehow managed to turn my head. What was once my father's body was now separated gelatinous blobs suspended in the water. Natalie looked at me and laughed. The old man laughed. Natalie began drinking my father. NO! NOOO! STOP IT! I screamed, but I could do nothing. I watched as she drank him, and she became him. Her body was replaced by his and shifted back to hers.

And I could feel my vision shake, as the old man drank me.

"This is delicious," he said. "You make a good duck soup, Kevin."

They laughed.