187 Nocturnal Fruitions

By second grade, she and her husband knew he'd be relegated to Special Ed.

"What will you discover tonight, Brock?" his mom asked. "Every night you wake up with great ideas. I bet you'll cure cancer tonight. You've already solved the energy crisis, drug addiction, and the homeless problem, right? Because you're a genius, Brockie."

"Only in my dreams," he whined. "When I'm awake, I'm stupid again."

"You're wrong," she reassured. "We're proud of you. Now close those eyes and start inventing and discovering."

His mother realized Brock's nonsense dreams were compensation for shame he felt over his low IQ. Yet, she imagined how happy he felt, feeling smart every night. Though he could solve no crises, in his dreams he did. She reported them to her husband every breakfast, and it began to grate on him.

"Record what he says," he suggested. "It'll be good for his self-esteem."

"Or, reinforce this delusion," she fretted.

Yet, she did just that; she waited to record him. Finally...

"Brockie, wake up." Brock opened his eyes. "What, Brock? Tell me."

He mumbled into the recorder and fell back asleep.

"What'd you do last night?" his dad asked him that morning,

"Finally, I cured cancer!" But the recording proved unintelligible. "I don't know what I'm saying, Dad. I'm stupid again!"

"No, you're wonderful. You're our cure for everything."

"You're our little genius," his mother added.

"Tell you what," his dad said. "Let's mail the recording to scientists. Maybe they'll understand."

"Oh, Daddy," his mom cautioned, but when Brock went to school, she reconsidered.

"Really?" her husband said. "Mail it where? I just said it to validate him," he grumbled. "No one's gonna study mumbling." She insisted, so he came home with the receipt and tracking number.

"Thanks," she said, putting it on the refrigerator.

Life went on. Brock hit puberty; the dreams stopped. His parents never spoke of them.

One day, a non-disclosure agreement arrived from Johns Hopkins Oncology.

"God! All those ideas wasted," her husband rued, thousands of humanity's plagues racing through his head.

Brock's Mom opened up a drawer. In it were the cassette tapes she had continued recording.

"I told you he was a genius," she said.

__________

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

For Friday, July 5, Day 187 of the 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge

366 WORDS (without A/N)

Title-accompaniment photo was AI-generated but the dreamlike epiphanies were not!

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ABOUT THIS STORY:

This is a repurposed treatment of my submission the the 3:00 AM Challenge, truncated to meet this challenge's 366-word count maximum. I know someone cognitively impaired who once told me he was happiest in his dreams, because in his dreams he was a genius. Hit me powerfully on so many levels.

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There are currently three surviving Vocal writers still participating in the insane 2024 Story-a-Day Challenge:

• L.C. Schäfer, challenge originator

• Rachel Deeming

• Gerard DiLeo (some other guy)

Read them. Support them. Pray for them. Let them keep dreaming, 366 words at a time.