The Dreamer’s Nightmare
I was frantically seeking asylum in a land renowned for kind-hearted Giants but found horror instead. The Giants were “cleansing their land of all lesser life,” maniacally self-replicating and seeking immortality to “last forever.” A Supreme Council of Sorcerers bestowed immortality upon the Giants with one absolute condition; “You must spare The Plant Kingdom!“
After becoming immortal, the Giants grew even more arrogant. They disregarded the Supreme Council’s Decree and continued to indiscriminately exterminate animals and plants. The Sorcerers were furious but could not reverse their grant of immortality. Instead, they shrunk the Giant bodies to minuscule size, morphed their little arms, legs, and faces into ugly crablike creatures, and called them “Cancers.”
The miniscule Cancers were undeterred. They invaded and killed animals and plants by replicating wildly within their hosts and remained immortal. The Sorcerers responded by arming plants (only plants) with formidable defenses against Cancer. If Cancers invaded plants, they either retreated or perished.
I plucked a leaf from a plant and pleaded before the Supreme Council of Sorcerers. “What about humans? We suffer, too. My sister is dying from Cancer.” The Council decreed. “Humans are Animals. You are unworthy! Go back where you came from.” With one puff, they blew me back to my cancer-ridden sister, leaf still in hand.
I placed the leaf in boiling water and drank the brew directly above Nadia’s body. Within seconds, vines sprung from my chest, entwined my dying sister, and embraced her with healing red, white, and blue leaves. Fleshy lumps of Cancer squeezed from her skin and coalesced into a jellied star-spangled mass that hovered above me. I reached up, drew the cancerous mass into my pounding chest, and awoke in a sweat.
There was a loud pounding on my front door. Armed ICE agents in police uniforms had come to arrest and deport me as an undocumented immigrant. Just a week earlier, my sister Nadia, a nurse, had been arrested at work and deported. I handed them a letter issued by the US citizen and Immigration Services–Form I-797– certifying the approval of my DACA request and deferral of deportation. I also held up my Diploma from MIT and insisted, “I am here lawfully.” They backed off, but one of them scoffed, “Not for long, Dreamer.”
As a Dreamer, my nightmare was rooted in the constant fear of deportation. But as an MIT graduate in plant biology, that nightmare sparked an epiphany: the same chemicals that give plants cancer resistance could be transformed into drugs to treat cancer in humans. The ICE raid on my home was the catalyst that drove me to make it happen. I am just as worthy of being here as anyone else.
Arthur Pitchenik
Arthur Pitchenik is a retired professor of medicine with a lifelong love of storytelling and sharing experiences. Since retiring, some of his stories have been published in Tall Tale TV, Literally Stories, Fabula Argentea, and Flash Fiction Magazine, with one forthcoming in After Dinner Conversation. His poems have appeared in The Annals of Internal Medicine (Ad Libitum section) and The Anthology of College Poetry.
