Lainey found it to be true, the fact that wild, feral eyes are drawn to the movements of other wild, feral things. Her own eyes were currently attracted to the prowling's of one such thing, her ears tuned toward it’s guttural reverberations, her senses recognizing something of herself in the way the souped-up roadster crept jerkily towards her, it’s muscle flexing against it’s brakes as though anxious to pounce, the familiarity of it tickling at a salacious memory deep within her.

The car stirred some untamed thing inside Lainey which slowed her steps, allowing the danger to creep ever closer in spite of her natural predilection to flee… even wild things have a breaking point… but then a resigned willingness to either consume or be consumed halted her steps altogether until she waited, allowing the distance between she and it to close. Lainey couldn’t forget. How did one unlearn the exhilaration of lust, or the intoxication of being it’s object. God knows she had tried, but she couldn’t forget the summer heat, the youthful intrigue, the secret hidden trysts. These were, of course, the delectable parts. They were the reasons for the excitement produced within her by the approaching car, and they revealed to Lainey her long suppressed yearnings for those things, despite all that had happened.

Like it or not, Lainey Frost was possessed of a wildness.

“C’mon, Lainey. It’s just a ride home.” Gideon’s eyes were a drug boring into her own, sedating her judgement. They were a drug she had tried before and whose cravings she didn’t want to like, that she was afraid to like. The fire and ice intensity of those eyes seared through her, beautiful as they were, so that Lainey instinctively knew she must pull herself away or suffer another terrible injury as consequence for her addiction.

”What is it with you Galloway boys and these cars?“ Lainey hoped to sound cavalier, but her voice failed her, dribbling the words out meekly, barely even audibly. Lainey understood perfectly well that this specific car was no accident. Gideon had always idolized Noah, just as Noah had idolized their father. Gideon had chosen this car on purpose, and had obviously worked hard to make it just like the one Noah used to drive, the one that had killed him and had nearly killed her. “Please, Gideon.” She tried to look him in the eye, the better to get her point across, but she only melted into that crystalline, Noah-like gaze of Gideon’s.

"Damn these Galloway boys," she thought. "And damn what they did to her!"

“Please Guideon,“ Lainey found her strength. Gideon was only a boy. He was the age now which she had been at two years ago, when she and Noah had…

“I can’t. Just leave me alone, Gideon. Please leave.”

The hurt in his eyes at her rejection nearly changed her mind. Hadn’t she already hurt the boy enough? But she didn’t call out for him to come back. She couldn’t, could she? And even if she had, could he have even heard her above the sudden mechanical storm she’d wrought?

The heavy growl of the small block V-8 as the ’57 Chevy idled away was every bit as frightening as the low rumble from an unseen bear or lion would be from out of the primeval darkness. Lainey knew it to be just as deadly in fact, as she had once danced in that darkness. Cast in her father’s era the car did not look antique, not with it’s custom hood scoop, flared fenders, and chromed out racing wheels, but the Chevy’s heavy heartbeat reverberated through her, rattling her bones, and her nerves, and even her sexuality. When safely away from her, whether from anger or disappointment Lainey could not know, Gideon floored it’s accelerator, loosing 455 cubic inches of mechanical muscle strong enough and loud enough to shake loose the very pillars of Heaven. As the it’s engine roared, and it’s squealing tires spewed a towering chimney of billowing white smoke into the ethereal blue Lainey shrunk down inside herself, the sights and sounds taking her back to that night when love had lived and died for her as quickly as a meteor‘s shower ends.

Like most sixteen year old girls Lainey had once had girlfriends. She had even been somewhat popular, back before Noah. But while those girlfriends had been drawn to the football quarterback, or to the baseball boys, even back then Lainey’s eyes had been drawn to the wild things, to the things the others couldn’t understand, and feared. From Lainey Frost’s very first glimpse of Noah Galloway she‘d known exactly what it was she wanted, and who. Lainey had been standing outside the high school when his souped-up Chevy crept past her, it’s “balls of steel” engine rebellious at being reined-in beside her, spitting and sputtering it’s disgust at her. He’d stopped on account of her, brashly ducking his head for a better look through the passenger-side window. Brown, wind-blown curls splayed from beneath a ratty ball cap. A tight, greasy t-shirt and faded blue jeans completed the “motor head” look. His arm reaching out for the steering wheel had been tanned and muscled, with delicate blue veins which longed to be traced coursing down it’s length. But it was his eyes that captured her, so icy-hot that she found her heartbeat matching the spitting and sputtering angst of the Chevy’s. He’d smiled a crooked smile at her through the window, Noah had, but the smile hadn’t been necessary. She was already aware of his desire, his eyes had made sure of that. She might have climbed in then and there if he’d asked, but he hadn’t, thank heavens. No, the car had rumbled away, leaving behind a million questions and no one for Lainey to ask them of, her heart despairing of ever seeing either car or driver again.

But she should have known better. Eighteen year old boys are hungry, and must eat. It seemed that everywhere Lainey went from that day forward Noah was somehow there, too; whether parties, dances, or ballgames. Things progressed quickly from phone calls, to holding hands, to kisses, and more. Long and lanky, he took her to his home, where she also fell in love with his Uncle Benjamin, and his little brother Gideon, a sparkling-eyed fourteen year old with the same curls spilling over his forehead that Noah sported.

It had been her idea, sneaking out. They drove until they found a dirt road, and a quiet place. She and Noah made love for the first and only time on a blanket laid over a dry, sandy wash beneath a bright, low-hanging moon. They had used whispers there for no real reason as the slow, black water serpentined past. It had been soft, earthy, and innocent. They had proceeded slowly, cautiously, tree frogs and crickets urging them on from the darkness. Noah had balked in the end, afraid of hurting her, content with touching and tickling her most sensitive parts with his calloused fingertips until her body literally ached with wanting him, so that she nearly screamed at him to do it, already! And when he finally did do it, it was even better than she’d imagined, and nicer, and sweeter; his lean body rocking gently atop her softness, and then faster, yet his rigor somehow still soft in her hands, and salty to her taste, as if the tawny muscles of it were melting for her comfort… except, of course, for that tiny bit of pain that warmed her to her core, reminding her that she was now a woman.

He’d kissed her then, gazing into the shadows of her eyes as an easily rolling thunder rumbled like waves towards them from the faraway distance. ”I love you, Lainey Frost.” The words had come to her on queue, right when she’d needed them most, making her so happy she could have burst.

If only she had whispered them back. But in that youthful moment time had seemed no obstacle.

On spindly legs they’d dressed, helping one another in the darkness, giggling guiltily in their clumsiness. Their get-away car had been that lone obscene thing which shattered the stillness of the night. Her insides a-smoldering Lainey had climbed aboard him as he drove, grinding on his lap and kissing his neck, her grooves wetting his mounds through their confounded cotton clothing.

The flashing lights had been a surprise, coming as they did from nowhere. “Oh God, Noah! No! Don’t let me get caught.” But angry parents would not have been so bad.

From her perch on his lap she’d watched the lights through the back window. They were clearly pulling away from the police car when the turns became too sharp. His arms left the wheel to embrace her protectively as the car slid from the road and into a ditch, where the Chevy’s great speed sent it, and them, reeling high into the air.

She’d lost her spleen, and broken her sternum, but Lainey was comparably lucky. Still in the hospital, the funeral had gone on without her. He was completely gone to her, devoid of closure, as though Noah had never been anything more than a sweet, recurring fantasy from her youth. But then Uncle Benjamin had come by, wondering what had happened, seeing if she was ok, but she honestly hadn’t known the answers to any of his questions. She either couldn’t, or wouldn’t remember. Over time, some of the memories returned, in spits and spurts, until she longed to go to Uncle Benjamin now that some of the answers were unveiled, but it seemed that the more time ticked by, the harder that became.

On Lainey’s 18th birthday she was still grieving. Two years of ever-so-slow healing. Her school friends were already marrying the quarterbacks, and the baseball boys, while her stitches, and bones, and memories scarred over. Those girls seemed happy-as-not when observed from afar, from where Lainey watched alone as she spiraled down in her whirlpool of guilt.

And then it had all begun again, as though a wish had been granted. The car had frightened her when she first began to see it on her few sojourns about town; sleek, black, growling panther-like through the streets, or leaping and screeching when kicked, barreling from sight. It’s novelty awakened something inside her; a longing, an urge to track it’s blacktop skid marks right up to it’s very lair, where she might actually pet the beast. It frightened her because she knew her drug now, and she knew her weakness for it. And as she’d known from the start that it would, on one of her sojourns about “it” finally rumbled up behind her, a crooked smile finding her through the passenger-side window.

”Hi Lainey.” He seemed genuinely happy to see her, Noah did, as if he had forgotten what she had done. Of course the boy wasn’t Noah, but it was exactly the same, her feelings exactly the same, only the day and the year being different. The blood inside her froze, paralyzing her in memories, and desires, and shames. Those same icy-blue eyes burned her, bilging long dried-up tears to her surface. Standing there, on the outside looking in, Lainey felt the warmth of other suns, and the warmth of another’s skin in the cool of night. God, how she so longed for him to be Noah.

But it wasn’t Noah, was it. “Gideon?”

He was forced to read his name off of her quivering lips, as her voice failed her, but despite it his smile grew. She had dreaded this moment, feeling unsure about how the younger Galloway boy would react to seeing her, the girl who had killed his older brother, but Gideon seemed genuinely happy to see her.

”Yea. How are you, Lainey? We’ve missed you, me and Uncle Benjamin.”

Not trusting her voice, she constrained herself to a nervous, half-smile by way of gratitude.

”Can I give you a ride somewhere? I’d love to talk.”

Lainey was suddenly sixteen again, standing in front of the high school. She would have climbed in, if he’d only asked. From inside looking out those crystaline eyes burned into her, just as they had before. She could see the desire in them, and she felt it in herself, and she wondered if he could see it in her as she could in him. The thought broke her down so that she had to get away from him, and fast.

”C’mon, Lainey. It’s just a ride home. Can’t you trust me?”

But he had it all wrong, didn’t he? She did trust him. It was her she didn’t trust. Damn these Galloway boys, anyways! “Please Gideon, just leave me alone.”

She was still standing there, staring at nothing, holding her feelings in, tamping them down. The smell of burning rubber was still heavy around her, the shame still hot on her cheeks when another rumble found her consciousness.

Gideon had circled the block and come back. She climbed in, as he’d known she would.

It felt the same, the speed did, the exhilaration, the freedom. It was nothing for those things to toss the heaviness inside her out the opened window. For a moment she was allowed to be a girl again, with a boy. She never imagined she could have that again, what with the warm winds whipping at her hair through, her shrieks weightless upon ticklish rises and under dipping valleys, his laughs at her screams, the bluish veins on his steering arm longing to be traced.

The sun was low when the Chevy finally rumbled them to her curb. “Can I see you again, Lainey? On Saturday, maybe?”

Her mother’s worried face looked out from the window. ”It’s not a good idea.” Gideon was just a kid, though he no longer looked like one, what with his bulging biceps and chiseled features. She would have to be the smart one in this room, if there was to be a smart one.

”Of course it is. Uncle Benjamin would love to see you. So would I.”

”No Gideon. I can’t.” She climbed from the car. “Thanks for the ride.”

She was half way up the driveway when he called out to her. “See you Saturday, Lainey. I’ll pick you up at noon.”

The driveway seemed dreadfully steep as Gideon drove away. Lainey’s feet felt dreadfully heavy walking it. The house waiting at the driveway’s end seemed dreadfully domesticated, her room inside it dreadfully lonely. Her parents seemed dreadfully apprehensive, her future dreadfully docile.

They should not have let her out alone. After two years cold-turkey Lainey had tasted her drug today. Gideon had rolled up her sleeve, and had administered her cure as any good doctor or dealer would, shooting it through her veins and removing the tourniquet, releasing a rush like Satan’s pet "bat out of hell" straight to her heart.

Could she go back now? Could she ever go back after this day’s relapse? She understood her parents, and could not condemn them for their comforts and amenities. But if “they” were right, her friends and her parents, if she succumbed to their cautions, what would their caged life offer her? Roasting beef and darning socks? Could she stand so little, she who thrived on passions? Wasn’t the dullness of them just as deadly to the wildness in her spirit as his injuries had been to her body?

And if she ran, and it were to go with Gideon as it had with Noah, could she survive the trauma again? Perhaps not, but did she care? Wasn’t one form of death the same as another? For two years she had tried it their way, and where was she now? Sad, broken, lost in yesterday and the rush he had given her. Was the spirit pumping through the beating heart not as crucial to it as the blood was? She’d had just a taste, but after today she knew that the spirit was as crucial, and she knew now what it was she needed.

Damn those Galloway boys, and what they did to her.

Yes... she knew exactly what she needed. At noon this Saturday, come hell or high water, Lainey Frost would be ready and waiting.

At first there was only sleep. Deep sleep. The deepest of sleeps. His heart rate slowed and slowed until his body, for all intents or purpose, lived no more. He saw the body there on the table. His body. Dead. He was dead. He watched the body as he drifted away, untethered from it. He watched it get smaller, and smaller. He watched it not because he cared what happened to it, but because he did not want to turn. He did not want to know what was behind him, what it was that awaited him next. He did not want to know what the answer was to the only real question.

But then he did turn. Slowly. Something far away called to him and he turned, something from the darkness. Deep inside that darkness was a pinpoint of light. It was unwillingly that he moved toward the pinpoint, but he did not walk, as there were no feet on no ground. There were no arms to swing, there was no voice to sing. There was nothing; a vacuum. He could still be analytical! It was a vacuum! He clung to that, clung desperately because he had thought of it. He had thought it!

“I think, therefore I am.”

Had there been a mouth, it would have smiled. He had remembered his Nietsche. He was still him. He could still remember!

The light was closer, only it was no longer light. It was colors now. Prismatic and bold colors. Rainbow colors wrapping around him, embracing him, touching every part of whatever it was that was him. Warm and wet were the colors, like lotion caressing, squeezing him inside, like vaginal walls pulling. Like wet, warm vaginal walls massaging, and squeezing him inside to a place that he did not even know that he could not have resisted.

Had he a mouth it would have kissed. Had he a dream, the dream would be this.

And then it was done. And then he was there, where the ears are music, and the eyes light. There, where the mind was wonder, and where, with the body gone, nothing else could ever matter.

Dr. Abel Cane had come full circle; born of the Mother, taught to suffer, and returned to the Father.

When I was a kid I was afraid of Johnny Cash. His music hit like a storm, so that the mere mention of his name was enough to conjure up black clouds and whirling winds in my childish mind. I didn’t know him, had never even met him, but when a girl in my class said she was related to him it was enough to send chills down my back. Country music was what my family tuned-in to in those days, and Johnny Cash was country music (all others, to include the hillbillies before and after, being mere imposters). Such was the living legend of “The Man in Black” down where I am from.

It wasn’t the prison associations he fostered that frightened me, nor his priestly black, frock coats, nor his towering physical presence, nor even the deep bass of his voice, although any of those things could be scary enough in their own rights to a seven year old. It was his aura that unnerved me. It was the reverent way that people I knew and respected spoke about him, as though Johnny Cash was the Resurrection itself, or worse, that he might have actually sprung from that other place that we were not allowed to talk about. Johnny Cash seemed larger than life back in the early 1970’s, and capable of any and everything. For instance, my Memaw would say with certainty to everyone gathered around her television set that Johnny Cash was the very devil himself come up from Memphis, and this as she sang and clapped along to he and Mother Maybelle picking out the Wildwood Flower. How is a child to process such oxymoroneous (I just invented that word) behavior?

Later, when I was in my thirties, my wife and I moved to Hendersonville, Tn., where Johnny and June had a house on the lake. I saw them while shopping at the local Lowe’s one day, she carrying a list as she scurried up and down the aisles, he struggling to keep up on the little electric handicapped cart, his bowed head humble and gray. Any unresolved fear I harbored was lifted at the sight of it, he being so obviously near his end, and yet I felt that same shiver I’d felt when my little classmate, Angie Cash, had told us all so long ago that she was somehow his kin. I never would have believed that day in Lowe’s that Johnny could somehow survive June, and looking back on it I wish he hadn’t. Her death left him even more broken than the turncoat, ”keep up with the times” country music industry had.

Johnny is gone now, and it is still debatable which direction he traveled from Tennessee, north or south, but he left behind a discography of greatness to remember him by; a plethora of songs to remind us in their simplicity and lyric, from rockabilly to gospel, that our time here on Earth is short, just as his was, and that there is something worth considering after… maybe even something to fear.

Just how high is that water, Momma?

We are trapped in a room with Susi_Trash, who wields a blood-dripping, 12” dagger in either hand while spinning, twirling and slashing them ninja-like. ”One more comment with a freakin’ <3 heart and I’ll kill the stupid man!!!”

As I look around me, I swallow hard; Mariah, dctezcan, Mnezz, and MeeJong.

I am in real trouble here!

So this is where the years wind up? This is where it ends?

The man crouched on the stool atop the stage touches the strings with delicate if resilient fingers, but the tattered Marshall on which his boot rests beside him doesn't care. The Marshall likes it loud, just as the Gibson connected to the amp does, and just as the old rocker who cradles the classic guitar to his breast does. And just like the other two, the aged amp still works fine, which it proves by ejecting the single chord through the “business end” of it’s speaker like a well-tuned cannon’s blast. The lonely chord reverberates through the practically empty room, an amplified clarion call of Axeman, Gibson and Marshall, but the few paired-up people in the bar are inattentive, all but one. In the harsh glow of the footlights his fingerprints and sweat streaks besmudge the guitar’s fire-burst design, soiling it, the same as the man’s blue jeans are soiled, and the boots beneath them. His hair is long and unwashed, and his beard, and his shirt tails hang too long as well, (the tails left untucked so as to hide the unwelcomed paunch above his biker belt). The man appears very comfortable in his place upon the stage, comfortable being spotlighted in the skuzziness surrounding him, glowing in the raunchy smells and dim lights made dimmer still through his dark glasses, and through his hazy, three-quarters of the way there drunk.

He steals a moment to read the room. He could take that single chord he’d opened with in a myriad of directions. His catalog is extensive, overflowing with both self-written and cover songs, but he waits before continuing, counting heads. He’d drawn seven people. Seven. Not so long ago he’d drawn 17 thousand. Or maybe it was “so long ago,” considering how the world had changed in that seemingly short amount of time? In any event, this must be where it all really ends, he thinks, all of the rehearsing, and travelling, and playing. He is down to an audience of seven.

Hidden behind the glasses his eyes pick out the only one in the tiny audience who is paying attention. He begins to play nothing in particular to that one, just old finger exercises he’d invented long ago when learning to play, tricks designed to impress, but “nothings” which also allowed him the freedom to take flight in a million different directions, just as the single chord had. It is an old game to him, showing out, a game he plays very well.

She is young, the one paying attention; dark eyed and olive skinned. Big, frizzy hair and sandaled feet stick out either end of a long, shapeless, hippy-looking dress. He can imagine her with actual flowers in her hair, can remember other girls just like her, in other times. She is the sort he used to easily have. He wonders if he still can. Looking at her, he decides on an old song, but a goodie; a song that the girl might even have heard before, written by his favorite songster, way back when. Even if the songs are dated, you can never go wrong playing Kris. Once the song is decided the man in the spotlights begins searching for a jumping off spot from his riffs and rips. Finding one, his transition is seamless into a finger-picked intro in the key of E.

He has chosen the song for her because she has reminded him of it, she has the “look” of it, so he is disappointed when she throws back her drink and stands, but she doesn’t leave, as he half expects her to. On the contrary, she makes her way over to the one step stage, climbs aboard, and without asking for permission pulls the microphone from it’s chrome stand. Intrigued and up for anything, the man slides into the opening chord, nodding her along with him into the song.

She must be Capricorn, he thinks. Her voice is deep, sultry, much smoother than Janice’s, reminding him for some reason of silent snowflakes touching down in a wooded, gray, and wintry world. She keeps it simple, which he appreciates, singing the song as it is meant to be sung, though her lyrics are not quite right;

Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waitin’ for the trains

I’s feeling nearly faded as my jeans

Bobby thumbed a diesel down, just before it rains

It rode us all the way to New Orleans

She is good, so he tones and tunes down, allowing her room to work.

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose

And nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain‘t free

He joins in where she needs a push, his harmony mixing nicely and naturally with her melody, even though his voice is unamplified. His fingers fill in the breaks, running free at the song’s high point while she lays low, a soft and mournful hum in contrast to the bedlam which Janice’s crescendoes had made famous at this point in the song;

La la la, la da la da, la dee la dee la dee la…

His smile remains inside. An experienced poker player, he knows when to bluff. Hers is on the outside, where he can see it, glowing brightly as the song nears it’s end. They have found something, this old man and this girl; a connection that only music or lovemaking can allow two strangers to share. He wonders if one might lead to the other?

When the final notes tinkle from the amp, in that briefest of moments before the spatter of unexpected applause, while respectful silence still reigns supreme, the two of them share a look, both seeing something fascinating in the other, and wondering “what could have been?” The startled few at their seats, they who have only now realized that they had just unwittingly witnessed one of those special, unforgettable moments in life that are oh-so difficultly found, rise and begin to clap. As she hands him back his microphone he notices her wetted cheek, and longs to swipe it away with a hopeful thumb.

“Thank you, Dad. I‘ve always wanted to sing that with you.”

With that she walks away, leaving him suddenly older, sober, and even more alone.

“Dad?”

Can this be where the year's wind up? Is this where it all ends?

Not on your fuckin’ life, it’s not. The guitar man lovingly lays his smudged instrument down atop the well-travelled amp and leaps a little too exuberantly from the one step stage, so that he is forced to limp hastily through the maze of tables in his pursuit...

(For my friends, TheEnigmas... "words, words, words of shame.")

I know exactly what you mean when you say you don’t like dogs. My dog General Sherman doesn’t like dogs either. He especially doesn’t like all the butt sniffing, although he will get carried away on occasion, particularly with that cute little doodle dog down the road, but he’s always ashamed of himself after, you know, when he drops down to the olfactory level. But then we all have moments we are not proud of, don’t we?

But then, The General is not your typical dog. In fact, he is a-typical in that he not only considers himself above other dogs, but above humans as well. No small part of his uppitiness stems from his law degree, which he shamelessly acquired just to prove a point to me, and he managed to gain admittance without even bothering to learn to read. You see, he convinced the registrar at Tulane that she was being discriminatory by not letting him in. To prove it, he asked her to look up the percentage of enrollee’s identifying as trans-canine (he is snipped, you understand), and the bleeding heart blue hair not only admitted him after finding that the actual number was zero, but she offered him a belly rub as well! (He is his father’s dog.)

But he had to finish his studies online, as I would not let him take the truck down. That and he suffers anxiety when separated from Pooky-Bear. The online courses proved easy enough for him, as he is a very smart dog. Most of the exams were multiple choice, and General Sherman quickly picked up that the longest answer on multiple choice questions is always the right one. It’s college y’all, not rocket science. Everything else he needed to know about the Bar he learned by watching Orson Welles in the 1959 classic, “Compulsion,” (which is also where The General gained his penchants for mustaches, cigars and smoking jackets).

But anyways, like most graduates today The General now owns his doctorate, the prerequisite $600k in debt that comes with it, and his unemployment benefits, which should take care of his loans by the time he is 70 (in people years. For those slower at math, that is 490-ish in dog years), so of course Sherman is praying for a Sleepy Joe second term college debt bailout, which places him on the wrong side of my conservative political leanings, but those damned colleges are indoctrinating them all these days.

Sheesh, if it wasn’t for all of that stupid college debt he figures he could have had his own bass boat by now… and a Target swimsuit for his Olympic qualifier! (If you missed that post, General Sherman has decided to swim as a female, as it not only improves his chances of a gold medal, but the women’s suits fit his tail better.)

But anyways, I digress. The fact of the matter is, since transitioning the General no longer has much use for other dogs, and would just as soon they stayed the hell out of his yard and off of his television, as every time they appear it drives him up the freakin’ wall.

And truthfully, it does me too. Stupid dogs.

The six of us convinced ourselves that the steaming hot shower vapors would sweat away the alcohol which threatened our early morning exams, so we donned towels, rolled a joint, and sprawled ourselves across the bathroom floor’s mosaics.

The party was crashing until Carol (petite and pretty), with one plain white towel wrapping her torso and another her hair, slid her tiny feet down into my cattle boots and, without the merest trace of a smile began a graceful, if jocose “Chopiniana” while the rest of us accompanied her with Squeeze’s, “Black Coffee in Bed.”

The stain on my notebook

Remains all that’s left

Of the memory of late nights

And coffee in bed.

Oh, now she’s gone…

Three boys, three girls. If any of us somehow did not love Carol before that night, we certainly did ever-after.

Who needs lion tamers, or trapeze flights of fancy?

Call them all back, and send in the clowns!

I learned the horrors of prescience at the very moment I discovered I was gifted with it.

She was a childhood friend, a year younger. There happened to be a pause in our rambunctious play, a pause just long enough, and our play just close enough, that we accidentally found ourselves looking into one another’s eyes. Being children, the staring itself became the game; exploring each other’s souls inside them, daring ourselves to venture deeper while at the same time being revealed. We passed that point where one laughs to hide their discomfort, or looks away, and we continued even longer, her winded breath so close that I could feel it on my chin, and on my moistened lips. It was then that I saw who she really and truly was, and she me. And it was then that I knew.

“You are going to die.” I whispered.

“I know.”

“What will you do?”

She answered the only way a child could answer when the question is so fearsome as death. “Hide.”

When I left her that day I never saw my childhood friend again.

“Robert?” My mother called from the foyer. “Alicia’s parents can’t find her. Do you know where she is?”

“No Momma,” I lied.

But it did find her, even where we had so carefully hidden her; inside that big old trunk down in her basement, covered between the musty old clothes and things, the heavy cedar top closed and latched.

There’d been death in my friend’s eyes that day. There is no hiding from that.

It was the oddest thing, this feeling she woke up with, a feeling so much better than just a good night’s sleep. The feeling seemed to have come right out of the night’s ether as she slept, entering along with her breath. The strangest part of it was… she did not dislike the feeling. In fact, she laid there a good while reveling in it.

Outside her window it was still dark. Thinking back, Liza couldn’t remember the last time she’d been up before light, at least not since those Christmas mornings when she was a kid. Her memory replayed pictures of one of those Christmas mornings, surprising her with how bright and shiny the images remained after all these years; the colored lights, the empty cookie plate with it’s half-finished milk glass, and the myriad of gifts, both wrapped and pre-assembled ones, which awaited she and her sister. Smiling was a novelty Liza rarely experienced anymore, but the thought of her poor father up all night, putting together all those doll houses, and EZ Bakes, and bicycles brought a big one right up! She even chuckled, thinking of how he, not the handiest of men, must have dreaded the days leading up to Christmas Eve. God, she had loved him! It was a shame, their falling out, but he was so old fashioned that he just couldn’t see the world the way it was today, the way Liza saw it.

And the old movies her mother used play every Christmas morning! Mother had always loved movies, and had drug her girls to all of the newest ones, splurging on popcorn, soft drinks, and candies that you couldn’t get anywhere else. How special those Saturdays had seemed! Liza had gone to see a movie just last weekend, but it hadn’t been the same. The theater was mostly empty. Of course, the movie was pretty lousy and the acting even worse, but the message had been important, and that was something. You would think that all those talented people in Hollywood could make a good movie with a modern message. Surely equity and diversity were stronger social constructs to build on than the joys of Christmas… were they not?

The sun was just peeking through the blinds when she heard the coffee pot click on. Liza waited for the familiar aroma to work it’s way through her tiny apartment before sliding out of her warm sheets. As she poured she thought about that new guy at work, the one who had taken to bringing her a papercup full every morning since finding out that Liza drank hers with just a touch of hazelnut, the same way he liked it. It must be costing him a fortune, buying two at that snooty coffee shop every morning. She should give him a few bucks next time, but she really couldn’t afford it every morning and wished he would just stop. It was nice of him, though. She couldn’t imagine what had started him doing it? Hell, he barely knew her and probably wouldn’t like her if he did.

But the new guy was still on her mind as she eased herself into the shower, checking the water’s temperature. He’d taken to having his lunch with she and Sophie, the new guy had. Of course, they only allowed it because he mostly just listened, although he did interject occasionally. His interjections were usually pertinent, though. He was pretty smart in a goofy, clueless kind of way, even if Sophie did usually make fun of him after he had gone. Of course, Liza teased about him too, but only because Sophie did.

Funny, that odd feeling was still with her when she stepped out of the shower. Liza was surprised to find herself humming. She never hummed! Especially not in the morning, but she didn’t stop! She was still humming when she wiped the circle of haze from the mirror and examined herself. Nothing looked much different but that whisper of a smile on her lips… but no. She couldn’t be smiling, could she? She was all alone, and it was first thing in the morning. Jesus, she was fucking losing it. But smiling or not, waking up early had left her with some extra time, so Liza spent it on her hair. She even applied some eye liner and lipstick. Just a wee bit, but enough to give her a glow. Sophie would get a kick out of that!

The ride into work was uneventful. Well, other than that song that came on the radio. The song took her back to her high school days, cruising the strip with Allie and Beth. She should call them up sometime, just to say hi. She would love to know how they were doing. It had been so long since she’d seen them though, and all Beth and Allie had wanted to talk about was boys, and marriage, and babies. How cliche. They had no idea about what was really important in this modern world. The trio’s old favorite still had Liza singing along however. She even caught herself at a stoplight shimmying to the beat. She glanced around to ensure that no other motorists had seen her. What in the world was she doing? She wasn’t a kid anymore, so why did she suddenly feel like one?

At her desk “He” stopped by with coffee, as had become his custom. “Hey, you look great this morning!”

”Do I?” One of her eyebrows raised quizzically. If that was his reason for bringing her coffee he was shit out of luck.

He was smart enough not to push that too hard. “Say, you want to meet for dinner?”

”Sure, me and Sophie are going at 11:00.”

”No, not lunch. Dinner.”

”You mean, like a date?”

”Yea. I’d really like to talk, to get to know you better.”

”You would?” She said it with some disbelief. She was not the type that guys asked to dinner, or wanted to get to know better.

”Yea,” he said. “I really would.”

Shit! Why did his smile have to be so fucking cute?

Her heart reminded her that it was still down there, never-minding her head as it gave a great forward leap, blurting it out before her mind had time to think the offer through. “Sure, I guess.”

”Awesome! Gotta run! See you at lunch?”

”Yea. See you then.”

When he was gone Liza could not temper her excitement. Her hands were actually shaking! She wondered if she should tell Sophie? No, Sophie would think she’d lost her mind. And maybe she had lost it? How else could she explain her morning, with all of this “allowing herself to feel happy” shit?

But she did feel happy. And she liked it. Maybe she could share the feeling? Should she dare? On a whim Liza took out her phone and texted her father. “Do you mind if I come by this weekend? Just to hang out?” That would shock the shit out of him!

“Hallelujah!“ The reply was incredibly quick. “I’ll make chili.”

Uh oh! Liza couldn’t resist texting back, hoping it wouldn’t ruin everything. “No meat?”

Again with the quick reply. “No meat.” Followed by a smiley-face imogee. Her dad used an imogee? Ugh!

“Isn‘t this the craziest thing,“ Liza thought. “Waking up not woke?”