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 Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 5:57 am
Dreaming With Dolphins / Lindsay /
I am alone. I am cold. It is a wonder to roam the quiet of the hallways. Someplace so noisy, so filled with chaos and life suddenly becomes an ominous and silent path. Papers and books lay strewn across the floor, flotsam of the passing storm. They are the only drops of blood left in this empty vein.
Except for me. I’m still here. No one seems to see that I am still here.
I feel like I’m swimming.
No. Drowning.
I think that I’m drowning.
/ Anthony /
I never can quite understand the journeys our on which our mind takes us. I’ve heard thoughts described as a train. I think mine crashed somewhere in between the cerebellum and the cerebral cortex. For as hard as I try, I can never seem to keep it on one track.
I’m sorry; that made no sense. I’m no good with metaphors. I’ll just give you the facts. And only the facts.
My mind will sometimes drift and flash out different images. There are composed of little pieces that I don’t recognize. And when my mind takes me there, almost no time passes before I come back.
I will be sitting in a quiet classroom, taking notes on a teachers lecture. Then suddenly…
/ Mud sinks between my toes as a woman washes clothes along the river. I turn the gold coin over in my hands, feeling the cold metal against my skin. /
And then I’ll be back, the teacher on the same word, the same syllable on that I had left. It’s concerning, to say the least. Even now in the library, I await my next moment when I will be taken away, if only for a moment.
Perhaps my mind is trying to tell me something. Or perhaps something poisonous has infected my brain. Perhaps it was something that…
/ The floors fill with water. The Dolphins are trying to take me away. All breathing stops, for a solid second. I’m drowning. /
/ Lindsay /
The sky is recharging again. I think it’s only raining because it has fallen into the habit. Like crying because you have cried for so long. Or laughing just to feel. The rain is falling in sheets. However, it is anything but a blanket.
God wants to flood us out again. Someone call Noah. Someone call the Dolphins. Tell them I need them. Tell them I want to go home. They need to save me. Tell them I’m a damsel in distress.
But it is still raining. I stare down at the ground to watch as drops hit the existing puddles. This was once a field of clover. Now it is a marsh. In the deep pools, clovers sit at the bottom, writhing and straining for the surface. They are lonely.
So the storm clouds drop fish for the ponds opening up around me. They glow many colors as they swim in their new surroundings. Blues and pinks and greens and yellows, all dance amongst the clover and grass. I bend my knees to watch them.
The fish don’t even remember the world they came from. They adapt so easily. I feel a pang of envy in my throat. I hardly understand this world, and I have been it much longer than they. Maybe that’s made me understand it less.
I miss my home. Someone save this princess from her tower.
The sky spits one fish onto the grass. The clouds let it flap hopelessly as it strains for a place where it can swim. It wants to be with the other fish. It knows that when the rain stops, it will be stranded, dying and alone. It pulses purple light as a scoop it into my hands.
The rain has drenched me to the core. But their rainbow lights paint me warm.
Lightning flashes. Thunder rolls. The bell rings. This courtyard floods with students as they rush to their homes. I drop my friend so he can swim free. All the fish scatter to the corners of my mind, afraid that anyone would know that they existed.
But they were there.
I am still here.
/ Anthony /
Study hall is over. It’s finally time to go home. I grab my bags and head out through the library doors. My hear sinks as I see that it is pouring buckets. People run to the busses, their backpacks high over their heads. I join them.
But as the flocks run, a girl stands still. She is pressed against the sidelines, watching us. The rain has plastered her hair to her face, her clothes to her skin. She had been out here for a while. She stands in the puddles, holding her hands cupped together. She looks at their contents for only a moment.
Her eyes are ice blue. She catches my gaze. Her smile is steady and whole. She catches my breath. She separates her hands and let a stream of water fall down. I see something shimmer brightly as it falls. A bright blue fish splashes into the pools of rain.
/ “What are these?!” I ask with childlike wonder. The Woman looks at me and she smiles. I watch the river, pointing as colored lights rush by.
“Fish,” she laughs, “They sparkle like rainbows, don’t they honey? Aren’t they pretty?”/
Where do fish sparkle like rainbows? Where can they be that beautiful? I look back at the girl, but she is walking away. The fish is gone.
What’s happening to me?
/ Lindsay /
He saw me. The Only Other One saw me. I think that means it’s almost time. Time to go home.
/ Anthony /
I can’t get her out of my head. It was her eyes. Or her smile, perhaps. Actually, that was a lie. It was the fact that she was holding a glowing fish. Normal girls don’t do that. It was disturbing. I need to get home. I need to sleep. I hope I don’t dream; dreams complicate things.
/ Lindsay /
I walk without an umbrella. The rain is fine by me. Others like me say rain reminds them too much of the Descent. I’m not afraid. If something wants to take me away, the Dolphins will come for me.
Someone else needs them too. That’s the Only Other One. He’s the only other one like me in the school. He’s the only one who can see the bits and pieces that our old world left behind.
I splash a puddle and let the mud fly. His memories are the wet dirt that scatters. They are now just bits and pieces of a whole puddle. He doesn’t remember our home.
I spin in circles to catch the rain. However, now it’s slowing to a stop. The clouds are rolling out. Yet I believe that they will return before too long. They have done that lately.
It’s an omen, you know.
The Dolphins are coming back for us.
To take us back to our dimension.
I’ll restore his memories before then. I want to return home. But I’m not going back alone. It’s a promise.
/ Anthony /
/ The Woman has my eyes. The piercing blue-green color that has won me attention. She takes me in her arms and I play with her hair. I want down. She won’t put me down, “The mud you’d get on your clothes,” she explains, “It will take too long to get out.”
She had just down a load of clothes. She didn’t want to do it again. I immediately understood the minute I looked at her. I curled in her arms as silver lights danced above me. They were wisps of mist that swam in the skies. The Dolphins. The Woman always told me they protected us.
Then why do I feel this terrible shiver whenever I look to the sky? /
/ Lindsay /
Today the sky is blue and sunny, but there are still clouds lining up in the distance. All this talk about weather is a very British thing to do, I think. Of course, I’m not British. I’m not anything.
He’s not anything. Here he comes. He is walking on the sidewalk; I’m sitting in the grass. I shift my bare feet through the field, fresh from the rain of the day before. He walks by in his tennis shoes. His eyes sparkle with unnatural brightness. Just like mine. Our home was sewn with the threads of rainbows. We used to have colored light pump through our veins.
Now it’s all so gray. We are all so black and white, only shimmers of our light remains, in our eyes.
“Hello.”
/ Anthony /
“Um, hi,” I cough up, as though it were somehow stuck in my throat. It was the girl from before. Her hair is a muddy blonde, her dress a plain coral. The sunlight through the tree she’s sitting under makes her face look green, but it isn’t repulsive. She looks very natural. Like…
Like…what does she look like?
Where are my bursts of time when I actually need them, “Some weather,” I weakly say to her.
“Talking about weather is very British,” she informs me.
Good to know. However, “I’m not British,” I say quickly, looking around for my friends. We are supposed to meet here in a little bit. I’ve never been one to be late. I usually like to be early to have some minutes to myself. With weather like this, could you really blame me?
“No. You aren’t,” she smiles. It’s a toothy, conniving smile. I don’t like it. In fact, I am certain that I hate it, “Do you ever think that the sky will betray you? Do you sometimes think that the sun will be replaced with rain clouds permanently? We’ll all drown. Just like…”
“Noah’s ark,” I say quickly, looking out past the field and towards the playgrounds. There are two girls on the swings. They could be my age or they could be younger. It is a little hard to tell. Fortunately, that doesn’t matter. I pretend I know them anyway. I wave my hands at them, hoping they don’t think I’m crazy, “I have to go,” I say quickly, looking back at her.
Then I walk, “Lindsay,” she says loudly as I begin to walk over the sidewalk and towards the playground, “My name is Lindsay.”
“Anthony Burgess,” I say quickly, looking back quickly. It is rude just to not introduce yourself. Never mind that; I stumble away. I don’t look back after that.
/ Lindsay /
Anthony Burgess. Perhaps it wasn’t the name I would have expected. However, it is what I have to work with. A name is enough.
A shimmer of light passes through the sky. It is quicker than a cloud, colder than mist. It is a Dolphin. Not the ones from the oceans that drowned my home and my people. The Dolphins who saved me. The ones who watched my people.
They are the ones who will bring me back home. But it doesn’t see me. It is still swimming. Come back! I try to call it to me. It does not hear me. It becomes clearer than ever before. Clearer than the day: I need the Only Other One.
Maybe the Dolphins will hear me then.
/ Anthony /
I still can’t shake her out of my head. I try to block her eyes out with my mind. I try to erase her words with my ears. I even try to physically get her presence out by shaking my head. She’s still there.
Drowning, she mentioned. Do I ever feel afraid of drowning?
It’s the only fear I’ve ever had.
/”Please save him!” the woman shouts. She doesn’t care about herself. She only cares about me, her son. The water is not a crystal blue. It’s a silver-gray, just like the waters of Earth. The white shimmers of life, the Dolphins swim around us, taunting us.
She’s handing me over to them. I scream. They wrap around me. I feel something cold escape me. My life here is disappearing. My mother is being taken under water. I’m being taken far above the surface.
To a new world, say the Dolphins. /
I’ve always been afraid of drowning.
/ Lindsay /
I’ve had it with guessing and referring and inferring. Games were never my strong suit. They say I’m a sore loser. Of course, I’m also a sore winner. So its best I don’t play. I’m not playing now.
I’ve given him hints. I’ve given him clues. If he can’t remember, I’ll have to tell him.
He’s in the library for study hall everyday. Or at least that’s what this copy of his schedule says. And computers never lie.
/ Anthony /
It was a long weekend. I can’t believe that I’m happy to say that I’m happy to be back in school. There is too little to do during Saturdays and Sundays. There is too much time to think about things. I run things over and over again in my mind until they have been eroded down to pebbles.
It’s kind of like what I am doing right now. At this very moment in the library, I am rubbing my thoughts together until they mean nothing anymore.
/ Lindsay /
“Ever heard of Atlantis?” I ask him, leaning over into his chair. He covers his mouth, perhaps in surprise. He gasps for breath for a second and turns around. His eyes still look as though he is devoid of air. They are spread so wide that his eyebrows almost reach his hairline. I giggle. Admit it, you would too, “Are you okay?”
“Lindsay, right?” he asked, breaking into a smile. I don’t like his smile. There are some people on Earth who should just keep their mouth shut. He is certainly one of them, “What about Atlantis?” he then asks, although I’m fairly certain I made the “what” very clear just a second ago.
“Have you heard of it?” I repeat. I learn over his shoulder and begin typing on the computer he’s at. I’ve never been a fan of computers, but I knew how to work it. Technology runs our lives. Without it, we would be lost, having to take it all the way back to square one. Although it often turns out to be beneficial in retrospect, square one is a terrible place to be when you’re standing in it.
He nods and raises an eyebrow. I wish I could raise one eyebrow at a time; I can’t, “It was a fictional city that was drowned by the oceans," he then says, clearly not wanting to talk to me. He's trying to chase me away, is he? Well it won't work. Not that easily anyway.
"It drowned," I then repeated. Washed over in water. Just like him. Just like me. Or at least, we started to drown. I pull up the web page I was looking for, "Children of Atlantis. They were the survivors. The ones who were pulled from the waters and sent to Earth. They are waiting to return, once the flood waters have been pulled away."
"Interesting," he says blankly. I can see recognition go off in his eyes. However, he is clearly still skirting around the issue. But you can't make me go away. I am a parasite that will suck your disbelief right out of you, until there is nothing left within you but the truth, "But the rumors say that Atlantis sunk centuries ago. You can't tell me the 'survivors' are still alive. This is clearly a hoax site. Or something pulled together by a bunch of delusional kids. And why's a girl like you interested in this stuff anyway?" he asks, a rather rudely. His tone of voice is not called for at all.
"Dolphins," I finally say, "They were rescued by Dolphins. Not the kind that swim in the sea. The spirit kind that watched over their people. They were possessed by the creatures upon their rescue, the memories of their old home buried deep in their mind. The Dolphins would come to retrieve them once the home is restored and their memories repaired. Until then, the Children must live," I say, pointing at the text on the website, as though I had memorized it. Well, I do have it memorized. I wrote a good portion of it, after all, "From generation to generation. Born and born again. Memories growing deeper and deeper into the subconscious. Until they dwindle away."
I walk away. I have no more business with him. Not until the Dolphins come, anyway. The rest is all up to him. I hope he'll remember home. I hope he'll come with me, my Only Other One.
/ Anthony /
She's weird. So weird. She should have been born into the body of some girl with thick glasses and frizzy hair, and not the beach hippie she is. Maybe she was like that in years past, in her old bodies. What am I saying? I am imagining again, aren't I? Well I'm sorry. I told you that I would only give you the facts. Just what is happening around me and nothing more or less. And nothing strange can happen here.
Then why is the ceiling cracking? Slowly, at first. There are a few cracks. No one else seems to notice. They widen and spread, engulfing the entire library ceiling. Water begins to drip in. It's cold and quick, covering the carpeted floor and sending all of the computers into sparks.
It's up to my ankles. My knees. My thighs. Before long my throat, my eyes, and my words would be covered in water. Everything I know will be drowned. Everything will become something that I don't recognize anymore.
I have to find her. I rush out of the library, the water draining into my mind. It is all in my mind. But the memories are flooding back to me. I can taste the food I once had. I can feel my mother’s arms around me. I need to find Lindsay. I dash out of my chair and run towards the library doors.
She’s walking down the falls. I don’t need to call out her name or any of that. She turns around simply from the sound of my heavy footsteps. And all I can say is, “I’m one of them, aren’t I? A child of Atlantis.”
/ Lindsay /
“Of course you are Idiot,” I say through a huge smile. He doesn’t smile. Good thing. His smile is such a shame.
There are streams of light flooding through the windows of the school. Dark clouds speckle the sun, but the sun prevails. Wisps of light float through the sky. I look at him, who is staring through the windows as well. I grab his hand, “Time to go.”
“Is this a mass awakening? Is it everyone at once?” he asks me as we run through the halls. No security guard can slow us down. We’re racing towards the outside.
I shake my head. “Only when we find someone to travel home with, do they come. One child isn’t enough for the Dolphins to make their trip,” I whisper, looking at the sky. This is no hallucination. This is not a fragmented memory. They are coming. We’re going home.
/ Anthony /
What if they are the enemies? What if this cold feeling is the slow kiss of death? What if we are going to another kind of home? They swirl around us as soon as we exit the outside. I feel myself shake. I feel my lungs fill with air, yet I can’t breath. I must be floating. I must be dying. Really, I can’t tell where I am right now.
What if…they are trying to return us to the state we should be? We should have drowned, but we escaped. Maybe they weren’t trying to save us. Maybe they were trying to take us away the entire time. I try to tell Lindsay.
But she’s already gone. We’re already home.
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 5:59 am
Tilting at Windmills
Part Five “What you are about to see is not a mere trick,” the Great Benny Benson said to his crowd that had become larger over the months. “It is magic that the Trickster God gave to me years ago. It took many more years to learn to control it.” He waved his hand and smiled mysteriously. “May I have a volunteer?”
Petunia Peppertin, a lovely blonde in a sequined dress chose a young girl with her hand up. As the girl climbed up onto the stage, Benny thanked his new assistant with a kiss on her hand. She smiled in return. He asked for the little girl’s name. It was Janice. Her friends called her Jan. No one but Janice and Petunia could see the look in his eyes when she said this name. No one knew or ever will know what this look meant. He thanked the Trickster God for that fact in his mind.
Within a moment, Janice had disappeared behind a curtain. When the curtain dropped, not a soul could be found. The audience let out a deafening gasp. There were even cries. There were even screams.
But the minute Petunia raised and lowered the curtain again, the chaotic noise turned into a roar of applause. For little Janice was standing there with a large smile on her face, her front tooth missing. Benny almost smiled. Instead, he closed off his heart and took a bow. On stage, his normal self melted away. He was the Great Benny Benson right then.
Not even the stars could touch him, much less the army. Sure, plenty of people suggested that he use his magical talents in the war efforts. However, rules are rules and everyone knows it. He could never be drafted. Benny had never felt more secure in his life. Thus, he had never felt happier. Right?
So as a happy magician would, he bowed before the audience and they marveled at his smiles. He grabbed Petunia’s hand and dipped her down. They cheered for the greatest attraction in town. Suddenly the fear and anger bred by the war had eased, if only for that moment. If only for that moment, nothing else mattered.
Sitting in his carriage filled with his tricks of he trade, he counted the money he had made from the day’s performance. Petunia sat next to him, waiting patiently for her split of the profits. After he had given the woman her proper share, he made his way to the horse pulling the carriage and took his show to the road, as they did every night. The nomadic style was custom for performers, even though it grated on Benny. Sometimes he fancied the idea of a bed, or even a couch, to sleep on. He sometimes imagined he was in a small little cabin, no bigger than the size of a windmill and…
He shook his head, knowing it best not to let his mind wonder at the reins of the horse. He needed to stay focused and alert, for he had a show to do the next day. He couldn’t let his mind drift too far into the past, for he was afraid that it might never return.
----
Meanwhile, January Featherstone was at her kitchen window, staring out into the dark fields lit only by the moon and stars. Suddenly, a strong mixture of frustration and sadness overcame her. “It’s always a mixture,” she said through a sigh. She felt compelled to leave her home and start the life she had always dreamed of living. However, her mother’s will had left her feeling chained to the windmill, waiting for the wind to come so that she could work on her tiny farm.
Nowadays, however, she wasn’t so sure if it was just the wind that she was waiting on.
Her mix of emotions began to push her heart. She looked up at the stars and felt an overwhelming sense of enlightenment. She knew something else was out there than just stars that night. She knew that someone was up there watching over her. So she closed her eyes and whispered a small prayer, hoping that whomever was there would hear her, “Please. Bring him back. I don’t want to seem desperate. I don’t want to be a princess waiting in a tower. But…I miss him.”
And swirling in the stars, the mysterious Trickster God heard her words. Now, no one knows for sure if the Trickster God has a face or a body. However, supposed he did, he would have been grinning at that moment. He would be grinning with the pure essence of mischief on his lips.
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 6:02 am
Tilting at Windmills
Part Six The next morning was a hot and sticky one, much like the morning young Benny Benson tried to fry an egg on the ground. Still, it felt slightly different to our hero. It could have been because he was older. This was his first thought. His second thought was that it was because for the first time in his life, he didn’t feel clueless. He thought he had his life figured out.
What he didn’t know was that it was really because that the air was filled with a queer sort of magic. Of course, he did not know this. So instead of staying inside and perhaps waiting for the feeling to pass, he pulled out his stage clothes and simply looked at his assistant. He said to her, “Are you ready?”
Petunia, being a late sleeper, was not quite ready. However, knowing her duties as the faithful assistant, she had to wake up and make herself ready. She had to slap on a smile and nod, even when she wanted to crawl underneath the cheap covers Benny had bought for her.
So arm-in-arm, the pair was ready to start their street show.
Once his appearance in the town square was made known to passer-bys, he put on his hat and pulled out a handkerchief. The trick was simple: he would quickly switch the simple white cloth for a dove that he bought from an animal breeder. Then he would let the dove fly away and the crowd would be amazed.
However, the minute he flicked the handkerchief away with his slight of hand, no dove was to be found. He looked back at poor Petunia with a look that could shoot knives through anyone’s heart. She only shook her head, her eyes wide with terror and embarrassment. Benny smiled awkwardly at his audience and shook out his sleeves, hoping that something would fall out. And something did fall out: a bleeding, and certainly dead, dove. Children began to scream and cry. Benny stared at his audience in horror. He was certain that he could not have fit a dove inside of his sleeve without noticing, whether it were dead or not. He simply could not figure it out for the life of him.
He felt an odd energy surging through him as members of his audience began to peel away. That was when the Great Benny Benson had realized what had happened: overnight, the Trickster God had cursed him. It was the only explanation for the dove and the feeling. His mind began to race with one thought: he would lose his crowd.
At once, he knew he had to do something that would win his crowd back. It never occurred to him that if he was cursed, he had real magic. It never once crossed his mind that he could quit the stage and leave for good, for no army would recruit a man who could make dead doves appear out of nowhere.
No. All he said was, “Petunia, grab the curtain. Please, folks! I need a volunteer. I promise you, this will be worth it.” He begged his audience for volunteers until one young brave soul raised his hand high in the air. Petunia helped the young boy onto the stage. The Great Benny Benson cleared his throat with new confidence. This was his surefire crowd-pleaser. This was his best bet. The mysterious and incredible disappearing act.
He asked the young boy to step behind the curtain and did the trick as usual. This time, the reaction to the disappearing was even more frightened. They must have been nervous that he would become like the dove that was now being used to entertain some stray cats in the outskirts of the town square. However, they would never know what happened to him. They would never see whether his body became bloody or mangled or whether the Trickster God stole the young boy away as his personal servant.
No one would know, not even the Great Benny Benson. For no matter how many times he tried dropping that curtain, the boy never returned. He tried the carriage, where the boy would normally be taken during the trick. But he was not there. He was gone. To where, no one will ever know.
The only thing we will know about the incident was that the small crowd was outraged. Naturally, this included the boy’s rather large group of family and friends. They screamed, they shouted, they revolted against the magician. “Petunia, grab the carriage! We need to leave!”
Petunia, who never had a strong stomach for bleak situations, was already ahead of him. Unfortunately for Benny Benson, she was far too many steps ahead of him. For he heard the whinny of his horse and the rattle of his large carriage. Petunia looked back at him only once before wheeling off to leave the young man to angry masses.
“Of course,” he muttered, before doing the one thing he seemed to be ale to do without any problems: he ran. He moved his legs and feet as fast and as far as they could, with the crowd trailing behind him as fast and as far as they could. They pulled members from the village, attempting to catch the young magician as he ran. He tried to shed away his troubles, even as they trailed behind him, shouting and crying out for the young boy that he had lost in his dizzy world of magic.
Fortunately, his new magic proved to be useful, when it would work. He had a habit of touching trees and causing them to fall sometimes, which quite naturally came in handy when attempting to make a barrier between him and a mob of angry villagers.
That’s when he remembered his egg. That’s when he remembered that sometimes things don’t turn out how they are expected. That’s when he realized that times change, and you have to make room for the fits of the seasons. Or in this case, the fits of Trickster Gods.
The sun had set by the time he felt it was safe. If there was anyone with enough endurance to still be following him, they were not making it known. So he began to walk, no knowing where he was or how far he had traveled. He did not know where the nearest village was, let alone the nearest inn. He had to make due with where he was.
He sunk against a tree within the forest he was hiding in, realizing with a bitter taste in his mouth that he may have to get use to this. News travels fast around the cities and kingdoms. He feared the idea of having to move to another area, for he did not know whether he would be taken hostage as a prisoner-of-war.
He was filled with bitterness and confusion. The grass he was sitting on had died, perhaps from the magic he was given. He did not understand it. He did not want to understand it. He only felt the horrid sledge of his curse pumping through his veins. And so he cried. He cried and resolved never to leave. He resolved never to fail or hurt again.
Yes, if it were not for a break in the trees where he caught a glimpse of the sky, Benny Benson may have stayed against the tree until he died of starvation. However, he did see the sky, mottled with stars. He wondered if he could touch the stars without them falling or disappearing forever. He held his hand up for a brief second. However a second later, he pulled it down, laughing at his absurd thought.
Yet he still felt compelled to walk forward until he found a field. In that field the moon was rising into the sky. And that moon revealed a familiar windmill. And that windmill perhaps promised refuge.
His heart began to beat and his mind began to race. His blood was speeding through his veins. Yet he still stepped forward, as though his body were acting on its own. He took step after step until he found his hand knocking on the front door, his breath still until it swung open.
A lovely, yet tired-looking redhead was standing on the other side of the doorway, her big eyes wide open in what seemed to be delight and shock. She shook her head, freeing up tears that she had been holding in for far too long. She rushed to him, her arms open and ready to embrace.
The next thing Benny done may have seemed cruel. Yet in context, perhaps it was kind. He stepped back, refusing to let her touch him. He afraid that his new magic may kick in. “That seemed rude,” he said quickly. She stumbled back to her feet and nodded in agreement, her tears already drying and her face contorting to its normally sassy self. “But I can explain. You just have to let me come in.”
Despite herself, she smiled. “Maybe I’ll let you in,” she said, her accent delighting his ears. “But only if you pay me first. How does ten lene a month sound?” She put her hand on her hips and tilted her head curiously. “Oh, and I’d like to talk again about my own show, mister magician.”
His shoulders relaxed and his smile stretch from ear to ear. “I think we can talk something out,” he then said. She stepped aside, allowing him to come into the small house inside of the windmill.
And even if the new beginning for our heroes would be hard, they would stumble on. Even if the promise of unstable magic was scary. Even if the world was at war and spinning out of control, they could find solace. For we end where we began, with a lesson of life, where we learn to expect the unexpected, and make room for what life has to offer.
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 6:05 am
The Lies Roxanne Told Foreword
There is a reason and rhyme for everything we do.
There is a reason for why I am writing this pamphlet. There is a reason the people documented in this pamphlet did what they did. I could not see these reasons at first. Sometimes you have to dig, but everything comes clean in the end. We all come clean in the end.
Just remember that this was not written to entertain. Perhaps it will, but I am not telling stories or fabricating lies. Everything I tell you here is true.
-Ryan MacNeil
The First Day
There was something strange about looking at the Center for Science in the Global Interest in the flesh. I have no doubts that you could picture this building perfectly in your minds. I have confidence that you have seen this picture on the glossy pages of magazines, around blocks of text in our school’s textbooks, and in the types of newspapers that I reported for. Yet, there was something about that building that no camera lens could ever catch. It was a certain shine and gleam that made it sparkle against a blue. It was lovely, with intricate arches and slopes.
Yet it was the coldest building I have ever stepped foot in. The way it towered over you and the way the floors echoed when you stepped in the hall, it was demanding. It had no love or feeling. I did not think that way when I first entered; but as soon as I had left, those feelings rushed towards me. It was as though the building gave some sort of aftertaste that made me dislike it.
I know that sounds foolish. I was only stating what I felt. I wouldn’t want to sway your opinions. After all, what I felt was a fact. And everything I tell you here is true.
“Mister MacNeil!” a voice said pleasantly as I stood in the gaping mouth of the front hall, “It is so nice to finally meet you!” Doctor Antuan Sommers rushed towards me, with a feeble smile on his face. He was the kind of man you predicted to blow away in the wind. A girl followed behind him, his daughter Sophia. She must have been at least twelve, but she looked to be about nine.
I shook his hand without wasting any words. I have a hard time gauging human emotion, but the look in his eyes looked slightly upset from my lack of reaction. I hardly remember now, “I’m here with the Gaian Worldly Investigator to ask some questions regarding the mission to Earth,” I recited. I had corresponded with the man weeks before this meeting, but I had practiced that line far too many times not to use it.
“Yes, I am aware,” the man said, adjusting his coat, “If you would please follow me,” he said, forever with that chipper smile on his face. Sophia stared at me as I followed him. She followed me, both with her body and her eyes. It was unsettling, I’d suppose. I tried my best not look back, only catching glimpses of her through the corner of my eye. She never backed her gaze down.
“You have a reporter from the Investigator going to Earth, don’t you?” Sommers asked as he turned down the hall, entering a room. It was large and dark, with stadium seats and rows of computers. It looked just how you imagined it: high-tech, large, and built for lots of people. This was the operations room. At that moment, it was empty save for five people, all of whom were working diligently, “Do you happen to know her?”
“I do,” I said tightly, not wishing to talk more about it. This was the Roxanne I mentioned in the title of this piece. She was to send reports of what she found on Earth to the Investigator’s office, via transmitter. She never did. Not to the office, at least.
“It’s dangerous down there,” Sophia whispered, “People come from down there. They are helpless. They come up here,” she said with the wide eyes I suppose only a child could have. I wasn’t interested.
He proceeded to give me the tour of the operations room. I have documented the tour in great detail in my appropriately titled article “The Room Behind the Curtain” (Volume 134; issue 65). However, this is not a document designed to paint an image of the working quarters. These are harder facts.
After the tour was completed, Doctor Sommers left his daughter with a coworker and took me down to the break room for some coffee, “I do love coffee,” he sung to me as he heated up the coffee maker, “It is one of my favorite treats brought from Earth. Would you care for a cup?”
“Doctor,” I said carefully, shaking my head, “Is it true that you are one of the driving forces behind the Magic energy system?” I finally ask, flipping out a new sheet of paper. Ever since I spoke to this man through the transmitter, I had been itching to know the truth. I had been starving to know more about the Magic system. Everyone in the reporting world had. He decided to talk to me. This was rightfully my story to tell. This was my big break into the journalism business. As I spoke, my heart pumped with anxiety. It was the kind of anxiety I hardly ever felt.
“I am,” the man said, wandering over to a vending machine as he spoke. Doctor Sommers never traveled; he simply wandered, “Marvelous thing to be a part of,” he said dismissively. I knew at that moment that I was not getting anything out of him. The light on the coffee maker went off, followed by a small bell noise. He hardly turned around, “Fix my coffee, will you? I simply cannot decide; should I get the Tastie chips or the KingPop bar?” he asked no one in particular. Perhaps I was mistaken and he had asked me. It hardly mattered; either way, he wasn’t getting an answer.
I sighed and filled up a cup, having nothing else to say. I didn’t know if he liked cream or sugar. So I filled it the way I had always fixed it, with special ingredients from the break room cabinet. I put it on the table and he drank it, simple as that. He looked at me with that feeble smile; I suppose there was something about me that he approved of.
“Come back tomorrow,” the Doctor said to me. I stood at him and stared, pulling out my notepad once again and beginning to scribble notes, “The operations room is all well and good. However, you should see the room where we keep the artifacts from past missions to Earth. Now that’s really something!” he laughed.
That was how I was set on the path to being a regular visitor at the Center. I know it sounds crazy. I know it seems like a story people would tell their friends to make them impressed. But it isn’t. Everything I tell you here is true.
Transmissions from Earth
My transmission device began to vibrate that night, while I was sipping a cup of coffee of my own. I was mauling over the notes I had taken while in the operations room. The last thing you would ever want to mess with is a reporter working to a deadline. This goes double when it is the middle of the night and the reporter was heavily dosed on caffeine. So it is needless to say that I was not happy with the prospect of communicating with anyone, let alone Roxanne.
The device began to roll as the transmission came in, “Ryan? This is Roxy,” a female voice said through the clicks and pops and white noise. “This is coming to you from my first day on Earth. Since you are listening to this, it is safe to say that many weeks have passed,” she started.
I froze in my place. Really, there was no reason for her to be contacting me. There was no reason for her to be sending any information past the editor and straight to me. I am not a good writer and I am certainly not high on the Investigator’s food chain. I should have shut off the transmitter and crawled back to my desk. I should have turned my back and gone back to trying to make my daily dime.
But I didn’t. There is a reason and rhyme for everything we do. And whether I knew it or not, I had to find hers. I had to listen to the tape and find out what she was doing, if this was real. If I did not, I knew that curiosity would just swell up within me like a giant balloon, and it would never deflate until I listened to that transmission.
“The scenery is wonderful here. I wish you were still my partner, because then we could see it together. There are no real words to describe it. It’s lush and green, with vines crawling over the gravel and small heaps of our human destruction. It was as tough n the midst of despair, the plants rose up to overcome. They have taken over, leaving very few animals in sight. They seem to breath as the winds blow, the plants. It’s as though they have become the new humans. They are us; walking the planet softly.”
This was the problem with Roxanne: her career was disintegrating. She didn’t like facts as much as I do. When we were reporting together, I began to notice little quirks. Quirks like leaving out important details and adding in some of her own. I created headlines. She fabricated stories. Once I found out, I told the staff, who had seemed to know for a long time. The lies Roxanne told began to catch up with her. She was the girl crying wolf. And in this tale, the wolf always catches the liar.
I think this is why she volunteered to go to Earth. No one would know what to believe from galaxies away. No one would be able to point a finger and tell her that she was wrong. She wanted to save her career. I wanted to write the story of a lifetime. No one could blame us for that.
She continued:
“The air smells strange though. Rotting and unsettling, almost. There seems to be a faint smell of despair floating through the breeze. Even against the perfect green trees and the clearest skies you have ever seen lays the softest hint of darkness lurking in the trees. Tomorrow the team is off to find a more suitable area for camp, one without as many plants and farther from that awful smell. I will be reporting from there. Please be well, Ryan.”
She added:
“Also, don’t be too greedy with your stories. Sometimes you can’t tell them all. Sometimes there is something to say for your imagination to fill in the gaps. This is just another kind of truth. It’s a kind of truth we all have to find within ourselves.”
I rolled my eyes, believing that she lied, again. So I put the transmission onto a tape to save it forever. Then? Then I tucked it away. Every word she said just sounded like her search for “truth” and not her search of accurate events. I didn’t even think of sending it in to the Investigator. I couldn’t afford to send in her kind of information, especially when they were supposed to be receiving it. They would have found my story faulty. They would have charged me for stealing and exploiting. And no matter what kind of lawyer I had, I would be found guilty and many dollars in debt, not to mention out of a job.
I had to keep my mouth shut then. Now I have nothing to lose.
The Second Day
The Center was bustling, unlike the day before. The day I had come at first was meant to be quiet day. I did not want the distraction of other work going around me to distract from my job. I wanted to focus only on the story. I did not want to see the hustle and bustle of what the building was really like. Perhaps this is my own way of closing myself out to reality, much like Roxanne did. But also like her, it was how I worked best.
He was waited with his daughter again. I remember asking myself why he brought her to work at least fifty times while walking up to them. It made very little sense at the time, bringing such a small girl to work in a science institute. There must have been other places she could have been sent for the summer. After all, she barely ever spoke, let alone seemed to know much about science.
“Hello Sir,” I said with the biggest smile that I could muster. I stuck out my hand, where the Doctor shook it firmly with an equally large grin.
“You are horrible.” Sophia said while pointing at me. Sommers released my hand and stared at his daughter and a disapproving look. I believe I simply stared. If I had any trace of shock or disgust on my face, I couldn’t tell. She continued, “You’re smiles are thin. Just a thin lie. Like Magic.”
This got me interested. I immediately pulled out my notebook. In those days, it had become reflex for me to pull out my notebook every time someone mentioned the word ‘Magic’. There was, within that word, a story no one else had covered. There were stories, of course. But they were nothing more than the kind of lies that Roxanne told. Just guesses and imagination. I was looking for facts on the Magic System that inspired more than just rumors. I looked at the little girl and her wide eyes. “A lie? Why do you say that?”
As you may be able to imagine, this did not make her father happy. Doctor Sommers was the kind of man who silently demanded to be constantly appeased. You never wanted to make him unhappy, even when you weren’t sure what the repercussions were. He spoke up, “Sometimes the idea of what I do scares her.” He assured me with his smiling eyes. “I tell her that the Magic System is perfectly safe. But she doesn’t believe me. We’ll get to that later. Come, let’s go to the Earth Artifact Room. Sophia can come along this time, instead of going to daycare.”
“I’m too old for the daycare here,” she informed me as we began to walk. The doctor started walking ahead of us as I listened to her speak. I am not one for little kids, for they tend to imagine things. However, when it came to Magic, I felt the need to listen anyway. Her father helped develop the system. If there were any child on Gaia likely to let any information slip, it would be her. It provided especially useful that she went to work with the genius every day. I wondered if he home-schooled her. Or work-schooled, if there even is such a thing. “Daddy takes me anyway.”
I nodded, wanting to take her back to the topic of the energy system. However, I resisted, for I knew that her father wouldn’t have it. Besides, if I was lucky, I knew I could find a story within the Artifact Room.
The artifact room was another room that look unimpressive and exactly as you would picture it. There were tables lined up along the walls and display cases in the center of the room. It was much like a museum. However, instead of little gold plaques, there were clipboards next to each item, collecting and recording data from the artifacts. There were tons of them, more than I expected. “How many times have you sent people to Earth?” I asked the doctor, my notepad out and ready to record his answers.
“Many times.” The man said simply, standing by the door as I looked around. He still had that smug grin on his face. Sophia walked around the room, surprisingly well-behaved for a child. “They were mostly filled with scientists. But we had sent a few ships of civilians. I believe that was covered in the papers?”
I nodded, biting my lip. I looked up from a bunch of wires salvaged from an old computer. “They never returned.” I said, as composed as possible. “There were malfunctions in getting back. I believe they must have burned up in the atmosphere. Am I right?”
Sophia looked up at me and shook her head a few times. She walked up to me, as to tell me something. But before she could, her father spoke up: “Sadly, that’s right. However, we hope that there will be better luck. We were able to bring back a ship of these artifacts. How much more of a stretch would be bringing back a ship of people?” He smiled, trying to be reassuring. I didn’t care, but I nodded and jotted it down in my notebook anyway. I looked back at Sophia, but she was no longer interested in talking. Kids.
The items were nothing spectacular, mostly pieces of rock and wires from old technology. There were a few plant seeds and soils, but no real signs of life. Not like the kind that Roxanne had told me the night before the visit, anyway. To me, that proved that the she was imaging things again. But even so, things didn’t quite add up. “How much do you know about Earth, Doctor?”
“Not much,” he confessed with a small sigh. “I will do best to answer all of your questions, but it isn’t really my department. I can give you the name of the head of the Earth Studies Board, if you would like.”
“I would like that, thank you.” I said absentmindedly. He told me the name and I wrote it down. I have since ripped out that page and handed it or to my boss, who sent another reporter to talk to him or her. I don’t remember the name at all nowadays. “Do you know how much on Earth is now decomposing? Animals, specifically?” I asked him, hoping to find the cause for the alleged smell that Roxanne had mentioned.
The look that this comment received was unsettling, to say the least. He stared at me with his wide eyes and his face pale. There was something suspicious that even a plain man like myself could catch. It was clear that something was being hidden on Earth. Perhaps this wasn’t a truth stated, but it seemed to be a truth all the same. I think it was then I started to realize what the female reporter was trying to teach me.
The doctor cleared his throat and returned his smile to his face. “It is possible. After all, our scientists brought back samples of dirt without many decomposers in the soils. This is possibly because of the pollution we caused there a thousand of years ago. After animals die, it could easily an abnormally long time to decompose.”
I nodded, not successfully shaking the thought of his previous expression out of my head. Sophia was done with looking at all of the rocks and rusted and crumbling machinery. She made this clear by heading towards the door and announcing: “It’s time to go.”
“Of course Sweetie.” Her father obliged her whim, stepping away from the door to let her pass. He looked up at me expectantly. I had enough notes to write a novel; it was safe to say that I was done there. So I stepped out of the doorway, letting the man shut the door behind us. “Are you hungry Sophia?”
He was making an excuse to go to the break room. Even I could see that. Fortunately for him, the girl nodded. Unsurprisingly, he responded: “Oh good. Then let’s go to the break room.”
I felt my chance of asking about the Magic System slipping away. A chance to get a front-page story was dripping through my fingertips and flowing right towards the break room, where we would have our coffee and the doctor would bid me goodbye. “Sir. I have a few questions about-”
“Not now. I need my caffeine break. Do you mind if you make my coffee again? I need to feed my little Sophie.”
“Don’t call me Sophie,” the girl protested plainly as she walked ahead of us.
I sighed, doing the best I could not to roll my eyes. “Of course.” I finally said, under the impression that he liked the way I fixed coffee more than he liked me. I didn’t mind, so long as he would invite me back. I needed to get closer to him. I needed to get closer to Gaia’s greatest mystery: Magic.
Once we got to the break room, I went straight to the coffee machine. The other two went straight for the vending machine. I made his coffee in the same way I did at home: with cinnamon and a pinch of vanilla creamer. It was the same way I made it last time. He was eager to drink it. He smiled as he took the cup. “You make the best coffee out of anyone I have ever met.”
Sophie looked at me. “It’s a test of character,” she explained, taking a bite out of the nutrition bar her father bought for her.
I had no words on the subject of testing someone’s character through coffee. I still don’t, although I suppose it worked out for me in the long run. As long as he kept me coming back, I didn’t care how he judged my character. “Thank you?” I said, looking from father to daughter. Neither said anything. They only ate and drank silently.
“I suppose I will be on my way,” I finally said, in hopes of getting a reaction. For further effect, I slowly worked my way towards the break room door, hoping that someone would stop me.
And by some miracle of a higher power, it worked. Doctor Sommers looked at me while holding his coffee cup. “You will come back tomorrow, won’t you?” My heart started pounding, renewed with high hopes. But before I could answer, he started laughing. “Oh wait, of course you won’t.” I felt my heart sink to the bottom of my stomach in a sick sort of ache. I felt fooled and extremely awkward. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Come back Monday, then?”
Seeing as my heart had just done two back flips nearly in a row, I couldn’t speak. I simply nodded and tried to force a smile. “I’ll be there. Same time?” He nodded, more interested in his coffee than anything else. Sophia nodded as well, though not looking as enthusiastic about her nutrition bar. I imagine he bought it for her against her will.
I did not bother to wish them a nice day. I didn’t think it was necessary. Call me cold. Call me cruel. However, you must remember that there is a reason and rhyme for everything that we do.
At Mercy’s End
My transmitter’s recording device was empty when I got home. I don’t know what I was expecting. I pulled out the tape with Roxanne’s recording on it, just to make sure it was there. I may have listened to it again; I don’t really remember. My memories are sometimes hazy, but my notes a perfectly accurate, I assure you. Everything I tell you here is true.
I was sitting in my apartment watching some televised report when the transmitter began to buzz. I slowly meandered towards it, not completely interested in who was on the other end. Even if it was another recording from Roxanne, there was no rush. After all, the message had already traveled such a long way to get to my apartment. What was a few extra minutes going to do to it?
However, when I turned the transistor on, there was no message on the other end. Instead it was a live person. It was my boss, Sylvia Johannesburg, to be exact. “Mister MacNeil, you haven’t been by the office to pick up your assignment after you sent in your last story.”
I froze. It was true. I had put on hold to chase after a pipe dream. However, I was planning to go over there, I think. So I made a point to tell her so. “Mrs. Johannesburg, I am so sorry. However, I am on the verge of making a breakthrough,” I assured her, not wanting to give away too much.
“I’m listening,” she said tightly. I could tell through the phone that her lips were pinched together, as she did when she was stressed.
“The man I used as contact into the Center? He is heading up the Magic System project. I was hoping to use the contact to get closer into finding the source of the new energy system. It will be huge. No one has covered it yet.”
She said nothing for a long time. I was holding my breath the entire time. It is no easy task to get me excited about something. My family had always said that it roots from fear of disappointment. However, when it came to writing my idea of the perfect newspaper article, my heart was nothing stronger than an eggshell.
“I need the article by Thursday. Is this understood?” she finally said to me through the transmitter. If it was due Thursday, it was going to be printed into the Friday paper. I was personally hoping for Sunday, but the weekend was the weekend. I couldn’t be too picky, see as I was trying to find my way.
“I will get it to you in record time Ma’am,” I assured her, not believing what was coming out of my own mouth. I wasn’t sure if I could get the story at all, let alone in “record time”. Mrs. Johannesburg hung up and I turned off my transmitter. I stared at it for a while, marveling at the mess I had created for myself. My old partner would have been so proud.
And like magic, at the mere thought of my old partner, the transmitter began to pick up a recorded transmission. Roxanne’s voice crackled through the sound waves:
“This is my second message to you. Well, you would know that, obviously. I’ve been recording copious amounts of notes from Earth to send. This will be a front-page story. I can smell it. Don’t worry Ryan. Your time to write a winner will come too. You’re still young.”
I grumbled, knowing that I could easily have my “winner” of a story out before her notes even reached Gaia. Since she could not hear me, my doubt naturally did not deter her from describing Earth thus far:
“We found an old city today. We were trying to escape from the smell of decay. Ironically, the air is clearer here in the deteriorated city. There is hardly anything left of it now. I have a hard time believing that there were ever skyscrapers and bridges here. I can’t picture any cars rushing through these grounds. For now the only things that ever rush around are rodents and insects. We still have not found many animals. I like to think that the humans took all of them with them when they first left. Like Noah’s Arc, two by two. Don’t you think that would be ironic and lovely? The first time, God created the destruction that made us find a new life. This time, we have caused it. We’re playing God. We’ve always been playing God.”
Roxanne liked the bible. I can’t ever say if she was religious or not. That was none of my business. But she did love to read and talk about the bible. She said it was because everyone knew its story. It was a universal knowledge we all carried. She lied. Again.
“We’ve set up camp up here, for it feels safer. So we accomplished the mission of the day. I heard the leaders of our little crew talking about the thicker forests. We may head out there in a few days. I am happy I packed my tougher clothes. However, I wish I packed a mask of some sort. The smell is overwhelming towards the forests. Oh well, wish me the best of luck and I shall speak to you later. Be well Ryan.”
I took a few moments to write down the last of what she was saying in my notebook. After I had finished documenting the words by hand, I recorded it onto another tape and put it with the first one. I was wondering how large my collection was going to get before she realized that all I was doing was saving them for my personal records. I can’t imagine that she would have thought that her reports would be used in a pamphlet like this. However, with a girl like Roxanne, I suppose you can never be sure.
I had no social life. Friday nights were not date nights. They were nights dedicated to my video viewer and me. My collection of movies was impressive, no doubt. I popped in the newest addition to the collection at the time and made some popcorn. This was the world that I lived in: soft, cushy, and nearly dependant on the Magic energy source. Every move I made was connected to the Magic somehow, from the video player to the lighting over my head. I took note of all of these little things that night. I wrote them down. And then I resolved to find out how they all worked, starting with the very basics.
Saturday Morning Means Losing my Mind
I usually spend Saturdays at the office. That day was no exception. I thought going to my little cubicle in the newspaper office might have jarred me out of the habit of thinking about my time at the Center. I wanted to stop trying to piece together things that weren’t there. My life seemed to be spinning in slow motion then. It just a slow moving of clock hands, waiting for something to happen that would make life worth it. I didn’t like feeling as though I were chasing wild geese.
I spun in my office chair, pivoting the seat in circles over and over again. I was half-distracted with my daydreams and thoughts about the Center and the Magic System. I was also trying to see how hard it would be to write a small article on biologically advanced kittens while dizzy. I always got the science-related articles. I suppose it was because I minored it biology at the university. However, I sometimes think that my mind just thinks in scientific methods. I don’t jump in to things; I prefer to hypothesize and test.
However, it didn’t matter how much I liked science; I didn’t care about biologically advanced kittens. I didn’t care if they could scoop their own litter box or meow “Row, Row, Row your Boat” in a round. I just wanted to finish my article so I could get home and stare at my clock, waiting for Monday to come.
I finished the article with ease, despite my attempts to create a challenge with my office chair. I turned the article into the editing department and went home. I didn’t write this down in my notes, so I can’t be sure, but I am fairly certain that I took a detour past the building for the Center for Science in the Global Interest. I just looked at it from my car. I felt obsession sink into my skin through the pores. My mind was wrapped a single track.
But I ignored the symptoms of my disease and I just kept driving. My mind never left he thoughts of the Doctor and the Magic system. I even thought about Sophia and the tapes from Earth. I felt like a detective. I felt as though everything was a clue to unlocking what I wanted. I had a problem, but I couldn’t diagnose it at the time. I just kept telling myself that there is a reason and a rhyme for everything we do.
Those were my words to live on. They still are.
The Next Lie She Told Me
I did not stare at the clock when I got home. Instead, I cleaned my apartment to pass the time, which was something I did more often than you’d expect. I loved that apartment. I put a lot of work into making it look how I wanted. One of the first articles I ever wrote for the Investigator was about tips on keeping a tidy home. The main advice I gave was to love the way your home looks. You are more likely to want to keep it looking clean if you love how it looks when clean. I stand by these convictions.
I’m sorry; I’m getting off topic. I was cleaning my collection of framed articles when the transmitter device clicked on. I dropped onto my couch and pulled out my notebook, fully prepared to take notes. It took a while for Roxanne to begin speaking. It felt like I was listening to white noise for at least five minutes before she finally said:
“I hate the woods. You wouldn’t expect me to say this, I know. Little Roxanne loves the outdoors, that’s what you are thinking right now.”
I wasn’t thinking that at all.
“However, there is something wrong here. The trees are long and dark and looming. They are staring at me Ryan.” She sounded panicked, not to mention crazy. I pictured her wearing a purple fleece robe while walking through a forest. I always picture crazy people wearing robes. I’m not sure why. “I can’t put my finger on it, but I want to go back to camp more badly than I’ve ever wanted to before. All of the others in the group feel the same way; you can tell by the expressions on their faces. I’ve been taking pictures, but none of them due the place any justice. You just can’t feel the way the trees are tracking your steps. You can’t smell the juices of decay and metal. It smells like metal here, did I mention that?”
I don’t know why, but these last few words made me almost sorry for the young woman. I felt as though there really was some dire happening on Earth. Then again, why wouldn’t there be? We already had destroyed it. What made us think that things would get better if we just left it alone?
“Oh God Ryan,” she then muttered, letting me know that she had taken the transmitter with her. She was speaking as she was walking along, not just recording after the fact. This gave it a feeling of rawness. This made it feel real. This made it more than just a story being spun from her mind.
That’s when she told me: “There are bodies. Lots of bodies. The scientists are hovering around them, feeling their skin, and probing at them. I can only stare in horror. They look like humans. They are just like us. These aren’t animals we left behind when we went to Gaia. These are people just like you and me. I think there were still humans on Earth when we left. Do you think something happened to kill them?”
That didn’t make sense. Earth had been left alone for a thousand years. I didn’t care if there were very few decomposers or not. No human body would still be anything but a skeleton after a thousand years. I could hear voices in the background, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I leaned in as close as I could get to the speaker, but I still couldn’t tell. I heard a few voices mutter words that I will not repeat here due to sensitive readers. All I can say is that something was going on, but I could not for the life of me figure out what that was. The next thing I heard her say was: “What’s this?”
Those are classic famous last words if I’ve ever heard them. I held my breath, waiting for more.
Then, the white noise returned and the recording was finished. I stared at the transmitter for a long time before putting it onto to a tape, hoping there was more. I suppose I must have hoped for some kind of “hidden track”, buried deep beneath the silence. But there was nothing there. Only more silence. So I put the recording onto the tape and put the tape into my drawer where the others were being kept.
I had heard nothing from Roxanne on Sunday. A part of me told me that this was because she was always fond of the bible, and was therefore observing the day of rest. However, I promised you that everything you read here is true. And the simple truth of the matter was that whatever Roxanne had told me about happened weeks, maybe even a month, ago. I was helpless. To her, I was witness from a distant future.
Another truth of the matter is that I was left guessing for that Sunday. I was trying to piece together clues. I thought of the bodies. They lead me to the conversation I had in the Artifact Room. The doctor said that the previous expeditions to Earth didn’t work. That people didn’t make it back alive. He said there were malfunctions in the equipment; that they burned up in the atmosphere.
But then something happened. What was it? I sat on my couch. I racked my brain until I remember the small girl who shook her head. Something told me at that moment to talk to Sophia, that she would know. Maybe that something was just my imagination. But a imagination is also a kind of truth. Just a different kind, one we have to find in ourselves.
The Third Day
I knew the moment that I walked through the door that I had to find the girl. I knew she was more willing to talk about things than the doctor ever was. I was hanging a lot on a little girl. Hell, I was even hoping to squeeze the blueprints for the Magic system out of her mouth. It was laughable.
However, when I met with the doctor, the girl was nowhere to be found. Figures. I did not ask, because on any other day I did not care. So I just shook his hand and greeted the man with the thin smile that I always had on for these moments.
“Well, I suppose I shall show you something a bit different than space exploration today. Come this way.” Doctor Sommers began to walk down the hallways. He seemed rather off that day. He seemed like he was tripping over his own thoughts, as insane as that sounds. I followed him anyway.
He seemed so off, in fact, that I had enough gall to ask, “Is Sophia in the nursery today?” I straightened up and picked up my pace. That way, I was walking more beside him than directly behind him.
He nodded. “She protested. But following me around all the time is no way for a girl to learn to be independent. Besides, she has been rather sick lately. She’s best if she is somewhere she can rest.”
I am not one to tell people how to run their lives, for I don’t care. However, I did think putting a girl in a nursery everyday was a good either. I didn’t say I word. I know when things aren’t my business.
I followed him through a series of doors until we came to one with a large control room inside. There were glittering lights and patterns and buttons and levers all across a big panel. There was a huge glass screen sitting in front of it. The man sat at the panel and pressed a few buttons. I leaned forward, trying to read the labels off of the buttons, but could not make out a single word.
Suddenly, images of people, or digital simulations of people flashed onto the screen. “We all contain a strong energy, Mister MacNeil. We emit it from out bodies uncontrollably. Some people call it an Aura, which you may have heard of.” I frowned at this, but wrote it down anyway. I was going to say something, but he continued. “Palm readers use this energy all of the time to make predictions about the future. Of course, this poppycock, for nothing will ever tell you the future. However, it can’t be denied that our body emits a heat and movement that is powerful and lovely. It keeps us going in the darkest of times. All animals have it, of course. And for a long while, it worked in mysterious ways.”
I wrote all of it down, but I was frowning all of the while. That’s when numbers and symbols flashed on the screen, pointing to parts of the human. He started explaining energy points as though he were talking from those old books on Zen Buddhism, a trend started in Earth and carried to Gaia. The way he talked spoke to the scientist in me, all the same. He spoke of targeting energy points using statistics and physics. I was fascinated, though thoroughly confused. Finally:
“Why this? Why are you showing me this?” I asked, not knowing why I had spoken so out-of-character and out of turn. I felt stiff and odd. He stared at me, also wondering why I had bothered to wonder now.
“I suspected you were tired of hearing about Earth.” He said simply. Well I was, until recently. “Do you know what happens to this energy when the animal dies?”
I stared at the screen blankly. If I really wanted to throw my disbelief into the wind, I would have said, “it’s reincarnated into another life”. That just sounded like what the hip kids at my college who worshiped all things Earthen would have said. However, I’m not a hip kid. I never will be. So instead I just said, “It disappears?”
“Precisely!” He said, avoiding the awkwardness of me being wrong. “However, it doesn’t have to disappear. When someone is dying, the heat and the energy surges through them in a way no one could imagine. With enough of it harnessed and sped into extreme acceleration, one could power buildings with it. It’s wonderful Mister MacNeil!” He was returning to his old self, I could tell. “It’s almost like…”
“Magic,” I finished. I stared blankly at the screen some more until he turned it off and looked at me. He was looking at me as though he hadn’t practically told me from his own mouth. Yet he had. I was a reporter who wrote about space exploration crap that everyone and their uncle knew. Sometimes I even wrote about extra-special cats; but I wasn’t stupid. “You harness the power from dead things. From dying things.”
That’s when I noticed a door to the right of the panel. It wasn’t the door we had entered through. It was cracked open, and I caught a glimpse of little Sophia, climbing onto a large bed, the kind you would see in a doctor’s office.
I looked at the doctor and pretended not to see a thing. “How did you come up with this idea exactly? How did you notice this energy?”
I already knew the answer. But he told me anyway. “I saw someone die. Two people.” His lips were curled into a thin smile. “It was a car accident. I was holding her. I noticed how strong she was before she went limp. And then when the other was losing it on the hospital bed I wanted to fill her with the same kind of strength.”
I opened the door to the right all the way. Sophia was now lying on the bed and a scientist was poking a needle into her arm. The same numbers and symbols from the doctor’s little film were on a screen. “Did you? Fill her with the same strength?” I asked, looking at the girl as the man closed the door before my eyes. He nodded.
“I need a little caffeine, don’t you?” He finally said. I followed him out, putting my notebook into my pocket. I had won. And yet…
We did not speak as I made him his coffee. He did not get anything from the vending machine. Finally as the coffee maker had finished, he said, “She’ll be fine, you know. It was just a routine test.”
I took the spices out of the cabinet and didn’t say a word, although a million questions ran through my mind. I spoke up, after long hard though over my words of choice: “Gaia was not a large planet. Not as large as Earth, anyway. Yet we still needed plenty of Magic to survive through a regular day. I couldn’t even make his coffee without it. Things couldn’t really die that often. You can’t always be there to harness their energy as they die.”
“There are pipes in the cities that help.” He said, watching me carefully as I mixed in the ingredients. I made sure he couldn’t see. I wanted to come back later. I needed to give him a reason to invite me back; although I was certain that it wouldn’t work. “I can give you the name,” he paused as I put the cup in front of him. “Of the engineer, if you would like.”
I didn’t get his name, although I probably should have. “I’ll just show myself out.” My head was so full of thoughts. It was so swimming with questions. If I tried to ask one, I knew that they would all pour out. It became so absurd that I thought I might choke on them. So I swallowed it all down.
I needed to go home. I needed to sleep. What I didn’t think I needed was his permission to come back. I knew I already had it.
The Lies Roxanne Told
There was a transmission waiting for me when I got home. The beeping the transmitter made was a victory march for me. I had the truth of magic, though many questions loomed. I almost didn’t listen to the message. I almost went to sleep and didn’t bother with whatever my little Earthen reporter had to say. It couldn’t be as nearly as important as what I had discovered.
It couldn’t nearly be as shattering as discovering that our life was based around death. Roxanne would have loved to hear it. She would have gone on for hours about how profound that was. I’m no good with profound things.
I played the message anyway. If only to gloat that I would have the front-page before her, even if she couldn’t hear me.
“We found machines Ryan.” She was rushed, her voice hushed low and in a panic. “We found machines with the logo for the Center on them. You know, the Center for Science in the Global Interest? They were the ones who authorized this mission and, well Ryan… I know you never believe me. I know that you say I’m a liar and a storyteller and maybe I am. But I don’t like this. They have hooked the machines to everything that is remotely dead here. Even the bodies.”
She was crying. My Roxanne, my partner who was usually strong enough to not bat an eyelash at a challenge was crying. But she continued on. “The human bodies. There are these machines and pipes underground. We found them with metal detectors and I think the Center is doing something here. I don’t what it is, but there isn’t something right here.”
Suddenly, things fell into place. I didn’t need my imagination to fill in the pieces. I didn’t need the lies Roxanne told, although they helped me along the way. I had no time to celebrate a triumph.
I knew the next part of the story. I knew the headline that would read in a few weeks, maybe sooner. There would be another malfunction. They would burn in the atmosphere. Sophia would shake her head. So would I. I was a helpless witness.
I saved the tape and put it in the drawer. I closed the drawer and hung my head. I stood up straight, though my head was still low and staring at the floor. I somehow once again found a truth inside of myself and I bought something that I had never bought before. It was against my better judgment. But at that moment, my mind stopped working. I had figured out every mystery that was slicing at me. I was a victor. Nothing could grab me.
The Last Day
Sophia was with him that day. She looked about as stoic as ever, so I assume the tests turned out all right. I shook his hand. I even offered to shake her hand, but she wouldn’t take it. She shook her head frantically and stared with big eyes. Her father laughed. “Well Mister MacNeil, what do wish to see today?”
“The break room, actually. I didn’t have my breakfast. So let’s start there before we begin, can we?” I asked. I was rather hungry, though eating out of a vending machine did not sound remotely appetizing to me at all.
He nodded and took Sophia by the hand, “Come on now, and let’s go get food. I trust you will make me some that famous coffee, won’t you?” I nodded and Sophia pulled her hand away from his as the three of us walked harmlessly towards the room.
I turned on the coffee pot and went over to the row and machines. I picked out the only thing looking the least like a breakfast food. It was a pastry of some sort. I forgot to right the name done in my books. No big loss; it wasn’t very good. Sophia got another nutrition bar. Maybe zombies can only eat nutrition bars. I pondered this more than I should have. The light on the coffee maker went off.
“That’s your cue.” The doctor smiled as I swallowed the rest of my pastry. I stood up and began to pour a cup.
“So Doctor, what do your scientists get rid of the small colonies that go down to Earth? They do kill them, right?” I asked as I pulled spices down from the cabinet. “Or do they just wait for the hostile environment to get them. I have a source that says the trees there are highly suspicious.”
“Mister MacNeil…” he started, looking at me with wide eyes. “What you are talking a bout isn’t really my department. But I can give you a name, if you’d like and you could talk to them instead.”
I put the cup down in front of the man and sighed. “I’m sorry. I suppose you are right.” He took a drink. “However, you did create the system. Perhaps I’m shooting the messenger here in saying that this was all your fault.”
Sophia only stared as her father began to gasp. Her eyes were wider than his. Perhaps I had gone mad. But all I could say was, “It’s cinnamon. I put in cinnamon, vanilla creamer and a hint of nutmeg. That’s makes the coffee so delightful. Oh. And rat poison. But that was just the special blend of the day.”
Sophia began to scream. I began to cover my mouth, unsure of the words rushing out. I was taken over, perhaps by my own energy that I emitted. Perhaps I had kept it hidden and this whole time I was sleeping, obsessed with promotion and pipe dreams. Now I’m unleashing my power. “I think I’ll show myself out.” I said, knowing I wouldn’t get very far.
And I didn’t.
Afterword
There is a reason and rhyme to everything we do.
I came to you as Ryan MacNeil, the person slated as a cold-blooded killer by the newspapers, even the one he himself worked for. I leave you with the truth about what Magic really is. This isn’t a cry for help, but a word of caution. If you feel you must act, than act. If you want to burn this pamphlet, then let it go in flames.
For from this cell, all I have are my words. I am a helpless witness to a world I thought was in control. So I am decided to do the one thing I know how to do: I told the truth.
Everything I told you here is true.
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Posted: Fri Jul 24, 2009 6:07 am
Next July .2009.
The music is dying in the distance. The sun has set too low. The fireworks have filled the sky with too much smoke to see the stars. People are forgetting why they had come here and are starting to file out. I can see the final coals from the barbeques glimmering away. The Fourth of July celebration fizzles down, only to be sparked again next year. There will be the same laughter. There will be the same intensity. Hell, there will even be the same kind of food. But I don’t think that I’ll be there. The sand under my feet is growing too cold. The streetlight hanging over my corner of the beach is burning into my eyelids. I need to go home.
I know that I said I’d do this every year. But traditions were really just made to be broken.
.2007.
“Alright Dustan, baby, I am going to make your night,” Andrew rushed up to me in the middle of work. I was working at Sno-Zone Snow Cones that summer. I can’t explain how much I hated that place. But that’s for another story, “Down at the beach, some people I know are throwing this epic July Fourth party. It’s going to be awesome.”
“Sounds fun. Have a nice time,” I responded coldly. Parties were never as fun advertised. This was just a fact of life. So I went back to throwing ice into the ice crusher. I was planning on spending the Fourth like I did every year: at my grandparents’ house, listening to stories about Vietnam. “I have plans.”
“The grand’s again?” Andrew leaned on the Sno-Zone counter and looked at me with the sly grin that always meant I was going to be pulled into something I wouldn’t enjoy. “All you do is eat roasted chicken and listen to old people gabble on about old things. I’m offering you something better. The night of your life. And all you have to do,” he paused. Andrew liked dramatic pauses. He said they gave things more suspense. “Is say that you’ll be my wingman.”
I looked at him for a second and shook my head. “I won’t be your wingman. Andy, this is gathering is a family tradition,” I said while organizing the flavored syrups by alphabetical order. “Besides, we eat grilled chicken, not roasted.”
“Dusty,” he called me, as he often calls me when trying to convince me to do something against my better judgment, “Everyone knows that traditions were meant to be broken. Look, this party is going to be better than any tired old family get-together. Plus, the average age there won’t be next-to-dead.”
An age other than next-to-dead did sound rather good. The mere idea of a conversation that didn’t begin with “Some time ago…” or the trite and infamous “When I was your age…” was enough to get me out of my rut. Yet I couldn’t give in so easily. I am a man of habit, I always have been. So I was naturally reluctant. “What time does it end?” I asked cautiously, already expecting that I wouldn’t like the answer.
“As though your parents will ever know you were gone.” Andrew scoffed at me, laughing as though he had just made some hilarious joke. “They’ll be too busy clawing their own eyes and ears out.”
“It’s going to end around 3AM, isn’t it?” I said, forever the smart one of the duo.
“Longer, if you get lucky.” He winked, laughing at his total and complete lack of humor. His own sincerity was enough to crack a smile out of me. But nothing more. “Come on Dusty. What do you say?”
“I say you’re a nut. Also, I hate when you call me Dusty.” I sighed and began to organize the paper cones that we scooped the ice into. Did I ever mention that I hated that place? Because I did. “Alright. I’ll go with you. Just don’t call me your wingman, okay?”
His smile was absolutely infectious. He was nearly bouncing with delight the minute those words slipped out of my mouth. “I’ll be at your house at nine. You are not going to regret this! We will pick up chicks together and eat food and…oh! You are going to have a great time!” he nearly shouted. He smiled at me one last time before running off to his car, leaving me stranded in the Sno-Zone shack, questioning the decision I had just made.
.2009.
“Dusty,” a familiar voice says to me as I sit on the sea wall that separates the park from the beach. I’m staring at the dark ocean, but I know who is talking to me. It has to be the only person in the world who has the balls to call me that god-forsaken name.
“Andy, what are you doing here?” I ask, not looking up at him as I speak. He doesn’t care either way. I know that much about him. “Weren’t you going to celebrate the holiday at the strip club?”
“Yes. And I did. Seriously, the burgers there are great. You should come with me sometime. Plus, on the Fourth, I found out that they have this charming little show where Kelly…” he trails off, clearly seeing that I am not interested in his tales from the local STD box. “Anyway, I could ask you why you’re here, at this totally lame party.”
“You didn’t think it was lame two years ago,” I remind him with a stiff upper lip. It doesn’t matter to me what he says. Sure, he had tried to make me go to the strip club with him. However, I’m stronger than two years ago. I resisted him. And here I am now
“I was seventeen two years ago,” he responds, as though that made any sense. “Any party I could get into wasn’t lame. Seriously Dustan, you can’t expect her to show up every year.”
“She said she would.”
“But it’s been a year. She could still have a boyfriend. Or be married. Or, or, she cold have gotten fat,” he says. He sits down next to me on the sea wall. I just roll my eyes. Normally I would joke with him. Normally I would suggest something else that could have happened to her. And we would play this game until we both gave up and went home. But my motivation is restored. Andy reminded me way I am here. And here is where I will stay.
.2007.
The party was on the beach, as it has been every year. It took place on the picnic area, where there was burgers, hot dogs, unspeakably loud music, and people who were too cool to dance. Amongst the crowd of teenagers and young adults, Andrew and I were sitting on a pair of lone chairs, looking at the people lucky enough to be eating their food at a table.
“Okay. So here’s what we’re going to do,” Andrew said to me, leaning in close so I could hear him over all of the noise. If you know anything about popular music, you would know that there were no real words, just beats and rhymes and electric pounding. I don’t mind it. But it wasn’t ideal for conversation. “I’ll take the girl in the white sundress. And I’ll give you one in the red halter-top and blue jeans. What you say? A real patriotic night for us, huh? Get it? Red, white and blue?” he asked, winking at me excessively.
I laughed, trying to find the girl in the red halter-top that he was talking about. I couldn’t pick her out amongst the crowd of partygoers. I was playing along with him, as I usually did. But even if I saw her, even if she was the most beautiful girl in the world, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to talk to her. So I told Andy so, “I can’t find her,” I nearly-shouted to him. “Even if I did, I can’t talk to girls. You know…”
I lost my words as he tapped me on the shoulder. He pointed towards the tables and I followed his fingers with my eyes. That’s when my eyes caught a look at Red Halter-Top. She looked up at me from her food. I pretended not to see her, but I don’t think she was having it.
Then she smiled. Her eyes seemed to glisten when she smiled; I think I remember that the most about her. That and how the lights set up for the party shone perfectly upon her chestnut hair. I straightened up in my seat and did the only thing I could think of doing: I smiled back.
Pleased with his choice, Andrew stood up from his seat. “Now if you excuse me, I need to go talk to White Sundress,” he said quickly, barely looking at me while doing so. I didn’t care. I was too busy looking at her. Even at this party, with people swarming all around, she was alone. She was talking to no one. She was not laughing at anyone’s jokes. It was just her and her plate of food.
So I decided to do the unthinkable. I was going to talk to her. I told myself this was solely because she was lonely and I was lonely. This was what I had to do. My body was nearly on autopilot by the time I made my way over there. By the time I had sat down, my nerves had replaced me with someone else entirely. Someone who smiled at her and smoothly said, “Hey.”
She looked at me with coy brown eyes and took a sip of her drink. “I’m seventeen and too young to hook up at a party,” she said immediately. “So don’t even think of putting the moves on me.”
“Well you’ll be happy to know that I’m equally as young and clearly not putting the moves on you,” I countered quickly, not even knowing what words were spilling out of my mouth. I wasn’t letting myself think about this. Not this time. Every single time I tried to plan these things out, they always went horrifically wrong. I just had to jump in, feet first, and not worry about whether I was going to drown.
“You’re not putting the moves on me? Then why did you come over here?” she asked, smiling all the while. It was as though all she could do was smile. It was oddly endearing. Of course, she was hopelessly good looking while smiling. So I was biased.
“You know, conversation, food, the seat next to you is the only open chair at a table, those kinds of things,” I said, swallowing my words. It seemed as though whatever James Bond wannabe that had possessed my body had somehow given up. I was just bumbling Dustan once again.
But it made her laugh. That’s the important detail: that really lame line had actually made her laugh. Granted, she was probably laughing because of how dumb I sounded. But I managed to neglect that detail of the time. “So, am I allowed to have your name?”
“I’m sorry. I’m already using it,” she fired back. It took me a second to understand what she meant. But when I did, I laughed a little, despite my frustration. “If I told you my name, that would make it seem too official. It would seem as though we were trying to hook up, wouldn’t it?”
Clearly, this girl had never hooked up at a party before. Then again, neither had I. I was still very much a virgin. But I knew how Andrew worked. And I happened to know that he would seldom ever get the names of his one-night stands. “Well then I don’t see how this is going to work out,” I finally said, not willing to let this one slip out of my hands. Her rejections were clear. However, I was standing my ground until she physically pushed me away.
She didn’t say anything for a long time. My heart caught in my throat, beating every second that she didn’t say a word. It was like a countdown clock, waiting for what she would say. “How about we just don’t tell each other names? We can use fake names. We can spend the night together and have the night of our lives. And then we’ll never see each other again.”
“Like a one-night stand?” I raised an eyebrow. We were too young for something like that, after all. Not that I was complaining.
“Without the stand. Just having fun. This party is too boring. Don’t you think it would be better if we made it more interesting for each other?” she said with a bright and thoughtful grin, “That way, there will be no way to ruin it. There will be nothing getting in our way. All we would do is make memories.” She held out her hand for a shake. “Sound like a deal?”
Her mind went too quickly for me. Yet I think I got the gist of what she was saying. “So we spend the party together, say good-night, and never talk to or see each other again?” I asked for clarification. She nodded, impressed with her plan.
I just frowned, but I eventually shook her hand. I had never seen her in my life before. She didn’t go to my school. She apparently never went to the same places I went. What were the odds that I would care if I saw her after that night?
I had no idea.
.2008.
I spotted her the moment I arrived. People are easier to find when you are actually looking for them. She wasn’t waiting on the corner, like we agreed to a year ago. But she was still there, and that was all that mattered. I had arrived late, unable to weasel my way out of the annual Fourth of July meal with the family. She didn’t have that smile on the face, but her eyes still told me that she was happy to see me.
Just like the first time we met, her first words came out as a warning, “I have a boyfriend. So there will be no funny business tonight.” She leaned on a table, a slow smile moving onto her face. I sighed, as though I were disappointed. I hadn’t expected any funny business. I was just playing along.
“Does your boyfriend know you are here?” I asked, leaning on the table next to her. She shook her head. “Well then tonight you aren’t his girlfriend. Tonight you are simply Lola.” I said, using her fake name from last year.
“I don’t think Matt knows a Lola,” she confessed with a small laugh. But then the laugh turned into a sigh. “Still, I don’t think he’d be happy to know I have a secret life.”
“So he wouldn’t allow me to ask you for a quick dance?” I asked coyly. By this time, I was moving more into my skin. I was becoming slicker with my words, less awkward around those of the opposite sex. I moved from the table and began to walk towards the parking lot.
“Without music?” she asked loudly, running after me as I began to walk more quickly. I didn’t say a word until I had made it to my car. She looked at me with an expression of fake surprise. “You have a car now!” I could tell that she was delighted.
“Meaning I can go home whenever I want. I don’t have to wait for a ride this time,” I said while turning on the car, just so the radio could play. I chose the first station that wasn’t on commercial. It was an oldies station, playing an old-fashioned song with a man singing smoothly through the airwaves. “Now that there’s music, am I allowed to have this dance?” I held out my hand to her, like the suave gentleman I was trying so desperately to be.
“I guess I have no more reasons to protest.” she shrugged, taking my hand and twirling herself around, as though she were made of feathers. She was a ballerina, dancing on air and into my arms. We both laughed at ourselves, swaying to the music.
.2007.
“Okay,” I said awkwardly, looking at her with a goofy smile that seemed to be permanently plastered to my face, “So now that we’ve established what’s going to happen, what are we going to do?” I asked, already establishing her as this dynamic duo’s official plan-maker.
She paused on the responsibility, thinking for a moment. “I know,” she gasped when an idea hit her. She bolted up from the table and beckoned for me to follow. She weaved through the tables, making her way to the only not-crowded part of the park. She pointed to a pile of fireworks. “You see these?” I nodded. It was a little hard not see them, even in the dark. They were not only huge, but there were enough of them to win a small war with. She bent down and pulled out a large blue rocket firework and showed it to me. “Pull out all of these that you find. I have a plan.”
I wanted to argue. They looked a little deadly. But when she bent over a second time to pick up another one, my brain stopped doing the thinking. So I did as she was told, picking up all of the blue rockets that I could find.
When we were down, she began to walk down the sloped field and towards the beach, “You know what these are Johnny?” she asked, using my ingenious fake name, Johnny Fame. I shook my head. Firecrackers weren’t my specialty. “They are Megarocket 5000s. They’re all kinds of illegal in the state of New Jersey.”
It just so happened that we lived in New Jersey. So needless to say, I nearly dropped those rockets where I stood. But I bit my lip in order to steady myself as I walked onto the sand. “So?” I finally was able to ask. “We aren’t planning on setting them off, are we?” I then added, sadly attempting to hide the nervousness in my voice.
To my relief, she shook her head. “Better.” She set down the pile. She then picked up one and chucked it as far as she could into the sea, which wasn’t very far at all. But I got the gist of what she was trying to do. So I did the same.
We laughed as we threw the rockets into the ocean, letting the tide take them away to their next destination. The water often splashed us as the firecrackers landed into the water with a mighty crash. Yet we didn’t care if we got wet. The only thing we cared about was getting caught. But the nose of the party was too loud for anyone to hear our mischief.
“Well, Miss Lola, I think we just saved a whole bunch of people from being arrested,” I said with a smug grin. She laughed again. I can’t describe the feeling she gave me when I made her laugh. My words would just not do it justice. Besides, it’s a feeling I want to keep forever. Call it selfish, but that’s sometimes how it has to be. “We’re like a vigilante Bonnie and Clyde. We steal for the betterment of the world.” I joked, in hopes of getting another laugh out of her. No such luck.
“Lola and Johnny. It has a nice ring to it.” She said blankly and grabbed my hand. “Come on. Let’s try to catch crabs.”
I started at her with wide eyes. That time she laughed loudly, though I don’t think I was to blame. “Not those kinds of crabs. The ones with claws? That live on the beach?”
That time I laughed, realizing the joke. “I knew what you meant.” I lied. “But isn’t that the least bit dangerous? As you said, don’t they pinch?”
She was about to say something, probably to persuade me that they wouldn’t pinch me. However, I will never know. For the second that she opened her mouth, I heard a voice that was positively not her own: “Dusty! We have a stage three! We need to kick rocks. Now!”
I looked up at Andy and tried to shoot him the evil eye. Although in the dark, I was sure that he didn’t see it. I don’t remember now what a stage three was. But I remember it being rather serious. So I looked back at Lola, who only smiled sadly. I couldn’t leave her. The night was supposed to be a night of good memories. “Andy? I think you can wait, okay?” I shouted up at him.
I saw his silhouette lean forward, as though he couldn’t hear me. “What was that? You’re training for a marathon? Oh good. You practice when you walk yourself home!” he then shouted back to me. If it wasn’t clear earlier, I had to go. So I began to climb back to the park.
“You going to be here next year?” she asked me, causing me to turn around suddenly. I nearly fell down the slope that started at the sea wall.
“I thought we were never going to see each other again,” I said softly, swallowing my words as I said them. I wanted to see her again. So why was I saying anything to jeopardize that?
“They say all good things must come to an end,” she said in a long breath. She then smiled at me with a smile so bright that I could see through the dark, “But some things are good enough to start again and again. Meet me by the corner of Main and Ninth. Next July.”
.2009.
“Hey,” Andy says loudly. “Don’t kick sand onto the shoes!” We are walking on the beach. Sometimes I guess I drag my feet. Other times I kick up sand. It seems Andrew has a complaint for both. I don’t actually care. I suppose I’m just lost in my own thoughts right now.
“Andy, do you believe all good things must come to an end?” I sigh and look up at him.
He smiles sadly and says, “Yeah buddy. They do. I mean, it doesn’t matter how much you pay a girl, she’s got to go back to her pimp at some point,” he adds, I pray to God as a joke. He then shakes his head, as though trying to tune into that very rare serious side of him that some people get to see. “You need to decide what’s best for you: waiting around for a girl that will never show up, or living your summer the way it’s supposed to be lived.”
I look up at him with inquisitive eyes. “Oh yeah? How’s that?”
“Free.”
Figures he should say that.
.2008.
“I have a surprise for you,” I said with a broad grin as soon as the third song wound down. I pulled away from her and made my way to the trunk of my Trailblazer. I pulled out a bottle of wine and some plastic cups. “Do you wish for me to pour, mademoiselle?”
“Oh, you are pulling all of the stops tonight, aren’t you Dusty?” she asked. I cringed. It was no secret that my name wasn’t Johnny. But I didn’t like the fact that she now thought it was the nickname only my best friend calls me. “I’d love some.”
I poured her the wine in the classiest way I could muster. I handed her the glass and watched her drink. It wasn’t bad wine; I had taken it off of my grandfather’s hands. One of my other vigilante Bonnie and Clyde moments: I was preventing the world from seeing my grandfather drunk. The plus was that the beautiful girl in front of me might get drunk instead.
I closed the lid to the large trunk and began to climb on top of the utility vehicle. “Come on up,” I said, motioning for her to join me. “We can watch the fireworks from up here.”
“Why can’t we sit in the back?” she said, motioning towards the trunk. She was right: my trunk was a small room unto itself. “It’s completely empty.”
“There’s a reason for that” I half-laughed, offering to take her drink while she climbed up. She handed it over and began to climb up. “Andy? You met him briefly last year. Or at least, his dark outline. Well in December he totaled his car and kept asking to borrow mine so he could entertain his lady friends.”
Her eyes widened as she climbed to the top. She sat on the room with her legs dangling off of the edge. “So did you let him?” she asked, grabbing her drink out of my hands and taking a sip of it. I could tell she didn’t drink much by the way her eyes rolled back slightly as she swallowed it.
I nodded sadly. “Not at first, of course. But he was so freaking persistent. Also, I was under the impression that ‘entertainment’ just meant driving them places. I had no idea that it included…more explicit things.”
Her pace went pale, I could tell under the streetlight. She laughed nervously and looked at me. “Oh,” she said, realizing now why I didn’t sit in the back of my car anymore.
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh. “I vacuumed and shampooed the hell out that area. But the idea of what happened there still remains. It’s like it has been….” I cringed. “Stained.”
She laughed, possibly at my expense. I laughed as all and poured a cup of wine for myself. I raised it towards her. “A toast.”
“For what?”
“For surviving traumatic experiences and celebrating a holiday with truly entertaining company,” I said with a small smile. We clicked our glasses and drank from our cups as though we were a dainty couple. Yet we were just the opposite: two half-drunk teenagers pretending that we were in love. Perhaps we were. I could never know.
.2009.
We are reaching the corner. Oh God. She’s at the corner. Or, someone is at the corner. I can only guess that it is her. I had checked under that streetlight twelve times. And now there she is, right under my nose.
“Andy,” I turn to my best friend. “Kick rocks,” I tell him, nodding towards the parking lot. “Oh and happy Fourth of July,” I add with a fake smile. He rolls his eyes and lets me be.
She turns to me. I walk closer. There is no denying that it is her now. She cut her hair, but her eyes are the same. Her smile is still perfect. My heart is still pounding, just like two years ago. But now it is pumping a bittersweet taste into my mouth.
“Hey,” I say, trying not to sound awkward. She smiles and nods, recognizing my existence in the most minimal way possible. She can’t tell, but it cuts into my throat. I could barely speak before. Now it would be nearly impossible. “You’re late. I ran out of wine.”
“Too bad.” She shrugs and begins to walk down the beach the direction from which I had just come. “I’m glad you made it.”
“Same.” I say, not seeing this conversation getting any less awkward. “Listen. I’m going to college in the fall. I’m growing old. You don’t look it at all, but you’re growing old too. I was never good at playing games and…” I pause, trying to compose the right thing to say. In all of my time waiting for her, I had not once thought of what I would say if she arrived. “I guess I’m trying to make you decide. First you say you will never see me again. And now here we are. Third year in a row.”
She smiles at me and grabs my hand. I can see in her eyes and that nothing is going to happen. We would never be together, “You know what I said? About some things being good enough to start again and again? Well this isn’t one of those. I lied.”
“It’s something too good to even begin.” I sigh, pulling my hands away. For the first time since I had met her, we are speaking on the same wavelength.
“So no more Next Julys?” she asks, standing on her tiptoes so that she could look me in the eyes. I want to kiss her. Damn do I want to kiss her. So I lean over and peck her lips softly. After all, tonight is a night for making memories. She doesn’t say a word.
“No more Next Julys,” I finally agree with her. I turn and I walk away, my feet dragging in the sand. I don’t look back, but I suspect that she is going back towards the corner with the streetlight. I suppose she’s going back to her life. I know that I’m going back to mine.
“Ashley,” she said as I walked up towards the park. “My name is Ashley.”
“And mine’s not Dusty.”
I can’t cry. I can’t feel a thing, even though I want so desperately to cry. I want so badly to kick the sand in the air and scream and fuss about how I almost had something that could never happen. But I don’t feel any of that at all.
After all, traditions were made to be broken.
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