Parker
Suddenly I hear the sound of a match being struck and the sudden flicker of the flame on a candle as it is lit by an unseen hand. The flame dances hypnotically in the middle of the room. I stare at it for a while until it registers that it is sitting between a chair and a mirror.
I watch as a young woman--too pale and thin to be healthy--with long, dark locks that I’m unable to rightfully tell the color of because of the dim lighting, walks into view. She comes up behind the candle, between the chair and the mirror. She stands still for a moment, her eyes blank, positioned so that if she were looking at anything, she’d be looking at the wall just above my head. I wait for her to do something.
I jump at the sound of glass shattering as she balls her hand up into a fist and smashes it into the mirror, the glass sliding neatly to the floor. When I open my eyes again and release the breath I did not realize I’d been holding, she is standing with the same dull expression on her face.
Slowly, she bends down and blows out the candle. I’m lost in the darkness as the piano music fades out eerily.
I squinted, unprepared for the burst of light coming from the window in my room as it hit my pupils. I sighed, closed and opened them again, turning over to look at the clock. Another sigh escaped me, this one in disappointment at waking up so early.
“Ugh,” I said, stretching and rubbing my eyes thoughtfully.
It took me a moment to realize I had just woken from a dream as it does sometimes. It surprised me for a moment that I had even forgotten that quickly. I have a habit of forgetting stupid dreams or the good dreams, but the especially creepy ones have a habit of staying with me regardless. From the time I wake up to the time I can find something else to occupy my mind and even after that, I always remember them.
And this one was no exception when it came to creepiness.
The first thought about it that occurred to me was about the woman. Who was she? I didn’t often dream about people that I didn’t know in one way or another, but I couldn’t put a name to her gaunt face, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe she was some obscure singer or actress I had seen on television once and forgotten until she appeared in the dream. But that seemed to be an awfully strange dream to have about someone I had only seen on television and then forgotten. I know that this will sound like the typical male when I say this, but I wouldn’t have a reason to remember her (or dream about her) unless she had struck me as pretty. And that woman certainly didn’t strike me as very pretty. Unhealthy, yes. Pretty...no. Not really. Even her resemblance to a sickly Sarah McLachlan didn’t do anything for me. (And let us all be thankful for that...)
But I knew her from somewhere! I had to!
The name wouldn’t come from me and before I could think of it, something else occurred to me.
I was in my bedroom. I hadn’t fallen asleep there. I had fallen asleep on the couch with Gina. Or was that a couple nights ago? Another dream, perhaps? No, it was real. And it was definitely last night. I remembered catching a glimpse of some interview with some star on some late-night show that Gina had been watching. Maybe the woman in the dream had been the person who was being interviewed when I fell asleep. No, it was a man. I think.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and proceeded to rub at my temples as though I could rub the woman’s name out of my mind. And make the fact that I was back in my bedroom make sense. I wasn’t a sleep walker as far as I knew.
Gina must have had something to do with it.
I opened my eyes again and they fell upon the RG&E (despite the less than flattering nicknames I’ve heard, that actually stands for Rochester Gas & Electric) calendar that we had gotten free in the mail a few months before. There was a nice picture of some baby deer wandering around in the snow, an inappropriate picture for July but nice all the same. I looked at that day’s date and then slowly moved to the date of the day I was leaving for Oklahoma.
The square for the day I left was directly under that day’s square.
God, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to go anymore. But I had to go. I promised. And I couldn’t make up anymore excuses to not go. I had been lucky to get away with the great great aunt that I never really knew (who never really existed) dying and having to stay up for the funeral story. Gina would never let me make something else like that up. She wouldn’t let me chicken out again at the last minute.
I knew Gina was worried. She didn’t know I knew and I allowed that only because I knew how she would feel if I knew just how worried she really was. She didn’t want me to go, that much I could tell. She was worried that I wouldn’t come back. It hadn’t taken me long to figure that one out. I would have placed my right hand on a Bible and sworn to her that I was coming back, but the fact that I didn’t really know that for sure kept me from doing that. And it bothered me, too. What was there for me in Oklahoma that would keep me from coming back to Gina?
Apparently there was something, or else I really would have done the whole swearing thing if I thought that would prove to her just how sure I was of coming back. I should have been so sure I could taste it, but I couldn’t.
It was just the taste of nervousness in my mouth at this point.
I stood up and stretched some more before walking into the kitchen. As I made my into our small kitchen, still sleepy-eyed and not quite with it, I was surprised to see Gina there. It wasn’t Saturday, was it?
“Gina?” I said. “You sick?”
“Nope,” she said, putting her coffee down and smiling. “I just thought I’d feign sickness for my bosses and then stay home and spend the day with you.”
Huh? She had never done this before.
“I don’t know. The last time someone did something like that for someone else, I ended up coming home to find Taylor lying on the kitchen floor, bleeding all over the place,” I said. I meant it as a joke, but it brought on some serious and frustrated thoughts. God, how I wanted to know what had really happened.
“That’s not funny,” she said as I sat down.
“I know. I didn’t mean to say that, it just kind of slipped out,” I told her as I absently grabbed a muffin off of the plate in the middle of the table and started to take the wrapper off of it. Then, something came to me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Freshly baked muffins?”
“Actually, no. They’re those Pilsbury things,” she said, waving it off as if it was something she did everyday.
“What brought this on?”
“I don’t know. I felt like doing something nice,” she said, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
“Gina, the last time you made muffins--especially my favorite kind,” I added after biting into it, “you told me that you had something important to tell me and then proceeded to tell me that you weren’t really my aunt as you had made me call you all those years.”
“Oh, yeah, ‘all those years’. As if you hadn’t just barely learned your ABCs when I told you that one,” she said, rolling her eyes at me.
“Still...,” I said. “Now what is it? You’re not pregnant or something are you?” That thought made me nervous. I hated Lyle with a passion so...passionate that it took my all not to push him into on-coming traffic when we were taking walks around the block together as he had insisted on doing since the Hansons had left. At least I had the glimmer of a hope that she would break up with him once she realized what a creep he was. But if she got pregnant with his spawn, that would mean that he would be a permanent installment into our small unit. That would certainly be a circumstance under which I would more than willingly agree to move to Oklahoma.
“Hell no,” she said. “What? You don’t think I use the birth control pills I have stashed away in the medicine cabinet?”
“Oh yeah, ‘stashed away’,” I said, aware that my tone sounded exactly like the one she had used when she had responded to my “The last time you made muffins...” comment. Sometimes I prayed to God that there had been a mistake. But I knew there wasn’t. “Stashed away right next to my toothbrush.”
She snorted. “They are not right next to your toothbrush,” she said. “They’re in the back on the same shelf as your toothbrush.”
“Yeah, and those are pretty small shelves,” I said.
“Not that small,” she retorted. “And, I’d like to remind you that we do have a toothbrush holder. You could use that instead.”
“I suppose having my toothbrush near something you only put in your mouth...”
“And just where do you think I stick the birth control pills? Up my ass?”
“Can we not talk about this?” I said, pleadingly.
“You’re the one who brought it up,” she replied.
“Whatever. Just tell me what’s behind this whole muffin making thing and I’ll be on my way,” I said, holding up my hands innocently.
“There is nothing behind it,” she said. “And you’re not on your way anywhere without me. I lied specifically to spend the day with you. That’s not something I’m willing to do often so revel in the fact that I actually did it for once and stop asking questions about the muffins.”
“Okay, fine. Then let me ask you this, where exactly are we going?” I asked.
“Anywhere you want to,” she said back.
I raised an eyebrow at her and wondered if she had had some type of lapse because obviously she didn’t remember where we lived.
“Hmmm....possibilities, possibilities,” I said sarcastically, tapping my chin with my pointer finger. “So many places, so little time.”
“Hmph. Well, then I suppose we can stay here and do nothing like you do every day,” she said, raising one eyebrow at me.
“First of all, if I did think of somehting to do, you would object to it because you hate all the places I like to go,” I started.
“I do not!” she protested.
“You kind of do.”
“Even so,” she said. “Just think of somewhere and we can go there. I promise I won’t object.”
I paused for a moment.
“I honestly can’t really think of anywhere.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Are you kidding me?”
“Well, you should’ve warned me that we’d be doing this a week ago so that I’d have time to at least think about it a little more,” I said.
“I didn’t think of it until last night,” she said.
“All right, all right, I’m sure I can think of something,” I said. “Fantastic Records?” I suggested.
She wrinkled up her nose.
“See!” I said, pointing.
She rolled her eyes. “All right, I’m sorry. We can go there...if you really want to, I guess,” she mumbled. “As long as we go to Barnes and Noble afterwards.”
“How about you go there while I go across the street to Fantastic Records?” I suggested.
“No, that’s fine,” she said. “There’s a CD I’ve been looking to buy anyway.”
“What CD? It had better not be something dorky like the last CD you bought.”
“I do not buy dorky CDs!” she said.
Nope, I couldn’t think of one reason I would want to stay in Oklahoma. Maybe I would soon, though.
Well you can just sit there and think about it until you decide to e-mail me! :-)
Chapter Six
Chapter Eight