“I was gonna say a salad,” he says.
“You weren’t,” she shakes her head.
“But, that sounds good enough,” he says, to her rolling her eyes.
“Right,” she says.
“And you’re fine with a duck soup?” he asks.
“Sounds good.”
“Will that be all?” the server asks.
“Yes.” “Yes.”
“Great…”
“Wait,” she says.
“What is it?” the clerk asks.
“Two coffees please,” she says.
“Great, I'll be back with your drinks. If you need anything feel free to ring this bell,” the insomnia eyed server says picking up a little silver bell with a black bow, similar to the bow around her neck, from the corner of their table and shakes it ever so gently. Causing every server in the place to snap their necks with a lustful look in the direction of the bell's sound.
“Okay, thanks,” Anna says.
“Thanks,” he says. Anna waits until the undead girl is gone and says “See things like that?”
“Like what?” he asks.
“The servers, all of whom are walking gothic sex fantasies enslaved to the sound of a diner's bell.”
“Don't judge.”
“I wasn't judging.”
“Cuz you’re coming off a little…”
“What?”
“A little intolerant Anna, I just want you to know that,” he says with a serious face for almost a whole second before laughing.
“Oh shut up! you think nothing’s ever awry,” she snaps.
“You should respect all customs and cultures,” he says condescendingly.
“Did you order the ruptured spleen of a guy named Sal? a guy named Sal. Why would they humanize the meal?” she asks.
“Upupup, no you ordered me a pastrami sandwich, and what did you get, a duck soup? what if it was called duck soup of a duck named howard, would you eat it?”
She thinks for a minute, stroking her chin, pretending to be deeply pondering of her morality before surmising her answer.
“Yeah, anyone would if I they were hungry enough,” she says.
“You see, oh I thought you were gonna says no.”
“No a duck is still a duck, and that spleen, is from a guy. Named Sal, but what were you gonna say anyway,” she says.
“I dunno,” he says with the wind let out of his sails, “something about the infiniteness, and the guy is a duck to someone, or something”
“Don’t worry I would've convincingly listened and mumbled in agreement,” she says stroking his hand. They eat their meals as the drizzle outside turns into a torrential rain, violently turning the ground into tides of rapidly spiking ripples where each penny sized drop collides with the fluid ground. Finishing his sandwich, Cider excuses himself to the bathroom, leaving Anna alone to watch the water in the ambient wind washing across the front window.
“This is for you,” the undead server says, placing a slice of frosted carrot cake on the table in front of her, “from the man over there.”
“Where?” she turns to her left to where the girl is pointing.
“From the guy I walked in with?”
“No, another soul,” the server says.
“What did he look like?” Anna asks, just as a bell rings and the girl vanishes from standing beside her sprinting away on tiny skulls. Anna sneers dismissively down at the slice of carrot cake served to her from a stranger.
“I thought it would be something you would like,” says a man’s booming voice, as though every syllable is echoed from the depths of a cave. A six and a half foot tall, broad shouldered man in a dark dress blue suit is towering over Anna’s shoulder. Having barely gray stoically staring eyes looking through her, and big blue teeth that seem like cut stones, seen only when his grown cherub’s face is smiling. He's crowned with the blonde curly hair of a cherub smoothed and swept to the back of his head. His demeanor is disarming though his presence resonates a spine gripping gravitas into anyone to share the same air as him. Rarefied air is always around of too little oxygen to breathe adding to the feel he's clothed in a veil of unnerving serenity, making every second near him seem more cold and distant then the last.
“What nice ecru eyes you have,” the man says in a polite but dreary tone.
Anna looks up to see the man, finding his glare immediately overbearing she quickly looks away and says, “no thank you. I'm actually here with someone.”
“Oh, you are taken? sorry for my presumption,” he says.
“Yes, sorry. Thanks but, no thanks,” she says pushing the plate of dessert away.
“Well I don't see why you can't have your cake and eat it too,” the man says bemused. Anna takes another look at the piece of cake, remembers the waitress brought it and shrugs “I guess, I don't see why not. Thank you,” she says half smirking over her left shoulder, but the man is no longer there. she catches a glimpse over the heads of patrons of the man showing his gums as he leaves, then weaving into the torrential downpour and out of her view.
“Oh, a carrot cake, that looks good,” Cider says to a confused faced Anna.
“What?” she says.
“What's eating you,” he laughs.
“Nothing. Some guy bought me that cake.”
“Oh yeah, where is he? I'll show em,” he feigns bravery and flexes his arms.
“He's gone. I watched him walk through the door,” she says.
“No reason to waste a good piece of cake,” he says.
“I wasn't going to but, okay we'll split it then, I'm not gonna eat it all anyway,” she says.
“Ha, like you couldn't,” he laughs, cutting his half away with his fork.
At the door, Anna stops dead in her tracks, hesitating just before the raging roar of densely packed, penny sized, light refracting streaks of crystal clear rainfall. A deluge, suffocating the midnight blue of the ambient view above, pouring down an earth's sky per square mile a minute. Flooding the obsidian black pavements and undulating streets under an inch thick sheet of crystal clear water whose fluorescence reflecting surface is rendered into Rictor scale like spikes by the ultra rapidly splashing volumes of streaking rain.
“What is it?” he asks. She says nothing only staring pensively to the rippling rain and undulating ground.
“It's really delusional out there, sure you wanna go?” he asks.
“You mean it's a deluge,” she says.
“Yeah, a real delusional downpour.”
“But you said. Whatever, nevermind,” she says.
“Okay, ready,” he asks. She’s still, standing paused biting her bottom lip in front of the roaring open door. Staring pensively past his open palm to the deluge of demassifying dark blue ambient emulsifying refractive streaks randomly ravaging the watery surface of the five foot black swells rolling through the mellifluously flowing ravine that are the sidewalks and streets. Her eyes are welling as she's shrinking into the soles of her shoes with a low whimper. Panic stricken and trembling in place she’s stuttering trying to speak through a swell of self deceiving doubt reigning over her as a shelterless tempest of temporal lament. Scrambling her sensibilities and her sense of the present, seconds stretch into minutes metered by hot flashes under cold sweat pouring from all the pore's of her body. She feels like she's melting into her clothes as her tongue dries out and her eyelashes soak to blur her vision further.
The deluge through the door is overwhelming her senses unshielded senses. Her face is holding a distant glare, looking far out though delving deep into the depths of her self within, and desperately seeking unseen shelter from a soul sickening storm menacing the horizons of her mind Lost, foraging fruitlessly for the calm clear skies of the inner tempest’s eye, witnessing herself falling to her knees in an empty field, frightened, weeping alone in the dark of dusk. No longer searching for any warmth to shine through the clouds or thinking about the sorrowful scene around her. Focusing instead on the darkest swarms of thought rain
ing resurfacing glimpses of past missteps and faults, and memories wrought with remorse and self loathing. Perceiving from the depths of her being, and feeling as though her soul is fleeing, from a skin peeling psychosomatic pains of her each self deprecating though racing through her head. Anna descends into spine shivering self defeat debasing even her sense of being, seeing only the ugly days and moral compromises to survive.
Spiraling further from any semblance of perceived safety and further still with cold creeping through her bones she’s trapped stiffening to stone with quivering breath forever. Until she remembers living a path of circumstance and freewill alongside an interAlto criminal, alive beside him and on her own, in whatever present her foot may fall next. She remembers the unreachable holes in the sky above her when she learned to drive. How the road split by the second then infinitely bending into every plausible path while remaining a straight line. Wavering side to side, its edges blending with the shifting hills of green on either side. Of her holding the wheel while phantom pink and yellow hands emerged from hers to make every plausible motion at once. Spreading to her legs and arms until her body was enveloped in a ghostly blur of her being in every possible place at once. With each movement emerging into a diverging reality reacting to each other as reverberating parallel paths of pink and yellow ghostly light illustrating impossibility by the time they reach her peripheral, and radiating infinitely outward to fill the entirety of existence, like she was seeing the body of a sea seen from the car seat as she was steering the wheel.
Thinking that either way she is where she is, whether her mind is affected by the weather of weltering emotions or not. That It's up to only her to know if she can weather the storm of her own restless soul. And that she is one of them, the endlessly overlapping forever expanding reverberations. Thinking of herself, her own perception, her own path and present, as just a single pink and yellow echo to the infinitely ebbing and flowing echo to her. Each with their own minds and souls, growing independently while existing in the same stream of experiences, simultaneously persisting along their parallel paths, each alive in a life of their own.
In another place there's one of me that's courageous, there's bound to be, she thinks, of another her, that's fearless, not fearless but a brave warrior when in the pits of fear and panic. An echo that's thriving, valiant when perceiving herself through a lens stained by self loathing, defying the sentiment, destroying their soul eroding swarms falling from her minds sky. One of her who single handedly makes a crater in the clouds and the sky, that opens slowly into a massive hole of clear blue with hot sunlight pouring through it. That her feet would flee from the ground and she would float toward the warm and windless calm hole in the sky of her own creation.
Why can’t it be me that's strong enough to make holes in the sky? she asks herself, It could be me, It is me, she thinks. Struck by the thought of her summoning her own strength, then feeling passions embers igniting deep inside burning like wildfire in her chest. Heat is beaming through the bruises and blemishes her being, endures by all things from simply being alive, like sunlight shines through the sea’s water surface. Then thinking she could be what she sees herself as, realizing then that she's already in the eye of the storm envisioned as her mind. That she’s already manifested the strength from within, and it's she alone that through thought is afloat in its calm windless center of her mind's creation. She tries for fun to sip the steam rising off her sun drenched skin, quelling the tempest churning around the center of herself, seeing, feeling it’s tranquil eye in her mind’s eye clearly. Embracing without doubt, her sense of self and wielding it to easily creating craters in the sky as she pleases. Seeing herself as the ruler of the rains of fear and self afflicted disbelief pouring from blighted clouds raging around the center of her being. That to live, to feel alive in the life she is in, the path she's on, she must drink the depths in like fresh water from a stream.
She wills of herself freedom from her anxiousness, from her fidgeting finger tips and clammy palms. Reveling in the sensations of sweat dripping, and blood boiling through her veins, while riding each rib rattling pulse of her frantically beating heart. Learning to use her panic spells, her weakness as a source of strength, something to strive against, to rise to and conquer in the moment. Forcing her to seek and sip the ambrosia of life optimizing positive perspective, and slipping into a path of where ever her foot may fall next is the place to be. Experienced with sheer optimism of having no other choice, though free in the present to forge the path she will be infinitely on as herself existing.
“Anna...Carrots!” Cider shouts a foot from her with flustered face. Snapping his fingers and tapping on her forehead, snatching her out of a full minute’s daze.
“Hm?” she says hazily.
“I almost smacked you, ya know,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Well not really, where’d you go anyhow?” he ask s.
“Home,” she thinks, finding herself still and still standing in front of the open door, though relieved of her senseless apprehension. No longer dreading the mammoth monsoon pouring millions of ripples per second onto the mellifluously undulating avenues. Instead hearing the deafening downpour outdoors as the roars of lions encouraging her sense of courage to swell. The immensity of the storm outside and her pounding heart beckon her forward, to immerse herself, her senses, to experience the deluge, to know the invigorating feeling of living, of being alive. She's lost in a delighted daze and drifting past his open palm, through the open door into the same roaring deluge she seen sweeping across the windows with dread a minute ago.
My perch, she thinks, recalling the scenes seen from her many window sills, just before passing the glass door. She wakes from a wakeful slumber a few steps into the deluge and already entirely drenched. The tepid water’s running through her carrot colored pixie cut hair, down to her slender neck and soaking her soles and socks. Feeling like she's submersed and melting away in warmth. Her spine isn’t shivering and her nerves aren’t trembling, she’s tempered by the weather of her own inner tempest. She’s not afraid, but welcoming the weather outside, dreamily basking in the boundless scope of the refractive downpour outdoors. Seeing the rain as glimpses of glistening bliss beating like drums onto her head and ears and beading down her elated face. The overwhelming experience of being immersed in this onslaught of refractive rain is invigorating to her senses. Allowing and embracing the passion she feels in this moment, this present to enrapture her, wash away her cares with each penny sized drop splashing against her skin. Light, weightless, alleviated of worry, feeling like she's levitating without her feet leaving the flooded undulating ground. Carelessly swaying up peaks and down the valleys of five foot swells while standing readily still.
“They have umbrellas ya know,” he laughs, and she turns to him beaming ear to ear.
“I’m already drenched, so,” she says waving for him to join her.
“So,” he says shrugging.
“Why aren’t you,” she asks.
“Do I have to be? I mean they have umbrellas,” he says, finishing his smoke and flicking it at her but missing, instead fizzling out to the falling water.
“Fellow travelers, right?” she says. He stands unflinching for a minute, watching her standing in place swaying up and down unfazed by the weather, while beaming brightly smiling alive in it.
“Well?” she asks, tapping her foot to splash the ripples. Holding his sensibilities hostage with a smile, that's sweetened to please only his soul.
“Oh come on, what’s living for right, if not to feel alive? aren’t you a weather chaser, or something?” she asks.
“Sort of, as a hobby,” he says.
“One who’s scared to get wet? ha,” she teases, waving him closer, and with one step he’s drenched head to toe, head over heels, standing close enough to kiss to her. The faint blue spinning particle winds are sweeping across their elation shaped faces as they march along the edge of the curb. Side by sides, soaked and soaking in the st
orm while strolling the ups and downs rolling underfoot. Passing intersections, parking meters and payphones. Occasionally passing a straggling particle person, whose skin is blotching and darkening in the drops of rain, like every fluorescent and mineral wall in all of Central.
Anna waits for a crest to be underfoot and pushes him off balance, laughing as she leaps, splashing onto the top of the next wave, riding it down and up to leap again to the next. She rides the five foot swells up and down by staying in place, as he goes down and up again to catch up. They stand in place, riding the peaks and valleys of the grounds frequency as though they're on opposite ends of a seesaw. She times another jump and takes it, then skips away hurdling across the peaks of wave with bounding lunges of limber legs. He follows trying to catch up, coming to be one wave behind her a minute later. She's careful to stomp crowns and craters from the two inch sheet of rain rippled river riding the ground, sometimes splashing up to her shoulders and onto his.
The streets are empty but for the torrential downpour and the two running and jumping, stomping from one crest to the next. In reverie between canyons of variegated mineral skyscrapers whose tops are disappearing in a falling fog above them. The rain is so ferocious if she were to look up one of the millions of heavy penny sized drops would falling in this moment would poke out her eye. The two are reveling in running through the rising undulations that she'd seen with self defeating uncertainty only moments ago. Anna stops suddenly at a crosswalk, Cider nearly knocks her off her toes, but pulls her back to the pavement before she hits the street.
“What is it?” he asks, patting his pockets for the smokes he knows are soaked.
“You don’t see it?” she asks almost bashfully “look, weather chaser” she says turning his head by his chin toward the scene down the street.
“See what? you can only see, I dunno, a hundred yards in this...?” he says putting a hand over his eye like a sailor in the sun to see what her eye has an appetite for. He's peering deeper into the depths of sight through a dense, perspective bending apparitious downpour of sun stippled streaks vertically diffracting the particle breeze into wavering stripes stretching from the ground to the clouds, and bending the blue ether like heat waves blur light. Overlapping one by one until stratifying into a massive volume of mirage suspended in the air. Appearing to slow the flow of motion more, the deeper your eyes reach through its wavering depth. At eye’s length matter is moving slow as molasses, rendering billions of light blue particles spinning in the breeze, and becoming excited from suspension, more animated the closer the two come to their depth.
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