This guy was definitely going to take advantage of her and that’s what she meant when she said not to leave her. I probably would have left if I had my car and she had her car. I don’t know. No I wouldn’t have. It just wasn’t fun watching them dance. When they returned I decided that I’d wait ten minutes, and then we were going to leave. He smiles at me and asks if I want a drink. I shake my head no and he asks her. She says yes and he gets up and goes to the bar. I tell her that I want to leave in a few minutes, which is a lie because I wanted to leave right then and there. She nods yes but I see the disappointment on her face.
The guy returns with drinks for them and she tells him that we’re going to leave. He tries talking her out of it and he even turns to me and says that he’d take her home. He tells me I don’t have to worry about it.
The anger I was feeling was great but I still had control. I told him no way in hell. She looked at me and smiled. She was so drunk she probably didn’t even hear me, but he did and he didn’t smile. I didn’t care. This night was over. I stand and reach for her hand. She takes my hand and stands then she reaches over and kisses me on the cheek. She says thank you and my stupid, dumb, mentally challenged, and seen-one-too-many romantic movies mind takes over.
Thirty-four seconds pass and in that time I began convincing myself that what happened tonight was ok. She just wanted to have a good time. I don’t dance and this guy did. In my life I’ve heard women say that it’s just dancing. That’s what it was; just dancing and I didn’t blow it. I didn’t run my mouth and ruin a potential. She was just dancing.
On the thirty-fifth second as we are walking away she stops and turns to me. She says wait a second and begins reaching into her purse. I was dumbfounded as I watched her grab pen and paper and write her number down. She walks back to the table and drops the number in the middle.
I couldn’t take that. I walked to the table and picked the paper up and crushed it in my hand. I wasn’t thinking when I yelled “No Way!” and I threw the paper in his face.
In a small town where everybody knows each other that was a mistake. He stands and so do half the guys sitting at different tables behind him. I didn’t care. I knew what was about to happen and I just wanted to hit him at least once. My punch makes him stumble backwards but that was all I could do. A second later I’m lying on the ground in the fetal position absorbing kicks from multiple people.
The bar tender breaks it up and they disperse. He helps me stand and then she and I leave. I drove her home and park her car beside mine. I get out of her car then I walk around and enter mine. I was leaving but when I started the car she entered the passenger side.
She was crying, begging me to stay. I keep the car in park and we talk. We talked for a couple hours. She cried, not because I was leaving but because of her life. In that time I realized what I already knew. She was cool, not for me, but she was cool. She was a single mom who just got divorced and was living with her Dad. I saw my Mom get divorce and start a new life with no support. I knew how hard it was. This girl was a good person. I hope she ended up with someone cool and I hope her daughter is doing well.
I don’t date again for several months. I get lost into my job as a video department manager. It was something I was good at, or at least I felt like I was good at. I hired and fired people. It was fun. Not the firing people but the job was fun. I worked with cool people and the customers for the most part were nice. Things were good. Shared an apartment with friends and I was about to transfer to a new store. I thought that would be fun, starting a store from the beginning, but I was wrong. It wasn’t fun, but it is the reason I meet my wife.
My wife. My beautiful wife, an amazing human she is. There is no other way to say it. She’s kind, patient, strong, weak, gentle, angry, happy, and pretty much everything a man needs in a woman.
I can’t do this. This is stupid. This is dumb. Nobody will care. I don’t care. I don’t! I don’t! I don’t care! For what reason is this, the path? I don’t know and who am I? Why try to control? Is that wrong? What is to happen if there is no control? Who? Whom? You know how stupid it is to allow one letter to distract? Control of my thoughts is what I need. I don’t have it and I know what it means if I don’t get it. I can’t allow that now. I don’t have time. I have two hours, that’s it.
No! I can’t let it happen! I can’t! I can’t! No! No! I don’t care! I don’t care! That’s it. Control is lost. The whispers are returning but that’s not right. It’s too soon. Not now! Not now! There is nothing I can do. Vision fades to the familiar blackness but I won’t stop fighting. I won’t! No is all I can yell.
In the blackness my cries cannot be heard. My voice is not aloud to make sound. I’m trying to remember time but I can’t. Over and over I tell myself two hours, two hours, two hours, but I am weak. I lose thoughts and self-awareness becomes as absent as light within blackness. There is only the sound of wind.
My vision fades and I become aware. I’m inside my car, driving home from work. I had transferred to a new store that wasn’t open yet. I remember this day. This is the day my life began for the second time. The first was when my son was born.
This day was weird. I was driving home and for no reason I was taking a very long way home. To this day I don’t know why I did anything that I did.
Out of nowhere a thought enters my mind.
Key. I’m going to get a key made. I’ll go to the old department store I used to work at and get a key made. It was on the way home, or now it was on the way home.
That thought was dumb because at my video store we had a key machine and I can wait until the next day and make a key for free but whatever. All I remember is shutting my car door and walking towards the store’s entrance.
It had been three years since I stepped into that building, not since I had quit. When I quit it was weird. I was a few days from receiving my five-year badge. I was carrying a TV to a car for a customer. I load the item into her trunk then start back to the store and that’s when I said no. I’m not going to do this. I walked inside and went to the service desk. They paged the manager and when he came I told him that I quit. He took me back to his office and for two hours we talked. He tried to change my mind but there was nothing he could say. It wasn’t his fault and there was no real reason for me to quit but that’s what I did.
Now I was walking back into that building for a reason I cannot explain. I enter and immediately I see two old friends working behind the service desk. There were smiles and hugs exchanged and then I started through the store in route to the sporting goods section. That’s where the key machine was located. I turn the corner and walk by my old department with no thought other than why am I here. Why was I there? When I turn the corner down an aisle that leads to my destination I hear it, the sound of footsteps behind me.
I turn around and that’s it. That is the moment my life began for a second time. She was beautiful. My breath is what she took from me in those first few seconds and when it returned I did the only thing I could do. I said hi. That was a first for me. Up to this moment in my twenty-three years I had never started a conversation with a woman that wasn’t my friend. I couldn’t stop myself. I had to say something. I wasn’t going to let her walk past me. She stopped and smiled and then she said hi. That one word and her smile was all that happened but it was at that moment that I knew something. Something that couldn’t be real but it was. It doesn’t matter if nobody else would ever understand, because I did. I knew.
We talked and I learned that she was the portrait studio manager and before I knew it that’s where we were. She had no customers and I was going to stay until she told me to leave. She was amazing, was funny, unbelievably smart, and she loved sports. She even knew the names of fighters from a sport that’s not too popular. She was perfect. Hours went by as we talked. We sat on the floor coloring in coloring books. No customers ever came. We laughed as we talked about our lives and where we were in them.
She was three years older than me and had
a six-year-old daughter from a previous marriage. She had been married twice, and hadn’t been serious with a man for over a year or so. I don’t know. I don’t remember because it only matters that at the time I meet her she was single.
Instantly I pull out of concentration and I am sitting on the couch a few feet away from the computer. The blackness fades and I see the shadowy being sitting in my chair. How? How did I get here? What happened to time? Why am I at this place in this time? Why is this being in my chair? The Being isn’t typing and when he turns to me his long head rounds to oval as he speaks.
"Got you,"
My vision returns and I realize that I’m sitting on my chair. My wife is sitting behind me on the couch and she is mad. How? When? I was alone in the basement. I was. I know I was but yet my wife is here. She is behind me and we are apparently in the middle of a conversation. Awareness and knowledge leaks into my thoughts, it takes a second but then I remember. One of our kids ruined something upstairs. I know what it is but I can’t think.
My thoughts are spinning and the more my wife speaks her complaints the more I lose control. It’s not her fault. She is right in what she is saying or at least I think she is. I can’t tell. Her voice is muffled and it’s hard to hear. I try to say what I think is right but my focus I can’t control.
Word after word is exchanged until fifteen minutes later my wife stands. We kiss so I guess we are done and everything is ok. She’s not stupid. She probably saw my lack of concentration and is doing what she thinks is right. She humbly excuses herself from the basement.
I know she’s not happy but she’s strong or at least she is trying. She won’t allow herself to be weak, not for longer than a moment. I need to match her intensity, her trust, and her strength. There cannot be a let down. There can be only truth. Hope she forgives me.
Then I remember. I remember what the being said to me before I saw my wife. It was something about got you. Got you? As in he could get me without my permission. The memory angers me so I yell.
“No you don’t! No! There is no you, there is only truth. There is real and you aren’t real. I know! I know what is real! I will not forget!”
The faceless being is never kind so when the eerie wind like voice speaks, I know there is wrongful intent.
“This will never end.”
The Being’s whispers are cold and I feel breath crawling around my neck up the back of my head. I stand up yelling.
“You’re wrong! You won’t win! You aren’t real! Only me! I’m real!”
I turn around and scan the area. I look to the couch and then to the far wall around to the other side of the basement, nothing. There is nothing. This is stupid and I know better. I take a deep breath then turn back to the computer. Its cold, I’m hungry and I’m tired but I know what is next. I grab my headphones from the floor then I sit down. I grab the remote and point to the stereo. I take another deep breath and I make sure that the headphones cover my ears completely.
There are thirty-one songs programmed on my stereo and when I press play on the remote, my night goes down a different path. For a length of time, control may not be mine.
A powerful thought hits me and I hesitate to start the music. I take the headphones off and listen. I hear my family upstairs. I know they need me. I know I need them. It wasn’t always that way but now it is, and I will not forget past experiences. I’m done for the moment. I save my document then I shut down the computer and monitor. I stand to leave the basement but I stop at the bottom of the stairs. I speak to the un-seeable Being because I know he’s still in the basement, and even if he’s not real, it still makes me feel better.
“You are wrong. You will not win.”
I smile at my own stupidity then ascend up the stairs to enjoy my family.
Eight hours later at the beginning of the A.M. hours I’m sitting in front of my computer again. I’m working on two stories at the same time. A couple hours ago I was working on four stories at the same time. Two relate to T.B.O.T.E. and the others do not. My focus slips, from lack of concentration. I’m not being me. I’m not allowing myself trust, faith, or strength but now I will. My music is ready and I light all my candles. I know all in the house are secure and asleep. Now is the time. I know where I am.
I’m sitting in front of my computer. The music is loud and the air is cold. The basement is dark tonight, darker than normal because one of the bulbs is out. The truth is I fear. I already hear him, and I hear others, others that I know and others I don’t know.
The two stories I’m working on now, they take away everything that’s me. It’s weird, I’m not sure that’s accurate. I have no control because I have no desire for control. Time doesn’t allow one an infinite amount of chances and opportunities. This is one of mine and I will not miss it. I can’t stare at this computer. I can’t. I can’t! I have vision. I can see.
My vision fades to blinding white and the music fades into my subconscious until there is nothing but a small circle of vision in the middle of the whiteness. I’m staring at the keyboard watching my fingers as they type but the experience lasts less then a minute.
I lost it. Son of a Dag-nabbit mother may I!!!! I lost it. I try but I know it’s gone. Only for the moment but it’s gone. I allowed distractions to pull me away. I know I’m stronger than this. Movement out of the corner of my vision catches my attention. Then I hear the wind-like whisper blow across the basement creating a chill over my body. I shiver and shake it off.
No! Not now! Not tonight!
My focus is gone but my desire to do the right thing is strong. By the right thing I mean sleep till focus returns. My morning is taken for good reason but my day to night is free.
No. I’m not giving up the now. I know what to do. It’s right in front of me. I see it clearly and I allow myself to execute trust, faith, and strength. I can’t. I won’t. Tonight I’m not fighting. I’m done.
Four hours later I wake with my head on the desk. I rise up and stare at the clock on the screen. I need coffee.
Thirty minutes later I’m sitting in front of my computer, typing. I’m typing fast and without thought. I hope it is good but then I’m not sure I know what good is anymore. Yes I do.
Then the music overtakes my distractions and my vision fades to black. I hear the sound of soft wind and I don’t fight. I allow my subconscious to take control of the experience. This is why I’m here. Why I’m in the basement. Why my wife works and I don’t. This is the reason I’ve taken the verbal crap every one slings in our direction. Fine, I accept truth and release my trust. Time will tell. Right now I’m going to travel through my memories, back to the day I meet my wife.
The blackness becomes all I am and seconds later my vision clears. It is nine years ago and I’m driving in my car. I had just spent the last few hours doing something I would never have guessed I would have done. I just was at a store when I had no business being there. I just met the woman I was going to marry. It was unbelievable how much fun I had. All we did was talk and sit on the floor coloring like kids with no cares in the world.
I drove home to my apartment and ran inside. I see my roommate, Michael sitting on the couch. I told him I met the woman I was going to marry. To his credit I don’t think he doubted me.
Michael and I met in Shakespeare class in high school. That was a fun class. I got into trouble in that class all the time. Once I got in trouble for telling the teacher that Shakespeare was a woman. That made my teacher furious every time. I got in trouble for silly things, like putting my foot on top of the Shakespeare book and fine, sometimes I would sleep. Other times, Michael and I would talk about T.B.O.T.E. and sure sometimes we’d forget to listen to the teacher.
I remember standing in our apartment laughing as I told Michael about my day. I told him about Sally, and how we did nothing but talk and color. I told him what I wanted to do and then he laughed. He might have said that I was stupid. I’m not sure.
My plan was simple. I was going to get a second job, at my
old department store. I needed money. I needed money so I could buy a ring so I could ask a woman to marry me. I was distracted by the fact that I didn’t know her. I didn’t know if she even liked me, how could I? All we did was talk and color but that’s not where I put my importance. I gave value to the feeling, to what I was experiencing in my mind and heart. This woman was going to be my wife. I knew it and if I was wrong embarrassment would follow.
I also knew what that meant. I was going to have to change. Some people have a hard time admitting they have flaws; I am not one of those people. I know I do. Most of them are normal and understandable, but still flaws. I was going to be different this time. I was going to be, me. Sounds simple but it wasn’t.
That night I had a dream. It was about my future. It was similar to a dream I’ve had since I was fifteen.
In the dream there is a grayish tint to the air and this time there is a sense of awareness that is stronger than normal. Information comes with vision and thought.
My presence is hovering about twenty feet in the air and I’m staring down. I know when and where I am. This is my funeral. I’m watching my family and friends as the priest speaks.
My presence flies towards my coffin then swoops up to hover several feet in front of my family. I see my wife and this time it’s Sally. Normally when I have this dream the only thing I can see of my wife is that she has dark hair. The irony in that I always thought I would marry a blonde. Like always with my children I can see blurry outlines but I get information with the vision.
Two of the forms clear and I see them. I see Jessica and Bryan. The other three are still blurry but I know them. They are the twins, boys and then there is the youngest, our daughter. I wake from my bed and sit up. From my experiences in the past I’ve learned to keep a pen and notebook near in case I needed to write my dreams down before I forgot them. It wasn’t something I executed as often as I’d like but this time I did. I draw a picture of a family. It was simple art, stick figures.
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