Corona of Blue

by Berntson, Brandon

  Corona of Blue

  Brandon Berntson

  Print ISBN: 9781500953973

  Ebook ASIN: B00ERETPBK

  Copyright © 2013 Brandon Berntson. All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this book may be copied, sold, or distributed in any way.

  Cover art, royalty free, public domain image.

  This is a work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  CORONA OF BLUE

  by

  Brandon Berntson

  For Leslie

  Light, you are to me

  PART I

  HERE AND NOW

  1.

  Cinderella Sunshine

  2.

  What Mommy and Daddy Never Gave Me

  3.

  Light, You Will Go Away With Me

  4.

  Extremely Under-dressed

  5.

  Home Again?

  6.

  Living Inside Me

  PART II

  GHOSTLY VAMPIRE

  7.

  Corona of Blue

  8.

  Book of Poems

  9.

  Betrayed

  10.

  Silent Killer

  11.

  Scents From the Grave

  PART III

  HOME AGAIN

  12.

  Charlotte and Shame

  13.

  Broken Books

  14.

  A Little Madness

  15.

  What I Know About Ghosts

  16.

  R.A.T.

  PART I

  HERE AND NOW

  1.

  Cinderella Sunshine

  This was supposed to be a lot different, not the kind of thing that it is, that it will turn out to be. It was supposed to be one of those flighty, fluffy romances everyone gags over because it has something to do with love, but I’m not sure anymore. Maybe I knew about love at one time somewhere in my demented past. Enough love stories, I suppose, have been told over the ages. This wasn’t going to be any different. Man and woman fall forever after in love and live in a great big palace somewhere on the coast of some fairy-tale planet. That’s what it was supposed to be, but it didn’t turn out that way.

  I’m a woman, so I’m going to talk about love. Big surprise! Women (are you listening men?) know more about love and how important it is, the reason we cry as much as we do, why we’re so emotional, sensitive, and why we make such a big deal about it. Get the picture?

  Good.

  This is about love in a way, I guess, but it’s about a lot more, too. It has some love in it, just not the kind you find in your fluffy, paperback romances. It was supposed to start something like: The only good men left in the world are either dead, married, or gay. There have been a few chosen and scattered throughout time…

  Only, I never thought…

  The world of relationships, as everyone knows, (even the gays) is rocky and disastrous at best. (This is my spiel about love. It won’t take long, so bear with me.) That’s where I fit in. Ladies, we all know what we’ve been through. (Not to exclude the opposite sex, but hey!) All of us can relate. So, I made a rule, something to get me through the hard times. Something to live by. Hell, this has gone on long enough! It’s time to put my foot down! So, the new philosophy is this. When dealing with love…

  I try to be terrible whenever I can.

  I also try the other: kindness, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, though, you have to be terrible. You have to make it horrifying. It works better that way. That’s the deal. Rayleigh, I tell myself. (I know, long name for just two syllables. Thanks, Mom.) Rayleigh Angelica Thorn, you miserable girl. Why do you have to be so mean to them? Do you really have to do that much damage?

  Usually, I answer, “Yes, madam, I do have to be that mean.” (Some people say answering yourself is a sign of lunacy. “Talking to yourself?” “Yes,” I say. “Just don’t answer yourself.” “Screw you,” I want to say, but I decide against it. Hey, I’m in my thirties now, and the way I see it is this: If you can’t answer yourself, then why did you ask yourself the fucking question in the first place?)

  I would like to say this, but I haven’t mustered the guts yet. Someday.

  Everything goes wrong, the unending roller coaster of piss-poor dates, bad hair days, and experiences you’d rather forget than remember.

  I’m glad I’m a woman. I know my femininity. In this day and age, you have to be strong, but you need to know when to act like a lady, too. I see gruff, hard women out there, and it makes me cringe. I see women who act more like men. I wonder what gay women see in those kinds of women, and I wonder about the men who act more like women and what girls see in them. Yes, I am still looking for my knight, my prince, so I need to act like a lady, a princess. So, when the wrong men come around, I try to be terrible whenever I can.

  It comes with the sense of power, force, and dominance. I attribute that to my parents. Mom and Dad are both dark-haired beauties. I love them both to death, and I admit, I’m Daddy’s little girl. My father is tall and handsome. People say I look like him, and I wonder what they mean. Do I look like a man, or do I simply look like my father? Thank God I didn’t get his height because I’d be a monster. I already have the monster inside anyway. Mom will always be Mom with her tidbits of advice. More like a barrel. Barrels of advice doth my mother emit, and I nod in all the right places, “I know, Mom.” “Yes, Mom.” “Okay, Mom. I hear you. Yes, of course, I’m listening, Mother. I’m standing right here, for God’s sake! Would you please get your elbows out of my eyes?”

  But I love them. Daddy’s an associate at Knopf and Holdburg. They specialize in men’s fashion; Daddy has always believed in looking nice, and there is never an occasion when it isn’t appropriate to dress splendidly in my family. Knopf and Holdburg have been around since the thirties. Joseph Knopf and Lance Holdburg founded the business of men’s fashion in Chicago in 1932, and they steam-rolled into the world of fashion from that day forward. Now there are branches in Denver, Minneapolis, and San Diego. Daddy (that’s Rex Michael Thorn) started early and worked his way up, designing his own suits to add to the Knopf and Holdburg collection. I always thought men’s fashion was funny because so many different names for suits exist when they all look roughly the same…except for maybe the color. I stopped keeping track years ago. I told my father once that all suits looked the same except for maybe their color, and he almost started crying.

  Mom (that’s Dorothy Willamina Thorn—boy did I rib her for that one!) is a stay home Mom who keeps the house clean, works in the yard, and is a phenomenal cook. It’s one of her hobbies. Theirs is a partnership that has lasted thirty-seven years. I don’t know how they do it.

  Rayleigh Thorn went to Colorado State University majoring in English, but she only made it to her sophomore year. I own a bookstore now, my very own, thank you, called The Broken Spine. I like chills. A monster painted on the glass is ripping a paperback to shreds. It’s a dark bookstore, and I have many interesting patrons. I pride myself on being unique. In this dark, underground world we live in, I need the added reminder. It lets me know worse things in the world exist, and what I enjoy doesn’t scratch the surface compared to the horrors of today.

  The Broken Spine is on the corner of Broadway and Ellsworth. I specialize in rare and obscure speculative fiction. I think in Denver the store does fairly well. It would collapse i
n a smaller community.

  I like being close to Mom and Dad, but there’s something inside calling for a small town—just for the experience. I don’t know, though. I think I would miss the city too much.

  Mom always thinks it’s one of her failings that I like ‘dark things.’ She comments on it all the time. “Why are you so dark, Ray?” “Well,” I say, “you have dark hair and dark eyes, and daaaddy has dark hair and dark eyes. Thus I came out, looking similar, hmmm, and here I am. Ta-dah!”

  She shakes her head and rolls her eyes. It’s a game we play.

  “Really, Ray. Why do you like dark things?”

  I shrug. How am I supposed to know? It just happened. It chose me. I tell her this, but she doesn’t bite, so I shrug again.

  I wonder if that’s part of being a monster. I have gone through life being unequivocally wicked. I appreciate wicked. And I appreciate those who are also wicked. Not wicked in the sense of malice and evil, but wicked in the urchin sense, the playful demon…the ghost of a child.

  So, I thought, who is ever going to like a dark girl like me?

  (That was how it was supposed to start.)

  But you’re beautiful, Rayleigh, says my alter ego. You don’t give yourself enough credit. Look at you standing there with your tight jeans, your snug ruby sweater. Look how lustrous, how long and thick your black hair is. Look at those big, beautiful dark eyes. And you have enchanting skin, skin like marble cream. Do you see how luscious and full those red lips are? How sculpted that nose? You have been blessed with a womanly package, and I must say, girl, you are mesmerizing! You see the way people look at you whether you want them to or not. You are the lonely girl; you’ve always been lonely—those days as a child—time spent alone. You are and always have been an enigma to yourself. You doubt your own beauty. And you are capable of so much more!

  Yeah, well, I have to be optimistic whenever I can.

  That’s what you tell yourself. There’s a Natalie Merchant song about it. You wait all the time to grow up, to be pretty, or hope to be. You don’t always see yourself that way, though, a tendency to traumatize the matter by getting philosophical. One of my many faults.

  I guess, I just never thought…

  Never thought…

  Never thought what?

  I’ve been trying to figure that out. And don’t you hear that all the time? ‘I never thought I would be this, that this would happen to me.’ People say it every day. How did this happen? How did everything happen?

  The reason for my taming, my wickedness kept at bay, put on hold. Cautious and always wary but more reluctant now. Rayleigh Angelica Thorn has fallen. She is just a girl, a woman in the slam and drill of every day life. Like rhythmic chaos. It builds and builds, and you have no choice, getting caught up in it, then you vanish. It is a maelstrom. Lunacy, sadness, and delight. Yes, Rayleigh Angelica Thorn has ceased to exist. She has been a great audience. She has so much to learn about abundance and care.

  Goodnight, sweet prince.

  Voices follow me down dark corridors. Demons lurk around every corner, and all of them are men.

  At least, that was how it was supposed to start. Funny, you know. Instead, it’s another failing of mine.

  So, love, perhaps isn’t my strong suit. I guess I don’t know much about it. I love my mother and father, and my bookstore, the patrons I have, but I have never loved much else, or perhaps never had that kind of luck with it. Not that kind of love. Not the kind we pine for, the unconditional, easily forgiving kind. That was how it was supposed to start.

  It turned out anything but…

  ~

  He was blond with green eyes, cute as hell. Bashful, too. His name was Ricky Bradford, and he was in my sixth grade class. I was eleven, close to twelve. I loved the bashful bit, even then, still do. But I like them strong and in control as well. At least now. Strong and in control isn’t something you run across these days. It’s 2011 already! More women are becoming successful, more men like women, dressing in their clothes. Just be you, whoever that is, but don’t necessarily broadcast it. This is all live television anyway.

  The secret is they know what they want. They want you. You know that’s what they want, and you don’t want them. At least not yet. You’re playing the game. Even then, in the sixth grade, you and he are learning the game. It’s a fun game, exciting, and has lots of rewards. But it is just a game.

  “Can I walk you home?” he asked.

  I smiled, looking at him, Ricky Bradford, green eyes, cute as hell, and I could see he was trembling, bright red in the cheeks. His heart was hammering in his chest a million miles an hour. He was wearing a Def Leppard T-shirt and faded jeans at the time. His hair was long and wavy. Even then, I knew what I liked, and I liked music and boys who liked music. I liked boys who liked rock-and-roll music.

  I smiled even wider. “Yeah, you can walk home,” I said. “If you want.”

  He wanted.

  Prepubescent love affair! That first real challenge of a girl still trying to get her teeth to grow in straight, her wardrobe up on the times. Then, it was nothing more than jeans and jean jackets, unlaced tennis shoes. That would be the style throughout middle and high school, and I would don it like a plastic rebel. My parents hated the phase, but girls will be girls. It made Daddy furious because he based his whole life on looking smartly dressed, and here was his only daughter in heavy metal shirts and torn jeans.

  Ricky took my books, oh, that gentleman! We left the elementary classroom and walked out into the still warm sunshine of October, 1988. We walked across the parking lot, and he kept trying to think of something to say. He would look at me and smile, and I would look at him and play coy, and he would look at me and smile again.

  “So, you like music?”

  I nodded.

  “Who’s your favorite band?” he asked.

  “Van Halen,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s cool,” he said. “Eddie’s a wicked guitar player.”

  “Yeah. Do you play guitar?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. But I barely started. I try to play every chance I get. I skip homework to jam.”

  “You’ll be better than Eddie some day. You’ll be a rock-and-roll star.”

  He blushed madly, smiling as I petted his ego. I already liked him and wanted to kiss him. I had kissed boys before, the silly playful, ‘Oh my god, I’m doing something naughty Mommy and Daddy would be very upset about.’ And that, of course, made me want to do it even more. But I had never kissed a boy before, not really kissed him, if you know what I mean. And I wanted to kiss this boy.

  I took his hand, which seemed to send another shiver through him. It was damp from being nervous, but my hand was, too.

  “You wanna go steady with me, Rayleigh?” he asked.

  I nodded vigorously. “Uh-huh.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  We didn’t really say much. We were, in all aspects, enjoying this lovely, immature relationship in its early stages. It’s funny to think about how it gets you, how it creates something, how it makes all the sense in the world and none at the same time. It’s like the notes you pass. Will you go out with me? Check box ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Oh, and we thought we were so clever!

  I see through the eyes of a woman.

  I thought this, even then, back in the sixth grade, holding Ricky Bradford’s hand as we walked down the street and across the fields of Louisville, Colorado toward my house.

  We lived in Louisville then because it was a small, more economically convenient place for Dad. Although, he still had to commute to Denver every day to work, it wasn’t more than a half hour’s drive.

  “Nice out,” Ricky said, looking at the sky.

  It was nice out, balmy and wet, but it was warm. October made its presence felt. Leaves were changing, but the grass was still damp and green.

  Some boys had gotten together for a football game after school. They were in the grassy field to our right. Cars and trucks moved in and out with parents behind the wh
eels. The bus was still waiting for other kids. I was glad I didn’t live far from Louisville Elementary. I hated Mom and Dad picking me up, and I preferred walking ten miles to school rather than riding in what I thought was a raucous deathtrap of a bus or getting a ride from Mother. The bus, to me, seemed like a long yellow missile just waiting to explode.

  “Do you want to walk through the field?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, gripping his hand.

  So immature, so ready to believe Ricky would be with me forever. I already had it going through my mind: wedding dress, Ricky looking smart and handsome in a tuxedo, his hair in a ponytail maybe. We would go on tour together. I’d string and tune his guitars. It would be everything a rock-and-roll girl ever wanted!

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you out for a long time, Rayleigh,” he said, staring straight ahead.

  You always see yourself as an adult then. Even looking back, you tell yourself you were never that small, that immature. Yes, you can see yourself growing, getting mature, but even looking back, you think to yourself, “Even as a kid, I was a pretty cool kid. A little disturbed and emotionally over-wrought maybe, but still a pretty cool kid.”

  “I’m glad you did,” I said, turning to him.

  Prepubescent love affair! How romantic you always are! Where did that innocence go? Is that what made it special? The best love, the truest love was then and not now? I wondered if this was what love was trying to teach me.

  This is the feeling that should take you through life. If you remember this, you will be on the right track. If it’s not like this later, even when the innocence is gone, then it is not that prepubescent perfection you’d hoped it would be.

  We walked through the fields of high, wet grass. My shoddy tennis shoes were damp, and my toes were cold, but I didn’t care. This was my first real love, the one I would look back on and endeavor to mimic throughout ever relationship afterward, every thought and feeling.

  Ricky stopped and looked at the sky. Clouds had gathered, and it was darker. The smell of wood-smoke hung in the air, the lush cool of autumn wet and leaves. The wind picked up. In the distance, I could see the back porches of several houses. Other than this, and the school behind us, we were alone.