by Rose Shababy
“Yo, Julio!” Delilah hollered as she leaned across the bar. Julio was the regular bartender and all sorts of drop-dead Latin gorgeous. Delilah had been trying to get in his pants for almost a year. She leaned against the counter until her chest surged upward, exaggerating her cleavage. For a moment, I thought her breasts were going to pop out the top of her dress.
“Del, Blue!” He grinned at us and lay out a couple napkins on the counter in anticipation of our order. “What’ll it be, pretty ladies?”
Delilah giggled and I wanted to gag. “Whatever you’re serving up, sugar,” she purred.
I happened to know that Julio was one-hundred-percent gay after running into him and his boyfriend in Pike Street Market, a fact I had never shared with Delilah. It had always been more fun to watch her chase him.
Not tonight. Tonight her desperate flirting seemed tired and feeble and I suddenly didn’t want to watch anymore. “Just bring us a couple Bud Lights.” I handed him a ten. He nodded and walked down to the other end of the bar to retrieve the beer.
“Why are you such a beaver impeder?” she hissed at me.
“Seriously, Del. I’m not trying to cramp your style but you and Julio? Never gonna happen.” Julio brought our drinks and I thanked him.
“You don’t know that.”
“Truly, I do. Besides, there are so many fish in the sea.” I swept my hand in a half circle, indicating the sea of bodies on the dance floor. I waggled my eyebrows and grinned at her. ”You can catch anything you want. You’re fucking hot.”
She laughed and I was grateful she was so easily distracted. “Bottoms up, Blue.” She tipped her head back and drank most of her beer without stopping. I followed suit.
****
It didn’t take long before we were hip to hip on the dance floor with everyone else. I danced with every guy that asked, and accepted every drink offered. The beer we bought from Julio ended up being the only drink we had to pay for the entire night. The comfortable haze of booze took over quickly and I almost believed the pretense of fun I put on.
By one thirty I could feel the fat blisters forming on my heels. I knew they would hurt like hell in the morning, but the pain didn’t register in my shit-faced state. My vision blurred, and as I looked around the dance floor my thoughts vaguely centered on the guy wrapped around me, swaying to the music. I tried to remember his name, and told myself I should be offended as he touched me in familiar ways, but I was too drunk to care. He was attractive in a beefy, linebacker sort of way and I wondered if I should let him take me back to his place.
He nuzzled my neck, breathing into my ear as he spoke. “You are so fucking hot, baby.” His tongue swept along my earlobe and I forced myself to hold still and let him. I knew he wanted to turn me on, but all I could think about was the repulsive trail of saliva his tongue was leaving on my skin.
I turned around so I didn’t have to look at him and closed my eyes, bumping and grinding. He groaned and pulled me tight against him. Even through his jeans I could feel his arousal pressed against my ass. “I can’t wait to get you out of here and take you home,” he growled into my ear.
I let him continue to kiss my neck as his hands traveled up and down the sides of my body. I tried to concentrate on what he was doing, hoping my body would respond. I felt nothing and opened my eyes again, staring into the mob of dancers. They all dipped and rocked, nearly in unison, like a strange cult performing a sacred ritual.
As I scanned the crowd my eyes fell on one person out of sync with the rest. Close to my age, maybe a little older, he obviously didn’t belong in the club. His clothes, messy looking slacks and a gray t-shirt, hung on his lean frame. He finished his look with a tartan scarf and brown fedora that seemed more at home on an old man than one in his twenties.
He pulled his hat off and shaggy brown hair fell across his eyes as he danced. Well, he didn’t dance so much as sway to the music, his eyes closed while a hint of a smile graced his lips. As he danced, he bobbed his head back and forth and his hands moved like graceful waves. His shadow grin seemed to infuse his entire body. He danced by himself as if he didn’t care what anyone around him thought, dancing for the pure joy of it. He looked completely out of place, yet he appealed to me and I felt myself wanting to go to him.
I was shocked by the surge of envy that rushed through me as I stared at him. His face broke through my drunken haze and I realized this man was no paper doll. His face belonged to a truly happy man. Hell, he looked fucking ecstatic.
He had the face of an angel.
I tried to remember if I had ever seen a face like his before and couldn’t.
I sure as fuck didn’t see it when I looked in the mirror.
Jealousy raged through my veins like an angry bull charging a matador, shocking me with its intensity.
“What’s the matter, baby?” I glanced up at the beefcake as he looked down at me, and I realized I’d stopped moving.
“Nothing. Hey, I’m thirsty.” I wasn’t, but I suddenly couldn’t stand the idea of him touching me again.
“No problem, baby. I’ll be right back. You wait for me, you hear?” He stroked my cheek and I repressed a shudder. He left, muscling his way through the crowd.
I turned back to look for the man in the crowd again. He wasn’t there and I almost screamed in frustration. I scanned the mob desperately, turning in a circle as I searched for him.
And then, there he was, a few short feet away from me. I stared at him and he stared back at me, still smiling and holding his hat in one hand.
“Who are you?” I asked, feeling stupid as the words left my mouth. What kind of question was that?
He held out his free hand and I reached for it without thinking. Taking the hand of this stranger seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
Our fingers touched and my skin came alive. I felt a surge of electricity as some sort of energy shot from his hand into mine, running through my whole body and back to his like an endless circuit. I couldn’t stifle the gasp that broke through my lips. I stared at him, my vision narrowing until his face and eyes and smile were the only things I could see.
The energy between us exploded outward like a wave into the crowd, through the people, and everything around me stopped. The music ended like a switch had been flipped, the people froze mid-step and even the air around me seemed to stop moving.
A split second later his hand tightened around mine and I heard him inhale sharply as I gasped in the same moment. Foreign images flooded my vision, like scenes from a movie or memories that didn’t belong to me.
The club faded away until it seemed like a distant place, belonging to a long ago past. I closed my eyes trying to block it out, but the pictures remained, playing out in my mind.
I saw him, the man holding my hand, except in the vision we were in a room with dirty windows running along the top of one wall and rickety wooden paneling. All my belongings filled the room. He had me up against the wall as our lips grappled hungrily and we tore at each other’s clothes. He pulled away for a moment, his dark eyes burning into mine. “I have lost myself in you, my wild Blue. You are like oxygen. I cannot breathe without you.” A golden glow ebbed and pulsed around us, bathing our bodies in its light.
“No one has ever believed in me like you. I’m a better person because of you.” I rained kisses on his face. “You make me want to be better.” The glow surrounding us expanded, growing brighter.
“Blue,” he moaned and crushed his lips to mine. The glow exploded and I could see nothing but light for one brilliant moment.
Then the light faded as the next scene rushed in.
The next image was of a different man, this one tall and broad and beautiful standing in the hallway of hotel with an ice bucket in his hands. He glared at me, his full lips curled in as he dropped the ice bucket and grabbed my shoulders. “I swear I’m gonna shut that smart mouth of yours, one way or another,” he growled as he picked me up off the floor and slammed his lips against mine.
“Stop it,” I told him. “Let me go.”
He did as I instructed and I slid to the carpeted floor in a heap.
That image faded as a new one took its place.
This time I saw myself, both men from the visions and several others, standing in what looked like an abandoned warehouse, holding hands in a circle. The golden light that I’d seen in the first vision surrounded all of us.
I watched as the golden orb surrounding all the people in the vision expanded and funneled off them, enveloping another man I hadn’t noticed before, obscuring his face. At the same time, the man whose hand I held somewhere in the far away Noc Noc club fell to the ground in convulsions.
I watched my face contort in agony. “No!” I screamed and knelt beside him.
He smiled a little. “This is how it ends,” he whispered. “Not a bang or a whimper.”
Then the scene faded away and another forced its way to the forefront of my mind, this one much different than the others, and I felt dark emotion sweep over me and fill my senses.
THE MIND OF A MAN
This vision differed from the others. The others were like watching myself on television, a prerecorded video. This time I seemed to be observing the scene, looking back and forth as though my eyes were the camera.
I watched as a woman trudged up a hill toward a group of apartment buildings. I glanced around and recognized the skyline behind me. I knew the hill well. It sat on the outskirts of downtown Seattle in the Belltown district. I’d lived in the area in a shitty apartment with my mother.
I felt myself walking toward the woman as she hiked, never getting any closer, keeping tempo with her. I tried to stop walking, but couldn’t. All I could do was look around a bit, and I suddenly realized I looked through someone else’s eyes.
I glanced down at my feet walking along the pavement and saw that they weren’t my feet. The shoes were fine leather wingtips, not the stilettos I’d worn to the club. Dark slacks fell in clean lines down legs that also didn’t belong to me. I could only watch helplessly through the eyes of a mysterious man as he stalked the woman up ahead.
After a few paces, she passed under a street light and shocked coursed through me.
She still had her back to the man/me, but she had the same deep red hair and rounded figure as I did. If I could peer through the eyes of someone else, this strange man, did that mean the woman walking up the hill could be me?
I stared at her more intently, looking for a clue as to her identity, when the man stepped on a piece of broken glass. It crunched under his foot and he quickly stepped back under the shadow of the building next to him.
The woman didn’t seem to notice and kept walking.
The man waited just to make sure she wouldn’t turn and catch a glimpse of him, and as he/we stood in the darkness I felt a manic desire rising up. I knew the desire belonged to the mysterious stalker even as it filled my senses and I screamed silently at the intensity. He longed for her, and at the same time he wanted to wrap his hands around the milky flesh of her throat and squeeze until he saw the life drain from her eyes.
Soon, I heard a smooth voice in my head. Soon we will see each other face to face. Soon you will be mine and the circle will be complete.
Somehow, hearing the thoughts of another pulled me even deeper, and memories that weren’t mine flooded my mind.
The man was thinking about the first time he’d spotted the redheaded woman.
He’d been winding his way through Pike Place Market as the sun began to dip below the horizon across Puget Sound, bathing downtown Seattle in a rosy glow. He liked to spend his evenings wandering through the market, listening to people and studying them as they, in turn, wandered the gallery.
Sometimes he picked up a hand-knitted sweater pretending to examine it, commented to the vendor on the beauty of a pair of blown glass earrings, or leaned in to smell a bouquet of fresh flowers, but it was for show only.
What he really did was listen.
He all but ignored the carved wooden boxes, hats and scarves, dresses and t-shirts. He didn’t care about the fresh produce, organic jams and jellies and jerky. The smells coming from the bakeries and pubs meant less than nothing.
Listening was the only thing that mattered.
He watched the crowds at the main entrance under the neon Public Market sign as the fishmongers tossed the huge vertebrates back and forth, calling to each other with laughter in their voices.
And he listened.
He listened to their words, but it went deeper than that. As far back as he could remember, he’d been able to hear the thoughts of the people around him. He could delve into the deepest recesses of the mind, listening to the most secret thoughts and feelings of the people around him. Searching.
He remembered having a difficult time controlling his ability as a young boy.
He couldn’t remember the first time his mother took him out in public around crowds of people, nor could he remember the last time. He did remember her telling him that he cried uncontrollably and thrashed wildly in bouts of hysteria each time she took him out. She decided he was afraid of people and eventually stopped trying to take him out at all.
As an adult, he was certain the childhood episodes were brought on by his inability to shut out the minds of all the people around him, the clamor from all the minds unbearable and frightening. Even as an adult he had to maintain laser focus to control the noise.
His mother kept him home instead. The only people he came in contact with besides her were the staff that maintained the house and grounds, and the occasional delivery person. They were instructed to stay away from him as much as possible to avoid upsetting him, although it hardly mattered. He could still hear their minds through walls and great distances. He often wondered how long it had taken him to gain control.
He knew the isolation imposed on him was necessary, although he also knew it had little to do with protecting him and everything to do with his mother’s embarrassment. He remembered her shame over his strangeness. It wafted off her like the smell of rotted flesh every time she looked at him.
Even as a small child he’d known she would never understand his abilities.
It wasn’t just her embarrassment that made him hide from her, but also the religious fervor with which she ruled his life. She’d possessed a puritanical love of God and constantly drilled into him the evils of humanity. “There are many sins,” she told him, “All sorts of temptations made to turn you away from God. You cannot help your nature, which is why you are and always will be a sinner, and must grovel on your knees before God, begging his forgiveness.”
His mind contained a parade of memories, his many punishments for imagined sins and false transgressions. “The Hand of God will always find you,” she had told him countless times as he suffered through her punishments in silence.
He knew if she found out what he could do she would consider it unnatural and evil, and the consequences would be dire.
So he stayed hidden, learning how to control his abilities and shut out the voices. Eventually, he developed his skills until he could do things he was certain no other human could do.
He showed her only in the final moments of her life. He still recalled with crystal clarity the way her eyes had widened as the fear and hatred rolled off of her, the stink of it clouding his mind.
He was only seven the day she died, but he would never forget. It was one of the most important days of his life.
Her influence still resounded in his mind and conscience, no matter what he tried to do to silence her. The memory of her lessons still managed to elicit a twinge of fear in him. Her voice lingered in his mind always, no matter what he did to try to quell it, no matter how many times he tried to kill it.
Worse, after years of listening to the thoughts of thousands of people, he knew she had been telling him the truth. Humanity was just as wicked as she had always claimed. I
rredeemable.
He’d also discovered the truth about himself. He was unique.
And alone.
The death of his mother left him an orphan, and no one had any clue as to the identity of his father. The one time he dared ask her, his mother had given him a terse response, anger lacing her words. “God is the father of us all. There is no other.” Then she punished him for his blasphemy.
He never asked again. He tried prying the information from her mind, but it stayed hidden, an empty shadowy place inside her. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t extract the truth.
The failure haunted him, and he pondered its meaning for years as he struggled to understand the meaning of his uniqueness.
He threw himself into the search for answers. He’d studied and learned and researched, hoping to uncover the mystery of his existence. He explored biology, anthropology, theology and dozens of other ologies.
Then, one day, as he recalled the day he asked his mother about his father, the truth of her words struck him. She’d been honest from the beginning. He truly was born of the gods.
Yet he grew and aged and someday would die. The idea of it enraged him. He wanted more.
He wanted immortality.
His studies had branched out into mythology, a wide and varied subject, with gods and goddesses from dozens of countries and ancient cultures. He’d been studying Egyptian texts and had come across the image of a serpent eating its own tail.
He’d seen the image before, in the mind of his mother upon her death.
He knew what it represented, and knew there was something special about the image, but it took time before he put it all together.
He remembered the first time he’d had an inkling of how he could attain his goal. The memories were familiar, like an old friend. The face of a redheaded girl, blurred like an old photograph, tickled the edges of his mind. She had been the first.
But hardly the last.
That day was the first time he’d realized that the Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail, representing the continuous cycle of life and death, was his own personal talisman.