Caves

“Hang in there, honey…” 

“You’re a person in your own right. Not just a collection of features…”

“We are working so hard to keep you alive here!”

“Damnit!”

The voices come… and they go back into the mist from which they arose.

I don’t know whose they are.

I only know I’m crashing in the dark.

“It’s been quite a week for you, hasn’t it?” my therapist asks.

“Been quite a lifetime,” I reply. Sarcastic.

How’s this week any different from the rest? I mean… Sure, my aunt died. The only one with any sense. And I lost my cockatoo. But that is just the latest in all the shit that’s always happening.

No one should have to be raised by an aunt and three uncles instead of their mom and dad. You shouldn’t be made to feel so unimportant that your parents don’t stick around for you. That they would rather travel just the two of them than be with you…

No one should be stuck in a shithole town in the middle of nowhere but woods! Where nothing ever happens except bad things. Where your own family abandons you to be raised by three uncles and an aunt. And the aunt dies…

Now it’s just me and my uncles. And my uncles are fucking dumb!

Not stupid. Not unintelligent. Shit, they’re each of them smarter than anyone else in town. But fucking dumb when it comes to raising a kid!

So awkward.

So… I dunno! I’m tired of thinking of my uncles always teaching me stuff I don’t need to know.

Approach vectors. Combustion theory…

Who needs Einstein’s relativity in the backwoods?!

I needed to learn how to climb a tree. How to swim across a lake.

I need to know how to kiss someone. How to kiss the girl of my dreams.

My uncles can’t teach me that.

Nothing useful.

I bet none of them has ever gone skinnydipping in the moonlight. Probably ain’t none of them kissed a girl. Or a guy either.

They’re just nerds.

And turned me into one as well.

Laughed at by everyone in school. Where I already know all the subjects better than the teachers but still have to go.

It’s so, so, so fucking boring! To always know the answers before the questions are asked. But sit there hour after hour with nothing to do but marvel at the stupidity of everyone else.

And watch the sunlight playing on her hair.

Look at the light kiss her lips the way I’d like to do…

I wish I were a boy. Then, at least, I could do such a stupid thing, and blame it on my hormones.

“Boys will be boys,” they always say. Boys get away with an awful lot of dumbassery simply on account of being boys.

But I’m a girl.

A girl who dreams of kissing another girl…

Back home I cook and clean beside my uncles. They quizz me on science all the while. Question after question. I reply. Correct.

My aunt always said just because she’s a woman, it’s not her job to do the cleaning of the house. To their credit, my uncles agree.

She said she won’t cook either. On account of hoping to keep people alive.

But she also said it’s useful for me to know how to cook and clean. That it’s a skill everyone should have, regardless of their gender.

It’s just her that’s so hopeless at learning how to cook here. Better for everyone she doesn’t try.

Though I know she’s a gourmet someplace else. An apartment so small there’s no room for a man inside. In a city somewhere I’ve never been. Where she lived before I came along and became their responsibility. Where she still visits, visited, I dunno… When she was alive. Is she alive now?

Where’s my aunt what happened to her?!

I’m crashing. In the dark.

I come back.

On my way home from school I hear them talk. All these other kids. They talk about going to the caves at night. They dare each other to spend the night there. “Too scared”, “Too chicken!”, “No, you are!”

I almost walk past them unnoticed. But not quite.

I see she’s with them. Forget to keep my face down. To stay hidden under my hood. I look at her, and… She sees me too. Catches my eye and smiles.

My heart skips the next ten beasts, I think. That smile…

“How about you?” she asks me.

Takes me a moment to reply. I have to clear my throat to get some sound out.

That smile…

“What about me?” I ask.

“Would you spend a night at the caves? Would you dare?” Teasing.

I don’t get a word in before someone else taunts “No way! Nerd girl here? No way she’d ever go to the caves! Let alone sleep the night there!”

Everyone laughs. Including her.

My uncles have told me to never go to the caves. They are dangerous. Everyone’s been told so. Even my aunt says… said… Even my aunt says not to go there. Ever. Not even in broad daylight. Could get killed.

Everyone in town knows better than to go to the caves! At least… Everyone should know better.

These kids? They seem to not have sense. To not know better. They’ve been told, I’m certain.

“With you? Sure.” I hear myself say.

What the hell am I saying?! I must not go to the caves! Ever! It’s not safe! I can’t..!

But to spend a night with her… Even if it is only sleeping…

“I’ll go to the caves if you will,” I say. Like it’s a dare, and not a hope.

“Me??” she asks.

“Ooooo!” others start taunting her now. “Will you dare?”, “Come on! You gotta go now. You can’t back up, girl!”, “Nerd girl here wants to go with you to the caves!”

They are laughing, and teasing, and I look at her. Hoping there is challenge in my eyes, and not something else.

She squints a little. Assessing both me and the other kids. Her options.

“We will all go.” she declares. “Everyone who’s not a chicken sleeps in the caves tonight!”

And so it’s settled. Everyone will go. Except the chickens.

I had kind of hoped for just her and me.

I don’t know what exactly I was thinking would happen with the two of us there.

Maybe best it’s everyone. Not just us.

We all agree to meet a little after midnight. To give the grown ups time to fall asleep.

It’s a quiet town. Nothing happens here at night. So… They usually sleep by midnight.

If someone’s parents have insomnia, or something like that, and they can’t get out, we’ll need video proof that we’re not just chickens too scared to go. Show it in the morning to everyone else.

I almost hope my uncles will not sleep. But they all have tablets for their insomnia. For when that happens to whichever of them. They just pop a pill.

I know they will be out by midnight. And then… So will I. But I’ll be out the door and heading for the caves.

Dinner that night is a little bit different from usual. Quizzing as always, but then my aunt sees me look a little strained. Gets worried.

I tell her it’s nothing. Just school. Some kids were mean as usual.

She worries more. I repeat that it’s nothing. I can handle it just fine.

She tells me to talk to my therapist about it. Talk about the bullies, what they do.

I promise her I will.

Later, much later, when the dishes of the last bedtime snack are washed, and everyone in the house should be heading for bed, I hear her argue with my uncles. She says I should be taken out of school. Be homeschooled. Or maybe removed from this town altogether. Taken somewhere else.

I silently cheer her on. I would love to get out of this place. Or at least out of school, if I could.

But my uncles seem to win. They say there’s work to be done right here. No one should leave at all. Not even her. And interactions with humans at school are doing me a world of good. In spite of all the bullying…

Damn my uncles.

I wish my aunt could win!

I want to get out of this place so bad. But no.

Everyone settles down. They brush their teeth and go to sleep.

The house is quiet except for the usual snores from here and there. Most of us sleep with earplugs in to keep from hearing them all the time.

That works in my favor as I sneak out of the house. No one hears a thing.

My home is much further from the school than anyone else’s. It’s closer to the caves. 

The moonlight makes it easy to see where I want to go. Sure, there’s shadows in the woods, but when are there not? I find my way.

I’m the first to arrive, and for a while I wonder if that’s it. If no one else will come. But then they do.

Then she does. 

Shortly after that, all but two or three kids have made it to the clearing where we said we would meet. One has sent word that their mom is up drinking in the den, and will not be passing out till sunrise. Impossible for them to come.

We move on without the two or three who do not arrive. They’ll be deemed chickens tomorrow. Unlessof course they prove beyond a doubt there was a good reason they couldn’t make it. Probably still teased anyway.

I’m glad I’m not the chicken tomorrow.

I’ve been the chicken before. And paid the price. Back when I couldn’t swim.

I swim just fine now. I taught myself. Just so next time I wouldn’t have to be the chicken who says no.

Anyways, we head towards the caves.

I catch her looking at me every now and then. Smiling a little every time she sees I see her.

I’m not sure what that’s about. If it’s a good thing. Or presages something bad.

My heart skips a beat or a few every time she smiles nonetheless. Be it good or bad.

I just like being near her so, so much… Walking in the darkness of the night,and in the moonlight.

We arrive at the caves. Ominous and black. Looming. Chained. Boarded up. With signs all over the place warning about the danger. “Don’t go in!”

Skulls and shit on the signs.

But the boards are loose some places. The chains can be slipped under. 

Someone’s not been doing their job maintaining the obstacles in our way. One should never, ever trust mere warnings and half-assed obstacles to work in keeping people out.

Some will always take those as a dare.

Into the caves we go. Careful not to slip and fall on the sharp, loose rocks beneath our feet.

Our lights reveal such beauty in this place.

There’s green. And there is stone of different kinds that looks so amazing.

There’s tiny openings, where no one fits.

There’s spaces that are huge.

There’s sudden falls where a few of us almost die. But just in the nick, someone always yanks them back. Before they can step in and drop a thousand feet.

Or however deep that actually is. Way beyond the power of our lights, that’s for sure.

And in the caves we go. And deeper in. And you keep smiling. And that is all I see.

And then there’s screaming.

Someone shouts.

Chaos and confusion.

Kids go missing. Ones that were just there. Alive and laughing. Only some seconds ago.

An arm falls from the roof of the cave all bloodied up, and chewed. And you are no longer smiling but scream and crying.

I want to kiss the tears from off your face, but I hear singing. Humming. Song.

“Mama, you came!”

“Mother, you are back!”

“Oh, Ma, we’ve missed you so! It’s cold here, Ma. Please take us home!”

And I cannot.

For now I remember falling.

Crashing through the darkness to this place.

All those millions of lightyears, and all those stars and novas, and this is where we are? What I have become?!

Trapped in the shape of a human teen!

What have they done to me??! What have they done??!!!

And I crash in the darkness. And I’m lost in the mess. My children’s hopes…

The home I need to find them… The help I have to get! The falling and the crashing and the breaking into bits!

My uncles and my aunt! Finding me. (Though not my kids.) Helping me. (Though not my children.) Rebuild me in their image. Keeping me alive. (I need to help my kids!) They made me a teen.

They’ve done their best. 

“Hide!” I tell my children once again as I malfunction. On the ground. And in the dark. Cashing once again.

“Where is she?” My aunt, my uncles wonder. Search. Grow frantic.

“There’s other kids missing from the Town as well!”

“Lynn is passed out drunk again. But they talked to her kid, who was home, and she said they were planning to go to the caves!”

There it is. That cause for true alarm.

“No… No, no no..!” says my aunt.

She knows I could find pieces of myself here. Become confused.

They all know I could malfunction.

And no one wants the other kids to know about the ship. To tell the town.

The minute the military swoops in, the secret’s out.

They are the best at what they do, my uncles and my aunt. Their private company. They’ve been studying me for years. Me, and the remains of my ship.

They still think there’s no one else.

I haven’t told them about my kids. I buried that file so deep. I must protect them. Keep them safe.

That is my job. It always has been. The reason why I exist.

Protect the offspring. Take them to a world where they may live.

Not this one.

This one wasn’t meant.

We were supposed to fly past, but then something… Something happened and I crashed.

I have failed to take them to their home.

This world is too risky when they’re small. They need to grow.

I’m crashing in the darkness when they come. My uncles and my aunt once again. They find me. Like before. Almost like before.

There’s sparks of energy going all over my exterior.

“It’s too dangerous! Don’t!” My uncles yell at my aunt, but she won’t listen. She rushes in. Wants too much to save me. Stabilize me again.

The energy hurts her badly. Too, too badly. It does.

She saves me, but she’s burned. And then she dies. Right there beside me on the rocky floor of the caves. Before my uncles’ eyes.

I lose my aunt.

The only one who got me. To some extent.

There’s a glitch in my brain they cannot fix. Not quite. They go around that.

They tell me I had a bird that flew away. Did not come back. A cockatoo.

They tell me my aunt is dead.

But not that she died because of me.

That I’m the one that killed her.

They also do not tell me I was ever at the caves where kids went missing.

I’m no longer in that town. I got my wish.

They took me someplace else.

“It’s been quite a week for you, hasn’t it?” my therapist asks.

“Been quite a lifetime,” I reply. Sarcastic.

How exactly is this week any different from the rest? I mean…

Sure, my aunt died. The only one with any sense. And I lost a cockatoo. But that is just the latest in all the shit that’s always happening.

“But it’s not every week one’s favorite aunt passes away. And almost half one’s classmates go missing too…” My therapist says.

Missing?

Don’t go near the caves.

Gingerbread Witch

It is tradition. Every year for Christmas, she bakes a gingerbread house.

You are thinking “Yeah… so what? Everybody bakes a gingerbread house at Christmas. Nothing special there,” but you are wrong. Nobody bakes a gingerbread house quite like she does.

You see, hers is no ordinary gingerbread house. No little thing that sits upon a table somewhere. Ooh, no. She bakes out of gingerbread dough a full-sized house that people can actually enter.

She furnishes the house with gingerbread furniture. She bakes sinks, and stoves, and dishes out of gingerbread. She bakes cupboards, and closets, and even toilets out of gingerbread dough!

It is nothing short of miraculous what she can do. The end result is incredibly astonishing. It is both beautiful and delicious too in the end when it’s all eaten. It draws in tourists from all over the world to see and experience the most amazing of all life-size gingerbread houses ever made.

Every year she outdoes herself. Every year her house becomes even more spectacular than last year, and we all thought that nothing could ever beat that! How does she do it?

Seriously, how does she do it? Nobody knows.

For a gingerbread house this size, you’d expect there to be a whole army of people to put it together. Yet there isn’t. She does this all on her own.

The rest of the year she sells all sorts of baked goods at her highly popular small bakery and cafe. Her breads and cakes and buns and what-have-yous are all totally delicious with perfect texture. They are also all fairly normal size. Some a little large, some adorably tiny, but all within a range you could actually expect coming from a small bakery.

Her incredibly detailed life-size gingerbread house, on the other hand, is a complete departure from anything that could be expected from a small bakery. A large bakery with a huge staff perhaps, maybe… yet even then the attention to detail, the perfect execution, and the mind blowingly delicious flavor would still be… well… miraculous.

That she actually makes this amazing thing all on her own in a small bakery? Defies all logic. It really does.

It must be magic. No other explanation. There has got to be magic involved.

No way she could accomplish all this otherwise. No way she’s just a good baker. Just… No way.

And that is why we are here today, to prove what she actually is. For she has got to be a witch. A gingerbread witch no less.

– “Don’t you mean ‘a witch with a gingerbread house’?” Hans interrupts his sister. He is still recording her with the camera in his smart phone.

– “Shut up! Gingerbread witch sounds good,”

– “Yeah, but.. Gingerbread witch bakes herself familiars. This is a house. So, a witch with a gingerbread house, like in Hansel and Gretel, not like the other one in the Frogs.”

– “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hans. You never do. Those two are one and the same. Now shut up, and let me continue… Where was I?”

– “Well, aren’t you two cute,” she speaks from where she suddenly stands right next to them. “Gingerbread witch… A witch with a gingerbread house…” she laughs such a beautiful, delighted, warm and loving laughter.

Both brother and sister scream a little with fright. Neither of them had noticed her coming into the small room in the gingerbread house where they were making the video.

– “No, no, don’t be scared,” she laughs again. Hers is a really endearing and infectious laughter. It puts Hans and his sister right at ease, for all their theories of her being a witch. “I like it. Either way you choose to say it, I do like it. But, you should know, I really do not eat children,” and as she laughs again, the children laugh together with her.

– “Oh, no, we really didn’t think you did.”

– “We were just…”

– “We’re supposed to be making this video for school, and…”

– “For school? Well, isn’t that nice,” she says, all smiles and warm deliciousness. “Would you like a tour of the house? I’d be so happy to show you everything.”

– “Cool!”

– “That would be great!”

And so she shows them everything. The children fully enjoy a wonderfully thorough tour. They get to see every amazing detail, accompanied by her, and all while munching on delicious little gingerbreads also baked by her, of course.

The tour ends at the ensuite bathroom of the master bedroom. The detail is every bit as incredible as everywhere else in the house. The little soaps, the shower wall, the gingerbread toilets… everything is just amazing.

– “You know,” she says to the children as they stand admiring the bathroom horribly reluctant to ever have to leave. “When I said I don’t eat children, I did speak the truth, but…  Maybe not the whole, entire truth.”

– “What?” Hans and his sister look at each other confused, and just a little bit alarmed. Not all that much alarmed, though, as her laughter, and the tour, and all those gingerbreads they have eaten have really served to calm them down, almost to the point of coma.

– “Well… I do not eat children, but my familiar does.”

– “Your familiar?” Hans’ sister manages to ask through the fog in her brain.

– “Yes. My familiar. My house. Whatever you wish to call him. He has yet to eat anyone this year, and by now he is rather frightfully hungry.”

The bathroom cupboards turn into a toothy grin. They grab the girl’s head, and snap it right off her shoulders, swallow it down. The rest of her body follows in four bites.

The toilet seat gets Hans. Between the seat and porcelain its teeth are awfully sharp.

Once the toilet is done eating the boy, it burps. Up comes the smartphone. It lands right in her hand.

– “Do let’s delete this, shall we? It really would not do for evidence of your existence to resurface now that you have been eaten right out of everyone’s memory.”

She deletes the video. Then she drops the smartphone right back in the gingerbread toilet where it promptly disappears. Reappearing somewhere someday perhaps.

With the house’s hunger temporarily sated, it is time to greet other guests.

…Never to Cross Again

They crossed the bridge they’d crossed so many times as children. They crossed it just once more as grown ups. Crossed it once again, just this one last time, never to cross again.

The ravine was deep. They said that it was bottomless. Forever going down into the depths of the world and never ending.

They said if you fell in you never would stop falling. They said you’d live forever in that fall, but no one wanted to find out if that was actually true.

Grown ups said so many things we never knew if they were true. And then when we were grown ourselves they said that we must leave. They said that we must cross that bridge again, but this time not return.

Like they who left us last year. Like they who left the year before. Like they who always left us never to return.

Only now it was our turn to not return.

The bridge was narrow. It was hard to cross. The wind would blow and sometimes children fell. Forever went on falling so they say.

It was harder for the ones who were no longer children. Hard to cross this narrow bridge without a fall. Harder still to walk into the jungle on the other side where the children never went.

No one had ever returned once they were grown. No one who had stepped into that jungle had come back.

And now it was our turn.

We walked to where the bridge begins. We looked back at all that we had known. We walked across the narrow bridge so careful not to fall into the endless ravine. We walked into the jungle never to return.

We crossed that bridge to another world…

…never to cross again.

Good Morning

The ghost of my mother is leaving the kitchen when I come down. She’s already made the pancakes I was planning for breakfast. Thank God she hasn’t made the coffee, though. I always hated my mother’s coffee.

I start the coffee. Make it strong, the way I like. Then I sit down to eat. The pancakes are ready, after all, so I may as well enjoy this getting to eat alone. Thanks, mom. A moment to myself a rare treat in a house with four children, a husband, two dogs and three resident ghosts.

My mom is the only ghost I knew before we moved here. She moved in with us. The other two had been here already ages.

Cristobal had been a Spanish sailor. His ship hit the rocks just off the coast here. He made it to the beach on a plank of wood. The only one of the ship’s crew to survive. He fell in love with the lady of the house, and never left. Not even when he died.

She loved her husband. As far as I can tell, nothing ever happened between the lady and the sailor, but he lived out the rest of his days worshipping the very ground she walked upon. He’d work around the house and on the grounds. And he kept right on working even after a fever took his life.

The lady moved on with her husband. Cristobal remained.

The other ghost is a gray one. Fought in the war. Still wears his uniform. I do believe my mother is quite taken with him. And he with her. If ghosts could make children, I’ve no doubt we’d see a whole bunch of them running around here soon.

Can ghosts have children? Dear God, I do hope not! It’s bad enough having three brothers who don’t believe in ghosts. Let alone have to explain new siblings to them.

My brother John is the worst. I can understand Peter and Paul not believing in ghosts they cannot see, but John? Even when he sees our mother as clear as day, he still refuses to believe in her being real. Every time he comes here, he has to drink himself under the table if she tries to talk to him at all.

John is so convinced that he is crazy, he spends two hours every week talking to a really expensive psychiathrist. “Why am I still not over my mother’s death?” Oh whiny, whiny, whine. If he’d just accept that she is real, and he can see her the same as me, he’d be fine. Could spend his money on something so much better than booze and pills that do not help him at all. But no. “Ghosts do not exist.” Blah, blah, blargh.

John’s life is his. It’s up to him how he chooses to spend it. What he chooses to believe and not. Where he puts his own money. It’s only when he tries to get me too to stop believing in ghosts, and to go see his shrink as well, that’s when I lose it. I get so mad.

Last time I yelled at him to go and fuck his shrink. Thank God the kids were out of the house at the time. It really wouldn’t do for them to hear their mom screaming such things, and at their favorite uncle, no less.

If they heard me yelling at Peter, they’d be fine. They’d laugh behind the closed doors of their rooms. They’d agree with anything yelled at him, whether they understood the words or not.

Peter is such a bore. So stuffy and so insufferable. Just like his wife.

I never yell at him, though. I just put up with his pretentious bullshit whenever he comes around, and thank God he doesn’t do so more often.

It really is too bad that Peter can’t see our mom. She’s been trying to scare the shit out of him ever since he married that awful Mirella. Wouldn’t that be a blast if someday he actually saw her? Or if Mirella did… Now there’s a thought that makes me smile.

She’d be out that door so fast. Screaming in Jehova’s name all the way home. Hell, they’d probably hear her screams over there in her home town even before they made it out of our parking lot. And that with a five and a half hour drive ahead of them before they reach the place.

But, alas, John is the only one of my siblings who shares this gift. And he refuses to believe in it.

At least, he did refuse the last time I saw him. Who knows, maybe he’s changed his mind since then. It’s been, what, two weeks, after all.

Maybe he took my advice and spent those two weeks bonking his shrink. She’s single. She is beautiful. And she’s definitely got a thing for my brother underneath that professional veneer of hers. Oh, she’s got the hots for him all right.

Maybe the two of them came to their senses at last. Maybe they put away all the shoulds and the shouldn’ts, and the must nots and the don’t exists, and fucked like bunnies every day and night between two weeks ago and the next time I see him.

And maybe pigs just learned how to fly.

Who knows? I certainly don’t. All sorts of miracles can and do happen. Take my this morning’s solitary breakfast as proof of that.

I do know that my alone time is just about to end. I hear my husband upstairs. I hear our eldest daughter rummaging about in her room. The whole house is about to descend upon me, and I am ready for them. Nicely refreshed from the good, strong coffee, and the pancakes that my mom always made so well. Her recipe. One that I’ll be sharing with my children and no one else.

– “Good morning, honey,” my husband says on his way down the stairs. “That coffee sure smells good this morning.”

– “It does, doesn’t it, and the pancakes are good as well.”

I smile, and we kiss, and I give him his coffee, and he takes his pancakes himself. Two daughters run downstairs, for all I’m always saying “No running in the staircase!” and I say it again. And I give them their breakfast, and so begins our day.

Mom, her grey beau, and Cristobal are all sitting in the living room talking about something as the rest of the family gathers downstairs. We eat, and we move on.

The two dogs get to share the last pancake after their own breakfast of kibbles and a long walk.

My Future Me

Plop!

– “Hi.”

– “What the HELL??!!”

She appeared from out of nowhere. This woman who looked just like me. Only older.

– “No, no, don’t be scared,” she said in a hurried voice, “It’s just me, you, well I am you, I… Look, I came back in time from the future just to tell you this: Do not marry this guy. Seriously. Don’t. Do not get married today. I wish I had time to explain it all, but…”

And she disappeared. Like she’d never been there. I could only assume she never had.

It was the morning of my wedding. I was sitting at my dresser adding more mascara to my lashes when I heard the ‘plop’ behind me, turned and saw her there.

She seemed so real.

Now I’ve heard of wedding nerves. Every bride gets them, I’m sure. But was I really this nervous about marrying Keith? That I would hallucinate myself from the future to warn me off?

Oh my God.

If everyone had not chosen just that very moment to burst into my room to help me get into my dress and my veil, and into the car that would take me to the church, I might have taken more time to think about what I was trying to tell myself with this hallucination. I might actually have considered calling the wedding off. But it all just happened so fast.

I was carried along by the events and the people, and the next you knew, I was on my honeymoon.

I was lounging by the pool, sipping a drink so full of fruit it was a wonder one glass could hold them all, when I heard it again: Plop! And there she was, sitting on the edge of the pool chair on my left.

– “You just had to do it, did you? You just had to marry him, even though I told you not to… Look, it’s not too late. You can still divorce him.”

– “Why would I want to…”

– “I don’t have time! Just do it, ok? Please! Just get to the nearest consulate, find yourself a lawyer, and get this fixed! Divorce him, fast as you can!!”

With those words, she disappeared again.

Keith got out of the pool where he’d been doing laps. He came to me and kissed me. Asked me what was wrong.

But how could I explain it to him? We were on our honeymoon, and here I was hallucinating future me telling me to get divorced! I could never do that to him. I loved him!

Or did I?

I never did tell Keith about the woman that I saw, or anything she had said. I only hallucinated her one more time, when I was pregnant with our first child.

Plop!

– “It’s still not too late, you know. You can take this kid, and raise him on your own. I know you think you need his help, but believe me when I say, you don’t. You do not need Keith for anything at all.”

And she was gone.

I didn’t believe her, of course. I was going to have a baby. Our first child. Of course I needed my husband.

Three children later I was still married, and pregnant again. Only now I knew I really didn’t need Keith’s help with the children. If I did, we’d never have made it this far. Because Keith’s help was something that just could not be had.

Oh he made promises. All sorts of sweet promises of how he’d be there, how he’d do this, how he’d do that. But he never, ever, actually did any of the things he promised. He never saw any of it through. Just as he never once made it to any of the children’s plays or matches.

He didn’t really support us financially either. I found myself having to borrow money from my family and from my friends to make ends meet. Each month I found myself deeper and deeper in debt.

And we argued. We argued all the time. Mostly about money. I just could not understand where his all went. But we also argued about me. He didn’t like me seeing my friends. He didn’t like me looking pretty.

He was jealous. Crazy jealous. And no matter how hard I always tried to avoid giving him any excuse at all to doubt my fidelity, it only got worse as time went by.

On my thirty fourth birthday, he left me and the kids for a really sexy hot bimbo. I later found out he’d been seeing a whole string of sexy bimboes for years.

That’s where all his money went. Partying with them. Buying them cars, and jewelry, and clothing. While his children and I went without, sometimes without basic necessities even. Like toilet paper. The day we ran out of toilet paper, and I could not afford to buy a new roll, was the worst!

I was left alone with five children, and a house I could not afford to pay the mortgage on. I had to sell the house, and rent a place that did not have enough rooms for us all.

The kids had to learn how to share with a sibling. I had to share my own room with the youngest.

I worked two jobs to make ends meet. I managed to scrape together a little extra, and started a business of my own. My coffee shop/bakery did really well, and I was eventually able to expand into a small chain. Nothing too grand, but enough to finally get me out of debt to friends and family, and even pay four kids through college. The fifth didn’t want to study. He got a job in retail, and seemed content.

Was I content myself? Well no, not really.

I was happy to be out of debt. I was so happy all my children were doing well. But what had I really done with my own life?

Here I was getting old, and the only really interesting thing that had ever happened to me, was that I’d hallucinated a future me warning me not to be with the man I married. How could I have known? How could I have been, on some subconscious level even then, aware of whatever it is that was wrong with Keith that would lead him to treat me and his children the way he did?

And then I saw her again. My future me. Only this time it was in a mirror. And I felt my own lips move as she spoke to me.

– “I told you not to marry him. You really could have listened.”

 

 

 

 

That’s How

In my mind it goes like this:

In the darkness of the night, two shadows move. Two figures emerge briefly into an area lit by a street lamp, as they hurriedly slip from one dark spot to another that just couldn’t be reached without risking the light. Mostly they stay in the cover of darkness.

We see them wearing long coats with the laples turned up high. We see them wearing hats. That is all we see. Until the moon decides to come out from behind the cover of clouds, and reveals that the two characters are standing by a high fence made of wire.

– “Hurry up, will you? The moon is out. We don’t want to be seen,” one whispers to the other.

– “Takes as long as it takes,” the other replies, equally whispering.

They clearly do not wish to be heard, either.

-“Damn tricky finding the right frequency sometimes…”

The character is adjusting a device of some kind in his hands. It clicks quietly, beeps softly, and then hums in a very low hum. He aims it at the fence, and “whoop”, part of the fencing simply disappears. Large enough a part for the both of them to walk through.

-“Got it,” he whispers with a grin.

They step through, and on the other side he points his device at the fence again. Another quiet beep, followed by a soft hum, and “blop”, the fence is whole again.

The two men quickly run deep into the fenced-in yard. They are having to zig zag in between great piles of something. No telling what is in those piles, only that they are getting very high indeed. The higher they deeper they move in.

“How’s that over there?” one of them asks, pointing at a particularly suspicious-looking pile of something.

“Could do. There’s certainly lots of stuff in there, and some of it really intriguing.”

So they stop, and take from their pockets one metallic half-sphere the size of half a grapefruit each.

“Where shall we send this one?”

“There’s a house about twenty five miles from here that I believe would be just perfect. I’ll give you the coordinates in a sec.”

And they punch some touch buttons on their half spheres. And the one gives the other the coordinates of the house, and then they each feed those coordinates to the half-spheres.

– “Wouldn’t it be nice to only have to give the coordinates once? If one half did all the directing?”

– “Sure it would. Just as it would be great if one person could carry both halfs without disintegrating. But it doesn’t work like that, and you know it. That’s why we always work in pairs.”

They finish programming their half spheres. Double check they’ve both got the coordinates exactly right. It wouldn’t do to have one half go one place, and the other one someplace else. That tended to cause way too many casualties, and unintentional casualties got people fired from their jobs.

– “Ready?”

– “Ready.”

They take aim, and throw their half spheres in the air above their chosen pile.

The half spheres connect, and form one metallic sphere the size of a grapefruit, hovering in mid air. The spehere then begins to spin at an ever greater speed.

A flash of light. Very bright. The sphere, and the pile of junk are gone.

Twenty five miles away, in the house located at the coordinates so carefully fed into both halfs of the sphere, everyone is sleeping.

A metallic sphere suddenly pops into existence right in the middle of the house. It hovers in place for a moment, then silently explodes, as its contents suddenly return to full size.

Junk is flying everywhere. Oddly it makes no noice upon landing.

The family dog barks as toys are flying through the air. A half-eaten candy bar hits her on her sensitive nose. She runs and hides under the stairs. Even there, all sorts of clothes and thingamabobs have appeared.

At the fenced-in junkyard, the two halfs of the sphere rematerialize in the air, and fall to the ground about two feet from where they met. The two men pick them up, one each.

– “Well, that’s tonight’s work done. Do you think it went well?”

– “I’m not hearing any sirens, and there was no audible explosion, so it must have. We’re close enough to have heard the boom if anything had gone wrong, so my money’s on a job well done.”

– “Yeah… Good. Now let’s get the hell out of here before we’re caught.”

And that’s how my home is such a mess this morning. A mess I really ought to clean up before the day ends. But of course the moment I try to start with the tidying up:

– “Mommy?” a voice calls from upstairs.

– “Mom?” another voice chimes in.

And then they both in unison:

– “Moommyyyy!!!”

The culprits are awake.