The woman’s eyes were open, blinking every so often in a way that seemed
almost deliberate, but she did not answer right away.
Carol Ann had seen people sleep with their eyes open, at a younger age. She had once been at a party with friends, and as she watched the cat “paw” its face, supposedly due to weed smoke being blown in its direction, she noticed a man sleeping with his eyes open.
Was he away from his body? They had said that people who sleep idol like that are being kept awake, sort of like a computer monitor, and the body is just being driven while they are gone, the astral plane maybe.
But supposedly not this guy. He was just drunk.
I hope he does not wake up and rage, she thought. She had seen that before too. People drinking to much, or mixing beer with alcohol and then waking up in a blind rage, feeling compelled to do something like get more wasted or go drive a car. They called this “waking someone up”. A major cause of car accidents.
Then she remembered the Florida Turnpike story, and turned her attention back to the news. She grabbed the remote.
The other woman, her room “neighbor”, struggled free of her reverie. The IV machine had gotten her wrapped up as well.
When she spoke, it was like a small startled bird pausing to look at who was around, or what was around, before carefully forming each sentence before moving on to the next. Carol Ann Page never asked any questions. She made eye contact and like a button was executed, she started talking –
“The car flipped
-over on the interstate,”
and then,
“We hit an ice slick when we were going over the river,”
and then,
“There was the truck carrying the steel rods, which we missed, but after that there was the concrete pillar,”
Her accent was heavy, like Lithuanian or Eastern European, and she had a slight stutter it seemed.
“Jason was driving. Not me.”
and finally,
She replied, then quickly admonished herself for jumping to a point –
“Who’s Jason?” Carol Ann responded, then quickly admonished herself for asking about a man she did not know the identity of in this situation.
“My husband.”
“Is he all right?
No response. The nurse came in while they were talking, she pulled the blue curtain over the room divider that stretched across the middle of the ceiling, separating the two. She noticed the nurse’s entrance was sudden and unexpected. The lady pulled out a book, one she was familiar with, a story about Bagdad and its rise to glory during the early ages, before oil and wealth.
She felt bad for her, after hearing her story.
Carol Ann wondered if she could read.
“They won’t tell me. They say I need my rest. But I don’t see how he could
have …”
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Carol Ann Page had been studying the news footage all day, following the “illumination”, or at least that is what they were calling it.
“They won’t tell me. They won’t tell me if my husband lived or died.”
“Oh, well that’s strange.”
At that moment, on the news, they saw a “car bomb” go off, seemingly a celebration in Gaza, a skinny Arab looking man wearing a vest. He had a missile launcher, and was waving it around the air on camera, as if no one would ever figure out who he was.
Some people just want to see the world burn.
The other patients voice sank out of hearing.
“I kept asking him if he was okay—‘Are you okay? Answer me if you’re okay’—but he wouldn’t, wouldn’t answer.”
He just hung there upside down in his seat belt.” A genuine tear leaked from her eyes.
Already Carol Ann had seen several hours of footage about the strange illumination of the injured.
She imagined an incandescent lightbulb flooding the car with light until it burned out
with a pop. She watched the woman swallow and then bow her head, inadvertently pulling her hair taut. She pulled her head away from the T.V. and paid closer attention.
“Every morning he left a note for me on the refrigerator with a different reason he loved me. He never missed a day. I write them down in my book. Would you like to see?”
“Sure.” Carol Ann reached for the book, extending her arm as far as she could to connect, and the pulled the book close to her chest. She briefly opened to a random page, and written in the center of the page, attached to a sticky note that was attached to the page, was written the following –
“I know this seems odd, but I feel compelled to write to you often and everyday. You – are – so – beautiful — to me – (three little music notes).”
Carol Ann smiled. Then she looked at it, thought about it again, and smiled a little brighter this time.
How sweet.
She got the joke after the second read. Three little music notes indicated that he was singing the song to her – “You Are So Beautiful – To Me”.
You like it? the lady asked with a grin on her face.
“Yes, this is cute.” Then she remembered that this was the lady who had just lost her husband.
Michelle had been looking in the mirror, practicing reciting her lines. It did not matter whether she knew them because the mirror, at least in this universe, recorded everything with glass. She read her notes and recited them out loud, and the mirror would remember everything, and that’s how she used to go in.
“So I just step through the mirror?” she asked Ma.
Ma was hesitant to give her any more information. She had already told her enough. She did not like the girl, and eventually it would take a point of desperation, or losing, possibly losing all games before she would take to her, and not by choice.
“Yes, just like I showed you. I stole it from the dark tower. There is technology to support this, but there was a period of time when we were allowed to get ready before we identified ourselves and told them that we are the Game Masters, and I am the trophy wife” she proclaimed boldly.
To Michelle, this all sounded a little lame. Hunger games? The Baker’s Watch? What time period was she from. But she already knew. Ma was old, and in Michelle’s opinion, no longer worthy of her position.
But see it was not really like that at all. Actually, Michelle had two consciences. One for telling her what to think, and another for telling her “her actual feelings”. She had destroyed the emotional line, as so if not to feel, for fear that it would interfere, not with what she had already tied herself to doing, but rather to the
“You try writing without an emotional line. Speaking of, you still planning on letting me dump that, I mean “put that” on you. You’ll spread it out for me?”
Michelle seemed to always be to eager. Especially to hear about herself.
See Ma, had actually grown up during a time period when things were civil. The games were legit. There was no “Chuck Rhoades”, and Ray’s obsession with getting into the games was just his normalcy. He had even studied Malcolm X in his dream, or nightmare rather, because Ma had to cover everything while he was gone. That iss how she lost to Michelle. NO MALE support was essential, as part of her “point to prove” arguments, that she had allowed a system to write up for her, and she was preparing to go back to “suffrage”.
She just could not figure out a way to go there. Hillary Clinton was in office again, once in the real world, once on her board, and once on Ray’s simulated game.
I love those three perfect moles on your shoulder—like a line of buttons.” She took a shot at Michelle.
“Yeah, real funny” she spoke.
“Hey, at least I can dance better than you!” she then joked. The last pun from Ma had hit her. The wart on her own nose reminded her of her “mother”, the woman she once played to be in a dream, to pretend to be disciplining herself. Her life was complicated.
Ray brought her balance, so she missed him. Nothing else. It was his “illusion of wealth” that captured her. She was not quite mature enough for power, so he showed her systems and mechanics, but she could never connect to them.
“They say what you are hiding, is what you least pay attention to. It could prevent you from learning something, you know.” Ma whispered to her in her usually deceptive voice.”
What was she referring to, Michelle thought for minutes afterwards, and it came up several times throughout the day.
Wisdom. That’s what the members of the group had told her.
“-Wisdom”, Curtis “Black” Jackson had told her as he sat at the head of the council. Michelle was not used to being rejected because she had never tried before. She spent the majority of her life studying others, but then sealing the imagery, often with mirrors, so that she could make her way on her own and take full credit for her being her, as diverse as she might have seemed.
That’s what Ma had told her.
“You cannot trust these men.” Michelle disagreed and credited herself as “wiser”. A little wiser everyday and she would show that council. She had been obsessed with Judge Jackson’s blackness, and struggled to recall the words he had spoken.
Her mind froze in that moment – everything went silent. The life in front of her flashed closer towards herself, and then became a tiny square in front of her – and then it opened back up. For that moment,
She looked at both of her hands as she stood in the center of the court room – nothing moved.
Time seemed to stop around here. She looked at her hands, then flipped them over to look at her palms, her esoteric teachings remembered for a brief moment afterwards, and then she flagged –
She waved her hands in front of her, and the
She had actually failed to hear the judge’s verdict. She had been let off. All the men in suitcases, with briefcases in their right hand on the right side, and the left hand on the left side, mostly gray suits, and like Catholic Church, exited in an organized fashion, rendering a motion of movement in synchronous fashion, everyone leaving the building at the same time.
Perhaps another judgment had been rendered. The courtroom was empty.
Michelle had been alone by herself when she snapped back to life.
Overwhelm and excitement crept over face – even the judge was gone.
Had she done it this time? Without a mirror?
(CoinBlue note – note the equalizer type cadence he writes with to really show his flashback)
POWER
Are you listening, asked Ma. She snapped.
Michelle snapped out of it.
I love the sound of your voice.
Level 2 – Jacksonville
Did She Always Have To Do This (Dream Shatterer)
She had an obsession with cutting herself. That is all the operator had told him when he called the 1-900 hotline, supposedly for comfort from a woman.
Michael was still holding on to a dream.
He sat on a bench waiting patiently, as he “slightly” crumbled over, an old habit from playing the old man that was catching up to him.
He used to be an undercover cop, who set up young boys and men on park benches by pretending to purchase “illegal” things, sometimes just as small as “a joint” and other times, poison for Ray, so Ray would “fix” his habit.
Why did Ray have to be the brain scientist? he thought. Jealousy flooded him for a minute, then he squeezed and let it out. Somebody else should suffer, not me, he thought always.
Michael had been in on Ground Zero, as a monk initially, during the re-upheaval of the Calvinest movement, shortly after World War II during a dark period of rebuilding and less centralized news. This precluded the Cold Wars, and Ray had gone in too.
At the time, Ray was working as a “dispacio”, or dispatcher in Argentina, a head to the Vatican and Pope Benedict XVI, as an Italian named Valdespino, and also as a bartender at a gay bar, called something like “Pulse” or “Heartbeat” or something else.
Meanwhile, Michael was on the ground doing a job, or so to speak, and Ray had left him down there.
Why did Michael stay then?
Well for one, he had a small baseball career that never lasted past high school, but during a pick – up game, someone had spotted him for Division 3 Baseball, and had offered him a position in the minor leagues.
The guy reminded him of Ray. But back to the point,
Michael was down here because Chuck was down there too, but in a higher position, so he was guaranteed to secure him gold, a value for what he was worth. It would all be worth it.
A raisin in the sun, for Michael, a candle in the sunlight, so it seemed.
Ray was wealthy, and as he and Michelle both new, taken to giving wealth and lavish gifts and news lives and painting pictures and selling dreams. He hosted classy parties and invited everybody, of course through Mas connects. Ray was a small, closed-off man when it came to being social.
“You can’t dance,” Michelle had once told him. He made a mark, her first one, and kept track from that point on.
He took out the trash in a disposable bag. Then dumped it off. He wrote a tally on the refrigerator, tapped 4 times on the wooden counter, then he sat down.
“How would he keep his promises”, were his last thought.
Ray’s gift was to keep people on borrowed time, sort of like Chuck’s, but Ray had the capacity and forthcomingness to get things done. Chuck had none of these characteristics.
Or were we all fooled.
Chuck practiced his “perfectionism” in the mirror of sorts, similar to Michelle. But chuck kept a conductors wand the way another held a magic wand. He conducted “perfect symphonies” that played for him in shadows of old and “let go of” days.
He was never good enough for himself, so he had a propensity to flea the scene – “cut-and-chase” –
He had been given a gift – a camera in his young age, and he had misunderstood old wisdom, believing that if he held onto it for his whole life, he would turn into it. So someday, he would become the “cameraman” –
Or would it be Michael.
Chuck tied himself to beating ray, and so his leadership was more panicked, seemingly “mirroring” Ray, but more in a composition like fashion, obvious that his was “more” forced and rushed because he had to catch-up with him somehow.
Chuck had also been fooled, just like Michelle, but for appearances only. He never “peeked” at Ray’s bank account until he had – so it would seem more normal. Michelle would call this perverse.
She had to see it for herself. SO over a period of time, Ray showed her.
“I love the sound of your voice.”
Chuck would end up tying himself to something. Just for that one voice.
To others, it was obvious, and his jealousy grew like a storm cloud around him. His time was limited always, and Michael knew this, so at the least, he would return the favor when he had a chance to.
They always ended up in the same place. Chuck in 2. Ray up high.
Michelle would come into the picture later, always.
Ma hated this.
The echoes of the words reverbed in Ma’s head –
“I love the sound of your voice”
Dream Shatter Part 2
Did She Always Have To Do This
“I love the sound of your voice”
-was the first thing she said when she appeared.
Michael had been sitting on the bench waiting for whoever “he” sent (for) to arrive at the bench.
She walked out of the vehicle. A middle eastern woman with an Hispanic accent. Finally, someone who could get him out.
She introduced herself.
“My name’s Melissa.”
Carol Ann flipped to another channel on the TV.
Surfwaves — music — a shower commerical for Java Soap —
“Welcome to America Online Crossword Puzzle Show” – I’m your host, Charles Barker, and I’d like to welcome you to the show.”
It was a good show, or so she thought. The audience held clues and the guest had to call on audience members by numbers to open up a clue, which she could use to complete the crossword puzzle on a the big stage, a large carousel with a puzzle embedded in it.
She scooted herself up on the bed. In her hand was the same thing she had seen the older lady, her name “Ferren McDonald” she had said as they passed each other in the hall while being wheeled back and from the Radiography unit.
There was a brief pause in the wait where both patients were left outside while the doctors closed the door. In that small segment, the two had finally gotten a chance to speak.
“Has it been only a day? It feels like I’ve been in here for a week,” Ferren joked, careful not to reveal her disguise. Dave said it would not show if you drive from the eyes. But Ferren was still nervous.
“Where did you get your necklace,” Carol Ann asked her.
“Oh this thing here?” she waved her hand dismissively. “I got this from my mother when she was my age. They say it carries old wisdom.”
Ferren knew how to read without a reader. Nash and David had taught her.
“Just be yourself. That’s for “uptight” people.” He laughed.”
They wheeled Carol Ann in, and Ferren left in a wheel chair, being rolled by a nurse, who had given Ferren a book, of course at her request, about a patient that was staying here, name “OUI”, only initialed on the invitation to the hospital.
Silly.
Who would send an invite from a hospital.
Was it long term?
I feel like death is calling me.
That was something she had heard earlier that day, a store clerk at a mall had said – no – it was the T.V. that was playing that one movie, and that guy said it.
Synchronicity. A clamp down on the anvil can “spark” the hammer at any time.
But certainly no time like this.
OUI had been sitting in the red reading, a hash red color illuminating the room, a tinted brown, **** ***** maybe, with a cube accent for perspective from the top monitor that was actually a camera watching her, so she was on her best behavior.
The Handmade – she turned it off, and dug deeper into her phone list, a group of patients that would be coming here that she was to see. She burned a copy of the digital page, and replaced it within the cover with a laser jet copy, dark black ink –
The darkest black ink was is the mind.
Level 4 – Ray’s Home (before the Burning)
“Yes I did. Over the phone.” She screamed at Ray. That was her normal reaction to any type of feedback, even if she were wrong. Ma did the same. It was not uncommon to hear her yelling from her room, insults or other, but still the same. It was Ma.
Ray looked at his timer. She had over stayed her welcome again. Even he knew what time it was. He hung up.
Michelle did not take kindly to this. She went to her journal and wrote it down, then woke herself up that night to see if it stuck in her system on other levels. She smiled, an arrogant smile, one of assumption, that she had gotten him back, stuck it to the man.
Michelle’s aim was always blinded. See, she wanted to go at women for what she thought a man would do, so she could fit in. But women had never done her anything wrong. But for her, it was like she ignored her identity, like there was a man brewing in her somewhere, and she could feel him.
Just leave it alone.
There was love in her heart. She had asked and the lady had confirmed that she was Lithuanian. Still it seemed strange that they had not told her whether her husband was alive.
And then the door opened –
It was a gray shadow, with lines pointing out from the grand opening, in vectors that created a solid figure, a paneled shadow that resembled a wood shed in architecture, but was clear to her that it was a door opening – something she had learned from old age.
A door opening. How could this mean more than one thing.
Oh.
He walked in, and there he was, her husband, a couple bandages and wounds on his head and his left arm, but in his right arm were roses, of all colors.
He still loved her. He probably would have laid the pedals on the floor for her to follow, like a secret treasure map, if they were at home.
Carol Ann cheered.
Ferren peeked in at the happy moment, but minded her business, grinning to herself.
Love endures.
“I love –
when I turn over the phone to spend time with me. ha!
that puzzled face you give while doing crossword puzzles in front of me.
I love your lopsided smile.
I love the way you leave a little space between each piece of bacon on your plate: “amber waves of bacon.”
I love the way you sway and close your eyes when you’re listening to a song you like—a
dance, but only from the waist up.
I love that moment in bed when you first climb on top of me, and the uprooted smell we leave behind when we’re finished.
I love the feel of your hands on my cheeks, even when they’re “ ‘cold as tea.’‘Hot tea?’
‘No, iced tea.’ ”
I love the fact that when you accidentally pick up a hitchhiker, what you’re worried about is that he’ll steal the DVDs you rented.
Carol Ann burst out with laughter. She spit the water from her lips, spilling drops on her white sheets she was tucked in under.
I love your fear of heights and bridges.
I love the way you can be singing a song, and all of a sudden it will turn into a different song, and you’ll keep on singing and won’t even realize it.
She then looked at her neighbor, who was full of bandages from the car accident. But strangely, she saw no light emitting from the body. The man on the TV with the missile launcher had no light either.
Not sure about the “missile launcher guy”, but these messages, this journal was touching, and it was clear that –
she was full of love – clearly.
She took note of her own wounds.
Maybe that is what I’m missing.
Let it go!
She put the screen down on the computer, because for her rules, down meant off. She had picked put the habit, or rather demonstrated it, not intentionally, at a rehabilitation clinic in Phoenix, Arizona.
Ray had not been there to take claim for her habits, and the nurse duly made note of it.
“The first connection is usually with the father. Um, um, um.” She shook her head disapprovingly.
She had placed a small dog toy for the young girl to play with, but for some reason, she had revoked the “doggy” after playing with it for a few minutes. She quickly put it down. Then she looked at it, reached despairingly for it, picked it up again, this time just for a moment, and then quickly put it down, turning her head to look away.
“Now miss, why do you do that?”
“Do what.” She was tucked into herself. Like she wore a vest or something to shield her from light penetrating her body.
“That – that right there. Grab it for a second, look, and then turn away from the “doggy?”
She shook her head, almost violently.
“Um, um. No.”
But the doggy was not the problem hear. Could it be a translation error? Or confusing correlation with causation. The nurse knew better.
There was a small laceration on her ear that they had bandaged up when she arrived. She had cuts on her, but not the usually one or two, but many, and some of them were in “strange” places.
She started to reach for the “doggy” again, but then pulled back.
The nurse scribbled in her notepad. She had been working ceaselessly for “7 Days” and then this case was presented to her.
Level 4 – The Hospital In-Patient Rooms
Louis Lit was a mess today. He had been a mess for several days as he tried to rearrange his life.
He wore an “all too tight” blazor with spaghetti stains on it, from earliers’ disaster. He had gotten into a conflict with an employee in the cafeteria line and lost his calm. As usual, he was escorted by security back to his office yelled “threats” and “profanity” he never intended on using.
That was just Louis Lit. The small guy.
Already small. From birth some would say.
“I just need balance,” he thought. I just need balance. He was cryptically referring to something else. He was the only one that got it. His co-conspirators would never understand the art of wizardry, or magic the gathering, or any nerd-inspired activity mixed with esoteric arts.
“I’m gonna be a wizard some day.”
He noticed one of the nurses staring at him. She was staring intent, and it seemed as if she had heard his inner thoughts.
He shushed himself, then realized that that looked “gay” so he hid his hands. Hiding his hands was something Louis Lit knew a little too well.
He was intent on accomplishing what he had set out to do. Getting rid of the patient in room 1408. She had overstayed her welcome, and for what good reason had she showed up? It was none of his business and all of his business at the same time. He needed the room for reasons unreleased as of yet, but it had to be something important.
He stopped by the water fountain, looked in the metal at his reflection, and tied his tie.
“You still got it Louis,” he reminded himself. But deep inside, he was a frail man. He had devoted himself wholly and fully to Ray, on the pretext that Ray was a powerful man, both financially, and in the “knowing arts”. Ray had already let him down twice, but because he was the main investor, he felt he held the cards.
Plus he knew they would need him. He had always kept a trick up his sleeve.
They would NEED him’ reverberated through his head as he struck his disciplinary pose as approached the door. All he had to do was deliver these simple line.
“I’m sorry, you have to leave. You’ve overstayed your welcome.”
He knocked on the door and charged in. OUI was sitting on the bed, reading her book as usual, the lights dimmed to a dark gray, the desk lamp used to amplify the room.
He entered –
A man from the right side of the door quickly hemmed him up, grabbing him by his loose collar, ripping a few seems on his blazer. The white button up shirt was jerked to his chin, as Louis struggled to breathe and yelled –
-I need help.” A wheezing voice. A mouse’s pitch — to an oh so absent audience, due to the time that he had decided to enter.
10:10 written in red lights on the alarm clock.
10:10.
The man continued to hold him, until OUI moved the lamp to illuminate her face, and Louis Lit could see who it was finally.
“May I help you?” she seethed. Her words cut deep into his heart, making him turn cowardly, not to mention the balled fist wrapped around his throat threatening punitive damages for abruptly entering the room.
Louis Lit scrambled to come up with something to say. He had forgotten everything he had practiced.
“No – no ma’am. I just wanted to make sure you were having a nice stay. Feel free to stay as long as you like. Please.”
Suddenly the fist wrapped around his throat was gone, but it was not like the man had removed them and stepped to the side, to finally be seen. Rather, the fist had actually disappeared, all reminiscence of the incident had faded away, and nothing visible remained.
There was no body guard. It was just a dark shadowed corner with a closet, and a few hangers.
Oh no, Louis thought. This can’t be happening again.
Was it possible that Louis Lit had done this to himself.
Hangman.
No not again.
The grimace on OUIs face had evil intent.
“May I help you with something, Mr. Lit?”
She knows my name.
As quickly as he could muster, he jetted out of the room, loose papers floating to the ground, fallen from his folder.
A fallen man.
A fallen man indeed.
Carol Ann shut the journal, letting the silk bookmark trail over her wrist.
For some reason she felt mad at the end. She opened the book back up and looked at the back of the book, there marked an engraving. She ran her fingers through the engraving, and she felt all different emotions, touched with a hint of rage, and tinged with the sting of a curse.
Her head was drawn to the left. She lay there in bed, peaceful and happy, after the return of her husband reinstilled the faith in her. Carol Ann admired the woman. It must have been hard coming to America from Slovakia, at any age really.
She paused before disturbing her, and returned her eyes back to the page. They locked in, once again on the inscription, and glazed at the photo of her and her husband, attached to a paper clip. He looked much younger. They both looked much younger in the pics.
Nevermind that. She closed the book again and initiated conversation between the two, but to give her her book back mainly.
“That’s beautiful.”
The woman in the other bed nodded, and it might have been intuition, or
commiseration, or just the last timed dosage of the blue pills Carol Ann had
taken, but she could tell that what she meant to say was, Yes, it was beautiful. It
was. It was.
“You keep it,” the woman told her.
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do. I couldn’t bear to read it again.”
“You don’t want to give something like this away. It’s too intimate.”
The silence that followed had a strange bend to it. It drew itself out while an
old man pushed a walker with tennis balls on its feet to the nurses’ station at the
far end of the hallway, then pivoted around with a series of metallic clacks.
Eventually the woman let her breath run out, turned her face away, and said to
Carol Ann, “You don’t understand at all.”
Are you listening?
I love you still.
I love the way your hair floats as the curls breeze through the wind.
I love the way your typing board sings your keys as you type you long paragraphs for your news column.
I love when you squeeze your lips into an “x” and say “Hm” as you get stuck on a crossword puzzle.
I love…
Can you hear me?
…
I love…
The mist faded out, white whispers slowly removed their cloud like appearance from her view as she unraveled her eyes.
A long nap.
A long kiss good night.
She stretched.
Had she really seen him? Was he really there?
She tried to recall the dream, but the words were enough for her today. Maybe he would do the same.
Honestly, she could not tell.
But she wanted to believe.
And so she did.
And so she did.
(roaming)
Level 2 – The Hospital Setting
They were awake in the dark, but thought that they were too in the light, like the other people they were seeing.
They said they jumped in, which tricked the system at a 45* angle, and it confused “fell in” with “rushed in”, so he gave him a ticket. A small light mark on his head, to remind him he had been warned.
Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones..
are the worst thing to come in with with our top notch security team, on guard,” said the guard before him, but that was a long time ago it seems.
Reckless. Reckless is what it seemed but at all levels, this was something he was prepared to do.
Be a guard, at any location, any station.
He was in the dark, but thought he too was in the light.
The badge reflected light from the plastic surrounding it – he was looking around sitting at the guard’s booth.
Someone’s nerve – “How could he just go in and act all normal after what just happened.
The subconscious interpreter appeared and then vanished. The message stayed with a mirage of people who were in the early examining room. They froze, then like the front mirror in the car, their necks turned left to right, adjusting, their eyes became wide and white – but big. Bigger or…
He realized what he was witnessing and froze.
“No this can’t happen to me. I’m out of here.”
But the body would not let him go. Chuck Rhoades.
I got to get him out of here.
wait, what way did he mean by that?
Level 3 – Crashed (I’m A Little Tea Cup)
“i’m, i’m a little tea — cup -“
He leaned his hand over the back head rest of the passenger window, caressing a face.
“what? what you say? I’m tryin’ to read the directions here. Can you speak up?”
“i’m – a little – tea cup to drive.”
“You’re a little to what?!?”
Crash!
The car landed head first into a tree and demolished itself.
Who is to blame?
Quack.
A duck made a sound.
The car never opened for him. It caught fire, and incidentally he caught fire with it.
He thought he would get out here.
But he forgot something at the top.
Long ago he had dropped a key down a hole and was casted out of hell for treason for turning on his own people.
That remembrance would remain with him, as he eluded it drawing a trail of ink behind, on his search for a “scorpion”.
Nature has a funny way of turning on itself. Say for example,
If you take code and write it the wrong way, it writes itself backwards on the way back. So by eluding the audience with a lie, portrayed as his story, he has –
essentially written his own fate.
we call this behind-code.
“would you agree to that part?”
…
“yes, we would be responsible for turning our back on him, and turning over the information to a new authority.”
“i cant talk right now. I hope your day was good, button. Smile.”
End function
So this man was dismantled and dropped off at the construction site to be buried on the same level. On the way, in unfortunate circumstances, he came across a newspaper with a picture of himself in the obituary, dead to this day, over a week now–
“That bastard locked the gate!” Camera Smile.
Face Forward.
I can’t go back there.
This is the now.
And it’s already over with.
Before we were men.
Level 1 – The Hospital
A Tale About Michelle
Michelle had been reckless with dis-abandon for some reason the days leading up to the dream. She had been seeing Ray privately, first in France, and then in the states when she was, as she would put it, “on this level.”
Some even suggested that she was the one who came up with levels for universes in the first place, so she could always remain the grand prize.
“I had nothing to do with slavery” she rehearsed in the bathroom while things were taking place. She repeated it several times over.
“I had nothing to…nothing to do with it. SH*T!”
Working with Nurse Collins, Michelle, known as nurse michelle when she was down here, careless and confident enough to use her real name on both levels, a reckless mistake, according to Ray.
But he said nothing.
She had begun to tidy up different, play “friends” with her patients, and altogether “perform” an all-round makeover on herself when she wanted to impress others.
And so, it became Nurse Collins who she tried to impress. She baited him, sought him to the X-Ray room to have secret conversations with him.
She flirted. She danced. She even got a little tipsy when they would hang out after work.
Then she would disappear.
Shocked as hell, nurse collins would have difficulties breathing, sleeping, and even showing up to work when he did not know where Michelle was.
He would rack his brain for answers.
Then all at once she decided that she wanted nurse collins, or Chuck, as she grew to call him. And she went all in, head first, with what she believed love should be.
“In love with the feeling of being in love.”
Nurse Collins had grown worn out over putting up with her moods. Sunday bore bread Monday nuisance, and eventually “Monday Blues”, or depression. But he had tied himself to the relationship, and was outright committed to being a good man.
But Chuck Collins was broke. He had gambled away all of his fortune (from the past) on alcohol, drugs, and other rampant activities. He had finally gathered the nerve to tell Michelle–
“–you what?!”
She freaked out.
She had planned for herself a life after 32, now 45, that would consist of gambling, casinos, drugs – especially cocaine – that was her favorite, and scandalous life under the guise of another version of herself, that Chuck was to not know about at all until it was too late.
She had planned the divorce and everything. She had written letters accusing him of abuse and accusations that not even Chuck Rhoades would have been able to conceive of. And then when she handed him the divorce papers and Chuck would have had no choice but to sign – half of his fortune.
She never planned for her life to come together like it was about to. Not like this, and not so happening-ly at the same time as the illumination.
Ray, from her level, had come back into the picture, after about a year of his “disappearance”, as he called it. He and Ma had gone into the mountains for days not to be seen again for that time.
But he was finally back. He and Michelle had been reunited.
And Ray still had his fortune. She planned to tell Chuck that week. What she did not realize is that Ray had fallen in again, and he and Chuck were on the same level, liable to be discovered.
She swallowed a tissue and a pill and hid the potential memory of that happening.
She had a backup plan.
Michelle had made a copy of herself, just in case something “emergency” should happen. She hid that body on the top level, the level where she lived and was actually from.
And there, she had hidden herself, just in case she needed to “jump”, or “get out” at the spur of a moment.
What Michelle did not know was that Ray had discovered the other Michelle, and in his “just in case”, had awoken the other Michelle and the two of them had begun dating.
“Just a way to see if the “real” Michelle and I could ever really be together.” He laughed afterwards.
Michael burst out laughing. Michael knew for certain that that would never happen on Ray’s watch. He knew who she was, about her flirtatious relationship and lascivious relationships in the bedroom with other men.
But Ray had secrets too, and Michael was certain that he would not budge on the issue.
So they dated. And after a while, Ray lost interest and separated from her. But in that time period, the other Michelle had gone soul searching – for a piece of her that was missing.
And she had ended up on the first level working at a restaurant.
She would soon find out.
She knocked on the door at the same time Michelle had picked up the wireless landline to place the call to Ray in the dream state.
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