Lorna

The whistle blew as the train barreled down the tracks. Lorna stood at the edge of the platform, the rain pelting against her thin jacket. Her shoulder length, honey brown hair was soaked, and she felt like a drowned rat. She looked down at her shoes, scuffed at the toes where she had kicked against the concrete wall before she fled. She raised her eyes and looked down the long row of tracks. In another two minutes the train would reach the station, and she would finally be out of her misery. She looked around quickly to see if anyone had come into the station.

 

It was even too early for the commuters; the first train into Maple Grove wouldn’t arrive until five, almost an hour minutes after the express freight made its way through the station. She moved closer to the edge of the platform edge.  The whistle blew again, long and loud.  It’s now or never, she thought. She closed her eyes and took a step forward. And her breath caught when she was caught in a hold so tight that she could hardly breathe.

 

“It’s dangerous to be so close, don’t you think?” A deep male voice spoke into her ear.

 

She had not heard him approach. She twisted around, her gaze meeting the velvet blue of his in a connection that was instant. The rain grew louder, and the air hummed between them. Her mind was flooded with the thought of the summer rain as she searched his face. He looking down at her with an odd expression of concern, which she found surprising coming from someone that she didn’t know. His voice reminded her of music, deep and resonant, like the strings on a cello

 

He let go of her and stepped back, his eyes on her.

 

“Are you okay, miss?”

She pushed her sopping hair off her forehead with her free hand, held it there as she twined her fingers in her own hair. She looked up at the tattered edges of the terminal littered with rows of rust-covered street lights casting a pale warmth against the cold of the rain.

Theo wiped down the lunch counter, grumbling to himself. Helen had called in sick, and he was stuck playing waitress for the day. He looked up when Greta walked in, her hair slightly curled and damp at the edges as she walked in from the humid outdoors.

“How ya doing, Greta?” he greeted.

“Hi, Theo.”

She sat down at the counter and he handed her a menu.

“Late lunch, huh?”

“Um, yes, I have some things to do today,” Greta said. She looked over the lunch specials. “I think that I’ll just have the minestrone soup.”

He might be wrinkled, brusque and demanding, but he had a soft spot for Greta. He’d known since she was little, when she and her mother would come in the after mass on Sundays. She’d acted the perfect little lady, demure and almost afraid to speak in the presence of her mother. Her mother didn’t like him, he knew, but he didn’t give a hoot’s ass what she thought. To him she was a stuck-up snob and he didn’t like how she treated her daughter.

He poured Greta a cup of coffee, setting a fresh container of cream next to her. She was a big coffee drinker. Maybe she needed to cut back a little, seeing as she was already the nervous type.

“You make the best coffee, Theo.”

“Yeah, I know – you say that every time you come in.”

“It’s true. So, what’s your secret?”

“And you ask me that every time, too.”

They laughed over their standing joke.

“Alright, I’ll tell ya.” He leaned over and whispered in her ear. “The secret is — a little salt in the coffee grinds.”

Greta’s eyes widened. “Really?”

He leaned back and winked at her. “Don’t you give away my secret, you hear?”

The cook slammed on the order bell and Theo shuffled over to deliver lunch to the couple at the table near the window. Greta sat at the counter, a dreamy look on her face, the same look she’d get when she would come in with her Aunt Rosa. She was more relaxed when with her aunt; she’d ask if she could help him, and he would let her play hostess, chatting with the customers and seating them.

“Theo, do you know the auto shop down the street – Richie’s Auto Repair?” she asked hesitantly.

“Richie’s Auto Repair?” he repeated. He looked up at the ceiling, tapping his finger against his chin. “Richie’s – that’s the shop that works on a lot of old cars – that’s Richard Braun’s place.” He looked back at her with a piercing look. “You don’t drive, Greta – are you or your mother thinking about buying a car or something?”

Greta laughed nervously. “No, I just wondered if you knew the shop.”

“Richie’s a good guy,” he said. “He has a couple guys working for him.” He refilled her coffee and poured himself a cup, then came around the counter to sit next to her. “He’s been in business a long time,” he mused. “Years back he was one of the mechanics for the Family.”

He paused and took a swallow. Greta watched him, waiting for him to continue the story.

“Finally he told them he was getting too old to do the work and quit. Good thing, because if he hadna done that, he would’ve never gotten out. You know what I mean?”

Greta nodded.

“So, anyway, he started working with one of the chain shops, Texaco or Esso, I think. Couple of years later, he quit there and opened up his own place. Figured he’d get plenty of customers here, seeing as we got a lot of old cars in this town.”

“Did he work on your car?”

“Hell, yes,” he said, wheezing a little as he let out a big laugh. “When I had my ”62 Impala, Richie was the only guy I’d let under her hood.” He sobered. “But I got rid of that car years ago. Too old to drive now.”

“You’re not that old,” she protested.

Theo snorted. “Nice try, Greta. I’ve known you since you were what, eight? Now here you are, all grown up and I’ll be 75 my next birthday.”

Greta was quiet for a moment. “So, who works for him?”

He tapped his finger against his grizzled chin. “Let’s see, there’s the part-timers, Greg and Larry. They’re old timers, like me. Been around almost as long as I have.” He chuckled. “Then he has that new kid, Nick. Been working there for about a year now.”

Did her eyes brighten at the mention of the young man? He remembered her liking some boy when she was in high school, and how Lillian had squashed the whole thing. Greta was different after that, was quieter and kept to herself more.

The cook pounded on the bell again.

“Gettin’ too old for this,” he mumbled as he got up to retrieve Greta’s order. He set the bowl down before her. “You know,” he said, “Richie’s been pulling in a lot more business since he hired Nick. The kid knows a lot about cars, plus he’s good with the customers, especially the female ones.”

Her cheeks bloomed crimson, confirming his suspicions. “But he doesn’t seem to be interested in any of the girls who come ogling him. He seems to like the more quiet type.” He fixed an intense gaze on her face. “You’re probably more his type.”

Greta looked down into her bowl, her blush deepening.

Theo chuckled and got up to tend to his other customers, leaving Greta to her embarrassment.

“Well, I have to go now,” Greta called out. “Can I have the bill?”

Theo waved her away. “It’s on the house. Go on and enjoy your afternoon.” He smiled as she fled out the door, a spring to her step that wasn’t there before.

***

In the office of Richie’s Auto Repair, Richard tended to the coffee machine. He poured the old coffee into the sink, then added fresh water to the coffee pot. He threw the old filter of grinds in the trash bin and added a new fresh filter, scooping coffee into the new one. He always added a little extra because he needed that extra kick in order to get through the work day. Already lined up were three cars that needed work, and he hadn’t even had his first cup of coffee.

He headed into the shop carrying two mugs of coffee, handing one to Nick before sitting down on one of the stools at the work table. Nick came over to sit with him.

“I met a girl,” the younger man said.

Richard raised a brow as he scrutinized his employee. “I see,” he said, blowing gently into his cup before he took a sip.

He was fond of Nick, and treated him like the son that he never had. Nick did not socialize much, and Richard figured it had to do with something that had happened before he moved to the town. Nick had finally confided that he’d had a sister, but she had died long ago. He’d clammed up after that, and Richard didn’t press him any further.

Nick was a good looking kid, and received quite a few stares from women bringing in their cars to the shop, or from the teen-aged girls coming from school in the afternoons, walking past in small groups, huddling and giggling when they saw him. But Nick never seemed to notice. For him to bring up the subject of a girl, meant that she’d made quite an impression on him. He knew Nick well enough to know that he wanted to talk.

“You planning on seeing her again?”

Nick thought for a moment. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “She might not be interested.”

Richard furrowed his brows, waiting for an explanation.

Nick raised his hands in protest. “Not that it’s anything wrong. It’s just that we met under … unusual circumstances. Plus, it was at night and she might not remember what I look like.” Nick stopped talking, as if aware of how ridiculous he sounded. His cheeks burned bright red and he looked down, busying himself with his cup of coffee.

Richard chuckled and got up to throw away his coffee cup. “What did you do, attack her or something?”

Nick did not smile. “No.” He turned to look at Richard, a strange look on his face. “She was being … attacked and I chased the guys off.”

Richard turned sober. “Whoa,” he said slowly as he returned Nick’s gaze.

“Yeah, so then I helped her get home,” Nick continued. “Her and her little dog. Cute thing.”

“The dog or the girl?”

Nick rolled his eyes. “I was talking about the dog.”

“I thought we were talking about the girl.”

Nick laughed. “Yeah, I thought we were too.”

Richard slid under the car, hammering away at the rusted exhaust pipe to remove it from the car, and Nick returned to his own car, bending over the hood as he pulled out a few of the hoses leading to the carburetor.

“So, is she?”

At the sound of Richard’s voice, Nick glanced over to where he was laid out under the car he was working on.

“Huh?”

“Is she cute?”

Nick stared at Richard in surprise.

“Yeah,” he said absently. “I mean, she’s not pretty, and she seemed kind of shy, but she had a nice way about her.” He pulled another hose from under the hood, and discarded it in the waste bin next to the worktable. He reached up to the top shelves surrounding the perimeter of the shop walls, pulling down a couple of boxes of hoses. He pulled one tube out and picked up a knife and cut the hose in half.

“And her dog liked me, too,” he added, picking up a smoother and proceeded to shave the hose down to fit the coupling.

Richard chuckled from beneath the car.

“So, why don’t you ask her out?”

For several minutes there was no answer from Nick as he concentrated on ironing out the kinks in the hosing that he was working on.

“I would if I knew how to get in touch with her.”

“Didn’t you walk her home?”

Nick was silent for a moment. “I know what street she lives on. But we stopped before we got to her house, I think. I mean, she did not really know me except that I saved her from those assholes.”

More silence as both men worked. Finally, Richard came out from under his car and stood up, stretching his legs to get the blood flowing. He went over to the coffee machine.

“Hey, you want a cup, Nick?” he called over.

“Sure,” Nick replied, not pausing in the work that he was doing. He finished installing the first hose, then put his tools aside and went to the sink to wash his hands. Then he came back over to where Richard was sitting and sat down beside him, picking up his cup of coffee.

“Have you heard this one?” Richard asked. It was a habit for Richard to tell Nick some long obscure joke and wait for him to get the punch line, which he usually did after a few moments. The two of them would sit there cackling like two old hens over the stupid jokes that Richard seemed to pull out of nowhere.

“Once there was an Irishman who married a Ukrainian girl, and he was crazy about her mother’s cooking. The girl used to make him a special soup that he absolutely loved, but when he would ask her what she put in it, she would say that it was a secret ingredient. She called it czarnina. Well, one day he was talking to one of his buddies at work who also happened to be Ukrainian, and he told him about the czarnina that his wife would make, but that she would never tell him what was in the soup. His buddy explained to him that the “czarnina” meant duck blood soup in Ukraine. When he learned the truth about czarnina, the shock was severe. He went to his priest to ask if he had done something wrong by eating the duck blood soup. The priest told him that as long as the blood was from a duck and not a Protestant, it was OK.”

Nick listened, puzzled for a moment before he laughed, Richard joining him in laughter. Then Richard gazed at Nick.

“So, what are you going to do about this girl of yours?”

Nick almost choked on his coffee. He gulped down a mouthful of coffee as he looked over at Richard. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Richard had no intention of letting the subject rest.

“Don’t choke there, buddy,” Richard murmured as he gazed at Nick, sipping on his own cup.

When Nick could talk again, he answered in a monotone. “I don’t know.”

Richard smiled. “I tell you what you can do,” he said. “You know where she lives, right? Or at least, you know what block she lives on. So I say that you go on over there to that block and wait around on the corner where you dropped her off, and wait around until she comes home.”

Nick laughed. “Yeah? Then she’ll really think I am some idiot, or worse, that I am stalking her.”

“Nah,” Richard said. “She will probably think that you are just checking to make sure those guys aren’t around to bother her.”

Nick pondered on it, turning to stare out the shop window. He watched the people passing by in the street. He eyes widened when his eyes fell upon Greta on the other side of the street and he jumped up from the stool.

“What’s wrong?” Richard asked worried. Nick was not the type to move so quickly.

“There she is!” Nick sped to the shop door and flung it open, stepping outside into the bright sun.

“Greta!” he called.

Greta looked up at hearing her name and looked around, her eyes coming to rest upon Nick. Her face broke into a smile that warmed his heart.

 

M – Malibu

Crash and burn
All the stars explode tonight
How’d you get so desperate?
How’d you stay alive?
Help me, please, burn the sorrow from your eyes
Oh come on be alive again
Don’t lay down and die

He was a creature of habit, chasing down death like a hobby, his return another near miss as he waited for the final blow with something like disappointment.

Yet there was something in his eyes that looked like relief to her.

He stared coldly into her face, daring her to speak, to confront him. She refused to look away.

“You’re back,” she said reproachfully as she broke the silence .

“Yeah, it looks like it.”

If he wasn’t afraid of dying, then what was he afraid of? Because he did feel fear, that she could see behind the stony façade.

She dropped her eyes and stared through the port window. He didn’t care that every time he left she wondered if it would be the last time she saw his face. He saw only what he wanted to see and closed his eyes to the rest. His past had cost him his soul, his future, his dreams, left him with empty gestures as he waited for the game to be over.

First Page: Search for Paradise

“The rest of my life.” Greta Sanding closed her eyes and pushed herself away from the dining table.

Her mother, who sat across from her in her usual place, looked up. “What did you say?”

“The rest of my life,” Greta repeated softly.

Escape. That was all she wanted. Escape from the stifling walls of her childhood home, from the snarl in her mother’s voice. Escape from the surveillance of a boss that she disliked in an office that she hated.

“I’ve had enough ‘unselfish service’,” she whispered. “I am serving myself from now on.”

* ~ * ~ * ~*

The alarm clock went off and Greta reached from under the covers to hit the snooze button. By the time that she awoke again and looked at the clock, it was seven and she needed to be at work in an hour. The enticing aroma of coffee wafted from the kitchen and she hurriedly dressed and rushed down the stairs. Her mother greeted her with pursed lips.

“You’re going to be late again.” Lillian Sanding was seated at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee before her as she read the morning newspaper. “You need to get up earlier. No boss likes his employees to be late all the time.”

“Yes, Mother,” Greta answered through her gritted teeth. She pulled a cup from the overhead cabinet and poured herself some coffee, burning her tongue as she sipped. From the corner of her eye she could see her mother watching her.

“You won’t have time for breakfast.”

“Yes, I know, Mother.” She blew into the hot liquid before taking another gulp, then put the cup in the sink.

“Don’t expect me to clean up after you,” her mother said tartly, looking at her from over her glasses.

“I really need to go,” Greta said anxiously.

“Well, you don’t have maid service.” Lillian calmly continued reading her paper.

Greta glanced up at the clock again. It was nearly seven forty-five; she would have to run if she was going to make her bus. She let out a huff and went to the sink to rinse out her cup. As she headed to the living room to get her bag, she looked back to where her mother sat, still reading. She shot a glare at the back of her head, then left, slamming the door behind her.

* ~ * ~ * ~*

It was nearly noon when Greta closed the folder on her desk. A familiar dark, hazy sensation washed over her, a feeling that she had been experiencing all too often lately. Her eyes were tired and she felt flushed and hungry. She got up and stretched as her coworkers watched; it was an unspoken rule that no one leave their seat ten minutes before lunch break, and on any other day, she would have felt self-conscious for breaking it. Today she didn’t care. She was too restless to sit any longer.

She went down the hall to the restroom and locked the door. She pulled a towel from the dispenser, running it under the cold water. She pressed the towel against her sweaty brow and dried her face, trying to think of where to go for lunch. The others went out to lunch together, in pairs or sometimes in threes. No one ever asked her to go. She supposed she could walk down to the vending truck for a hot dog and sit in the park square to feed the birds, but it didn’t sound appealing today. She went back into the office and stood next to her desk, ignoring her coworkers’ stares. She decided that she would leave early and walk the extra blocks to Angelo’s Market. She didn’t feel like having lunch alone today.

Today …

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

So the saying goes: today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Well, here I am, six months later, and wondering what to do with the rest of my life. Six months since getting laid off from a company where I spent the last sixteen years of my [working] life.

I worked in the marketing department of a very large company, and the pace at times was frenetic. Working with managers who spent three weeks out of a month on the road, leaving their assistants to man the office, to make decisions on their behalf, in order to keep the process from stalling. I loved it at first, actually for quite a long time, but the pace was starting to get stressful and fatiguing, probably because I was beginning to suffer from burnout.

At first, it was a welcome thought, the eventuality of not having a job (yet collecting severance for over a year’s time), since I had never had the prospect of not having to go to work since my son was born, 17 years ago.

The first few months were the most wonderful months; I got to clean my house, I got to get rid of clutter that had been hanging around for a while. I got to donate clothing, old clothing of both Dave’s and mine, to the Red Cross. And all this while still bringing in a paycheck, ind collecting unemployment. Life was good, no money worries, all the time in the world to do what I wanted, finally.

And I got to write.

I wrote fan-fiction, the pieces that I’d started a few years before. I got to add on chapters and to really think about and concentrate on the plot, the story that I wanted to tell.

I started delving into adding chapters to my own short stories, and continuing with my WIP that I’d been procrastinating on because I would be too tired to write when I got home from work.

Oh, it was wonderful. While everyone one else had to get up and dress warmly in several layers of clothing to keep out the winter cold, then going to a car to warm it up for the daily commute to work.

I got to stay at home, leisurely drinking my coffee, reading my emails, then settling down at the kitchen table to write. And all this was accomplished before noon.

Now, six months later, I find myself struggling to get up before 8:00, and the urge to write is more of a chore than a pleasure. It does’t help that it is hot as hell outdoors, sometimes even before 10:00, and then I remember that summer has never been my favorite season.

What the hell was I thinking? In February the prospect of being at home during the summer months seemed so exciting. Summers off, going to the beach in the middle of the week.

When I was twenty years old, this would have been the most exciting prospect. But I didn’t like summer all that much then, either. And now, as I’m older, I remember.

I hate summer. I am one of those people who sweats through the head, at the temples, on the upper lip, on the back of my neck. I hate sweating. With. a. passion.

So what was I thinking?

I know that a job does not define who you are, yet I miss the camaraderie of office mates, talking about mundane things. People who you have worked with for over ten years, people who you know so well, if only because you see them and work with them, five days a week, eight hours a day. People who feel like your family, even the ones who annoy the hell out of you. Because you are in the same office space, share the same lunchtime, and have adult things to talk about.

I never thought that I would miss it, but I do.

I haven’t the foggiest notion on how to do this, how to interview for a job when I have not had to do so, nor wanted to, for over ten years. I don’t know if things have changed, if what employers are looking for is different now than when I first started working so many years ago.

It scares me to think that I have to sell myself again, having to convey to a prospective employer just what contribution I can make to an organization. It scares me, but I know I have to do it.

I think it’s time to go back to work.

Mr. Chang’s Tomatoes

Happy Father’s Day, John.

---

Mr. Li Chang peeked out the kitchen window of  his son’s apartment at the next door neighbor. The fellow was middle-aged, at least twenty years younger than himself. Mr. Chang smiled as he watched the man watering his tomato plants. There were five of them, swaying on an overhanging shelf just outside of his basement door. It was obvious that the man had done this before, but his method, Mr. Chang thought, was a bit amateurish. So typical for Americans. Americans did everything so large and complicated, when all that was really needed was to use the methods that farmers like himself had done for centuries back in China.

Mr. Chang’s eyes misted over as he thought about his homeland. He probably would never see it again. His beloved Wen had passed on two years ago, and his son had arranged for him to come to America to live with him and his wife, and their daughters. Oh, he was happy to be near his son and to see his two granddaughters raised up well, but he did not like America. For one thing, there was not enough green for someone who had been raised in the countryside of Beihai, in the Guangxi province. He missed the flow of the River Li in the mornings as he would awaken before dark in order to be down at the river before sunrise.

Mr. Chang breathed in deeply until the memories passed. He turned his attention back to the man tending his tomato plants. Mr. Chang turned away from the window and on a whim, looked around t he room for something to draw on. He spied his granddaughter’s school notebook and he picked it up, along with a black ink pen. He opened the notebook to a blank page and sat down at the kitchen table.

Back in China, when he was young, he’d been a fair artist, had wanted to travel to Shanghai to become famous. Then he met Wen. They married and made plans to escape their small existence in Behai. But Wen became pregnant, and their hopes to travel down the mountain to the big city were lost.

Mr. Chang looked down at the notebook. He filled in the details of the plant he was drawing. An hour later, he had completed the drawing, and satisfied, he carefully removed the page from the notebook. He headed to the front door and walked across the courtyard to the man’s apartment.

The man looked up when he saw him, and Mr. Chang made a slight bow in greeting. He extended his arm, holding out the drawing.

He watched the man wrinkle his brow in puzzlement as he looked down at the drawing. His face brightened as he recognized the plant in the picture.

Mr. Chang had drawn very detailed tomato plants, describing pictorially how to prune and tie them in order to yield the best fruit.

The man looked down at Mr. Chang with a big smile, saying something, speaking very rapidly, but Mr. Chang could not understand. He only spoke the Cantonese dialect of his homeland, and English was a very difficult language to learn. He was too old and weary to learn something new, and he did not like this country enough to put forth much of an effort. His son and wife spoke enough English to get by, and his granddaughters were fluent in the language.

But he knew that the man was pleased, and it made him very happy. He bowed again to the man, and turned, heading back to his son’s apartment.

The next morning, Mr. Chang was at the kitchen window, watching the man as he hurriedly watered the tomato plants before jumping in his truck to go to work. Once he left, Mr. Chang walked across the courtyard to examine the man’s plants. He started in surprise as he glanced at the wall of the building.

On the wall was the drawing that he had made, encased in a black frame. Mr. Chang’s throat tightened as he looked at the picture. He stood there a while, remembering his dream to become an artist when he was a young man in China. There was more than one way to achieve a dream, Mr. Chang realized.

He took one more look at his artwork, then turned to the man’s tomato plants and started to prune them, humming as he worked.

* * *

[Fiction] Friday #160 for June 18th, 2010

Signal the Animals

Paula drummed her fingers against the desk, her foot tapping in unison, as she waited for the phone call. She glanced at the clock and noted that he was already ten minutes late. He of all people should know how edgy she got when people did not jump to her command.

She chuckled as she listened to herself. Patience was not one of her virtues. She worked constantly to keep that character defect under control because the animals didn’t like it and did not perform well when they sensed it.

She swiveled her chair towards the window. Her office overlooked the serene pristine of the man-made lake surrounding the office complex. She had pulled a lot of strings … and tantrums … to get this office. She always worked better when she had a view. She’d had to remind them that she, Dr. Paula Randall, one of the foremost authorities in the field of zoomusicology, could have chosen any number of organizations to work with, and that they needed her, not the other way around.

In 2069, Paula had published a paper proving the theory that some humans had an inborn ability to communicate thoughts through music.

As one of a handful of people on the planet who had been born with this ability, Paula was very much in demand.

She and a team of scientists, in their pursuit of decoding the musical interaction between man and animal, had designed an animal tank specifically for larger mammals like the whale, whose population had declined to the point that, by 2071, the only ones left were those adopted through organizations like Humphrey Research Institute, an organization well known for donating funds to scientific organizations interested in the field of zoomusicology.

Companies like Humphrey began cropping up around the globe, creating habitats for the remainder of the animal population.

What the public did not know, was that Humphrey Research Institute had a number of benefactors interested in investigating the potential of transferring animal communication codexes into humans who had lost their ability to communicate with the outside world.

Paula’s interest in the field was not for the science, although it was a plus, or for the human potential for communication. She simply liked the music. And to that end, she had designed the communication device that was used to breathe and sing in the underwater tanks, to translate the signal between the human and whale minds.

When she was in the tank, she would insert the communication device. Then she would open her mouth and begin to sing.

The animals would surround her, their rubbery skin rubbing against her, guiding her as she swam around the tank. It was the most serene peaceful feeling that she had ever known.

She learned a lot about their history, the search for clean water and food in the vast oceans on the  earth. She learned how, as the years passed, their search for the clean and open space began to dwindle away, and how they were forced further out to sea.

She learned the names of each one of them, and the names of all those who came before them. Over time, as they began to know and trust her, she even learned where they had come from.

One day, six months ago, George, one of the other tank scientists who had gone for a morning swim with the whales, was discovered floating at the top of the tank. When the team pulled him from the water, they discovered that all of his equipment was fully functional. He had simply stopped breathing.

Paula jumped when the shrill chime of the phone interrupted her thoughts and she grabbed the receiver to her ear.

“Robert?”

“Yes.”

“Did you decipher the signal?”

There was silence at the other end. Paula’s heart sank as she realized what it meant.

“I’m coming down.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Paula. She’s really upset right now.”

“All the more reason,” Paula said firmly. “Maybe I can calm her down, make her understand.”

“Paula, why don’t we wait-”

But she had already hung up the phone. She grabbed her wetsuit from the closet and turned to leave the room, but paused for a moment. She went back to her desk and reached inside the top drawer, pulling out a small device, then slipped it in her pocket and headed to the tanks.

***

♪~ Nayla, what happened to George?

♪~ George is George. George is here.

♪~ Nayla, what does that mean?

♪~ George is here … with us.

♪~ But, Nayla-

♪~ Paula come with us too?

♪~ Yes.

***

She learned finally, what they were saying, how for centuries, the signals, the beautiful, haunting melodies, had been misinterpretated. She finally understood.

♪~ You are killing us with your ways. So we have to leave you behind.

[Fiction] Friday #159 for June 11, 2010

I huddle in the corner of the bed with my blanket draped around me. The power went out over an hour ago, and none of the hotel staff has come to check on anyone on our floor. Granted, we’re on the tenth floor of a hotel in the middle of nowhere on an island at that time of year when not many tourists frequented. But that’s no reason not to make sure that the guests were okay.

Okay, Steph, everything is going to be fine. I take a deep breath and pull the blanket closer around me while I wipe the sweat from my brow.

I hear a voice in the hallway and I perk my ears to listen.

Someone is knocking at the room adjacent to mine and calling out in a deep male voice.

“Hello, is anyone in there? Is everything okay?”

Obviously, no one is there, but he continues to knock, waiting for a response.

I wish he’d knock on my door instead, because I would certainly not keep him waiting. I am so ready to leave this place.

Waves

He stood silently on the rocks that jutted out from the shoreline, watching the waves crash against the rocks, spewing foam and churning sand along the beach.

It was early morning, and even the regular joggers had not made their appearance. This was the time that he liked to come, when the morning belonged to him and no one else.

He used to come out here as a child, when his father was still alive. The two of them would wake up early and go downstairs to the kitchen, treading softly so as not to wake his mother. His father would prepare their breakfast to go: apples from the garden, country cheddar cheese cut in bite-sized cubes and wrapped in long pieces of waxed paper, and a thermos filled with water and ice cubes from the freezer. They would whisper and giggle together as they stuffed the food into his father’s fishing bag. Then they’d tiptoe out the back door, and once outside, both of them would burst out into relieved laughter at not being caught.

But his mother had never been a morning person, so she’d never wake up to disapprove of the two of them sneaking out so early in the morning to walk down to the beach.

It had been their special time together.

But one morning, when he was twelve, his father had gotten up earlier than ususal and had not come to wake him up. When he had awoken on his own and gone to his parent’s room, he’d found that his father had already gone.

He rushed to get dressed and hurried out of the house, following the route that the two of them would make every Sunday morning for as long as he could remember.

When he got to their stretch of the beach, there was no one there.

But on the sand was the bag that they always carried with them.

With trembling fingers, he opened the top and found a slip of paper, folded in half with his name on it.

And he knew that his father would not be coming home.

* * *

Wild Horses

When Bryan stepped through the door, he saw the sheet of paper staring at him from the kitchen table. When his father left a list of instructions, it usually meant that he would be away for a couple of days, this time the trip taking his parents to San Diego for a short retreat away from the ranch. Whenever he traveled, Bryan was in charge of the ranch.

Bryan picked up the paper and scanned the contents, smiling to himself. He had already taken care of most of the chores on the list, as usual, but he allowed his father to feel in control by having everything written down. Bryan guessed it was a ingrained habit from his days in the military.

“Good morning son,” his mother greeted as she cleaned up the last of the breakfast dishes for herself and his father.

“Morning, Mom,” Bryan greeted her, bending down to kiss her cheek. He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the counter, watching his mother move about the kitchen with a nervous energy.

Maura was a petite woman who ruled her home with an iron hand. Raising her three sons and daughter had taught her to be so; years ago when she had had to discipline her children, even when she had to look up at the boys, they knew better than to question or cross her. Small or not, they knew who was boss.

“She hasn’t called in two days,” Maura murmured as she wiped down the already spotless counter.

“Hmmm…” Bryan mumbled, downing the last of his coffee, then stood to stretch the kinks out of his legs.

“I’m worried about her.” Maura stopped moving and turned to look up at him, her blue eyes radiating concern.

Bryan walked over to the sink to wash his cup, glancing back at her. “Do you want me to go look for her?” he asked, putting the cup away in the cupboard.

“Please, would you? I hate going away without knowing where she is.”

“Okay, Mom, I’ll go look for her,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder.

“Thank you, Bryan,” Maura reached up to caress his cheek. “Dad and I will be leaving pretty soon, so please call us when you’ve found her.”

“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “You two have a good time.”

Bryan turned and through the foyer to the front entrance. He picked up his keys from the console and strode over to his truck, started the engine and drove out towards the highway.