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1.Straight on till Morning
Bill Monkovitz sits on the balcony of The Pleasant Harbor Inn, and listens to the rumble of the summer thunder. The air is thick with the impending storm. He looks down at the table wondering where his beer is and then glances at the empty chair across from him. That's odd. His date is missing. He looks out over the bay and notices that the lights from all of the summer homes are lit and reflecting in the flat calm water. Just like stars. Except, there's something flashing. The humid air carries a strange sound that he cant quite place, and those crazy flashing lights. Idly, he wonders again, where his date is. Things had been going so well.
Two weeks, ago. That's when Melanie had walked through the front door of the Fairport Chamber of Commerce. He and Thad had been looking for a little help in the office. What, with the Field Days coming up, and the parade, the whole stupid Fourth of July thing. The two of them could handle things for most of the year, but they had always needed a little more help around this time of year, and since Thad's wife Jenny was sick again. Well, drinking again, really. They had put in the ad for the temp. After a week of looking and not being really happy with what they were seeing, Bill was just about to suggest that they give up and let Jenny do it anyway. Something was better than nothing, and even though they spent most of the time correcting her mistakes, she was fun to have around.
It was hot when she showed up. Hot and humid and showed no sign of breaking. The AC was busted and his tie was doing its best to choke the life out of him. He had just decided that professionalism was for another day and was taking his tie off, when the desperate little bell above the door rang, announcing her entrance.
She wasn't beautiful. Well, not in the conventional sense. Not, what Thad would call "a looker." There was just something about her. Something, mythic. No, classic. That was it. Classic. She had short blond hair, and long pale legs. She reminded him of that stupid little fairy that was always flying around and hitting things with her wand. Like, in the Disney movie. What was her name? Tinkerbell, yeah, the one with Peter Pan.
Shed gotten the job, immediately. She was from the city, and had just moved to town. Ugly divorce, shed said. Bill didn't press her. Shed worked in the Mayors office, so she knew her shit. She liked it here in Fairport, though. Bill watched her work, like she was in the ballet. He'd never seen a ballet, but he imagined that if it was as magical as everyone said, then it must be something like watching Melanie work.
Two weeks passed. Two weeks of pleasant conversation. Two weeks of taking an extra five minutes in the morning to make sure that his hair was all set. Two weeks of loving his job. Two weeks of the ballet with Tinkerbell.
Then today, as he'd been closing up the office, they'd got to talking. It was good, what had they been talking about. It wasn't politics or religion, because they were both in such a good mood. It was It was not important. The important thing was that she had smiled and laughed and even though the AC had crapped out again, he felt cool and fresh like a spring day. Her laugh was clear like ice cubes poured in a glass, and then shed asked him to dinner. Him. She had asked him. She, had asked, it kept going over and over in his head, and he almost forgot to respond. Her clear hazel eyes crinkled for a second in doubt, before he was able to blurt out a," yeah, sure." Then her eyes lit up and she swayed her hips a little as she walked out. The edge of her short green skirt caught the air and seemed to float around her. Yeah, just like Tinkerbell.
He put in a quick call to Jeff, over at the Pleasant Harbor Inn and after a little wheeling and dealing, he managed to get the table on the third floor balcony. The table overlooking the outdoor dining area and the bay. The table right by the railing.
Down by the water, it was a little less humid, or maybe the thunderheads that were piled up on the horizon were cooling things down. Heat lightning rippled through the clouds like the most romantic flicker of firelight, from the bottom of the ocean. Wow, I'm getting all poetic and shit. That's what Bill thought as he ordered a beer. But, this was just like that. She was poetic. Classic.
Things were going so well. After dinner she ordered the tiramisu and a cappuccino, and he ordered a scotch. He thought about getting another beer, but it seemed more sophisticated to order scotch, and that's just how he was feeling. How she made him feel. Sophisticated.
They sat back, each of them, and quietly stared at each other for what seemed like eternity. The quiet rumble of the distant thunder sounded almost like a musical. She smiled at him with her, magical, mythic, classic smile. Ah, Tinkerbell. He started to laugh. She tilted her head like a puppy trying to understand, which just made him laugh even harder. He finally explained the Tinkerbell thing. For a moment he was unsure about how she would respond, but her laughter rang out and her hand grabbed his, and she was holding his hand, oh my god. He couldn't breath. He couldn't think. He couldn't do anything but look into her eyes and know that somehow he knew her, and that she was meant for him and he was meant for her. And it was classic. Like an Audrey Hepburn movie. Classic.
Finally they both stopped laughing, and caught there breath, and calm came over them. She looked out over the clear calm bay and sighed. She knew it, too. He could tell. She looked out into the dark water from the bay, the dark water that reflected the lights like stars in the skies. The cold dark water threw a shadow over her face and she seemed to gasp for a second. He wasn't sure if he'd seen something pass over her face. A trick of light, but something very much like a shadow of such fear and sadness, that her eyes filled with tears. And suddenly he was scared, not for himself, not for her, just a low creeping dread of something foreign touching him. Something cold.
He leaned in to her and took her face in his hands, turning it away from the dark water. He looked deep into her eyes and he could see the shadow fade backward into her. She smiled quickly and it was as if nothing had happened, and they were right back where they belonged. That was when she started to lean in to him. Closer, closer. She put her hand on his knee, and wrapped the other one around the back of his neck. This is it!, he thinks. This is it. She leaned in toward him and time slowed down. Her hazel eyes closed in slow motion. The breeze of her movement tickled the five o'clock shadow on his cheek. Her pixie hair brushed against his temple and he felt his whole body shiver. Her warm breath touched his ear, and then the sudden intake of air cooled it, and then the confusion started.
"How do you save Tinkerbell?", she whispered and then sat back with the quizzical head tilt. He stared blankly for a second, and then the dread came back. He felt the cold shudder through him as she smiled for a second, and knew that something was extremely wrong.
Then she was gone.
Like a dancer she had leapt up, in one fluid movement, vaulting to the top of the railing. She paused for one second to smile as she pushed away, out into space, waiting for her wings to grow. Her back arched and her arms stretch out in an embrace of the ether. The breeze caught her and for almost a second it seemed like she might actually fly. Then gravity caught her in its loving embrace and pulled her down. She didn't even scream as she fell. She just smiled and felt the breeze whisper in her ear until the earth interrupted her flight.
And so, Bill Monkovitz sits there, and wonders. Unable to understand. For him, time has frozen in this moment and he is staring a half eaten piece of tiramisu and an empty cappuccino cup. He wonders if he has found his shadow. He wonders...
People keep coming up to him and saying things, yelling things, things that he just doesn't... can't understand. Why was he looking for his shadow? That's funny. He starts to laugh and then time passes. Or at least that's what he thinks. Because, now he's getting wet. It must be raining. He wonders when exactly that started and decides that he better get up, because his suit is getting wet.
He starts to stand up, and stumbles falling back into his chair. For a moment, he lays his head on the railing and stares at the lights in the dark water. The lights like the dark cold spaces between stars. The horrible darkness between the second star to the right, and how far it is till morning.
And then he thinks about the railing. The railing. What is so special about the railing? So, he looks over the edge and there, right in the middle of all the twinkling lights is his Tinkerbell. But, she doesn't seem to be quite right from up here. Something dark has stained the ground around her. Has she found his shadow? Did she catch it? What a good, little fairy she is. Even if her legs are turned in a weird way right now, she still seems like she's flying.
Then it hits him. Clap, real loud. That's it. That's how you save, Tinkerbell. Clap real loud!
So, now he's laughing again and he's dancing on the table and clapping as hard as he can. Strange men, in uniforms are around him, reaching out to him. But, he doesn't care. No. He doesn't care at all, because now, now, he gets it. No wonder he loves this woman!
Clap real loud!!!, he screams hoarsely as he dances on the table. Of course. It makes so much sense.
Clap real loud.
2.Interesting Times
Jasper Brown has become stuck in time and finally, he can see the future. It ripples about twelve feet away in the surface of the water. Like a ghost of a reflection, he can see through it, see the world, but its still there. The future is still there. He smiles and waves, and it waves back at him. All the fear is gone, the future just doesn't seem so bad. He smiles as he lays back into the cooling darkness. He smiles at the stars and the thing that swims between them. He smiles an awful smile, because he knows that he is not alone.
The Chinese have a curse. He says as he sets the beer down on the bar and pops the top. May you live in interesting times. He slides it down the length and watches as Jenny catches it.
Well, we don't have to worry about that here. She says as she takes her first sip of many.
Thank God.
She shakes her head. She doesn't understand.
He'd been away. He'd been to the city. He'd had times when the future had seemed so clear, so bright. Lonely, desperate, anxious, interesting times. He'd had fear as a room mate. But, when the future came looking for him, he ran. Back home. Back to Fairport.
Jasper is an old man's name. She says as she finishes her beer and motions for another. You're just an old man, trapped in a young mans body.
He smiles. She's right. He's just an old man who hides out in the Port Pub, bartending. A refugee from the future.
So, how's my husbands boat. She says as the new beer slides into her hand.
Ah, the boat. The old wooden row boat that had baked in the sun in Thad Johnson's back yard. It's gray sun rotten planks and peeling lead paint skin. The trash of history, just like him. He'd bought it immediately. Thad and Jenny had laughed in his face and told him to just take it. But, he wanted to pay for it. It just seemed right. He loved it at first sight and new that it had value. A soul even. He had lovingly caressed and cleaned and painted her battered hide. Scraping and sanding for a year. A year well spent. And every day as the sun was rising and kicking the fog off the glass calm bay, he would row.
What do you do out there?
Disappear. He says.
I guess we've all got our ways of doing that. She finishes her beer and waves for another. And he smiles, because this is what a life is like without a future, but it's a sad smile.
He would row out into the mist. He would row until the shore left him and then the houses. He would row until it would just be him. Him, the boat, the mist, and the water. He would row until the past and the future were long gone. He would row until even, the now, was in the past. And then he would sit and listen.
Until today.
Today it was waiting for him. Waiting in the mist.
It was another boat, that was his first thought. Another boat intruding on his nothingness.
Hello? He calls out, and nothing answers him. Not with a voice anyway. As he stares into the white empty musings of the mist, he realizes that something is coming. Something, horrible. Something huge and terrible. And then he knows. Knows for sure. Its found him. The future has found him.
The mist turns and burns away scampering to safety, and he realizes that it's in the water. It's in the water under the boat. The world is coming back, the now, and he feels his old room mate back in town. He feels the epileptic shiver of cold deep inside. And he's all alone, but he's not because it's in the water. Not under the water, but in it. His arms stopped rowing a while ago, and now, now they won't start. And he can feel it piling up around him. He can feel the future thickening the air, even as the mist flees in terror. It wraps itself around him in an anaconda's grip and gently, gently forces him to look over the edge.
He can see his face reflected in the water. His eyes are wide. Wide like a puppy being dangled over a ledge. Pleading. That's it. His eyes are pleading with him. Pleading in terror. And his face, his face is old. No, ancient, with potential like a baby's face. But his eyes, his eyes are brimming with fear.
He reaches out wanting to comfort himself, hold and protect this ancient child, this dying fetus that is his future. He reaches out, and it reaches back. He can feel the cold arms wrap around him in a wet embrace. Slowly, he sinks through the future, through the now. He floats by the past, watching it grow up toward the surface like seaweed. He lets out a bubbling sigh, and Jasper Brown, the old young man becomes stuck in time. But he's not alone, and as he turns his face away from the future, shimmering at the surface, he sees the leviathan waiting for him. He sees it twisting in the darkness and he will be never alone again. And he thinks to himself.
That's interesting.
3.Weird Face Girl
Weird Face Girl, this is all your fault. That's what Bruce Martin thinks as he shifts his car into reverse. That and he thinks that it might be time to stop smoking weed. He could definitely go for a beer though.
Weird Face Girl. When Sean, Jenny, and Squirrely Dave met her at the Port Pub, the first thing out of Squirrely Dave's mouth was, "That girls got a weird face." But, in Fairport, there weren't very many options. Jasper used to tell him about girls from the city, and they existed like fairies and sylphs in his mind. Something fun to think about, but the reality of the situation is that you get stuck with a Weird Face Girl when you live in Fairport. The added benefit was that Weird Face Girl introduced him to the miracles of Marijuana. This helped in their relationship immensely. That and the cleaning thing. The higher he got, the more he wanted to clean.
They barely spoke to each other, until they were stoned and then...then she would start into a long beautiful sonata of words that he never truly understood but still would seem like cold, calm water in the desert. As he cleaned her apartment he would listen and smile as if he were at a fine opera by Mozart. Pianissimo to forte and the dust would fly. The vacuum cleaner would provide a base line that she would talk arpeggios over, till finally they would lie down on an april fresh carpet and the symphony would end on high and staccato notes of gasps and grunts...and it didn't matter that she had a weird face then, because then he would leave....leave, sated as if after a fine meal and the drive home would be as smooth as a smoke after sex could be.
But today, Weird Face Girl had been watching a talk show. Montel, Sally, Ricki... He had a hard time telling which one, and honestly was surprised that this kind of shit was still on the TV. The subject of the show was "Modern Day Freaks". He laughed at the irony until Weird Face Girl, shushed him. The worlds smallest man, a very large woman with a beard, a pair of Siamese twins who hated each other and a man with no ears.
Bruce was fascinated. He had actually stopped cleaning and sat with Weird Face Girl on the couch. They watched in silence as people told the large woman, who also happened to be an Avon lady, that she should splurge and get electrolysis. When she stood up and said that she was proud of who she was, the audience went wild in an orgy of enthusiasm. The man with no ears kept making the same joke, leaning forward and going, "Hunh?"
Then the Siamese twins got into a fight. A fist fight. First Martin hit Lewis than Lewis hit Martin. Then it dissolved into a storm of fists. Bruce was disgusted with his own fascination. The same guilty pleasure as in masturbation. He sat in silence as he watched what appeared to be a man beating himself to death. He wondered, idly, if Martin could feel his blows landing on Lewis, and what kind of hatred that would inspire one to risk a beating just because it would hurt the other person. He felt like he was watching suicide personified.
And he couldn't stand to be where he was. He couldn't stand to be the person that he was, and without a word, he got up and fled the partially clean apartment of Weird Face Girl and she didn't even move. At least he thinks that she wasn't moving. But her face....
As he started his car he began to worry that at any second his own body might turn against itself and even though he wouldn't want it, his hands would reach up and begin to strangle him.
The gentle hum as the engine started calmed him. Then the weed kicked back in....or whatever, he felt a little giggle slip out. It was actually kind of funny. Squirrely Dave and Sean would really get a kick out of it. They would sit down later over a beer and laugh their asses off. Jenny, might even find it funny. Probably not, though, she didn't have much of a sense of humor after she married Thad, she would roll her eyes and make an excuse to go to the bathroom and then they would all laugh behind her back. Yeah, everyone else would be laughing and having a good time and that just made the giggles hit him even harder
It wasn't until he reached down to put the car in drive that he noticed the blood.
Blood on the steering wheel. Where the hell had that come from? Then he noticed the blood on his hands and heard someone moving in the back seat
"Well ain't that a shitter, Marty"
"It sure is Lou."
"What the fuck do you suppose is going on Marty?"
"Beats the fuck out of me, Lou."
Bruce glanced into the rear view mirror and spied Martin and Lewis, the Siamese twins, joined at the shoulder and smiling at him through split lips and blackened eyes. He blinked and looked away but when he looked back...
"He better put this car in gear, eh, Marty?"
"He sure as fuck better, Lou."
"Cause he sure don't want to see what's behind door number one."
"You bet, Lou."
"Hunh", said the man with no ears, from the passenger seat.
"I don't think he's listenin',Marty. I think he's gonna go back inside."
"That would sure be a mess, Lou"
"Listen to me boy. Put the car in reverse and drive away."
Bruce sat there staring at the blood on his hands. All at once, there were way too many choices in life.
"Hunh?", said the man with no ears.
"Show him, Marty."
"You got it, Lou."
And there she was. Weird Face Girl. She was smiling but she was missing something...something. She was...Her white teeth were gone. A dark red lump glistened where her weird face usually was. A wet and slimey...
He slammed the car into reverse. Tires squealed. Rubber burned. Sean and Squirrely Dave would know what to do. He left Weird Face Girl's broken body. He just needed a beer.
"The boy sure can drive when he wants too, eh Marty"
"You bet, Lou."
"Hunh?", said the man with no ears.
4.Visitor
Johnny lay in his bed waiting for the visitor. He wasn't sure who would be coming, but he knew that someone would arrive at 9:21pm. He wasn't sure how he knew, but as he glanced at the clock and it shifted from 9;16 to 9:17, he clutched the scalpel closer. He didn't know who the visitor would be, but he'd lived almost his entire life in Fairport, so he knew that it probably wouldn't be good.
The "Fair Pines Rehabilitation Center" was perched on Eggers Hill. It looked out over the town of Fairport and Blind Port Bay. Johnny's room faced north, so he commanded the best view of the entire town from his bed.
How ironic, he thought. I'm dieing and this where they stick me. A place where I can look over everything that has been my life. Fairport nestled in dim lights amidst the trees below him, twinkling like stars in a clouded sky. From this distance it almost looked beautiful.
He felt a chill waft over his body and shivered uncontrollably, almost cutting himself on the blade of the scalpel tucked under the covers. He had been a big man, robust. Full of life and laughs, with an appetite for the good things. But, ever since Joan had left him. Well, he had tried. He'd tried real hard. But with Joanie passed…He just hadn't felt up to it. Sure he visited the Grandkids and kids. Sure, he played in "The Old Timer's" band, and sure he could still keep the beat. He'd been a drummer his whole life, so he know how to wail on those old skins, but….well, with Joanie gone…it had been harder to do.
And, now…Now, he felt himself wasting away physically, like Joan had done mentally. This what we get for living in Fairport. Joanie had been the smartest whip in the shed. Obviously not him as he thought about that mixed metaphor. Somehow it had taken what they most were. Joanie's mind, his body, well, he was ready. He wasn't going down without a fight. He'd sent the kids away. They had been there at 9:00, and he knew that they had to go. He didn't want them there when the visitor arrived. So, he'd smiled and joked through his weakness, and then he'd kissed them goodbye and sent them on their way. He'd sent them with love in his heart and told them to leave this place. Leave and never come back.
"Oh, Dad, you're soooo dramatic.", they had said, and he'd smiled and joked.
And now the clock read 9:20pm. I've only got one more minute, he thinks. A life time in a minute. Well, no, thanks. He's lived his life. He's had his loves, he's had his laughs, and now he's ready. Ready for the visitor. He thinks that it will be the thing that he glimpsed in the woods when he was jus a boy. But, knowing this town…God, knowing this town, it could be anything. He waits and watches the shadows. He pulls the scalpel out from under the covers. His hands feel weak and he tries to grip it hard.
There is a small noise as the clock changes to 9:21, and he realizes it is his intake of breath. Another gust, another chill and he knows for sure that the visitor is here. Struggling, pushing, against his failing body, he sits up and stares into the shadows at the foot of his bed. He squints. There is something there. Something that wasn't in the room before. It takes all his strength, but he raises the scalpel and points at the shadow, only now realizing how small the pitiful blade is.
"I'm not going with out a fight.", he manages to say.
"Oh, knock it off, Johnny.", a voice says from the shadows. He tries…He tries to hold up the blade. It's a trick. He knows… He thinks, he knows…
And suddenly, he doesn't care. And suddenly, he looks out the window and thanks the little town of Fairport.
"It's time to come home, Johnny.", Joanie says, as she steps from the shadows. He looks at her and smiles with tears in his eyes and he reaches for her hand as the shadows wrap around them both, he manages to say,
"What took you."