Ah, here it is. Romance.
I sat down on the floor next to my video. There were some movies at the multiplex that I wanted to see, but it was too crowded to go on a Friday, and on Saturday my family would be coming to see me. I always tried to be there when my family came to visit, but it was hard. I considered myself separated from my wife, although she'd been dragging her feet on the divorce. She always brought the kids to see me, which was nice of her. It showed respect for what we once had, at least.
I had to wait a long time, and I was beginning to think that I should choose another video. Usually I went in, saw what everybody else was picking, and just watched that with them. But today I really wanted to see Say Anything. A great movie, in my humble opinion, and probably as good an ending as any movie has ever had, but my friends would tell you that I only rented it when I was feeling sorry for myself. That's true, I guess. I was feeling sorry for myself a lot these days.
A girl came in the store, a Gothic style girl, all in black, crystals and pendants and things dangling, and went straight for my video. I liked her aura as well as her taste in cinema. I followed her to the check out, and then home, keeping a respectful distance. I'm not a stalker. I just like to watch videos sometimes.
She lived in an apartment down by the university. Nice complex, called Three Streams, with the buildings surrounding a little park with an artificial pond. She parked, got her mail, then crossed the park toward her place. I had to stop at the fountain. The water shot up beautifully and came down noisily in the basin. The water then spilled from the basin in three spouts onto the ground, making its way downhill in discrete little streams that finally met right before they emptied into the pond. I liked it.
I hurried to catch up with her, but she'd already shut her door. I had some problems getting through it, so I marked the place in my mind and went around the building to find a window to get in through. That was soon done. She kept her place dark, and I lurked around, trying to find a comfortable place to watch the video. She had a beautiful collection of crystals on a curio in the corner. Some were on stands and others were attached to little leather strings. Necklaces, I supposed. They were all glowing very faintly. I put my hand out to one of the smaller ones. It was sticky and it glowed more brightly as I touched it.
I pulled my hand back when I heard the water for the shower go off. I hesitated a moment, concentrating, because it felt like she was crying still. As time has gone on, I've gotten very good at reading emotion, but I just don't communicate with people anymore. Part of it was the job I used to have, working the tech support help desk all those years, saying the same damned things over and over. Have you rebooted the computer? Have you talked to Microsoft yet? Go ahead and click on start, then settings, then control panel . . . Over and over, the same cant, the work channeled a mental rut right into my brain until I even ended phone calls to my mother with thanks for calling and have a great day. It definitely fucked up my ability to have a normal conversation. Of course, I had other problems. They hadn't put me in Greenville because I worked tech support too long.
Anyway, I'd noticed that she was crying when I went past the bathroom earlier. When I watch videos, I like to wander around unobtrusively and get the layout of the house in my mind, get to know where everyone is so that there won't be any unpleasant surprises for me. So what if she was crying? The shower is probably the best place in the world to go for that type of activity. Goth Girl knew that, what with the crying and the low, body-racking sobs she was making in there; I left her to it. Even if I wanted to reveal my presence to her, my keen understanding of the female psyche allowed me to conjecture that finding a complete stranger in her house would bring her little comfort.
She would be out now, toweling off. I wondered what her towels were like and how they felt taking the moisture off her damp skin. I imagined the towels as thick white cotton, with thousands of tiny cotton loops soaking up the drops, then the water permeating to the parts of the towel that weren't lucky enough to touch her. I thought about texture a lot of late. Texture and temperature and the pattern of sensation in the palm of a hand. My fixations have become simpler and infinitely deeper during my Travels, like a cold and noisy stream that jostles over cracked granite boulders down into a deep and ancient mountain lake with a surface like a mirror. It goes from noise and motion to silence and still depths, just as I have.
It's my nature now to be quiet. I admire her taste when she comes out in just a Black Flag t-shirt. She draws the curtains, closes the door to the room where I made my entrance through the window, and goes to the stereo. She bends over as she fumbles with the controls in the dim light, and I can see that the shirt is truly all she's wearing. It's always a pleasant jolt for me to actually see her sacred folds of skin, no matter who she is or from what angle. From behind and in the dark was particularly pleasant.
I looked away until she stood up again. I watched women at a lot more when I began my Travels. Showers, of course. Bathrooms and private moments between couples as well, when the mood took me. But things were more complicated for me in the beginning, when I felt like I was Dead. I thought a lot about Hell back then, if you want to know the truth. Dr. Shores at Greenville assures me that I'm not Dead almost every day. I know that he's right, and at least he's a real medical doctor, unlike some of the people that are still trying communicate with me. I saw the degrees in their various offices and most just have PhD's, although they insist on being called Doctor this and Doctor that. At first, I was very much interested in getting better, so I overlooked any educational shortcomings of the people trying to help me. I worked hard with them for a long time, but after a while it was just too frustrating for all of us.
My point was . . . what? Ah! That I thought about Hell a great deal. I can't say that I developed any deeper understanding or wisdom. Simple logic. Either Hell exists or it doesn't. And if it does exist, it is not a place you want to patronize with your eternal business. I decided that looking at naked strangers, unless it was just to admire beauty, might not go over well with the Big Cheese when I finished my Travels and Died. It was difficult, because my mind had started to get quieter and I really wanted to study lust.
Lust. The charge it gives in the limbs especially--a roll of sensation from the elbows to the hands and also along the thighs between the knees and the groin. A perfectly marvelous and natural reaction, at least in me. Even in my early Travels, I had separated lust from lewdness and replaced greed with earnest enthusiasm. Lust can be very cruel if you harbor anger or selfishness, and I'd overcome that ignorance. I had no vulgar intentions when I watched these people. I did not covet anything but to understand the delicious eagerness for sensation that lust gives a person.
After all, I'm not Dead. My heart's long countdown to rest is not complete, and I have a duty to enjoy my life, such as it was. I might not be able to talk to people, but between thinking and my secret Travels I discovered that I had very few reasons to feel sorry for myself.
The music comes on and I turn my attention away from myself. The Rollins Band. That explains the Black Flag shirt, maybe. Liar. Not the first track on that disc, so she must have forwarded it that song. I guess someone is feeling bitter.
I think of the top five bitter songs I've heard. Last week I watched High Fidelity in another woman's house, so I've been making a lot of top five lists in my head. Let's see . . . Liar would definitely be on that list, probably Hank's most accessible song. Rape Me by the late Mr. Cobain and company. Fuck and Run by Liz Phair, of course. Oh! I thought of another good one. Cancer of Everything by Lisa Germano. Bitter and obscure, the most devastating track on her album Geek the Girl. That little ditty would perch defiantly at the top of the list. Need a fifth song . . . something else from left field, but really bitter? Shit, I give up. Let's say that Mmm-Bop song from those adorable Hansen brothers. If I could remember the lyrics, besides the Mmm- Bop part, I'm sure I could analyze them and convince people the song was about being molested as a child or heroin addiction.
What's going on here? From behind the couch it appears that she's having a little fun. That's what happens when I let my focus slip away. I move a little, holding my breath, and yessiree . . . she is going to town. Her Black Flag shirt is long enough to be a nightie, but she's pulled it up. Body laid back on the couch, head propped against the pillow, one foot on the floor and the other pulled up on the couch, and two hands perched typist-style over her mound. Quick movements are being made on the unseen area, and her tendons are obvious under her pale skin. Her belly is rounded but not overly so, just like her face, which now has fresh tears on it. If I had not advanced beyond being vulgar, I must say that she would have turned my head on the street.
A girl who cries as she masturbates to bitter Henry Rollins songs in the dark. Wow. I don't need to conduct a poll to determine that there must be a lot more to her story. If I was better at talking to people, I'd try to find out what's going on behind that pretty face.
She came quietly, arching her back and a gentle spasm of her hips to finish. Once it was over, she was a flurry of activity. She picked up the room, washed some dishes in the sink and put them in a rack to dry. She looked at the clock and put some shorts on. She tidied up some more. She went to the door with the speed of someone who was expecting a knock.
In came a short girl in a rent-a-cop uniform: black fatigue pants and boots with a white collared shirt that had a silkscreen of a badge on it. Hugs were exchanged. They made small talk and popcorn, and the new girl took the flashlight, pepper spray, and radio off her belt and put them on the coffee table. She also took off her rent a cop uniform shirt. Underneath it she had a black t-shirt that said DYKE in white block letters. Like the crew cut wasn't hint enough.
They watched the movie together, but it was hard for me to follow because they kept talking through it. Can't grumble about that really. It's not like I paid to watch it, but I feel that if you are going to go through the bother of renting a movie and popping it in your VCR, you should shut up and watch the movie. Maybe that's just me.
In the end though, I became addicted to their dynamic. Friends, obviously. Each with pain in their aura. I don't think my little Goth was a lesbian. I wanted her to be heterosexual, that's true, but I pride myself that my observations are not tainted by my desires. There was a caring back and forth about a man and his hurtful behavior, which confirmed my suspicions about her orientation, and perhaps accounted for the choice of song like Liar.
There were undertones, though, that begged consideration. Crew Cut had some hopes of her own, I thought. And sometimes as I watched my Goth I saw signs that those hopes might not be entirely in vain. There was emotion in her that might have answered her friend's faint aspirations, but she didn't have the confidence to explore those feelings. I saw it most clearly illustrated when Crew Cut left her, and they had a hug goodbye that veered away from platonic. Face to face, eyes raised to each other, touching from breasts to hips. Intimacy between people can often be measured by how far away one stands when you begin to lean into an embrace. They had to lean very little, and they were a kiss away from pulling back the curtains on some very important feelings. But of course they did not kiss, and I almost began to feel sorry for it. I had, in this very short time, begun to feel some vulgar possessiveness for my Goth, but I could also see that Crew Cut had sharp and honest feelings for her. Noble feelings and good intentions. It's good to see that others have risen above the grind of purely sexual motives, just as I have done during my Travels.
After rewinding the tape and starting the movie again, my Goth stripped naked and got under a blanket on the couch to watch the movie. Her boyfriend called her, and from her half of the conversation I got fairly good impression of the man. From that moment on I thought of him as Shithead. After a while he either hung up or passed out. She drifted off to the sounds of the Chili Peppers singing Taste the Pain. Taste the Pain! Let's take Hansen out of my top five bitter songs and replace it with that one.
I stayed to finish the movie and the room went dark afterward. I see very well in the dark, and I knelt beside her and watched her sleep for a while. Her face was not peaceful, and her chest rose and fell as she dreamed. The blanket had been pushed down by the movement, and her nipples were exposed but uncontracted and soft. She had the pendant on still, and the crystal hung in the valley between her breasts. I touched the crystal again, careful not to touch her soft skin, watching it glow brighter in the dim light until the space between us was lit with a sphere of blue light. It was hard to take my finger away from the crystal, because she was beautiful and strong in that light. She smiled in her sleep and some worry lines eased. Enough for tonight.
It was very late when I came back to Greenville. I was still tired when my family arrived the next day, but I roused myself so that I could look at my kids. They seemed to be doing very well, and there was an air of general happiness in them despite their faces. I suspect my ex-wife rewards them with trips to the beach or the amusement park after these visits. It is depressing to be such a grim chore.
I was beside the bed and watching my oldest child hold my hand when it happened. I smiled down at him, but I felt sick and insubstantial suddenly. The walls of the room seemed smoky. I was dangerously weak to be Traveling, and reluctantly I went to the bed and got back into my body.
Darkness again. It's not absolute horror, once you get used to it. Before I learned to Travel, it got very lonely in my mind. Now fear of weakness and the implication that I wouldn't be able to Travel anymore choked me.
It took discipline to get my thoughts in order. I was weak because of handling the crystals and Traveling for so long, and it would pass. I still had the ability to sense pressure on my left side, and I could feel the loving squeezes of my children.
When I first woke up in the darkness, panic had been the first emotion as well. I had no concept of time before I subjugated my mind, so I can't say with certainty how long that first panic lasted. Thoughts are like speech, but without emotion or volume. Eventually they grow quiet, like any other conversation. In these quiet pauses that developed, I took control. I remembered things. I created and solved math problems. Anything to pass the time while I waited in the dark.
Almost from the beginning I knew I must have gone back into a coma, and for a while I still had hope. I was in the first coma for seventy-two hours, Dr. Shores told me, but I came out of it okay. I don't remember having any thoughts during that first coma or being conscious of anything, just of coming out of it. But maybe that's what it would be like when I came out of this darkness.
That would be a shame, I thought, because my mind was wonderfully clear. I never seemed to sleep, my consciousness continued on and on in an eternal moment. I was soon doing very complex sums, writing chapters of a book and memorizing them, rebuilding memories until they were distinct enough to almost relive. It wasn't too boring, just lonely.
I wondered if this is what the Tibetan monks do in their meditations. I remembered being told that they strove to empty the mind of all thought in order to achieve enlightenment. It takes a lifetime of work, or more, since they get reincarnated. But I had a leg up on those orange robed mystics, because I didn't have jack shit to distract me.
I worked on images, trying to picture what I must look like. If time was passing like I thought it was, I doubted that I was in the ICU any longer. They would have moved me to a hospice or something. A long term care facility. Would I have my own room? What kind of machines would I have by my bed, if any? Carpet or tile? A window? A TV?
And so I pictured it thus: a private room, a single bed. A nice upholstered chair underneath a TV mounted on a wall bracket. I had catastrophic health insurance, so everything should be quite nice. A window with Venetian blinds, the big fat ones that you see in hospitals instead of the thin ones you have at home. I'd have an IV drip and a respirator. A catheter certainly, discretely placed. A tough and thin but attractive carpet on the floor. They'd know I wasn't brain dead, so maybe they left the TV on for me in case I could hear it. What would my boy put on for me? Either the news or the Simpsons.
I pictured the room in grayscale, because the color of things seemed very important to me and nothing I imagined felt right. I could see the TV, and I projected my memory of a few episodes up at the screen. The Simpsons, at least, were in color because I knew exactly what they looked like. So I laid down in the bed, tubes taped down my throat and breathing for me, remembering an episode of the Simpsons on the TV. I was trying to remember it exactly, and I was getting very good at it. I even remembered commercials.
I watched the episode, and I got up out of bed to turn the volume up. I got up out of bed to turn the volume up? I looked around my imaginary room. Some of the things had been moved, and now everything was in color. I could see myself in bed, tubes placed very much how I envisaged them. I walked around the room, studying things, noticing the wealth of detail that had arrived. I went out the open door and saw a long hallway with a nurse's station perhaps forty feet away. I walked over there, but the nurse didn't look up and I found I couldn't talk. I went to the restroom to look at myself in the mirror. I was very indistinct, as if the mirror had been fogged wherever my reflection should have been. I began to feel like what I was doing was very dangerous, and I went back to my room quickly and laid down in the bed, back into the comforting darkness of my body.
That's how I began to Travel. Astral projection. In college I read an autobiography of a fighter pilot who mentioned doing it when he was a POW. He'd been locked in a dark hole for years, and astral projection was the only thing that kept him sane. I remember thinking at the time that maybe there was something to it. I didn't believe in that sort of crap, but this guy wasn't exactly some hippie or New Age guru. He'd bailed out of an A-1 Skyraider that had been shot up during a combat mission, landed in good shape, and escaped being caught right away. As he hid in the jungle an enemy patrol passed within feet of him. He was certain he was about to be captured, so he smashed his rescue beacon. That way the enemy couldn't use it to lure the search and rescue helicopters into an ambush. The patrol didn't find him, so he was left in the jungle feeling like an idiot with a smashed radio and no way to signal the rescuers. Eventually the enemy caught him a few weeks later, still running around in the jungle, and he had many ordeals and a long imprisonment before finally escaping again. I was very impressed with his story. I was surprised that I'd stumbled into astral projection instead of remembering his account and trying to do it on purpose.
Deep serenity passed, and I began to feel like a prisoner myself again. Panic, fear, anger. Now that I knew that I could get out, I had to do it again. I eventually suppressed those feelings again and learned how to leave my body whenever I felt like it.
But what do you do now? I went and saw my family first, which took a while because they'd moved to a new house, and I tried every damn thing I'd ever seen in any ghost movie to contact them. That stuff must only work for ghosts, because I made not the slightest progress in that regard. I was unable to be anything but a passive observer.
But observation has its uses. I knew that I'd been shot in the head, because they told me that after I came out of my first coma, but I didn't remember how or why. Not even my newfound ability to restore my memory gave me that knowledge. My family didn't talk about it, and it was only from eavesdropping on the doctors and nurses that I learned parts of the story until I had it all pasted together.
It had been burglars. My wife heard a noise, and then I distinctly heard breaking glass. She called the cops, and I ran downstairs. That sounded like me when I heard it, especially since the kids' bedrooms were on the ground floor. I must have been in too big a hurry to get my gun from the closet, but some time before they saw me I must have grabbed my wife's handgun from her purse on the kitchen table. My wife heard shouting, then gunshots. I was hit in the head with a twenty-two-caliber bullet, but apparently I never went down from that. I killed one coming into the kitchen from the garage, and he's the one who shot me. I was headed toward the kids' rooms when another burglar stabbed me with one of my own Ginsu steak knives in the back and then the throat, leaving the knife in my neck and picking up the gun I had dropped during our struggle.
At that point I went down and bled on the floor of the dining room for a while. The amazing part was that I got up, staggered up the stairs to where my wife had barricaded herself in the master bathroom with the phone and both the kids, who had run upstairs to our bedroom when the shooting started. He was banging on the bathroom door, cursing at them, trying to break it down. He fired a shot into it that grazed my wife's arm as she put her body over the kids, but that was his last bullet. I'd been a bit profligate in shooting up his partner, hitting that bastard four times and my Whirlpool refrigerator three times. Thanks to the Brady Bill, my wife's gun only had an eight round clip. In any case, I came in, shot in the head, stabbed, and still managed to kill him with my Ginsu steak knife, which incidentally never needs sharpening, before I collapsed again. It is a pity I can't remember any of that, because I always wanted to do something heroic.
So the cops came and cleaned up, and Dr. Shores did an amazing job in emergency surgery to even see me through the night. They told my wife it was likely I would die anyway. I was in a coma, and I'd lost enough blood that I might have brain damage. Some signs were encouraging, and others worrisome. I was moved from surgery to the ICU, and things looked pretty grim.
Then a false dawn. I came out of the coma long enough to talk to everyone and ask why I was in a hospital, but then I had complications and more emergency surgery because of a bullet fragment they'd missed the first night. They stabilized me, and I lived, but I never woke up or breathed on my own again.
It was especially hard on my wife. Even after I'd been in the coma for two years she couldn't let go. How could she? I wasn't dead. I'd come out of one coma already, after all, and my higher brain functions seemed okay. The doctors agreed that this coma was permanent, but they'd been wrong before. I knew her, and that's what she would be thinking.
So you might think that I'd spend the rest of my natural life wandering around, watching my family and looking after them. That was the plan, but it just doesn't work out. They were doing fine, but it was frustrating because when they did need help I couldn't give it to them. My daughter fell off her bike and broke her arm a block from the house. I stood there helplessly above her, unable to comfort or help in any way, tormented until a neighbor heard her crying and brought her home. Same thing with my son and a bully. I would get so frustrated and angry about my impotence that things would get hazy. I'd begin to break apart. I knew I was in grave danger if I lost my concentration so far from my body.
My wife was a different story. It was from her that I learned that in some small way I could communicate with her. She would stay up alone at night, after she put the kids to bed, flipping through our photo albums with a sad little smile on her face. Often she would drink wine from one of the set of four Waterford crystal wineglasses Uncle Bob had given us for our wedding. There was a night she set the wine glass down and I happened to absentmindedly touch it as I looked at the photos over her shoulder. The photos were of us in Cancun. That was a good time.
I noticed myself getting tired, which was very odd. When I looked away from the photos, I could see that the wineglass was glowing yellow where I touched it, and that it kept glowing after I pulled my hand back. When she went to bed, I stayed there, touching the crystal wineglass and thinking of her until it was as bright as the lights she'd forgotten to turn off.
Tired as I was, I stayed the whole night, waiting to see if she would notice the glow when she came down to clean up in the morning. This might finally be the way I could talk to her.
It turned out it was, though not in a way I expected. She walked right past it several times without seeing the glow apparently. When she finally did pick up the wineglass, her face turned sour and she burst into tears. It upset me so much that I went back to my body and skulked in the darkness for a while, thinking about what I'd done wrong. Why would my thoughts of her make her unhappy?
Maybe because they made me unhappy. I decided that after the initial burst of excitement, I'd actually been quite melancholy as I thought of her and all that we'd lost. Maybe that feeling had been transmitted to the crystal.
When I was strong again, I Traveled back to her new house and tried again. This time, focusing on memories of joy, I touched another wineglass. This time it glowed with a soothing neon blue. I left the other glasses alone until my hypothesis had a chance to be tested, and that took weeks. Another glass of wine happened to be poured into the blue neon glass when I happened to be there. She had the photo albums out again, but tonight she smiled and laughed as she drank. Maybe she was just in a better mood, or remembering some bad joke I'd cracked once upon a time, but I had a feeling it was the charge I'd given the crystal.
I went back and charged the rest of the crystal glasses with happy memories and positive feelings; all except the first one that stubbornly continued to glow yellow no matter what I did. I imagine she'll treasure those Waterford wineglasses until she dies, because they usually bring her such happy memories and thoughts of me. But she doesn't use them often, because sometimes (exactly 25 percent of the time, I would think) they make her sad.
This was a period of learning for me, and danger. I desperately wanted to find other things to put my feelings into, so that my family would know I was still with them. But other than the Waterford I discovered there wasn't much in the house that I could put my emotions inside. I could fondle a regular glass all I wanted without any supernatural effect. Mirrors made me uncomfortable, and that instinct proved true later. The first time I touched one, my hand disappeared into it and I didn't get it back. It hurt, and although my hand was back the next time I left my physical body for some Traveling, I didn't mess with any more mirrors. I found I could charge gemstones with feelings, but even very small ones took at a lot out of me for very little return. When I touched crystal, it felt sticky but safe. When I touched a diamond, I felt suction, like the gem wanted to pull me inside. Very disturbing.
I also began to notice that sometimes things had a glow that didn't come from me. At sunset, there was a thin glowing line along on the horizon between the sky and the ground. I looked harder for these lines, and I found that at night I could see them almost everywhere. Wherever two unlike things met, a thin glow separated them. Water and fire had glows of their own as well. It was trippy. I eventually discovered that I could use this glow. If I put my hands into the glow covering a wall, I usually could put myself on the other side just by thinking of it. It was a lot easier than walking down the long corridors out to get out of the hospital when I Traveled.
My wife had started dating again, and intellectually I was fine with it. I began having dates of my own. Little encounters where I would follow a woman home and watch her bathe or shower, and if I was lucky she would be naughty and I could watch.
At the same time, I was looking for someone that I could truly talk to. I tried visiting psychics, palm readers, and the like. Maybe an old school witch would have been helpful, but I couldn't find one. It takes a lot of effort to find that type of person when you can't leaf through a phone book or do a google search. You have to go door to door, basically. What the hell, though, right? Not like I didn't have the time.
I never did find a witch or a shaman or a priest that could help me. But there must be something to religion, because I discovered that there were some places that I could not go. Churches often had a glow that was stronger than normal, and it was a barrier that I couldn't break. It hurt my feelings. Why can't I go to church?
It didn't matter which church or temple or mosque, either. I either wasn't wanted or I was too early for my reservation. The discovery that holy places kept me out triggered a whole train of spiritual thought. I thought about being Dead and about Hell and above all about what the Big Cheese thought of me. Was He angry at me or was I just in some unique limbo? I never learned the answers, but I did come to some conclusions.
First, I decided to be Good. To that end, if I could find a way to Help people, I would. I also dedicated myself to studies and knowledge. I would live my life, such as it was, with purpose and to the best of my abilities.
To that end, I studied people. People on the street, people in their homes. When I got bored watching real people, I would go to the movies or watch videos for a while.
With study, emotion became clearer but speech became less so. I found thin glows even around people, colored primarily by their general nature but tinted by their emotions. With this sharper sensitivity I found crowds of people harder to tolerate. I could Travel for longer periods, and I could feel joy and lust and rage. I studied them all, trying to separate them into their proper forms so that I could be Good. My goal was to have no joy at the pain of another, no lewdness in my lust for the beautiful, and no desire for vengeance in my rage. It was my life's work.
But now the Goth intrigued me. Maybe here was a person that I could Help. I'd given her pendant an aura of confidence, because she needed it to help break her pattern. Perhaps I would visit her again and see how she was doing.
Back in her apartment, I nosed around. She had a beautiful Celtic cross on one wall that I hadn't noticed before, which was just as well. It was covered in beautiful spirals and interlace, patterns that I found to be very dangerous.
I think that I am becoming less bound by my humanity and more like a wild spirit. I feel drawn to things of three, like the streams that I had to stop and look at again before I could go up to Goth Girl's apartment. Certain shapes attract me as well; it takes willpower to ignore them. I love patterns now. I stare at interlace or spirals and I find myself being pulled toward them, wanting to get inside them and trace their routes myself. It has almost happened many times, and I suspect that to give in to that urge would be very dangerous for me.
People have patterns, little swirls and eddies that they learn and follow no matter what happens to them. It took me very little time to discover that my little Goth needed to break almost all of her patterns. Men who enforced their will with cruelty, like her father. That pattern had to go most of all, it held the other ones in place. The pity was that she knew almost all of this herself. She had great self-awareness, but it just made her that much sadder when she found herself back at the beginning of her circle. I was sad with her, but it gave me joy most of all. Finally, here was someone I could Help, and that would be Good.
She had a favorite pendant that she hardly ever took off. White crystal in a shaft about two inches long in a clever little clasp, unfortunately decorated with interlace, that she wore with a thin strap of black leather. It was the one I had touched the night I first saw her. Whenever she was still or took it off, I worked on it, imbuing it with confidence and joy. It was working, or so I thought. The crystal was so brilliant now, a soothing sapphire blue that filled any room.
I heard her discuss it with Crew Cut. Tonight was the night she would break up with Shithead once and for all. I won't describe him, save to say that he was just a concentrated strength version of all the others she'd ever been with. When he was in the room I could see her mistake his hatred for self confidence, and his vulgarity for love; just as she'd done her whole life after learning the pattern from her father. It gave me rage to see it, and not the Good kind of rage. I would have to work to rise above it.
Crew Cut offered to stay, but Goth Girl had confidence now. She would not need help. I was proud of my Goth. I stayed, though, in case I could Help in my own way.
Shithead must have known what was up, because as soon as he came in the door I could see that his aura was vile and much larger than normal. They talked, and then they fought, and I think he became afraid of her. He raged at her and hit all the triggers and insults he had used to control her before, but while her own beautiful aura faltered, it never collapsed.
Finally he was crying, on his knees in front of her. She looked at him with pity, and I thought to myself that this was a dangerous moment. It was, as she knelt with him and took his hands. They talked, or he talked and she listened, about love. Love? Hah! The next relationship would be the true pattern breaker, I thought, and I already had a plan in mind for afterward that involved a certain person that could--
Danger! I saw it coming before she did, and I moved quickly to try to charge her crystal with everything I had. He stood, as if to go, but I could see the sickening green corrupting his aura. He explained that he loved her, and that he couldn't let love, so special and so rare, leave his life. He unzipped his pants.
My fear for her clouded me, and it was very dangerous for me to stay now. He had a hand on her shoulder, keeping her on her knees, while he waved his small greasy cock at her face. Her hands flew up to fend him off, but he was too strong. Pulling her hair with one hand, he grabbed her lower lip with the other and pulled until her mouth opened with a shriek. Her yell was cut off suddenly and there was a muttered threat about how she would die if she bit him.
Her pumped away at her face, calling her vile names. Bitch mostly, although whore, slut, and stupid all made an appearance. He overpowered her fierce efforts to push him away, and eventually she submitted, her beautiful face scarred with tears and mascara runs and humiliation. I felt myself falling apart. I had nothing but despair and hopelessness in me. I had nothing to give her. I could not Help.
He finished, and looked down on her, telling her how much he loved her. He pulled her hair and tilted her head back, ordering her to swallow. She tried to spit it at him, but it went up and came back down on her face and he laughed. He let her go with a little shove and told her to get cleaned up and come to bed. He would be waiting.
On his way down the hall he stopped and turned back, looking at her with the sick satisfaction of a coward as she curled up and cried on the floor. He told her that she should call the police if she wanted him to go away, but that he'd never hit her. He'd just tell them that he called her another girl's name during sex, and that's why they were fighting.
He went back down the hall to the bedroom. She laid on the floor a long while, as I waited and felt myself dissolving. When she finally stood, she got cleaned up and then she went down the hall to bed.
I hurtled back to my physical body, the world fog shrouded around me and harder to move through with every minute. I barely existed by the time I got back to my hospital bed, and I fell into darkness so deep that I was sure that I never would come out again. I didn't care.
I slept, unconscious for the first time in years, and when I awoke I was right back where I started: In total darkness. But this time there was no panic, no fear, and no comprehension. My mind shied away from unpleasant thoughts, which is to say that every thought I might possibly have now. I had no thoughts, but I could feel them swimming around me in the dark deeps like black eels. What else could I do? I let myself sink further.
But even sinking was a thought, and soon my mind blocked that out. I was motionless, on the floor, and there was no light. Sensation returned. I could feel rough texture underneath me, and heat and liquid. I was cold, but the floor was hot. There was some dim light, but it would hurt my eyes if I opened them. I would stay on the floor until it warmed me up. Then I promise that I will get up.
Why did I have to get up, anyway?
The kids! My eyes flashed open into a memory long forbidden. The show is already in progress. A push off the floor, a stagger to the feet, and something pulling and cutting in my throat. I grope at my neck and tug on something I find. I stare down without understanding at the bloody knife. It's a Ginsu knife, like the ones we have. I know that it never needs sharpening, but I can't remember anything else about it.
I stagger toward the stairs, either at random or because of guidance from the Big Cheese, and then screams laid over a baseline of hoarse curses echo down to me. Devoid of strength and with sight closing fast, I propel myself up the stairs on nothing but willpower. A gunshot cracks in the bedroom now, and it makes me feral as I finish the stairs and fly down the short hallway to the noise. I give myself to rage. Good rage, with no desire to hurt, punish, or judge; just a flame within to stop that which is wicked.
It stops, and finally I can lay down on the floor and get warm. I drop to the merciful ground in a heap, but it's a trick. The floor isn't warm at all.
I remember everything now. For the last time I open my eyes and push myself up, this time out of my body. I look down on it for a minute, because I won't be coming back. I know what I must do now. I knew all along that I should be Good and that I wanted to Help. But I'd forgotten that sometimes to do Good, you must Sacrifice. I looked up at the clock. Just one hour had passed since I'd come back to my body in a shambles.
My body of light was fragile, even the mist from the fountain threatened to break it apart, but I made it to her room all right. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, naked, balanced on a needle's tip between her past, her present, and her future. She had not set her pendant aside, and I took this as a sign from the Big Cheese that my plan was approved.
I put my hand on the crystal and squeezed, keeping fixed on the light that was growing inside it. This time it was not blue, yellow, or red, but pure white. It burned my hand as I put more of myself into it. I squeezed harder, and now I could feel a suction like a gemstone pulling me in after my body. It was so bright that I could not see her on the other side anymore. White light filled the room and somebody with the Sight outside could have seen it blasting like a searchlight out the windows.
The light ended with a final pulse. I couldn't move, but that wasn't something I felt like doing anyway. I could see in every direction at once, and it took some getting use to. My thoughts were less complicated because my consciousness was pinned in the exact form it had been in when I put myself into the stone. I was going to be eternally as I was at that very instant. A good thing I was all heroic and noble when that transformation occurred, I thought jovially. Sense of humor still intact, apparently, but now there was work to do.
Goth Girl stood up and went to the phone in the living room. She picked it up and looked at it, dangerously close to breaking a pattern of three; Past, Present, and Future. She dialed three numbers. Good for her, and I loved that it took something of three to break something of three.
She had made her decision, and now I could Help. My powers had grown. She had the words to say, but I made her calm enough to do it. The dispatcher was helpful and concerned, he did not get off the phone until the officers had arrived. She opened the door for them quietly, and one drew her outside. He had forearms the size of Christmas hams and biceps straining his uniform sleeves. I saw at once that he believed her as he got the story, although I was fully prepared to Help in this regard if he'd been the least bit doubtful. They put a blanket around her. He then explained to his fellow officers that he would go in primary and they would back him up, as a female officer lead my beautiful Goth a short distance away. I went with her, of course, but I can see a lot better than I used to. Unfortunately, it came to blows in the bedroom because the subject resisted arrest. At least that's the way the officer saw it, and who are any of us to disagree with an officer of the law performing his duty as best he can? If the officer made a little mistake in pummeling Shithead, I do hope the Big Cheese won't hold it against him.
Crew Cut was there. She'd stayed out in the parking lot the whole time, waiting for his car to leave so that she would know that her friend was safe. When she saw the police cars swarm into the parking lot, ominous because of their speed, silence, and lack of lights, she put her hand over her mouth. Even their headlights were out. The officers got out and were quickly on the move. Crew Cut got out of her car as well and walked toward the building with her heart in her throat, cursing herself for being afraid of making things worse, for not checking to make sure her friend was safe from that asshole. When she saw my Goth safe with the female officer, she cried. When they brought Shithead out in handcuffs, Crew Cut put herself between him and Goth Girl. He spat at her.
Shithead, charged with rape, false imprisonment, and intimidating a witness, was convicted in short order by a jury of his peers. My Goth Girl only went to his trial on the day she had to testify, and when he glared at her I let her see the fear underneath his mask of anger. She returned his look with a bravery that was not a facade and he quickly looked at his shoes. She never thought of him again, although I'll admit I had something to do with that. I was there to Help her. Shithead only got sentenced to seven years, but she was satisfied. She didn't testify for vengeance, just to make sure it stopped.
Speaking of Good rage, I'm not sure the Big Cheese always plays by His own rules. Due to an unfortunate misunderstanding by a prisoner typing up the files on newly received convicts, word got around that Shithead was a child rapist. The felony codes are similar, so it might have been an honest mistake. Now child rapists and molesters were always segregated from the rest of the prisoners, but it was Shithead's bad luck that the Warden correctly interpreted his felony record and put him in the general prison population, whereas the general prison population got the incorrect analysis and killed him.
I'm dead, too. At least that's what the papers say. It's one of the risks you take with astral projection if you don't get back to your body. My body died the night I put myself in the crystal. I got a very complimentary obituary that Goth Girl happened to read, although of course it meant nothing to her. I hope my family will be happier with that closure, because I have no way to check up on them. I know, rather than feel, that I'm permanently trapped in the crystal. I'll never Travel again. That's okay, as long as I can Help.
As for my Goth girl, she's happy. Crew Cut and I take care to make sure she stays that way. I think achieving an understanding about her feelings for Crew Cut was the last hurdle to a new and better pattern for her. The trial was over, her life was starting again, and she really lived with little leaps and skips of joy in her heart, but something was still missing. After another night of heart to heart conversation, Crew Cut took her leave with a sigh, and they hugged much as they had done that first night I visited. Feet close together, touching from hips to breasts, faces inches apart and eyes on each other as they said goodbye. I read Goth Girl's mind, and when I saw Crew Cut through her eyes I saw beauty and love instead of the pug nose and an unfortunate haircut. How many times were we going to repeat this damn pattern of platonic hugs and goodbye sighs? What was holding her back?
I probed deeper into Goth Girl's mind than I normally would, because I like to give her some privacy, but this was important. I laughed when I found out what it was. Is that it? I can Help her with that!
I danced in her mind, easing some thoughts to the forefront while shoving others back, encouraging the right impulses. It was very much like control. Oh, okay, so it was total control. Goth Girl needed Help. If her only doubt about a relationship with Crew Cut was how would she please a woman in bed, I'm the crystal with a sex drive for her. I leaned forward and kissed Crew Cut full on the lips. She didn't kiss me back, and if I'd let Goth Girl take the wheel things would have gone badly. I, however, have powers, and I could see that Crew Cut just had the momentary freeze that comes with having all your hopes and dreams answered in a single moment. I just kept kissing, and I moved my hands over her back to help bring her out it.
Crew Cut responded. Her hands moved and her tongue gamboled, but I was able to anticipate her. When she reached for Goth Girl's hand, I was already reaching for hers. When she reached up to run her hands through Goth Girl's hair I was craning my neck. We all kissed.
Goth Girl finally stopped trying to be a backseat driver and just let herself go. She was afraid she was doing everything wrong, but Crew Cut's passion in return was very reassuring. Not surprisingly, she felt like she was in a dream.
Crew Cut went uncertain on me, and I decided that if I went on the offensive a little bit she'd come back strong. I disengaged a hand from her breast and moved it down to her jeans. I fumbled with the button and undid the zipper, reaching in to fondle her.
She reciprocated and things moved to the bedroom. I went down on her first, and in credit to my technique I had Crew Cut cumming on my face in no time. Of course, Goth Girl had a ravishing little mouth and a tongue stud, so that helped. When she went down on me the tables were thoroughly turned, my friend. It was a hundred times better than any orgasm I ever had, and it was hard to let go of it. Goth Girl had gone from fear to joy, and it was time to put her back in charge. She did great. I bounced around between her exquisite bounding breasts as she pumped her hips into Crew Cut's face, and I studied lust, Good lust, as I watched both their faces at once. Beautiful.
I did other noble work, helping Goth Girl in her career. She wanted to do Good as well, and with my assistance in reading people she did a considerable amount of Good in her new job as a high school counselor. I sometimes Helped her in bed with Crew Cut when she was feeling doubtful, and from time to time I would steal a moment of Goth Girl's orgasm for myself. A woman's orgasm is amazing, and I felt the need to study it.
I don't know if the Big Cheese approves of lesbians. I didn't have anything to do with that; I just helped Goth Girl accept the love that was in front of her, and I'm sure that's Good. I'm even less certain if the Big Cheese approves of some of the other ways I Help, what with showing her how to make love to a woman or the occasional orgasm I borrow for study.
But I don't worry about it too much. I decided that if Big Cheese wanted me to consult with Him about every little thing, He would have let me know by now.