That’s all it is. You tell yourself that as you walk around the corner. Looking up in the midnight sky, there it sits. It calls to you, beckons you to cross underneath it’s latticed metal and rusted rails. The area underneath is totally dark. Very few lights behind you, and in front of you, if any at all.
You’ve taken a deep breath, imagined this moment for a long time. The time when you would have to cross underneath this potential death trap. The red staining on the rails, mixed with the gray metal, reminds you of a mouth with teeth full of silvery-gray fillings. Decayed teeth coming down upon the jaw of the ground awaiting the tiny morsel of sustenance that is you.
You’ve put your foot in front of you, the sound of your foot landing on the paving stones echoing down the seemingly long corridor. The sweat on your forehead is starting to rain down lightly upon the bridge of your nose. A bridge, not unlike that of the rails that are threatening to consume you, heart and soul.
Getting up your last milliliter of courage, you quicken your steps and blaze quickly down the brick-lined tunnel of buildings. You look up at the grey and red metal steps, the five steps in between two platforms, those steps that you think will be eating you momentarily. As you pass under, you look forwards to the other side and you see what looks to be freedom.
At last, you reach the corners of the building. You’re made it past the gauntlet, the metal mouth has not eaten you this day. You breathe a sigh of relief as you turn to your right. That is when you realize the horror is just beginning.
You have now stumbled upon a maze of paths, with jungle-like trees in the middle of it, the door of safety that you have to reach so far away. As you look at the next task at hand, the many possibilities of danger flood into your mind like meat into the mouth of a velociraptor, which may be in those trees there.
(Author’s note: G’day, everyone! First classes have come and gone for the week [or at least they will as of tomorrow night at 6:30PM]. I hope to be writing a bit more, considering I am going to need some time away from writing autobiographical pieces, biographical pieces, short fiction, and scripts. So much writing, so little time. Anyhow, here’s today’s Fictioneers.)
“Big ones! Small ones!” Beano slurred, “So many different types!”
Beano looked completely hammered. and fully animated. I was merely annoyed.
“Beano! What the heck are you talking about?!”
He turned his rotund frame my direction, and smiled one of those smiles that can irritate an IRS agent. It was the smile that I knew from my time in the Army with him.
“Mexico!”
Again, flustered was I.
“What about Mexico, Private?!”
“I found all these bottles in an empty house. And I drank them all.”
“And that’s why you’re drunk now?” I asked, blinking at him.
Beano grinned.
“Permanently drunk. Not sure how!”
And now people know why I will never visit Mexico.
A long while ago, I had told the story of an incident where my “future wife spirit” had come to visit me and inform me that I was to wait for her. Naturally, I was skeptical, and after it was all over, I wasn’t able to get any sleep the rest of that night.
The next day, for the record, I was incredibly useless at work and was raked over the coals by my boss for being a “paperweight around the ankles of this firm”. One day, I vow I will leave that company and never look back.
To say the least, it got worse. I had the prescience of mind to go and visit my pastor, who deemed me as being either incredibly insane, a newly initiated member of a cult, or a new apostle. In that order. He wasn’t much of a help on this, lemme tell ya.
Fast forward to three months later. By this time, I nearly forgot about what happened. I went through my daily life, doing what I do, and just being sad about my situation. I came home from work as the sun was at the most perfect position in the sky. I walked out to my patio, opened a bottle of IPA, and looked out over the neighborhood and at the sun. It was probably the first time since that night when I actually had peace in my heart.
I went back inside and sat down on my bed, as I was in a studio apartment. I felt a bit sad, because while I was at peace with most things, I was back to the old habit of mine about seeing my life ticking away. I even kicked myself a little bit because I was thinking about an old girlfriend who I likely could have been in a long-term relationship with, had I not been a greedy little buggard.
In the midst of this darkening of my mood, and as the sun went down over the horizon, a gust of wind came in from the window. I looked up and I saw the misty form from before, this time being a little bit more corporeal. She sat next to me on my bed and smiled.
This time, I was able to recognize that it was a feminine smile, and that she was much more defined as feminine, though I was unable to see the rest of the defining features of her.
“Seems like you were starting to forget about me.”
I looked at her and sighed heavily.
“Well, I figured that you were a one-time dream that was the result of eating a spicy pizza.”
She giggled at my statement, which in my eyes was kind of cute.
“When it comes to God and things, that has a tendency of being the case. But, I’m here now.”
“So, my future wife spirit, why have you come today?”
She smirked as she stood, and turned towards me.
“I am here to spend a little time with you. The time will come soon when we meet, and you’ve had a lot of problems lately.”
I looked at her with a little disbelief, and decided that now would be the best time to really challenge her and see if she was exactly what she said she was.
“Okay, what would some of these problems be?”
“Well, you hate your job and want to get away from there, but you can’t because you need the money to pay the bills that got you the job in the first place.”
I pikued at this. Okay, first guess is a lucky one.
“Then, in the process of forgetting what happened before when I last visited, you became lonely and were thinking about an old girlfriend of yours.”
Okay, that froze me.
“That’s why it was decided for me to come over here and spend a little time with you while my person sleeps.”
This is the point where I suddenly felt sad about everything, and that she knew so much about what was going on. It was pathetic, that I seemed to be so hopeless in my life, that I needed a reminder about things from the spirit of my future wife. I even started to shed a couple of tears, which made her sit beside me on the floor by my bed. She brushed her finger against my face, and the cold appendage took away one of my tears.
“But how can I even trust you? I mean, you say all of these things, and I remember asking you about your service to Christ before. But, still, you’re just a spirit. How am I supposed to know if this is truly happening, or if I’m being tricked?”
She sat for a second, and said something that I never would have expected.
“I think that “go with your gut” would be good advice.”
Aaaand that’s where I became sold on the idea that this was, in fact, the spirit of my future wife.
That night, I pretty much told her everything. Everything I felt, everything that I was dealing with. And I talked about my regrets to her.
She giggled at my suggestion, and she smiled. Before we knew it, the night had passed and there was dawn that was about to break. She looked up and gasped.
“Oh, this is not good. I’m going to be waking up soon, and I don’t want to leave.”
“What would happen if you did stay?”
“Simply put, I would disappear. Consciousness would wake my dreaming self, and until the next major time I’d dream, I would not be able to come here.”
The thought of her disappearing in front of me was not a good one for my psyche.
“It’s a cold morning, my guardian wife spirit. You should fly back to yourself. Don’t worry about me, I think I’ll be fine now.”
She smiled at me, and gave me a ghostly kiss on my forehead. It…felt cold, but yet warm at the same time.
“I will hopefully see you in the waking world very soon. Keep praying for me, that you’ll see me. And keep yourself ready. Christ’s gonna make things happen in pretty short order here.”
I was about to say something, but she suddenly wisped out of the room and through the window. As the first crack of sunlight started rising above the buildings, I was filled with a bit of sadness, and yet a little bit of hope.
“She’s actually out there,” I said to myself, as I proceeded to call my boss and leave a message saying that I was sick for the day. Yeah, after this event, there was no way I was going into work.
Picture ©Miles H. Rost
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