MysteryGuy?

He just managed to miss his train. Not because he was late for it--actually he'd stood there as it scratched up and watched the doors open and hold...hold...hold. Then he'd watched them roll shut right before the train screeched away again. He'd missed it because he was confused. The sign on the window had read the place where he'd come from, but after it was too late, he realized that right underneath it the place he was going to was also listed. So now he knew--the top was your past; the bottom, your future. Depressing, but good to know.

Well, to be honest, he didn't know where he was going. The closest he got to it was deciding the direction. Today, it was south.

Another train came, and this time he got on it. The ride rattled and stayed warmly crowded. Six minutes and two stops into it, an elderly gentleman began strumming sweetly and singing in Spanish. The tune was reminiscent of a love tragedy set in ancient Mejico. MysteryGuy had seen the old man perform on this, the 1 train, before--but this time he wasn't carrying any cash or coin. Damn shame, too, because the song was lovely that evening. He couldn't look up when the old dude came tottering by with his hat held waist-high, after the subway patrons' scattered applause had faded. Next time I'll remember to carry cash, he silently promised the anonymous performer.

Carrie

With tight shoulders and a broken heart, Carrie sat staring at her blank computer screen, willing the words to write themselves. Outside the merciless window before her, the sun didn't shine as bright as it had yesterday. But secretly, Carrie knew she couldn't blame the sun for its dimness.

Sunny or not, she'd still give her right hand to be out there.

Her coffee tasted too sweet, even while the bitterness beneath the sugar was poorly disguised. Earlier, Carrie had tried drinking it black, like so many of her heroes were keen to do. The result was a scalded tongue, a sense of rejection, and this lingering bitter quality lent to everything else that went into her mouth, including her words. She supposed she should be glad, then, that there was no one here to talk to.

Admittedly, she wasn't mortified when she looked in the mirror. In fact, occasionally she even felt pleased. Nonetheless, walking through the halls at her little closed-in school never failed to leave her self-conscious. And seeing people she knew together, always huddled in small groups, always left her feeling lonely. And the terrible self-pity didn't ebb at all when she realized that she herself either systematically avoided, or else narrowly escaped, each of those groups during their formation several weeks ago.

Something about independence? Off-timing? An impulse to check everyone out before immediately attaching herself to whoever accidentally sat closest to her, during those first, befuddled days of courses? Whatever her reasoning at the time, now any such precautions appeared cowardly, as well as unforgivably arrogant to her loner's eyes. She told herself she needed to learn how to cling, at least a little, to complete strangers if she had any hope of befriending them. That's how it worked, in times of (love and) war.

Returning her ADD-childish mind to the task at hand, she once again cleared her head of pathos and stared blankly at the screen. This time, she readied her fingers in the proper ASDF JKL; positions, just in case inspiration suddenly needed a place to chill. Still waiting, when she glanced up at the window she saw that it was raining.

Hale

Work. Grudgingly I trudge off to work, muttering to myself, "Goddamn good for nothing work."

I take a short cut, halving the distance to four blocks, imagining fifty-nine ways to kill my boss.

My thoughts are interrupted by an incessant honking noise to which I plenty loudly reply, "Stop that godforsaken noise! I can walk in the goddamn street when I goddamn feel like it, you lousy bitch!" The rest of the trip, while anti-climactic, was accompanied by Bon Jovi singing "It's My Life" in my head, until I finally arrive at my grunge-metal pumping destination.

Looking up at the building that marks a low point in my life I think to myself, "Time to put on a happy face, time to pretend that life has meaning and that God actually wants a person with a broken soul." I went inside. The lighting was dim enough in the bar that if a person was drunk enough it wouldn't really matter how ugly another one was.

The next eight hours were quite uneventful. I served drinks and socialized like the normal person I am, goddamnit. I decided I would stay a little later so I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels and sat in a corner after my shift was over and forgot all my troubles. At 1 am I headed home, deciding that perhaps it might be best to take a taxi, if only because I was lazy from standing all night.

One taxi goes right freakin' by me and doesn't stop, so I decide to take matters into my own hands and jump in front of the next one up. It comes screeching to a halt and I got in, ignoring the profane-shouting of my sudden driver. When he quits I mutter to him where I wish to go and eventually we make small talk so as to resemble civilized people. We arrive at a place I loosely call home. I get out of the car while he waits for his payment. I kiss him on the cheek and tell him, "All I can offer is a kiss on the cheek in a crowd," then begin to walk away thinking awful good of myself. Apparently this currency doesn't satisfy the greedy man for he climbs out of the vehicle himself, yelling profanities at the universe once more.

I spin around beginning to seethe now, but just before the welcome confrontation Indie runs out and apologizes much too profusely for the likes of this scumbag, and then even pays the freakin' guy, just like many a silly time before. According to her thinking, being drunk makes me 'not in my right mind'. It's a shame people don't seem to understand how goddamn clever I am when shirking sobriety. Their loss.

I found myself standing in a vast desert with a big red sun shining in the background. Apparently I had been involved in a deep conversation with the cloaked man standing in front of me. That's not to say I actually remember what we were talking about, just that I was profoundly saddened and seeking comfort.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Don't be so worried, one of these days you'll learn how to die."

Dream ending, alarm clock screaming. I grabbed the alarm clock, pulled it out of its socket and decidedly threw it across the room. As necessary as this action was, I needed to stick to my routing. I ran to the bathroom moaning, "Oh god, I think I'm gonna die!"

After my venture of expelling last night's scanty dinner, Indie suddenly emerged through the doorway with coffee and Advil ready-at-hand. I stood up, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back, and took the much needed mug from her. I tossed the pills back and gulped down the life-giving Irish coffee. I thanked her kindly and stumbled back in the direction of my bedroom. She was about to go to sleep and she asked, "Where are you going this time?" I replied, "To get dressed. Don't ask." Indie shrugged her shoulders and walked off while I threw on some clothes and left to go keep a promise.

Beth

"I'm really surprised to hear soul in here," a customer commented. With that, the guy behind the counter cranked the volume to its impressive limits, and when the song ended, shut off the music abruptly to announce in a loud voice, "I'd like to thank everybody for coming out to SOUL night, tonight and every Wednesday night at the ****! I'd also like to inform you all that this is the last SOUL night EVER! Thanks for joining us." Promptly, the next song began its blaring start from the speakers, and it was most definitely not soul.

Sitting in one of the intentionally eclectic rooms/art galleries of this old-house-turned-coffee-shop, a wide-eyed kid named Beth began to feel the shivering jolt of caffeine start-up its own song in her all-but-shot system. With the coffee's persuasive insistence, her mind formed the thought, "Maybe I should try calling first..." Immediately--or at least before she could think better of it--her cell was against the side of her face, attempting to summon a voice with the shriek of a drrrrring!

Carrie

The sweet, empty sensations of "traveling" licked the insides of Carrie's thighs. Dissatisfied, but at least spent, she sleepily sucked on the moist tips of her fingers, pretending she tasted her far-gone lover there.

She moved through the days, dazed and sometimes manic with the magnificence of distraction, but most often as a distant witness to her own experiences. The shifting landscapes; the sensory overload of faces and sounds--unrecognizable to her in either expression or language; the summation of this absence of anything familiar, save her own occasional voice accompanied by startled look, returned by a glimpsed-at mirror...these were the things of her life just then. Profound, soul-bending, & ever more silent with every explanation.

As filled with newness as she always meant to be, still she fell asleep with an embodied lack of her love's memory: drifting off to the deserted rhythm of Beth's body breathing beneath her.

Indie

Indie felt queasy. She watched Beth and Mitch return walking through the alley across the street and she knew. They looked too far apart out there, and wore focus like masks that stared stiffly straight ahead. He had (finally) told her. So now what? Which choices would be hers? And what the fuck was she going to do?

Tracking their approach with her imagination more than her eyes, she sat behind the big lacquered pulpit of a counter with her face sunk into an unknown & oversized book. She anticipated the little silver-ring bell sounding only a few instant-beats before it actually did, and then waited until the very last straw of etiquette before raising her head slowly/reluctantly. The expression she thought she held in check blankly/frankly glowed her relief to see it was only one of them that entered--her one.

"Hey," she told him with an unexpected warm half-smile, come from force of a formerly good habit.

"Hey." His eyes wandered, distracted as was his own habit. Who was she to call it good or bad, now?

She stood up when he neared and he finally looked at her dead-on, seeming startled when he did so. Though she partly expected him to lean in and gently kiss her cheek--one of his dearest talents, (gentleness)--she knew she couldn't allow the gesture were it offered. But this time it wasn't.

She looked at him hard & soft(ly), as she always had. Hard as in closely, and determined to see whatever (was/) he held there; and soft with inexplicable affection, which afflicted her in his presence even now. Regardless of her efforts to neutralize/dilute the reaction/response with well-justified resentment, the latter just wouldn't stick, so far as she could tell. Not that it mattered--her mind was made up despite her self-traitorous body or soul (embodied soul?).

"Where'd she run off to?" Indie asked Mitch with light curiosity.

"She said she still had ten minutes of break time left--told me to tell you she'd be back in a bit." He looked slightly dazzled, or at a loss for words. "How've you been?," he questoned at last.

Indie had no idea what to do with him--her man, of ?? years, standing before her with his shoulders drawn up, knowing his betrayal of her, & knowing too that she knew, that he'd been playing a liar. Except he was just the same! He hated the part of her that refused to change, and yet she loved that part of him that just couldn't, regardless of every method he'd tried as instant remedy. She loved the timid/shy/sheepish blue that his eyes stayed (shaped) and showed; she loved his heavy, pointless heart, and his fruitless efforts to do some nameless SOMETHING that he could be proud of (at last); his fantastical standards for love, romance, & an ideal of life, even if these where the very things that doomed them (her) to failure (with/for him).

And so/thus/of course he hated that steel in her, could never condone its duplicity/unwillingness or disvaluing of sacrifice, which meant that simply by having decided so she would never again allow him to touch her face or hand, despite the fact of all her remaining love--for him, yes, but also for all the things that he couldn't live with, within himself.

So then, what? His face tilted down the incline of his three extra inches. She refrained from reaching up to stroke his chin, in careless-lover fashion. She glanced down instead, and watched/saw her hands do a brief drumming motion/movement against her thighs before looking up again. "Fine. How's goes it with you?" she asked non-committally.

"Okay. How's your day going?"

"Not bad," she shrugged off his lack of (sexual) tension and ridiculously irritating politeness.

They hadn't seen each other for four days, since he'd moved out of her/their apartment last week. They "weren't making a thing of it" however, which turned out to translate into "kept it a secret from their friends."

Well, most of their friends--she supposed Beth now knew. Of course, Beth was mostly more his friend anyway--working together nearly daily hadn't bridged up the gaping hole in communication that she and Beth had in common. Or more accurately, didn't have in common. They liked each other well enough, though. And who knew? After all, it suddenly looked like they had something more in common than they'd realized. Or rather, someone.

The scene short came its ending, & drizzle-stop ran the static that next fell.

Mitch

We drove through the silence together, and out of it again when the beach came into view. The waves roared & licked the shore like a pride of lionesses.

"I feel like I'm starting all over again," she told me in a low voice. I felt like I was starting new; we felt the same then, but reacted to the feelings in different ways. "I can't seem to focus wholeheartedly on anything anymore."

"Maybe you don't need to now--maybe you're not supposed to," I told her with an undetectable edge of desperation to my words. I wished I could lend her my acceptance of the way things are--however they happen to be.

She pulled the lumbering beast of a vehicle over, killing the engine the moment the back wheels hit the gravel of the shoulder. The headlights extinguished themselves under her demanding hand even before we glided to a stop, and we immediately began to drown together, submerged in the wake of the heavy darkness dimming the cab.

Ciarra

The house across the street is vacant now. (It's viiisible... Gone. Viiisible... Gone as I watch its image fluttering over the roof of my own house, jumping on the oversize trampoline in my back yard. I would expect that it's forlorn enough to be gathered up and scattered by the wind [after all that it had and lost] but it just sits there [all steady-like]. It is an atrocious house [to remain unmoved]. Living in that house, one can come to believe of the leaves to cackle as they fall (the nutcases). I too have surpassed my salvation (the sucker), like pencil marks invisible on skin [felt alone/only felt]. [Like Jesus even, huh? or so poised as this moment...] I've lost my unknowing companion, so that I might remember that it's cold.

[The in between is what I want. I want the darkness.] [Writing the words or the depths? Wondering about truth?]

I was in the car a few days ago and I saw an old man walking, as slow as you like with his hands behind his back, pondering. It hit me then, the beautiful intricacy of this life of ours. The excruciatingly frailty of this web that at times is the last strength in the universe. The only truth: that life will go on. Whether it tears or shatters or snaps. My life seems so complicated but that man, his life is complicated as well. It had consumed him. He needed a change of scenery just to comprehend the one he left behind/came from. It was surreal. Perfect. That's it. Gorgeous, the sheer perfection of all these fumbling attempts as though towards something we already possess. (Like the bus ride snippets...convey the magic of the everyday, if you can.)

MysteryGuy?

Counterfeit exhaustion got him there, but the coming fall is all his own. His pulse is strong and slow, which seems odd to his senses. Under his breath his own voice is muttering to him but he can't make it out. Instead, he gulps the coffee sitting on the church pew beside him, wishing he could be of service to someone.

MysteryGuy?

My eyes fill with her hands. They regard my face curiously, tracing away my lines until I feel my face a blur. My chocolate irises commiserate with her sepia skin, as the two move slow again through their ancient introduction.

"Will you write me down?" she asks me with quiet interest. I tell her hands yes, that I will write about this--but no, I will not write about her. "I miss being strong," she tells me, leaning down to give me her lips.

We go on, reaching out to bliss & contrition, but really it ended there.

The next morning she leaves without waking me, but to be fair I had lay in her bed for fifteen minutes without squinting an eye, listening to her lingering departure. When she goes, I roll lithely from the mattress and stand naked in her kitchen, making myself half a pot of her Columbian without a sense of guilt or regret to temper my actions. I sit at her bright chestnut table sipping for almost forty minutes, distracted by nothing else, and afterward, take care to rinse the mug I had used. As I leave through her large oak-black front door, seen for the first time during the brief darkness of the evening before, I can't imagine entering through it again.

If you're already feeling sorry for me--even if your pity's unrealistically self-directed--then you've misinterpreted the string of the story that I'm telling you. It's true that my solitude is not all I've hoped for this life, but when I delve into it I do so in a peace offering to every person that I love, and who has been handed the misfortune of loving me in return. It's the very best I have to give to them.

Ciarra

"Don't you remember why?" She didn't speak it aloud to anyone, because nobody was there with her. She wrote it down instead.

"What did her reasoning look like? Would she even remember now?" The words kept her awake that night, and not for their lack of an answer.

(Writing is so hard! when you still can't say, 'Fuck the words; I want a story.')

Simmer down, love. And uncoil. It's okay that you're waiting for something that you don't know how to expect. It's okay if it doesn't even come tonight. Loose your patience again, let it linger here. Do you still feel the ache of your arms? The depth of the cold to your feet? You do. They are just momentarily yours, remember?

Your stomach thinks it's hungry most of the time now, and you can hear your dog-heart snoring. When the second-hand ticking...pauses, the rain outside sounds alone, so that it ticks just as often as it does not. Of course its/the whole feeling of company is pretend.

Why do we dwell on loneliness? Why do we delve into it and reach for ghastly immersion? Why can't we tell the difference between loneliness and solitude? And what the fuck is it about approval? Utterly offensive, out of place approval... When will you come back inside and recall the way you always want(ed) to breathe? ... Girl, tell me a story, will you?

Janey & Ciarra

When the smile moved to me it didn't lose (any of/a bit of) its warmth. I realized that this proved she didn't recognize me (after all). No more than I had expected, I had let myself believe--I had left her when she was barely six years old, mind you. She nodded at me, paused in a way that wasn't in wait, then immediately began signing to me, evidently knowing I'd understand: Hi mom.

I'd been wrong. I had misread the smile as though to a stranger, forgetting that's all I was to her--whether or not she'd kept a picture of my former self in her head (all along,) now to draw upon after all these years. Hi daughter. I signed back, bravely testing her emotion by claiming her, having indeed/in fact not/never lost this sleight-of-hand skill of communication.

Indie

Her skirt rode up her thighs when she sat; she'd never worn this short before and she remained alarmingly aware of it. Sex is so boring, she thought. Or at least the mere mention of it, without the expectation of follow-through. And DISTRACTING at that, even from the possibility of actual attraction--so impossible is it to meet another person's eyes, dressed in this presumably obvious way. Just let go of the vanity, she urged herself silently, trying to focus on the jasmine breeze instead.

Just as her mind wandered to the potential of vining plants--the lovely fragrance of bougenvillia or the proud shape-color of ivy--her at last almost selfless musings were interrupted rather pleasantly: "Hey there, sweetheart." Sure, a rebellious irritation/offense struck her before anything else, but then she looked up to match the familiar face with the even more familiar voice--although entirely out of place as both or them were--and saw the only man with implicit permission to address her such.

"Dad?! Where'd you come from? What are you doing up here?"
"I took a drive. Check it out..."

He indicated at a place down the street, and she leaned over the coffeehouse railing to encounter the view: a Streamliner travel trailer--the thing he'd dreamed about simce at least as far back as she had breath in her. She 'whoooaa'-ed her delighted appreciation at the sight of his now-tangible wish, while wondering tangentially whether tea could be brewed from any sweet-smelling flower?

Carrie

There were things she didn't understand. Occasionally she labored under the impression that this was not so, but for the most part it went unsaid in her mind and known nonetheless.

Her most recent lapse from the loop of the universe came to her through the guise of her lover. Before that it took on the countenance of a stranger, once removed. And before that there were others, as there are always others.

"Why should I pretend I'm not arrogant? The very fact of it makes a denial damn near impossible. And whatever happened to finding arrogance appealing? I'm not the one changing here. Hey, don't even give me that look. This 'changing is a good thing' stance of yours is brand-fucking new and way too convenient to be taken seriously."

Her reflection looked contrite. But as this pleased her, in the next moment it began to look smug so that she felt ridiculous but pissed off anyway. She left the mirror alone with its victory.

Restless, Carrie asked her co-worker, "Do you consider yourself influenced by the weather?" as she returned from the restroom to the cubicle that they shared.

"Sure, my umbrella's right over there," she gestured wildly at the door before waving Carrie over to her with an impatient jerk-motion of her arm. She evidently didn't notice the younger woman's dissatisfied expression as she pressed on once again about the importance of consistent returns in their line of work, not bothering to explain what they were even doing here, so irrelevant as this small detail had turned out to be. In this room, Carrie found convincing herself that she was still alive to be hardest. Unfortunately, she also spent most of her time here.

Janey

"Not fair, not fair, not fair!" She'd raged against the sofa pillows for fifteen minutes, slamming her tightly closed fists into them until they flew up and dance-popped around like nervous kettle corn. Her voice was nearing ragged by now, but she failed to notice this, at least to the freezing point of cessation. She repeated her mantra (redundant?) in hush and harsh tones, not yelling so much as whispering with a solid force, and her tone was matter-of-fact rather than wounded complaint. So the injustice her words meant to express never got past her lips, and thus stayed within to stagnate and convince her rebellions to press on, avoiding relief at all costs.

But as suddenly as the tantrum had begun, the length of it came to an abrupt end. Janey sat heavily on the much-abused armchair and breathed the stale air in mouthfuls loud and slow. Head held high and with back bent not at all, she peered straight ahead, so that her glance hit incidentally beyond her gray apartment window. It lay upon the bougainvillea in fuchsia bloom, and (just like that,) she needed to be outside.

She remembered the wanting, and immediately after only the being there. Her eyes shuffled around then, locking on image after image, as though they were merely pictures of things that happen, (and not the things themselves/a thing in itself). She came to, (as) it seemed, standing on the steps of the building she lived in but seldom felt like hers, except between the pages of sleep and its absence.

Her whole self, as a sum of so many parts, suddenly felt simultaneously alive, and she drew in the blazing jasmine air through her pores, senses, lungs, as surely as the lowering sun set carefully on (the back of her) pale shoulders. The frantic feeling of loss slamming against her chest like a locked-tight door/window/cage, now soothed down to a frail tap--and while part of her wanted to panic even at the implications of this improvement, a baser knowledge led on by the breathing of her body kept the panic subdued/at bay. She watched her self-visible body meld into the/her surroundings, almost belonging there, and (again) she began to believe in what she saw.

"He wanted to write a song," she said aloud. "That's why I came."

"You ain't saying nothing that I don't already know."

Their faces were like lemon-drops and their eyes watered readily/reality. (Pretty girls make me blush.) I need some kind of structure; some kind of BELIEF. (It's like a kid on a cellphone! It drops things, and bends extravagantly over to collect them again.) This sharpness is in bad taste, I think.

It's the one thing you can't think about, be assured. How fragmented you must be! What sort of alternative would I prefer? Were it that you were here, with the face that you wear--open and full in front of me...then you wouldn't see me with eyes this foggy? My mood wouldn't drip tangibly and rich-viscous with wake. If you were here? You wouldn't know me at all.

Ah, but this doesn't save me from wanting you. I want to taste the flavor your eyes choose for ignorance! I want to listen to you telling me somethingsomething, your voice fluttering on and on in its brevity. What would you look like? Sitting here, with nothing but me for a distraction? I want to count your yawns; follow your drifting glance. Almost, I want you here without me.

[Don't put it past yourself to be here now. Your desires entail your presence. Yes. Practice, then, not abandoning yourself (while you still can see that you are).]

Ciarra

"Oh my fucking god. Where did it come from?! Why the fuck'd you bring it here?!"
"I found her in the bushes behind the complex! Goddamnit, listen! She's really cold, okay? Fucking--run a bath or something! I can't just let her fucking freeze, you know? Kell(?)... Kell(?), I can't take her home."
"Fuck, Dom!? What do you want me to do about it, huh? Jesus Christ! What if it's dying? What if it's fucking dead already?! A dead fucking baby in my fucking kitchen?!! Oh my god--oh christ..."
"She's not dead, Kell! (Don't worry.) Please. Come on, help me get her into some bathwater. Stay with me here, okay Kell?"
"Fuck. Okay! Okay."

*~*~*

"Ciarra! Girl, where the blazes are you?"

"Shhh," came from beneath the porch that the gray woman was just then standing on. She took the two rickety steps down and onto the pale-colored grass to kneel down breathily.

"Sweetie-pie, what the devil you doin' down there?" she wheezed.

"SHHH. I'm hiding."

This time the woman thought to lower her voice, "Who ya hiding from, Girl?"

"The clouds," the child whispered.

Unprepared for this, she still managed to keep her surprised laugh quiet enough for the girl's sensibilities when the woman responded. "Haha! Hon, the clouds ain't gonna hurt you this time o' year."

Ciarra (the girl) made the face of something scandalized when she looked up at the only other person on the planet. "I know THAT Grandma," she whispered quickly. "We're playing hide 'n' seek!"

MysteryGuy?

Working the taps, MYSTERY GUY felt his arms wake up--finally being appreciated beyond their monotonous swaying of the back and forth kind. (Or Hale's line when starts to work again...?)

"You're a distinctual sort of dude, mate. You know what I'm saying?"
I had no idea.
"Absolutely," I said.

The man in the pink hat scoffs for the third time that evening, so that by now I recognized it as an expletive of approval. Luckily there was no one around to see me gloat. I poured Pinky another shot without being asked, good bartender that I am.

Tonight at the bar I saw someone in the midst of a crowd of her friends. Do you know what I mean by that? There were at least a dozen of them, but no matter where she stood she seemed the one surrounded. I keep thinking, 'Does that say something about her? Or does that say something about me?

If it's the latter, I think I'd better grow out of it soon--I can't believe how easy it is to utterly ignore the individuality of seeming pack members.

What's she look like? The better question might be, what doesn't she look like? Or maybe, for an edging of flair, what does she exude? Something like thoughtfulness, I think. Ah! But what does that mean? What next? Something generic--something barely there. Like a patch of sky, painted/allowed in the corner of a ceiling--of a low ceiling, that is.

Anyway, I mean to answer the question, 'Why?' if I can. First things first, she wore a backwards hat, and her eyes narrowed painstakingly with each fixation of her gaze. Absolutely, which is how she seemed to see things.

Maybe that's all it was--a matter of movement. No, but it wouldn't be a case of physical stillness, what with how often she pulled a chosen friend into the crowded room and made her real--even into the crowded room blaring with the dissatisfying music, t-shirt hanging over her shoulders in all the wrong places. She wasn't the only girl grinning either, but it was just as well--I was only curious about hers.

Images of her smiling face watching itself in the mirror for a fleeting moment, and then wilting maybe, they manifested of their own accord by the design of my imagination. I saw her with an inscrutable expression, showing the clothes she would wear that morning. Yawning, and then rechoosing. Would she smile self-deprecating before she did it. Would she get an arbitrary sense of her choices? Of her life, perhaps? And would she keep right on smiling?, I wondered.

Like tonight, though? Why was I wondering about this girl anyway, when each of the other people I saw would have been subjected to the same processes of the days. Why couldn't I seriously care about their expressions, as if they'd be as invisible as my own through my eyes?

Her colors were monochromatic; she was all browns and grays. Cedar-skin, sequoia-hair, and lips and eyes. Shades of sand at midnight ensemble, as if feigning colorlessness. (Almost colorless?) None of this would mean a thing on someone else--I wouldn't even have noticed! How easy it is to get nowhere.

Janey

Jane stammered bodily among her things, bracing herself for the sudden wakefulness she still knew to regret. Her chamomile smile fluttered past her lips at the most unexpected of times.

When she awoke she had changed her mind again. Last night's late hour clarity had seduced her into sleep but now the morning had replaced it and she still didn't know what to do. Though she knew what was expected of her and therefore what not to do. [Which was to go at all...?]

Of course the funeral arrangements had been made far in advance and she and her love had played dress rehearsals with their eyes hundreds of times, but she was to be alone for the real thing. How could she have let herself forget this?

The phone rang downstairs to remind her that she'd unplugged the one on the nightstand across the expanse of the bed: his side, the left. She lay staring through that strange space at the quietly sitting handset when the answering machine next to it clicked on to talk to/speak with her in hushed tones, using the voice of her father-in-law.

"Janey... I hope I'm not waking you. Dear...Dolores and I just wanted to check up on you. Please let us know if you decide you want to come with us this afternoon after all. We can pick you up just like nothing and you can come back here with everybody after, if you want to. To eat something...you know. We love you Janey. Give us a call back when you get up, okay?"

She watched as the thing did nothing to commemorate the passing of Adam's voice, it's disappearance going unnoticed, like everything.

She'd only lied to him once when he was alive, and now with his death she found she would make herself a liar just once more. The first time was when she said she'd let him take care of her. This last would be ruining his expectation of her presence at his funeral. She wanted to sleep more but knew it would only generate/materialize people to put/with their hands on her shoulders and arms. She felt on the edge of a decision that wouldn't allow spare time. She didn't know how she could know this unless she knew what she was going to do, but whatever part of her already did wasn't letting on just yet. So she continued her scrutiny of the ceiling but didn't let her eyes weigh themselves down.

Although she now had the choice to let it have its way with her whenever she liked, exhaustion hadn't any real power ever since she had become a person she could no longer relate to. Sleep would always have to wait on her, she couldn't change this now.

She found herself noticing her breath for the first time in 11 hours. It was a shorter kind of the deep breaths and it filled her body with itself, solid enough to cause her left-center ribs to creak in a wince of pain. She allowed herself not to prepare for the end of the next ten minutes. She breathed instead.

Hale (plus Ciarra, Indie, Mitch & Jane)

"It's good to meet you, Ciarra."

The girl nodded in response, gifting Hale with a joyous smile to go with it. Always forgetful to reminding herself to return smiles at appropriate times, Hale's lips nonetheless worked of their own accord to meet this particularly joyous challenge. [Your characters are always so smiley! Why such smilemonsters, love?]

Curbing the bizarre urge to prolong this first meeting with a curiosity that would ostracize the rest of the room, Hale let go of the girl's hand and stepped backward once more, barely touching the kitchen counter right where it met the cheerily yellow-stained ceramic sink. [Use more concrete terms! Describe the feeling of the situation through the (apparent) physical characteristics of the folks that make it up, yeah?] Finally looking away, Hale did one more quick room glance trick before settling down at Indie's side for a minute to address the still-to-fore neglected inquiries of her dearest, silly friend.

"Since you ask, lovey--I slept something like an awful pitiable excuse for sleep," now, just as not-accidentally, positioning herself away from Ciarra's potential translation, less she offend the girl whose bed had been most graciously relinquished to her. Knowing it wouldn't matter anyway, she didn't extend the same courtesy to Jane--the mother's ears were physically perfect, no doubt, but her attention was inevitably elsewhere.

"It's so goddamn SILENT in this godforsaken sad imitation of a civilized town," Hale finished with faux-forlorn simplicity.

"What d'ya mean "silent"!? Didn't you hear the spiteful garbage kids at daybreak?!!"

"The only hour of peaceful shut-eye I got. And lemme tell you--the screech of breathing life!...'twas a sweet thing, girlfriend." She sighed heavily into Indie's skeptically bent/cocked/tilting head, and then addressed her friend's man/beau, the lumberjack look-alike lover, Mitch Beckham. "Mitch. What's up with getting me some work tonight? If I don't start working again soon y'all are gonna find me unnaturally hanging from my walk-in closet with fuckin' slit-wrists & ankles."

The guy smirked, mildly amused but not about to get crazy about it, it seemed. "You're up, nine to close, no problem."

"That's what you say now, but if you don't let me come till freaking nine, I'm liable to get shitfaced beforehand. How's about seven instead, cool guy?"

"Eh..." Mitch hesitated, not slightly irritate at the damn-near blackmail right along with the utter sense of almost bored entitlement in the face of his favor--spouting like nothing from the ungrateful mouth of his lady friend's best friend. Hale didn't take a word of it back in the down time though, and he reluctantly conceded, needing an experienced bar"man" after all. And being a practical sort of shrewd fellow, he recognized this hard won acceptance of her friend's "situation" would put him smack dab in the middle of a saint's photograph in Indie's wild camera-shot mind's eye. Plus, he liked helping people out...occasionally even without direct praise/appreciation for doing so. [Not a fan of Mitch suddenly, huh?] [Come on, come on! Let's make it more in line with reality...people like Mitch aren't all bad, and maybe aren't even due our casual scorn! Rather, they are aware of the multitude of reactions and consequences of their actions, paying close attention to these, and making colorful plan-outs of where they want to be, and how they will be seen when they get there. Remember, and be compassionately aware that the most evil of our nature can only/best be borne through intelligent means. You know that, love...you live with it too, recall. As most people do.]

(It's like the biggest fuck-ups are the easiest ones to cover-up with claims of most unfortunate irresponsibility...)