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.

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...)

Hale

Sprawled bluejay-style and belly-surfing slept Ms. Hale Larck. New to town, she nonetheless snoozed straight on through the unfamiliar rumbling of the secretly smiling garbage-persons, and afterwards she kept right on sleeping. About the time that breakfast had ended for most of the townsfolk and they all readied for that next morning step from the driveway to the broken-in-by-decades Fords and Chevy sweating-nightscares of the adorable Green party, Hale sat up. Glancing at the shiny old light on the brand new wall, she half-heartedly cursed her internal joke of a clock and unconsciously shuddered at the unusual quiet that had lulled her to sleep and then some--nothing like the constant percussive music of her newly abandoned N.Y. By now she imagined that her stomping grounds of the last three years would be like a jaded lover, not-at-all surprised to finally see her go. Thinking this, Hale felt a pained guilt like a tiny dagger colored the ice-blue/deep/shallow-slate of her eyes, and allowed herself to miss New York for a full forty-five seconds before she shook off the feeling and got the fuck out of bed.

Feeling like a stalking lion(ess) she slammed each foot down taking the steps across the room and reached the itsy-bitsy excuse of a closet, settled in by the viewless window which opened to the north. Swinging wide the singing door that creaked miserably to the stress of use, Hale tried her best not to notice the sinking-heart horror at the crystal ball future she looked into, seeing there stacked all haphazardly before her, boxes of stupid crap that seemed to puke the peaking colors of too many clothes spilling gently from lids left askew. Instead, in the pure(st) name of self-denial Hale grabbed hold of what seemed to be the navy blue arm of a t-shirt and pulled with all the might necessary to ignore the inevitable. Slamming the door with (accidental/pointless) flair she pulled her consolation prize over her head and forgot entirely about searching out a bra to go with it. Returning to the bed, she hunted around for just a moment before discovering yesterday's jeans tucked half-beneach the nightstand. These she pulled on, blowing off the effort too of finding a pair of underwear/panties, probably for consistency's sake. She reminded herself to dig out her alarm clock as soon as possible as she exited the soon-to-be-painted-over bright(ness) of the godforsaken/head-ache-inspiring/(thought) provoking yellow bedroom. She took the wooden stairs two at a time in her descent to the communal kitchen.

Entering with besocked feet that slid on the ancient tile (floor), Hale took in and swallowed up her surroundings. A sense like the pretense of vertigo swept over her when the sink turned out to be on her left rather than straight before her as she had remembered. Seeing the texture and shade of the dark sepia cabinetry likewise deceiving her expectations, she ignored the small group of people as yet unacknowledged and sitting at the corner of her eye. For a moment longer she let them await her inevitable attention and slowly slid her way to the center of the room to peer carefully around once more, for only the second time in the space of three months.

Yes, single sink on the left of the hallway entrance, uncolored stainless steel. And the cabinetry she now realized seemed too dark (only) because the room stayed dim this time of the year. Autumn. The visible changing of the light as the year progressed would be hard to get used to, she thought, so accustomed as she was to strictly artificial light. The rest of the kitchen turned out to be equally unrecognizable to her, though this time no shredded and useless memories desperately attached themselves to her mind's eye so that she could rediscover the interior as if for the first time. Plain, was the overall conclusion/result of her interpretation/study.

Turning around again definitely/pointedly, Hale at last paid homage to the housemates of hers who were evidently fellow bums, drinking coffee with bleary eyes at half past noon. (Really!?) The table enclosed by the hunched and hulking forms of the three present persons was of questionable quality/origin to be fair. It could quite possibly have once passed for a respectably good impression of wood, but those glory days of threaded grain were long past gone, and in their place was coat after coat of pale paint, probably/likely bright pink in a former life, something like sadly reminiscent of a fadingly too-vibrant bottle-assisted blonde man of maybe ninety-two. Hale glanced up (and away) instead, blushing awfully.

And at last her eyes alighted on the companionable bunch sitting above the false-jovial/joyous tabletop. The figures were Indie Parks and Mitch Beckham, the picturesque couple made up of her oldest friend and that chick's beau; Jane Levlin, her buddy-buddy, quietly budding landlord; and a younger woman than the rest of the small group--a girl Hale had previously seen only in a photograph--Jane's birth-deaf, lovely (grand?)-daughter. For the past few weeks prior to finally moving herself & stuff officially in, Hale had been waning curious about the girl and the rumors that came attached to her name/person. Seeing her now for the very first time in the flesh, her ebbing interest once more flowed and Hale's glance lingered into a gaze that was fully met by the mute(d) young person.

As ever reliable, Indie piped up upon Hale's entrance when no one else had yet thought to speak, including Hale, the bra-less intruder herself. "Hey there, sleepy-head! Come to join the land of the living, did we? How'd ya sleep? (How goeth the slumbering?)

Half ignoring the crazy girl, Hale addressed the whole lot of 'em: "Morning everybody." She removed her eyes from the girl in order to skirt them across the rest of the faces. They paused on their landlord before they returned once again upon their original curious subject. "How's it going these days, Jane? Can I guess that this is the (grand)daughter you mentioned, Ciarra?" Hale thought to position herself full frontal for the girl so that her lips might be read without much strain of effort.

Immediately the silent figure still looking with interest back at Hale stepped forward at this inquiry and stuck out her ridiculously tiny hand, as Hale noticed with her acceptance of it, presumably to be shaken not stirred, thought Hale's strange bartending mind.

Indie & Hale

"I know what it means to be dead."

I looked at my companion with not a little skepticism and she clarified. "Well, I've never been dead before, obviously, but I completely understand the implications and personally I don't see a problem."

"I know," I replied simply.
"But when I told him that, he shot me anyway. What do you think it means?"
"That depends on where you went when you died."

Hale Larck had just finished telling me about her dream during the night before. In it, she had been debating religion with Jesus Christ over coffee. Apparently, in spite of his presence, she had nobly stuck with her conviction/belief that his existence was unlikely. Raising his hand she had seen that Christ was toting a .356 Magnum. When she called his bluff and told him that her intended afterlife was made up of absolute oblivion, and that she gazed upon the prospect with wistfulness rather than dread, he shot her very dead.

"Of course it does, if I knew that I wouldn't need you to figure it out for me," she scoffed.
"In that case its pretty clear. Your subconscious says its me."
"Who's you?"
"Jesus Christ."
"I don't think it's saying that."
"Now that's what the experts would call denial."

She heaved an unnecessary sigh and indulged me, "Fine Indie, why do think you're Jesus?"

"It's you who--" she stopped me with a withering 'hurry-before-I-get-really-bored' look and I got on with my makeshift interpretation. "Okay, so you're having coffee with "Jesus". We'll, that's all we ever do. We're doing it right now, even! (I hope it's not too hard for you.) And your talking theology: one of our favorite subjects. Plus, he shoots you!"

She cocked an eyebrow at me, "And you do that all the time, huh?"

I pretended to look exasperated. "It's a metaphor, dear girl. I'm constantly putting a hole in the fabric of your reality, know what I mean? The similarities are too many to be denied."

We paused for a moment. Then, "You're not trying very hard," she says to me. And I thought my problem had been trying too hard. I shrugged. "If you want to doubt your one true savior, that's your problem. Besides, I don't buy into dreams as prophetic. You won't go down like that, I bet."

"That's not what I'm worried about..." Hale said with characteristic random mystery. Of course she didn't elaborate.

Shortly thereafter we decided it was time to go. We parted ways until that night when we'd both return to the house we shared rent on, along with three of our other friends.

It was four in the afternoon smack dab in the middle of a misty New York summer. While Hale went to start her bartending shift at a place called 'January's End', I left to return from my intentionally late lunch (consisting of coffee and still more coffee) to my own place of employment.

I used to wear the title of Librarian's Assistant, which basically meant I was a librarian without the proper, if ridiculously excessive, credentials. That was where I'd grown up in an itsy-bitsy town in Louisiana so that it felt less like a dirty government job and more like a community one. When I moved to this silly city though, I found out that government jobs are taken far too seriously. Still possessing an obsession with the scent of old books, I moved to the profit version of the same trade and now work in an independently owned used bookstore by the name of 'Tattered Remnants'. Sometimes we get customers in there just for the meaning behind the title. When we tell them they usually linger awhile, all charmed-like.

I, by the by, am Melinda Parks. My first name reminds me of the color gray for some reason so I try to go by 'Indie instead. I'm drawn to its possibilities: independent; indistinct; indifferent; indelible; in...decisive. My favorite is ????, yet in this I am deceived, for the instant devastation of change is...?!

[I wish for once "I owe my life to you" wouldn't sound so much like a reprimand.]