The moon looked shy in the hot
night. He stared at it while he drove,
which it was probably a fairly unsafe thing to do especially when the green
clock in his truck said
He parked in an empty space beside
a silver Cavalier and an older gold Accord.
Immediately he felt bad, his light-blue truck seemed to crowd the tight
parking space and he had to squeeze out of his truck to try not to bang his
door into the Cavalier. The lamppost
above his car flickered twice and then cut to a dull glow. He beeped his car locked using the keyless
entry and trotted forward.
The moon stared down at him as he
crossed the small parking lot. It was odd that he could see the hot humid air
under one of the working lamp post, hanging like fog and making his vision
blurry, yet above, in the sky, there shone the moon, clear and shy, peeking
behind an invisible dark blanket of sky.
Chills brushed against his arm and
he stepped forward on the steps in front of her building. He walked 15 more feet to the door of her
bottom floor apartment and knocked.
She didn’t answer right away, in
fact she didn’t answer at all. He
knocked again, knowing her doorbell didn’t work.
He would have called her name but…well…
The knob twisted fully in his hand
and he pushed it forward and entered her small one bedroom apartment, which was
dark except for the light pouring from the half-way open door to her bedroom. “Hey babe, it’s me! Make sure you keep this door locked, especially
at night, ok?”
He wasn’t met with a response and
a slight fear washed over his body. Had
someone intruded into her house? He knew
she didn’t live in the suburbs, or in a gated community, but it was a fairly
harmless area, minus a few drunken frat boys on Saturday nights.
The jingle of “Jangles” collar
greeted him and he watched as the small gray cat pranced towards him from the
lighted room and roll over on the floor in a stretch. It made him a little at ease, knowing the cat
didn’t seem too alarmed or suspicious. He
figured she must have been in the bathroom, or maybe asleep.
But when he got to the partially
cracked door to her room, he saw her, not in her bathroom but on her bed,
curled in a ball.
Her pillow was squished in between
her arms and her chest and the side of her thumb was in between her teeth.
She wasn’t asleep. She was crying.
“What happened?” He felt the wind knocked out of him when her
eyes met his.
She closed her eyes and let two
fat tears dangle at the edge of her lashes before falling. “I’m so sorry Justin.”
He moved quickly to the side of
her small bed, which seemed to swallow her.
He knelt down and looked into her eyes.
“What is it?”
“I don’t want to be a problem.”
He shook his head, not understanding
what she was trying to say to him. “What
are you talking about? You aren’t a
problem?”
“Yes, yes I am! I’m ruining what you love. You never get along with the guys. Your bosses are getting upset with you. You’re not yourself, even here you aren’t! A- and you’re scared
of me now. Y-you hate me.”
Puzzle pieces started to merge
together in his brain, but slowly. And
he heard it in his ears and felt it in his brain and almost said her name, “Da-”
But she cut him off and the name
vanished in his memory. “Don’t. Don’t try it.” She sat up at that time and
put her back against the headboard of the bed, leaning back and looking up at
the ceiling, avoiding him as much as possible.
“And, and she’s gonna find out soon. And then, then…”
He reached forward and grabbed her
hand. “She won’t find out.”
Her free hand moved to rub against
her face and in between her eyebrows, up her forehead. “I’ve done too much.”
He couldn’t stand when she was this
upset or crying. So he pulled himself
together and pushed himself up on the bed, sitting beside her and collecting
her into his arm. “No, no! You’ve done so much, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.”
She held onto him and cried into
his chest. “We’ve gone too far. It was never supposed to get this crazy. It was just for fun.”
“What was? What are you talking about?”
He was clueless as to what she was
talking about, but she seemed upset that he was that out of the loop. She pushed him and her voice had an
accusatory tone to it. He felt the tears
build in his own eyes just by looking at her, she looked so lost and
hopeless. “Us, Justin!
It was supposed to be just for fun, just
once or twice and now we have this whole thing!
And I’m- I’m scared to let you go, but…”She closed her hands over her
mouth and looked out onto the off white carpeting, which Jangles had now
plopped down onto, lazily tapping his tail against the floor. Her brown hair shifted on her shoulders as
she shook her head and spoke through her hands, “…but I don’t think there’s any other way.”
He started to feel a little lost
himself. His brain felt like he had had
a little too much to drink and buzzed with noise and felt light against his
shoulders, like it might have rolled off an onto the ground if he didn’t keep
it up straight. He shook her and pulled
her tighter against him. “No, don’t do
this.”
“I have to; I can’t keep doing
this to you. I don’t want you starting
to really hate me.”
He started to think about his life
without her and he didn’t like it. He
knew there had been times when he felt other wise but in that moment he wanted
nothing more but to be with her. “But
what will I do without you?”
“Live in peace. Have good nights
rests.”
He attempted a smile but it
failed. “Have no fantasies?”
She pulled away from him and
looked away to the wall. “You have Britney. You don’t need me.”
That hit him hard and his stomach
started to ache. “B-but I love you.”
His words came out easy but her
response seemed faster. “You love the
idea of me, of us, of a magical, impossible relationship.”
He felt her slipping away. He couldn’t grab her hand when he reached for
it. It wasn’t invisible, and it wasn’t slippery,
but every time he tried to hold it, it seemed to not feel like anything. It felt like air. He began to get desperate, afraid that she
was disappearing and swallowed hard. “I-
I can’t be without you.”
Her eyes were sharp and cold, a definite
difference from the warm feeling the honey color usually sent through him. “Yes you can.
This is what you wanted, remember?”
He breathed out, finding it hard
to get his lungs to work. “Please don’t leave
me. I-I’ll be so alone without you.”
She smiled, her tears gone as if
they had never been there to begin with.
“You’ll be fine.”
She got up off the bed and he
tried to go after her. “Please…please…don’t
do this!”
“I have to,” she shrugged.
He stumbled, following her as the
world around him crumbled into blackness.
“No, no...please…”
“Justin…”
He reached for her but she kept
getting farther away, farther submerged into the black surrounding. “Don’t! I can’t do this.” He fell to his knees and began to cry,
hearing his name echo around him.
“Justin!”
“No!” he yelled as she was no
longer in view and his name got louder.
“Justin!!”
“NO!!”
His eyes blinked and he found
himself staring wide eyed at the ceiling, which was no more than three feet from
his face. He felt someone near him and
moved his eyes carefully over to the curtain that had been slung open. Chris’s eyebrows were bunched and his mouth
was hanging open slightly. After a few
awkward seconds of Justin breathing hard and Chris’s unusual expression, he
said, “What the fuck!”
It still didn’t register in his
mind where he was. He blinked, rubbed
his eyes and took a deep breath. “Wh-what?
Where am I?”
Chris spoke slowly and dipped his
head down as he stared at him hard.
Justin felt like a science project under his stare. “The bus. What the hell man? You…you ok?”
Then he remember his dream, his
horrify dream and immediately panicked.
He looked around and grabbed Chris’s arm forcefully. “Wh-why’d you wake
me up?”
Chris jerked away, the strange
look still on his face. “You were
screaming ‘no’, I couldn’t sleep and me and Ray
started freakin’ out.”
Justin hit his head against his
pillow and grabbed his comforter in his fists.
“Shit! Why’d you DO that!”
“What’s the big deal? I was trying to help you out! You didn’t seem too happy in your sleep or whater.”
“Shit! She’s gone.
She-she’s gone.” The thought didn’t
hit him until after he had let the words come out.
Chris’s voice still was slow. “What?
What the… Are you sick again?”
Justin closed his eyes and tried
not to cry. He couldn’t take this, it was all just too damn much to deal with. “She’s gone…”
“Who is?”
“Just-just leave me alone Chris.”
He started to protest but instead,
nodded with one last curious look, and then slung his curtain back closed. “Bu- Right. R-right…”
Justin tried to get back into the
exact position he was when he woke up but found it deathly uncomfortable. After ten minutes of lying there, eyes
closed, desperately trying to make his breathing even, he hit the bed and then
wiped back the tears, mumbling to himself, “Go to sleep, just go to fucking
sleep!”
It took him a good 30 minutes,
which seemed much longer, but finally he did fall back asleep. He didn’t know if the dream came
automatically when he fell asleep, but he remembered it did occur.
He replayed the earlier dream,
driving to her apartment, noticing the shy moon, parking in between the cars,
beeping his car locked and then knocking at her floor level door.
But when he opened the door this
time a weird feeling crawled over his skin.
The lights were off in the den and Jangles came out to meet him just as
before. But something was off.
He didn’t speak to her this time
and didn’t warn her about her locks.
His shoes felt like they had been
cemented into the ground as he tried to walk and the door seemed to sink into
the distance as he tried to step forward.
Finally, after a work out, he came to her partially opened door.
He breathed deeply, afraid of the
scene that would lie before him. Would
she be crying like before? Would she be
happy to have him back? Would they
finish their strange conversation? Would
they make love and make it better? Would
they hold each other and talk?
Or would she be dead? Or worse…
His hand splayed across the white
wood door and it took all his muscle in his right arm to push that door open so
that he could look inside and enter. But
when the door did open and he did look inside, he didn’t want to enter. There was no point and he knew that it was a
mistake coming back here.
Jangles rubbed himself against his
legs and meowed a pitiful sound.
He leaned against the doorframe
and stared at her bed. The sheets were
crumbled, the pillowed smushed.
And her room was empty.
She was gone.