Dark Day Dreams, page 8
“Jerry, the last time we talked was a little over eight years ago.”
He was quiet for a few seconds and then said, “You’ve got to be kidding. For me it was just a couple of minutes. What year is it? What did I miss?”
I chuckled. That comment was so Jerry…he’d always been a bit of a news junkie and hated it when he was the last one to hear about some big
event.
“It’s nineteen eighty-seven. I got married to a wonderful woman named Kelly but we don’t have any kids yet. I got a job working as a copywriter for an ad agency. As far as the big picture goes, Reagan has been the president for six years now.”
“Oh, my God, you’re kidding. I always detested that guy, was always astonished California elected him governor. By the way, congrats on getting married and having a real adult job…two things I never managed to accomplish.”
I suddenly felt very bad for my old friend. I could tell he was feeling like a bit of a failure. Which was patently ridiculous considering he never even had a chance to play the game.
He asked me how everybody else was doing. I said, “As far as I know, your folks and siblings are fine. Our old buddy Walt lost an arm in a work accident and the Devlins ended up getting a divorce.”
“I knew that marriage wouldn’t last. I heard they were screaming at each other five minutes after they left the church.”
It was funny, this conversation felt just like any other I would have had with an old classmate. Jerry might have been stuck in the afterlife but he still seemed to enjoy a bit of snarky gossip.
I felt like there was a serious metaphysical issue that needed to be addressed. I said, “Jerry, I love our little chats but I wanted to ask you something. Don’t you want to get on to the next stage of this afterlife thing?”
“I’m not sure, Ted. To be honest, I really feel like I got cheated. I mean, I was only nineteen. I didn’t have time to enjoy hardly anything!”
“Yeah, I understand. So, are all the people there because they don’t feel ready to take the next step?”
He laughed. “Well, it’s not like I’ve walked around and actually taken a poll.”
I sighed. I knew if I was in Jerry’s shoes, I’d feel the same way. I said, “So, what’s your plan?”
The music from the cassette deck came back on. I’d lost him again.
************
May, Two Thousand Four
By this time, we had two sons, Kyle and Craig. Kelly had decided to get out of nursing and help me open my own advertising business. We had our ups and downs but overall I’d say we were a pretty happy family.
It seemed strange it had been almost thirty years since Jerry died. Sometimes I wondered if he’d moved on yet or if he was still wandering around on that otherworldly turf farm.
I had tried to tell my wife a few times about my conversations with him but couldn’t quite get there. Up to this point in our marriage, I believed she considered me to be a pretty solid, sane kind of guy. And even though I knew she loved me very much, it was likely that sharing the news I occasionally conversed with my dead friend might just make her question my sanity from that point on. You never want to plant a seed like that if you can avoid it.
I imagined a scenario occurring someday where she would be called on to decide whether or not I should be committed to some kind of mental institution. And she would tell the judge I was quite normal other than the fact I periodically visited with a friend who passed on in nineteen seventy-six.
One Monday morning I was on a call with three executives from a large electronics chain. One of them was droning on about their expansion plans when suddenly there was a loud click and I found myself on the phone with you know who.
“Ted, are you there?”
“Yes, Jerry. You interrupted my conference call.”
“What’s a conference call?”
I replied, “Never mind, it’s not important. Hopefully, they’ll just think I got cut off. Are you still stuck in limbo or whatever?”
“Yeah. Is it still nineteen eighty-seven there?”
“No, we’re seventeen years further down the line. Just getting started with the twenty-first century.”
“Oh, wow. Any flying cars yet?”
“No, but they’re starting to talk about making ones that drive themselves. I haven’t decided if I think that’s a good idea or not.”
I filled him in on the state of the world the best I could. And then I had to let him know both his parents had passed on since the last time we talked. It was rough but helped that he knew they’d both lived a long time. And it also helped that this time around he wasn’t surprised how much time had passed in the world he’d left behind.
I said, “I’m so sorry, Jerry. I really liked both of them.”
“I know, Ted. I sure wish I’d been able to spend more time with them.”
“Well, who knows…maybe you’ll eventually see them again.”
“Yeah, that would be so nice. Hey, I think I just saw Johnny Cash!”
I replied, “Yeah, I think he died last year sometime.”
Then the business people were back on the line and the expansion plan guy was still making his presentation. They didn’t even know I’d been off the call.
I started thinking about what a precious gift these brief moments with Jerry were and wished they happened more often.
*************
July, Two Thousand Twenty-Six
My wife and I were both retired at this point in our lives. We spent most of our time doing whatever we wanted, just enjoying the time we had left together.
Like always, the world presented a complicated mix of progress and problems. I sat down one day and made a list of inventions, changes and events I thought Jerry might want to hear about. Of course I had no idea if we’d ever communicate again.
Our high school friends were gradually dying from one malady or another. I felt pretty good but still looked up at the ceiling every night before I went to sleep and thanked the powers that be for giving me one more day of life.
Our granddaughter Annie had been begging me to play a new virtual reality game with her. It was called Ocean Masters. In this world you can breathe underwater, play with the various denizens of the deep and defend your kingdom against invaders from the surface. I found it to be breathtakingly realistic.
We explored a virtual version of the Great Barrier Reef for a while, checking out the beautiful coral and amazing marine life. This was especially great for me because I’d always been a bit hesitant to go diving in the real world.
I told Annie I was going to go off by myself for a bit and explore the Bermuda Triangle. She said that was fine and that she’d catch up with me there in a while.
A few minutes later, I’m checking out a pirate ship sitting on the bottom of the ocean. I was so impressed with the amount of detail the designers of this game had included. It seemed hard to believe how excited I used to get about Operation, Risk and Monopoly.
I swam up out of the ship and suddenly heard Jerry’s voice. He said, “I’m back.”
It seemed like less of a shock each time we came into contact. I replied, “Hey, Jerry. It’s been a while…or at least it has been over on this side.”
“You sound kind of weird, Ted. It’s like we have a bad connection.”
That made me smile. I thought about how the last time Jerry had used a phone they were still plugged into the wall and had rotary dials.
“I’m in the middle of playing what they call a virtual reality game. You put on this special helmet and it lets you go on all these cool adventures.”
“I don’t get it.”
I tried to figure out how to what to say and finally just punted. “It’s kind of complicated, Jerry. It had to do with computers.”
It seemed ridiculous trying to explain virtual reality to someone who was already stuck in a different kind of virtual reality themselves. My life had grown far too complicated.
I told him what year it was. He said, “Wow, you’re getting up there.”
“Yeah, we have grandkids and everything.”
“Ted, I get the feeling this might be the last time we get to talk. I have this weird sensation I’m starting to be pulled somewhere else.”
I suddenly felt very sad, like I was on the verge of losing something very important. But for Jerry’s sake, I decided to put a positive spin on it.
“I’m glad to hear that, buddy. I’m sure you’re sick of being stuck between the worlds or whatever.”
He replied, “I wanted to say thanks for being such a good friend to me when I was alive. We had some good times, right?”
I started to get choked up. “Yeah, we sure did. And losing you was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to go through.”
“Ted, that feeling is getting stronger. Goodbye, I hope we meet again someday.”
Suddenly, the voice was gone. I was alone, deep down in a computer generated ocean. I was happy my friend had finally been granted the peace he deserved (or at least I assumed that was the case).
I sat there for a few minutes and thought about the time we spent together before he died and the various moments we’d talked since that hot night in nineteen seventy-six. It was all very strange and I considered myself very lucky.
Hungry Women
Cassandra Fleming walked into the Starbuck’s near her apartment and had a horrifying realization. Every single young woman working there had a weight problem.
She knew obesity was a widespread condition in the country, affecting both women and men. She’d never considered herself a particularly judgmental person. But the physical uniformity of this particular group took her breath away.
They all looked like they were under the age of twenty-five. She could tell that by the condition of their skin. But she got the sense they’d all skipped an important phase of their lives…they had no youthful curves, no angles, no spaces waiting to be filled in, no lean lines. They had thick arms and legs and abdomens and seemed to move like middle aged women whose bodies had been altered by the experience of giving birth to multiple children.
The natural system was broken and every one of them had been deprived of their special time, those years when a human female feels like a beautiful wildflower just sitting in the field waiting for the right bee to come along.
She stood there for a few seconds with a stunned look on her face. Then a pleasantly plump barista named Tina said, “What can I get you today?”
Cassandra awoke from her momentary trance and replied, “I’ll have a Grande vanilla Americano with cream, please.”
“Do you want anything to eat today? We have some yummy new scone flavors...”
“Oh, no thanks.”
When her drink came, Cassandra sat down at a table and continued to watch the store’s employees moving back and forth behind the counter, taking orders and making drinks. She wondered how they felt about their lives…did they feel sad about the way they looked? Did they fantasize about being in love or having sex with another person?
She assumed one of the biggest problems was where these women happened to work. And of course it wasn’t just Starbuck’s, it was pretty much anywhere that served food in twenty-first century America. There was a display case full of scones, muffins, cakes, cookies, breakfast goodies and lunch items.
And the drinks were often the most insidious items on the menu. Sure, a cup of coffee or espresso was fine but now people were slugging down cold caffeine drinks that contained so many calories they might as well be called milkshakes.
She couldn’t imagine being them. She was about five nine and had what the kids these days like to call a smoking hot body. She had pale white skin, raven black hair and striking light blue eyes. And she would never grow old because she wasn’t human. She was a nymph.
There weren’t many of her kind left in the world. For the most part, they lived in the forests and fields of the world, often near rivers and lakes. Thousands of years ago, a Greek philosopher had joked that nymphs were extremely vain and lakes tended to make good mirrors on sunny days.
In the old days, nymphs were often connected with one particular deity or another. Pan and Dionysius were especially attached to these nubile creatures. But over time the gods faded away and their former acolytes were left to fend for themselves.
Cassandra sometimes missed her old friends. Satyrs and centaurs really knew how to party.
She wasn’t really sure how long she’d existed. She didn’t age and unlike a deity, didn’t depend on human adoration for her power. All she needed was the sun and wind and rain. And a good deal of red wine.
There had been so many stages of her existence. The times back in Greece and Rome had been so much fun. The Dark Ages had been brutal but then things turned around again during the Renaissance. But if you stay in one place too long, there’s more of a chance your secret will be discovered.
She’d come to North America approximately three hundred years ago with five of her sisters and they made a life for themselves in the various wild areas along the eastern seaboard. It was wonderful…the water was clean, the trees were thick and it was a big country where there were still lots of spots you could hide in. It took a while to get used to the winters but it wasn’t like they could ever freeze to death.
She thought it was so remarkable how these modern American humans left some large swaths of forest untouched. It was too bad more creatures of myth hadn’t survived to see this day.
Two years ago, she’d decided it was time to check on the current state of humanity. She was hungry for those things the natural world didn’t offer…the touch of a man’s hand, cooked foods, the sweet smiles of human children. Her sister Astra begged her not to leave the group but Cassandra said she felt like she was going crazy. She was so curious about what was going on in the world.
She walked until she came across a human campground in North Carolina. There was a young male there who was only too happy to help out a beautiful, naked woman. He gave her some of his clothes and food and beer and they spent the night making love in his tent. By the morning, he was so bewitched he would have gladly taken a bullet for Cassandra.
She accompanied him back to his home in Raleigh. She didn’t talk much because she knew very little English. But since she was a supernatural entity, it didn’t take long for her to learn how converse fluently. She made up a story about how she had run away from an abusive husband and that’s how she happened to end up at the campground. She also said she’d been skinny dipping and someone had stolen her clothes when she was in the water.
The modern world seemed like so much fun. She liked all the electronics, especially the young man’s large screen television. And the bathroom was downright glorious…the large tub was like something out of nature made ten times better by mankind. She spent hours and hours in there every day.
After a week, he said he had to go back to work. When he got home that night there was a note on the kitchen counter thanking him for his kindness and generosity.
She travelled around the country, finding it so easy to meet single men who were all too happy to offer her at least a temporary home. They were so easy to seduce and bewitch and persuade. Eventually she had her own car and access to apartments in five different cities. She even considered going
back and finding her sisters so they could leave the forest and enjoy the fruits of the mortal world. But as much as she missed them, she was also hesitant because she wasn’t keen on having competition.
She was pleased human women (at least in some countries) had made such important strides in terms of equality. She’d always felt like the species would have advanced much further by now if half the population hadn’t been penalized so harshly for simply having larger breasts and different genitalia. On a few occasions, she’d run into men so cruel she decided to separate them from this world, stealing the breath out of their bodies in the middle of a lovemaking session.
Currently Cassandra was staying at an apartment in Chicago. The owner was a busy corporate executive who was gone on business trips most of the time. She liked this city a great deal…it had a lot of energy, much like ancient Athens.
She shopped and went out to restaurants and partied in clubs. The loud, thumping electronic music and alcohol made her feel very happy. That was one of the things she loved most about humans…most of them understood on some level that while work and progress were important, those rare moments of ecstasy and release and love were truly what made all the struggle worthwhile.
One thing did puzzle her, however. There were so many wonders in this country and yet when she walked down the street, most people seemed to be wearing masks of misery. There were times when she wished she could show them how hard life had been for their race up until very lately. Days when people felt lucky just to have a scratchy wool blanket or a bland bowl of porridge.
She became obsessed with the crew of young women who worked at that one particular Starbuck’s most mornings. It got to the point where they began considering her a regular. She memorized all their names and they referred to her as either Cassandra or Cassie.
One day she asked the one named Tina what time her shift ended and if she’d like to get some lunch. The barista was a bit startled at first but then Cassandra explained that she was fairly new in town and hadn’t made many friends yet. And it was very hard for any human to turn down a nymph’s request for anything.
Cassandra insisted they go to an overpriced little bistro she knew about and that she was going to buy. Tina was heterosexual but still felt thrilled that this gorgeous, classy woman wanted to spend some time with her. Her life usually felt so predictable…go to work, go back to parent’s house, maybe go to the mall or the movies. She’d been thinking about taking some classes at a community college but could never seem to work up the energy to really get the ball rolling.
They ordered glasses of wine. After the server walked away, Cassandra said, “So, tell me a bit about yourself, Tina.”
“Well, there isn’t a lot to tell. I grew up out in the suburbs east of the city and still live there with my folks. I have an older brother who lives in Los Angeles. And as you know, I work at Starbuck’s. How about you, where are you from, Cassie?”
