Chapter Three

One Step Forward

Regardless of what had occurred with Ben, I rode the high from stopping the kid in the park for nearly a week. I had been sleeping better and allowed myself to actually be happy for the first time I could ever remember. The nightmares had nearly stopped and I felt energized almost every day. It wasn’t until the following Friday that once again reality decided I needed to be put firmly back into the dark place I apparently belonged.

I pulled into the same grocery store I always do on my way home from work. With the season moving into fall, the sun was already setting behind the hills to the west and dusk had moved in. I had called Erica on the way home and we both decided we really wanted to make some steaks with two big, fat baked potatoes for dinner. I parked in the nearly empty lot and started heading into the store. I was intentionally looking around more, coaxing myself to allow my natural awareness to take in everything it could and not shy away from people so much. The Darkness near the part of the lot where the employees parked their cars caught my attention and drew me in that direction.

A man was moving from car to car looking into the windows. He was dressed entirely in black. He even had his hood pulled over his head. He did not look nervous like most of the criminal types I have seen. That probably should have been a warning.

His shadow flared and pulsed with reds and blacks. Green sprites as he looked into various car windows.

I quietly walked over to the side of the building where I could get a better look and watched him move about the lot. He couldn’t have made it any more obvious that he was going to attempt a break-in. I watched for several more minutes before he finally settled on an older model blue Toyota and pulled a Slim Jim out of his pant leg. He deftly slid the tool into the doorjamb and unlocked the car with one tug. It took him less time to break in than it would have taken me with the keys. I decided now was the right time to approach.

“What are you doing there buddy?” The sound of confidence in my voice surprised me. I wasn’t exactly sure where it came from but it had a cocky edge to it that I was pretty sure I couldn’t back up with anything.

“Who the hell are you?” He said as he stared me down. Apparently, he did not see me as anything but a minor annoyance. He waited a moment for my reply then when none came he pulled the door open.

I hesitated another moment then replied, “Just someone that thinks maybe you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing.” Again my overconfidence sounded out of place.

“Are you a cop or somethin’?” He waited for my answer but never once broke eye contact.

“No, sir. Just someone that doesn’t like seeing things like this happen. These people work hard for what little they have and someone thinks they can come and take it. It just isn’t right.” I felt the confidence leaving my voice as I continued, “Don’t you think maybe you should just head home?”

Hints of red in the black mercury. Smears of dark-red flow out from the core.

“If you ain’t a cop maybe you should mind your own damn business before someone gets hurt!” He bent over and I could hear him opening the glove box in the car.

He stood up out of the car holding a handful of change and what looked like a cell phone charger. Why didn’t I notice this guy was a good four inches taller than I was before deciding to walk over and play hero?

“Why are you still here? Do you not understand basic English?”

“You can drop what you took and walk away right now,” for the first time I could hear the actual fear bleed through into my voice. The way the red and green flashed through his Darkness, he heard it too.

“Or I could keep what I took and beat your ass for bein’ a little snitch punk that thinks he’s some kind of dumb-ass superhero.” He closes the door and walks around the car to face me.

Standing roughly twenty feet away as he flexes his fists, I am starting to wonder about my extremely poor choice of actions so far tonight. Every fiber of my being tells me to run for the store but I stand my ground. I have no idea why.

Flashes of red and blue in the deep pool as he lunges at me. The light is overwhelming! Red and green sprites detonate in anger, curls of red.

He closes the distance far faster than I thought someone of his size could.

I fend off his first blow and attempt to push away from him. He hits me solidly in the side of the head and I feel the world spin around me. Two more times he lands blows to my head and I crash to my hands and knees. I cannot think straight, I can’t even tell which way is up. I feel the heavy blows from his feet as he kicks me in the stomach over and over. I can no longer hold myself up and feel my head hit the pavement hard. The world is growing dark, I can taste metal in my mouth and know it’s blood. I curl up and attempt to protect my head and stomach from his blows. I have lost count of how many times he has kicked and stomped on me. I can hear him screaming at me but the sound of his Darkness is drowning out everything. I can hear the rushes of wind as the waves pulse and race around his black-mercury. The smell of dry wood burning and copper surround me. My world is spinning clouds of pain. Slowly the light fades away down a long dark tunnel. From somewhere in the distance I hear a female voice yell at the man.

“Get away from him! I’m calling the cops right now!”

Another solid kick to my head and I hear his footsteps rapidly retreat toward the small park behind the store.

“Are you okay, sir? Cops are on their way, I can already hear them.”

She carefully rolls me over onto my back. The pain is surprisingly sharp in my chest and arm. I want to throw up but can’t find the energy to even turn my head to the side.

“Oh my god, Mr. Carter, is that you?”

Flashes of blues and greens. Hints of silver in the ripples. The light is so bright.

The checker that usually works the night shift walks out of the haze around me. Her colors are always subdued and nonthreatening. I find I have no voice. She appears to be pulling away up a long dark elevator shaft. I am falling into darkness. I marvel at how warm the pavement feels but how cold I am. Another shock of pain through my chest and the light goes out. I no longer exist as far as I know.

~1~

My head is pounding but it is dulled by the soft pillows and sheets. I startle when I wake as I realize I am no longer in the parking lot. The blinds are closed but I can see sunlight coming in around the edges. It appears to be early in the morning. I have an IV in my arm but no other monitors are attached to me. For some reason, not seeing any extra equipment relaxes me a little and I find myself thinking I’m not in that bad of shape. I look over at Erica sitting in that uncomfortable looking chair while she is sleeping peacefully. I can clearly see that she is dreaming.

Colors flash in small sprites of light, blues and greens ripple across the Darkness. Random colors float to the surface and fade slowly.

Watching someone sleep always reminds me of thunderstorms from the air. Like the random patterns of lightning, the Darkness shares that same effect. Some flashes are deep in the cloud layer and simply light up the storm while others shoot from cloud top to cloud top.

I lift my arm to reach out to her and gasp loudly as the pain shoots down my left side all the way into the leg and past my knee. Only then do I realize my ribs are tightly bound. My left shoulder is in some kind of sling and I have several bandages on the side of my head. A wave of pain moves down my body. I hurt, a lot. I do a quick self-assessment to see that everything is at least where it is supposed to be. Aside from the pain in my ribs, shoulder and head, nothing else seems to be out of place. I try to adjust how I am sitting in bed and quietly groan in pain.

Erica stirs at the sounds of me trying to move and sits up rubbing her eyes, “Are you really awake this time or are we going to get another lesson in strange lights and all the things they mean?”

I’m scared to think of what I might said but move on, “I think so. How long have I been here, and as far as that goes where exactly is here?” Last thing I remember is the checker from the store. I may have left the parking lot thirty minutes ago, or thirty days. One second I am getting my ass handed to me by some stranger, the next I wake up in the hospital in a world of hurt.

“You are in the Harborview intensive care unit. You have been unconscious, more or less, for a little more than forty-eight hours. It was touch and go the first night. They were pretty concerned about some of the trauma to your abdomen, there was a lot of organ bruising, things like that. They let me stay the night. That kind of gives you an idea of how close it was.”

“More or less? How have I been unconscious ‘more or less’? I’m not sure what that means.” I tried to adjust my position again and was rewarded with another wave of pain. I felt my ribs through the bandaging and felt several sharp jabs of pain. They felt broken.

“You would occasionally talk about seeing lights or something. No one could really make any sense of what you were saying, it was kind of strange, very unlike you. They were concerned that the boot to the head might have caused some brain damage but the scans didn’t show anything. Other than that you managed to get three ribs broken and a fractured clavicle. Not to mention the pretty healthy beating your head took, heavy concussion.”

She is quiet for several moments then I see her eyes begin to mist, “What the hell were you thinking? Why on Earth didn’t you just call the damn cops? Do you have some sort of damn hero complex now? Do you have any idea what you have put me through over the last few days? They told me to prepare for the worst, Adam! Do you know what that means?”

The anger in the black-mercury is unmistakable.

“I don’t know what I was thinking. Honestly I just saw a man breaking into a car and didn’t go much beyond thinking that maybe someone should do something. I certainly didn’t start things out with a plan to get squished like that.”

“That someone you talk about should have had a badge and a gun! What if he would have killed you! Are you trying to get away from me? Are you trying to push me away? I care about you damn it! Why don’t you see that? What you did was totally reckless and stupid!”

Silver edges with sprites of blue and green. The edge is curling and pulsing.

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just something I felt as if I had to do. It’s hard to explain. Wait, that isn’t entirely true,” I pause for a moment as I try to get my thoughts together. “I think it’s impossible to explain. I don’t think there is any way I could make you understand what was going through my head as I stood in that dark parking lot. To be honest, I don’t really know.”

She walks over to the window and looks out over the city. I can see she is thinking carefully about her next words. The contemplation rolls through her Darkness like a powerful tide.

Without turning away from the window she quietly says, “I have been seeing a counselor.”

“I figured as much,” I closed my eyes to block out the swirls of pain I could see in her Darkness. Swirls of pain caused by me, caused by her being around me.

When she turns back toward me I can see tears are flowing heavily down her face, “I want you to go with me. I need you to go with me.”

I had never in my life ever once sat down and talked to anyone about any single problem I had. I was an island unto myself and felt that was the only option I would ever have. How could anyone ever see the world the way I do? How could any person ever stand in my shoes and try to understand why I am the way I am. They can’t. They simply couldn’t begin to understand what my place in the world was. They would spend a dozen sessions just talking about my mother and how that has affected the person that I am. Maybe they would go into the fact that I didn’t know who my father was and that made me feel incomplete. All well and good but just a drop in the bucket that was the curse of my world. Even if I convinced them that what I saw was real, they would just throw some sort of antidepressant at me.

I look into her eyes and wonder what she thinks will come of this.

Random color combinations make it hard to read what is happening.

I feel my walls beginning to come up around me. I want to protect myself, to be alone and not talk to anyone, not admit I’m a freak of nature to anyone else, ever. I want to hide under that pile of dirty clothes in the closet and not have to see the Darkness let alone explain it to anyone. For a brief moment, I realize that I am not the same person I was few weeks ago. At my very core, something has blossomed, something is growing. The part that was able to confront people doing wrong and do something about it had awoken something I can’t quite put my finger on. I am starting to think that maybe I have missed my purpose all along. To read the Darkness and make something better from what I see. I remind myself again that hiding is no longer an option.

Her eyes watched me without blinking. They are almost pleading with me to say yes, to say that I think what we have is worth fighting for. I could see how desperately she wanted me to say yes to everything. I couldn’t think of a strong reason not to go, besides, it would be interesting to see what the doctor was like. Maybe find out if there was anything going on between the two of them. I didn’t see any way that it could possibly help me though, “I will go. For you, I will go.”

The tension left her shoulders and reflected in her Darkness, “Thank you.”

She carefully rested her head on my good shoulder, “And for future reference. If you get yourself killed being stupid, the afterlife is going to suck for you once I get there. I mean really suck. You are going to wish you were alive again when I get done with you, if there isn’t any hell in the afterlife, I will make one just for you.”

I smiled and closed my eyes as sleep came over me.

~3~

Erica pulled the truck into the driveway circle early on a Sunday morning. With a creak of the ancient metal hinges, she opened the door. I accepted her helping hand and stepped down from the passenger side. Moving was still painful but the hospital pharmacy was kind enough to load me up with some industrial grade pain killers. The painkillers they sent me home with were different from what I was given through the IV while laid up. One of the side effects of the pills I was given is I found the Darkness around people became considerably muted, almost blurry. I stared at Erica for several moments as she helped me down. The colors were much more flat and the edges less defined. Instead of the black-mercury I was used to, it was now thick cigarette smoke. A blur that I found much easier to ignore.

“You’re doing it again Adam,” she said with a frown.

“Doing what?”

“Staring at me like you are high as a kite.”

“Well, that’s because I am in fact, high as a kite,” I give her my best ‘I’m stoned’ smile held up my hands making peace signs.

She smiles back at me and holds my arm as I walk toward the front door. I cannot recall the last time I was in as good a mood as I am. As comforting as it would seem to be able to turn off my curse, it was in fact quite the opposite. I felt like my vision was fading. Almost as if I were handicapped in some way. It was difficult to say which was better but I could easily see the possibility of a brutal addiction forming. If my life hadn’t taken the turn it did in the hospital, I would spend the rest of my life in this drug induced stupor.

My hospital incarceration lasted a total of eight days and seven nights. As it turned out, the stay was far more of a soul opening experience than I could have ever anticipated. In the late evenings when Erica would reluctantly head home, they only let her stay overnight when they thought I might not make it until morning, I would grab one of the wheelchairs and slowly, painfully, roll myself around the halls. I felt locked up when I would stay for too long in my room. I can’t really watch television so for the most part I only listen to the radio. To me people on the TV look so flat and two-dimensional that I find it to distracting to watch, almost uncomfortable in its lack of life. The same thing goes for movies. I may see the Darkness as a curse but seeing people without it is like watching the animated dead. It completely creeps me out.

The physical therapist said the best thing for my body was movement. She recommended I go for walks around the ward when I was up to it but the wheelchair allowed me to rest when I got tired and I didn’t have to deal with that stupid IV stand.

The hallways were filled with the refugees of the worst life lessons Seattle had to offer. Gunshot victims, people on the bad side of car accidents, people involved in any of a myriad of possible violent endings that left them in horrific states of barely living. Many were victims of the savagery brought by other people.

On my third night of what had already become my normal rounds, I was hit by the most bizarre sensation. By hit me, I mean that in almost the literal sense. A gust of wind had silently blown over me and left traces of something I couldn’t identify in its wake. At first I attributed it to the pain killers but as the feeling continued to grow I knew better. The energy was all around. Something inside that energy was calling to me, calling for me. I found myself looking for something but I didn’t know what. Somewhere around me, somewhere nearby there was someone that needed to be found. I knew it would be here but I had no idea how or why I knew. I slowly pushed the chair past darkened room doors. Turning a corner just past the nurses’ station I knew I had found what I was supposed to. The pain in the Darkness ahead of me nearly made me gasp.

A father sits holding his head in his hands on a small folding metal chair. He looks over his shoulder into the room next to him briefly, I can see his eyes have spent many hours crying. I approach with nothing but the slight squeak of my chair tires on the linoleum. He does not look up, but I can see he is aware of my presence. I lean forward slightly and look into the room. A mother is sitting next to the hospital bed holding the hand of a small boy. She is whispering to him and stroking his hand. Several tears roll down her cheek as she speaks quietly.

“I knew I shouldn’t have let him go over there,” he says as he looks into the room. He turns back to me as if I should pass judgment on him, agree that this is all his fault, that any blame should be placed squarely on his shoulders and no one else.

Flashes of blue and green. A rare mist of blue moves through the ripples of black mercury. Small sprites of red flash toward the center.

“I didn’t want him to go to his friend’s house today. I always thought his friend’s parents just didn’t pay enough attention when the kids were playing. They never watched when they would go outside.” He looked into the room and a tear rolled down his cheek. He watches for several moments as I see more rolls of pain flood through his Darkness. I find I am struggling with my own emotions now.

He turns back to me, “They were supposed to be taking naps but he had gone out to play with their dog. He always wanted one so he took every opportunity to play with theirs, he’s a great dog. I don’t know how it happened, maybe he was running and playing with the dog or just didn’t pay attention, who knows? Somehow he fell in their pool. It wasn’t covered and they didn’t have one of those splash alarms but I guess that doesn’t really matter, does it? He was out there for at least twenty minutes before someone came out to quiet the dog. Every machine in there says he will most likely not wake up again. Even if he does they aren’t sure if...” He trails off into silence as he begins to quietly cry again.

The black mercury stills briefly. Hopelessness is hard to look at.

He holds his head in his hands and cries quietly. The empathy I feel is overpowering, I want to go back to my room and just cry until I fall asleep. This is almost more than I can bear but I push forward. The wheels on my chair squeak slightly as I turn and roll my way through the open door and into the room. The bed is bathed in a subtle blue light from the various machines arranged around the room. Monitors, tubes and wires stretch from one end of the bed to the other. The mother attempts to wipe away some of the tears as she sees me looking into the room. Her face looks tired and her makeup has long since been removed by the hours of tears. She is exhausted but she will stay by the bedside until her body physically gives out.

The boy looks to be four or five years old with dirty blond hair. His face is devoid of expression as he lies peacefully on the bed.

The mother is watching me uncomfortably but I smile warmly and try to calm her fears with nothing but a look. She senses that I am no threat and turns back to her son.

Streaks of blue and green in the still black-mercury of her Darkness. A still pool of blackness is growing slowly from the center.

Her hope is fading that the boy will ever wake up again. I can see she is already starting to realize that she may have to face the worst thing a parent can ever deal with. I am struggling to keep from crying myself. The pain of loss that I see in her Darkness is the saddest thing I have ever seen. It tears at my heart.

“What is his name?” For some reason, the present tense seems critical here. I hear my own voice waver slightly as I try to bury the emotions struggling to come out. My throat is heavy as I fight to hold the tears back.

She turns to me as nothing more than a stranger, “Evan. My little boy’s name is Evan. We named him after my brother.”

I smile at her and nod a silent thank you.

I look at the motionless boy and clear my throat, “Hello Evan, my name is Adam Carter. I just dropped in to say hello.”

The small boy is pale and motionless. The various monitors around him show nothing beyond a barely alive boy. His heart beats slowly, his pressure is normal but his brain activity is a still, steady green line moving across the monitor. The machines don’t see everything. I see far more than they can detect. I see life. I see his Darkness.

Unorganized flashes of green and blue. Hints of red and gold flow around in an unorganized pattern. There is no order in the flashes, waves, curls. Quick flashes of light and sound register all around me. I sense laughter and crying at the same time. One instant the Darkness smells of chlorine and water, the next it is crayons and warm bread. This shadow is in complete chaos.

Watching his Darkness is like listening to someone put random words into a sentence. It lacks all structure. With a deep breath I talk to him, “Evan, can you hear me?”

I stare deep into the young boy’s Darkness. I have never actually looked into another Darkness with this much concentration before. I feel the cool black-mercury all around us. I feel my own Darkness move, slide, into the life essence of young Evan. The maddening terror of the young boy is tangible and consuming. Part of me wants to scream out loud as our black-mercury joins. I am struggling for several moments as the flashes of random light threaten to pull me into the tempest at the core of his Darkness. I push out slightly and create calm within the storm of colors.

After several heavy breaths I am able to speak again, “Evan? I’m a friend buddy, your parents are worried. I know you are there Evan. I need you to trust that I know you are there.”

A single spark of blue and green starts in the middle of the Darkness. It holds for several seconds then fades slowly.

“I saw that Evan. I need you to come back again. I know you are scared but I can help you.”

Again the blue spark surfaces only to be swept away in a maddening rush of gold and silver flashes.

Reaching out to his Darkness I try to coax the blues and greens but they slip away before I can ever reach them. I’m doing something wrong but I’m so close. Like knowing whatever it is you are trying to remember, it was just beyond my fingertips but I couldn’t reach out any further for it.

“I know you can hear me Evan. We sure would like you to come back buddy.” I feel myself getting frustrated, giving into the pain of loss. For a brief second I feel like giving up, but seeing that his Darkness is crying out for help and it makes me angry for not trying harder.

With the flash of anger, something changes inside me. Some part of me wakes and before I am even aware of what is happening I am reaching out to the small boy. Like a hand reaching out into the dark, but not truly a hand. My Darkness is forming a bridge of sorts. I feel my Darkness flowing toward the chaos surrounding the small boy. They touch with a flash of light and I can suddenly feel him all around me. I mean I truly feel him, it is as if he and I are sitting in a darkened room together. I feel his fear and terror. I feel as if I am locked in a small room with no light. This is the chaos little Evan is suffering. He is there but locked away. He can hear but not speak. He is terrified that he will remain like this forever. He cries out but no one can hear him. The fear nearly overwhelms me and I gasp deeply for air. I cannot see the hospital room around us, I am quite literally in his hell. I realize that I must show him the way. I need to calm the storm and quiet the chaos. He needs someone to show him the way out.

Currents of Darkness swirl around. I reach for the blues, the greens, push away the reds and blacks. Calm the ripples and curls. Even the flow. Smooth the torrent tearing at the core of his essence.

I comfort the boy. I can sense him calming as our Darkness’ converge and flow. I allow the blues and greens to flare and spark around us. He is calm and relaxed. I continue to comfort him. I pull slightly as if to say, ‘follow me’. His Darkness is calm and organized. He is aware that I am there now but he still does not understand where ‘there’ is. I continue to comfort him, coax out the good colors, and push back the bad. The colors, the smells, the sounds, all of them calm in the storm of black-mercury around us. I pause and can see that his Darkness is now stable. I reach out a hand in the Darkness and I feel him grab on to me. With the colors calm, I slowly, carefully pull. I feel us separate and become two again.

Calm ripples of black mercury. Silver edges flash a dark green and blue.

With a rush of cool air and the distinct smell of ozone, I feel a sudden wave of exhaustion come over me. I am spent. Part of me feels more energized than I have ever felt but in body I am spent.

The mother is holding the boys hand and singing quietly. Evan’s face has a different light to it now. I see his eyes move slightly under his still closed eyelids and the slightest of twitches around his mouth.

“Welcome back Evan, good to see you are with us again buddy,” my voice sounds raged and exhausted.

The woman is startled and jumps to her feet. “Evan?” She nearly screams as she calls out to her husband, “John! Come in here, he squeezed my hand! John!”

I hear the small metal chair slide across the hall as the father jumps up. He runs by me as if I am not there and I slowly back out of the room.

“Mine too! Evan buddy, are you there! Can you hear me Little Bear?”

“He did it again!”

One of the machines on the wall begins to blink a green light and a similar light flashes above Evan’s door in the hallway.

Swirls of blues and greens. Edges curl in sprites of gold and silver.

The boy still has a long road to recovery, but I know now that it will be full. He will be given another chance at life.

I roll down the hall with an exhausted smile on my face and tears flowing freely down my face. I needed rest as never before but I knew it would not be haunted by nightmares. I had finally found the purpose I was looking for. The piece that made me complete. I didn’t get someone’s purse back or stop some petty crime. This boy was given a second chance at a life that would have all too suddenly been stripped away. I could see someone’s Darkness and for once in my long painful life, it wasn’t a curse. It was a gift.

~4~

I turned the car off of the highway and into a large business park. I was driving Erica’s Volkswagen Jetta and found a wide open space at the back of the lot under some trees. We held hands as we walked in silence toward the large two story office complex. I had been out of the hospital for more than three weeks and was nearly back to my old self although I still had occasional pain when I tried to exert myself.

“Thank you for doing this, Adam. I really hope he can help you. Help us.”

“I do too.”

“Really?” she stopped and turned to face me. “Do you really want this to help or are you just saying that to try to make me happy?”

“Since I have been out of the hospital I think I might be a little different,” I held her hands. “Wouldn’t you agree?” They had sent me home with strict orders to stay in bed for another week. I took a leave of absence from work and had the next three months to do nothing but get better. It felt strange not to have a job to worry about but I was getting used to not having to wake up to an alarm clock every morning.

She looks at me and smiles, “Yeah, I would agree with that. But it’s also the first time off you have taken since our honeymoon. Maybe you should get your ass kicked more often if that’s what it takes to get you to stop working and spend some time with me. You have been more relaxed, I haven’t heard a single ‘managers suck’ complaint, and you have cooked dinner nearly every night.”

The automatic doors slide open and the room greets us with a blast of cool air-conditioning. I smell the metal of the processed air but the cool feeling is enough to get past the unnatural odor. I also wasn’t going to complain about this kind of weather when we should be looking at the start of the fall showers. My strength isn’t what it should be yet so we take the elevator to the third floor.

“Going up,” the polite but bored sounding computer voice says.

“I think you will like William. He reminds me of you in a lot of ways,” she says with a slightly nervous sound in her voice.

“So he’s kind of weird then, quirky but dark, broods around a lot and really likes bacon?” I smile at her. Should I be concerned that she thinks he is like me? Why the nagging feeling that something is going on that I don’t know about? Part of me feels like I’m walking into an ambush.

She gives me one of her ‘you better take this seriously’ looks and I decided that maybe being quiet was the best plan.

“Third floor,” chimes the hollow computerized voice.

She grabs my hand and leads me down the long well lit hallway. The carpet is a combination of red and green that is probably supposed to put people in a good mood but I find all it does is remind of vomit. The furthest door on the left is marked William Songbird, PhD NCC CFT LMHC LMFT.

“That’s a hell of a lot of letters,” I smile as I point at his wall plate, “He should try for the harder degrees, the ones that have vowels.”

“He takes his job pretty seriously, it probably wouldn’t hurt for you to try to be a little serious too,” Erica smiles and holds the door open for me. “I think you will be surprised. He really does know what he is doing.”

“I’m sorry, Hon. I guess I’m just a little more nervous than I thought I would be. This is kind of new ground for me.”

The woman at the desk smiles at me then I see a flash of recognition as Erica walks in behind me, “Hello, Erica, how are you doing today?”

Flashes of silver and blue. Sprites of green in the ripples of black-mercury.

“I am doing fantastic, Sam, thanks for asking! This is my husband Adam, we will both be seeing William today.”

I nod, “Hello.”

“Glad to finally put a face to a name. Bill should be with you any minute. Have a seat and I’ll tell him you are both here.”

She picks up the phone on her desk and pushes a button, “Mr. Songbird? Your three o’clock is here.” She pauses for a moment, “Okay, I will send them right down,” a quick pause, “You’re welcome.”

She hangs up the phone and smiles at the two of us, “Go right on in folks, last door on your left. It should be open.”

I nod politely to her and follow Erica down the hall. William’s office door is open and I can hear the gentle sound of flowing water and very quiet instrumental music. Erica steps in ahead of me and is greeted by a soft spoken Native American voice.

“Good afternoon, Erica. It is good to see you again,” William spoke with clear and concise tones. He looked to be in his late fifties and had long flowing gray hair held in a ponytail by a very colorful band. He wore a brightly colored vest that appeared to be a handmade collection of beads and leather. His pants were comfortable but loose fitting jeans with very well worn moccasins.

He stood and reached a large hand forward. I shook it as I met his eyes, “And this young man must be Adam. Good to finally put a face to a name young man. Welcome to my office, thank you for taking the time to come in and talk.”

Swirls and ripples in the black mercury. Edges of blue and silver with ripples of green. The edges of his Darkness ebbed and flowed like fingers reaching out.

His hands were aged but had a strong grip. I was immediately intrigued. I had never seen a Darkness like this, so colorful and with a life all its own. “Hello, Mr. Songbird, good to finally meet you.” His Darkness flashed and rippled in time with his words. I had never met someone so at one with their life essence. I was completely fascinated.

He nodded as he looked into my eyes, “Please, call me Bill. Can I get either of you anything, water, soda of some sort, crackers, I have a few candies in here too if you are interested?”

“I’m good thanks. Adam, do you want something?”

“I’m still full from lunch. I’m fine, thanks for asking though.”

Water falls from a small vase held aloft by a woman with long flowing hair. It drops through several small shells before rolling into a large brass pool with several goldfish swimming around. Every shelf and table top is covered with various knickknacks from old cameras to new radio-controlled toys. The walls are covered with a multitude of photographs and paintings. Nearly all of them are of Old Western towns or Native Americans in various tribal garbs. The large comfortable sofa sits in the middle of the room and fills the air with the warm smell of soft leather. His small laptop is open on his desk to what looks like meeting notes from the last time he and Erica spoke.

“Is there anything that attracts your eyes as you look around the room?”

“You have a lot of really cool stuff. Kind of an eclectic gathering of really random items. I guess I pick something and it tells you something about how I didn’t get along with my mother?”

“Not really. If you see something you like, I can tell you where I purchased it and you could get one for yourself. If it would make you more comfortable, I can make something up and we can then talk about your mother. It’s all the same to me,” he smiled brightly as he finished.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I don’t know how this whole thing works. I have never really talked to anyone like this before. Hell, I haven’t told anyone beyond Erica anything personal about me, ever, that I didn’t immediately regret.”

“Well for starters, and to be very honest with you, if you aren’t looking to change then you have come to the wrong place.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I don’t have any magic spell that will change your life. There is only one person on this planet that can change you, and that is you. I can give guidance, a different perspective maybe but the change comes from you. You are the only one in charge of your destiny.”

“I guess I never really thought about it before. I always imagined I would lie on a couch and tell you something about me then you tell me what the deal was and I would walk out different somehow. Looking at it now it’s probably not very realistic of me.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I have certainly had breakthroughs with some of the people I have seen before and they can be quite life changing but they don’t happen often, and it can take years before we reach them. I’m always amazed at how some people can readily agree that changing a bad habit, say eating or drinking, can be a lifelong endeavor, but therapy should only take three sessions. Some patients understand that, some don’t. Those that don’t, I can’t help very much. Most of the time they aren’t ready to see what is right in front of them.”

“So I’m a patient?”

“Well, until we get to know each other better. I like to think Erica is someone that I can consider a friend. It’s hard to be in my line of work and not look at people differently after a few sessions. I can’t comfortably use the word client; it sounds sterile and makes the people I work for sound like a commodity to be consumed. If you can think of a word that fits somewhere between patient and friend, I would happily use it.”

Edges roll in blues and greens. Sprites of gold flash in time with his words.

“Well, we only have an hour so let’s get right to brass tacks. My name is William Songbird. I have been a therapist for just a little over thirty-five years. I have seen pretty much anything and everything the human psyche has to throw out at someone so don’t hold back. I don’t think you can say anything that would surprise me.”

I smile to myself as I think about that, he hasn’t seen anything like me before, and he certainly hasn’t ever been able to fix anyone like me.

“Is there something wrong, Adam?” He is slightly tilting his head and his eyebrows are furrowed as if trying to read me.

I looked around trying to avoid his eyes for some reason, “No, not at all. Please continue.”

He made several notes on a small tablet of paper, “Erica has been coming by to see me for some time now and I felt it was probably a good time to start including you. She has many concerns about you and your well-being, especially concerns about possible depression and how that seems to be getting worse as the days go by. She says that you may be extremely happy one day but very depressed the next. I try to shy away from suggesting medication very early on but it may be something we want to keep as an option if you think you need it.”

I looked at her slightly surprised. I knew she was aware of these things but for some reason hearing it from someone else came as a shock. It shouldn’t have. I can be an extremely difficult person to talk to sometimes, but medicate me? I look over at Erica and she is blushing slightly.

Sprites of red flash briefly at the core. She is angry.

“I kind of thought we had spoken in confidence about him, William?”

Her darkness flashes with small sprites of red as she her eyes locked on his.

“Many of the things we spoke of yes. But if you expected to just sit and watch Adam open up without any input, I’m sorry. It just doesn’t work that way. In order for Adam to build any trust in this, he needs to understand that this is an open environment. I don’t manipulate people and this certainly isn’t going to be a meeting where you and I gang up on Adam,” he looked at her the same way he had watched me. “Relationships are a two way street regardless of where the fault may be. Does that sound fair to you? Do you want to continue?”

“I apologize to both of you. I don’t know what I was expecting I guess, I wasn’t really thinking it through.”

“No harm done. I guess I should have made it more clear before we began. Instead of me telling Adam what we have been discussing, you tell him. Let’s try to open this up with a little trust.”

She nodded to William then turned to face me on the couch, “You just don’t seem happy anymore and it is getting increasingly difficult to talk to you. I worry about you Adam. There are days I worry that you will do something rash, that you will do something that you will regret. Like trying to stop that car thief in the parking lot, it was almost like you were hoping that something like that would happen.”

I look at my feet. I can’t meet her eyes. I know it hurts her to be with me and that she would be happier elsewhere. Hell, I think just about anywhere would be better than with me.

“Adam, I want to encourage you to speak freely. I am all about communication. Real communication, not stories, not telling people what I think they want to hear and certainly not wasting their time with a bunch of worthless information.”

The blues and greens remain with hints of gold at the center. He is sincere on a level that even he probably isn’t aware of.

“I have never been good at talking about myself. It just isn’t something that comes natural to me.”

“Well then it’s a good thing that I’m not asking you to talk about yourself, I’m asking that you talk of yourself.”

“Uh, what? I don’t follow you.”

“Are you happy?”

“No.”

I can see the flashes in Erica’s Darkness out of the corner of my eye.

“Are you unhappy?”

“Wouldn’t the fact that I’m not happy mean that I was in fact unhappy?”

“Not at all. The median strip on the highway isn’t on the road but it certainly isn’t off of it either. I would argue that being somewhere between happy and unhappy is a place that exists and from what I can see you are firmly in between. You are on the median strip of the freeway. If you aren’t happy than I would propose that isn’t where you want to be, correct?”

I stare intently at his eyes. He knows more about me than he is letting on. It isn’t things that Erica could have told him. He is reading me. I continue to stare and then try to reach out. I push my Darkness outward and attempt to reach his. He smiles at me and I feel something push back. It is somewhere between mental and physical and it isn’t unkind, simply a polite push back. Almost as if a friend were to calmly push you back as if you had stood too close. He has somehow built a barrier between us. I am walking the Darkness around him attempting to feel out this barrier when he clears his throat.

“Adam, are you still with us? You seemed a little distant there, preoccupied if you will, thinking about something else maybe?” William says as he stares at me intently.

He has pushed me back? How has he done this? Who is this man? What does he really know?

His Darkness has not changed. His face has not changed, he still stares at me with those piercing green eyes.

Blues and silvers continued their dance around the ripples of Darkness. His Darkness is simply dancing with color now. Is he excited?

“I’m sorry, Bill, I was lost in thought for a moment there,” I can see that he knows I’m telling a lie. What can this man see? Is he like me? I feel a small flash of hope that I am not alone.

“Not a problem, Adam. It happens to the best of us.” He spends several minutes writing notes on the small pad of paper. Several times he looks up toward the ceiling as if he is trying to find the correct word. He finishes his notes and closes the pad, “Erica, if you don’t mind I would like to meet with Adam in a one-on-one session. Are you okay with that?”

“Of course,” she smiles at both of us.

“Okay,” he opened his calendar on the small laptop, “Adam, are you able to make it tomorrow sometime around noon?”

His Darkness is entrancing. The shadow dances about in some unheard rhythm.

“Noon should be fine. I don’t think we have anything planned that I’m aware of,” I look at Erica and she shakes her head as if to say we have nothing going on.

“Fantastic. Erica, I will see you and Adam next week at the same time and Adam, you and I tomorrow.”

I look at him with an edge of suspicion, “I am looking forward to it, I think we have quite a few things to go over.”

~5~

We walked out to the truck in silence. I could see her Darkness sparking and rolling as she moved through the various emotions. As usual, it was nearly impossible for me to tell what was actually going on.

We had driven several blocks before I decide to try to break the wall between us, “How do you think that went?”

“Horrible,” she says quietly.

“Really?”

“Yes. I’m not sure what I was expecting but it sure as hell wasn’t that. I guess I thought he would say some magic word and everything would be okay.”

“I really like the man if that means anything too you. I’m actually looking forward to meeting with him tomorrow.” We drove another block and passed my favorite Mexican restaurant, “It’s a little early but I could really go for some steak fajitas and a Mexican beer, you up for some Oros con Pollo? Maybe a margarita or three?”

“That actually sounds really good about now.”

The rear parking lot was nearly empty and I parked up near the door. Our favorite table with a view of Front Street was open and we casually ate the complimentary chips. I caught sight of Jorge’s Darkness as he walked out of the kitchen toward our table.

“How are you folks doing, shall I put in for the usual?”

“Yes please, Jorge.”

“I’ll take water instead of the margarita thank you, Jorge.”

Strange flashes of dark-green and blue

“Water?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of tired and I think a drink will just make it worse.” She added with a nervous smile, “Don’t want to sleep through my dinner.”

A few red sprites flash in the black-mercury

It’s a lie but I let it go, “Are you mad that William and I got along?”

“Not at all, I’m quite happy that you two hit it off. I’m angry with myself for having the expectations that I did. It wasn’t realistic and I’m still sorting through it. I think I might need to see a therapist to get things straight with my therapist,” she smiles at me when she says it but it seems hollow.

Silence descends on the table as we watch the late afternoon traffic pass outside the window.

Jorge arrives with the drinks, “One beer for Mr. Carter, and one margarita for Mrs. Carter.” He leans in close and whispers, “It is virgin and on the house.”

Erica smiles warmly at the man and he walks back to the kitchen.

I hold up my beer, “Cheers.”

“What are we toasting?”

“Here’s to many, helpful sessions.”

“Cheers.”