Chapter 2. Time to Remember.

Day two, morning

I know it’s late by the measure of daylight beating against my closed lids. 10:30 A.M., I’m guessing. Maybe quarter til’ eleven. Time enough.

Come noon, Ayers will be at the door of my studio apartment. A 500 square-foot space located above his detached garage that sports four rooms: one for watching the tube-style TV that gets only four channels, one for sleeping, one for bathing, and one for cooking. As there’s no dining table, I eat in the TV room. My plate balanced on my knees.

The apartment is a good fifty feet from the restaurant so affords me a privacy I need more than want. Best of all, it costs only $150 per month, utilities included. A deal Ayers gave me for working every shift, lunch and dinner.

Everything about this suits me. The sparseness and the quiet. The work that keeps my overactive mind engaged elsewhere. Until last night, I’d begun to feel both unburdened and at home. Now here I am, afraid to open my eyes and find that neither of these things are any longer true.

“Come on, Goddamnit,” I whisper to myself. Quieting the coal-like worry in my mind with platitudes. Doesn’t matter if they’re there, again. They’ve been there before and, every time, you make it through. Every time, they disappear, eventually.

The platitudes don’t work. The fist in my mind turns that worry coal into sparkling, diamond-encrusted cards. Holographs quilted together and floating above my wool blanket. Thirty of them, maybe. Forty, tops. More than usual for a single event because there was the nightmare after. Which means they’ll stick around longer before being shuttled off to the stacks of my memory. A dark, impenetrable basement where no thing and no one, including six therapists, have ever been allowed to go.

I feel the breath, and the hope, go out of me and indulge in a few hot tears.

For the next couple of weeks, maybe the next couple of months, these notecard-style holographs, dictated by my silent, synesthetic voice, will hang like a windless flag a few inches ahead of me, starting at the line of my navel and draping downward. This glowing blanket will live with me and move with me morning, noon, and night. It will be my constant companion until whatever inspired it’s creation is resolved. Usually, that means moving. Outpacing whatever danger my synesthesia, being smarter than me, has dictated.

I throw off my bedspread and look down at the cards, floating just above my lap and thighs. So many, so fast, is unprecedented. Already they’re the size of Ayers’ poster of Elvis, blue-tacked to the opposite wall, and I don’t know what that means.

I throw my legs over the side of the bed and the gossamer tapestry follows. I watch it’s hem swing lightly, coming to a stop just beneath my knees. I grab my iPad off my side table and look for the time but the screen is black. Its batteries, dead, despite a full charge yesterday.

“Well, fuck,” I say, stopping at the bathroom to start a bath before heading towards the kitchen to see if the microwave’s blinking, too.

Energy drainage. Another fun feature of being a freak.

As I’d anticipated, the microwave’s display is flashing four zeroes as if the power went out. I turn and walk down the short hall to the tiny sitting area barely big enough to accommodate the love seat, lamp, and old-school television. The battery-powered wall clock above its wooden console has also stopped. The time of death, recorded by the rigor mortis of its arms: 2:14 A.M. It probably happened while I was having the nightmare and, as a result, shot out a few high-powered, somnambulistic shockwaves. The same battery-sucking kind I produce during waking hours when angry or afraid. And, last night, I was very afraid.

It was the most disturbing nightmare I’ve ever had, and I’ve had many.

I walk back to my bedroom, listening to the tone of the bathwater as I go. When it’s just about full, the tub itself emits a specific wave. A blue-green, F4 note I can see-hear from almost anywhere in my small house. The tub not yet filled to that measure, I grab my purse out of the closet and upend it over the bed.

Nothing comes out.

I turn my purse back over and look at the silver line running down its white leather tab, like braces set in a big smile. Usually, I don’t pull its zipper closed, too busy or too lazy to take the time. This morning, my purse has been zipped up tight and a flag goes up in my head.

Something’s off.

Somewhere low on my holographic quilt, I’m aware of another card blooming into existence. While I can’t see and will not read what’s written there, I know the assessed threat level by the bright, blood red text which reads, severe.

I’m tired and misidentifying things, I tell myself, though I know that’s not true. What is true is that I’m too tired to even consider picking up and moving on again.

The tub’s familiar blue-green wave floats into my brain. I grab my cellphone and flip it open. The screen there is dead, as well. I drop it into my purse and get up to turn off the water.

Despite my inability to verify the time, I lower myself into the suds-filled tub anyway, letting my feet, thighs, belly adjust to the heat as I go. The hot water kills the worry trying hard to burrow into my skin.

As I relax my head against the tub’s curved edge, the note cards float up and out of the sudsy water. They waver above its cloudy surface like heatwaves, then tip slightly up, so I can read them.

“Just three,” I say and the first three cards grow larger; an accommodation for the fact that my contacts are still on my bureau and my glasses are in my purse. Clasped inside their case, like I rarely ever keep them.

Each of the cards is written as if by a third person and is all business. Just the high notes of what happened, when it happened, who was there, and, most important, threat level. If the threat is severe, the word is shown in red. If it’s high, orange. Elevated, dark yellow. Guarded, blue. And low is green.

Only a few times in my life has my synesthetic brain attached any hint of green to one of these cards. It’s part of how I’ve been able to stay off the grid for so long, assuming everything is a possible threat.

For whatever reason, the holographic cards are always written in Courier font, italicized. Information gleaned after the fact is asterisked; the referenced data, added at the card’s end.

Card one:

10:24 P.M. 10/14/15, Porch of The Ship Shack

Three persons present: Rhys Overland, Barbara Bilba, and Daddy-O’s Pizza delivery woman* (female, 60s).

Delivery woman attempts to deliver pizza, sees Rhys’s birthmark, screams, ‘You should have never been born.’ She implies Rhys had something to do with her mother’s death, then, with perceived malicious intent, attempts to follow Rhys inside restaurant. Woman slams hands on pane of storm door; injures self. Leaves.

Suggested course of action: avoid delivery woman. If a surreptitious investigation into Rhys’s birth (location, date, complications of, etc.) is possible, proceed with this. Pizza woman’s delusional nature coupled with possible shared history suggests an elevated threat level.

* Pizza delivery woman’s name is Hazel Concannon. Daddy-O’s owner, Dan Dadovich, is her nephew.

Hazel. I think of the name. One of my favorites, now ruined. Hazel was my second grade teacher. A woman with caramel-colored hair who scolded the other kids when they laughed at my description of the number two as apple green. It was also the name of my favorite cat, my favorite sister, found in the fourth of my many foster homes, and the name of my favorite checker at the local A & P. A teenager who took me home to her house when my fifth set of foster parents gave me the slip.

Now Hazel is also the name of a woman who says I should never have been born and that I killed my mother.

I turn my eyes inward, call up the name, and examine its fresh coat of taint-by-association. The name used to be a beautiful, madeira-like, reddish-gold. Now it’s stained around the edges. Corroded by a mud-orange rust.

I look at the next card and it floats forward so I can better see. This card is primarily about Sergeant Biv Whatley, the responding officer who arrived on scene very nearly the moment Hazel Concannon drove away.

Thin and wiry, he’d approached the restaurant’s porch with the loose-limbed gait of a teenager. When he looked up at me from beneath the wide brim of his hat, I’d been shocked to see the age whittled into his alabaster skin. There were deep fissures scored into his brow, pale from the constant use of the hat, and his cheeks and nose were dotted with potato eyes from too many sunburns. He was probably Ayers’ age, in his early- to mid-sixties, but his bright-blue eyes showed no signs of fade. And for someone in his line of work, that was a rare thing.

“Sergeant Biv Whatley,” he’d introduced himself with a smile and an outstretched hand. “Ayers has told me so much

about you. And old Ayers…heck, he never talks

about anyone.”

Card two:

10:29 P.M. 10/14/15, The Ship Shack’s Main Dining Room

Four persons present: Rhys Overland, Barbara Bilba,

Ayers Membly, and Sergeant Biv Whatley (male, 60s).

Sergeant Whatley takes Rhys’s statement about the event. Explains that Hazel Concannon (name of delivery pizza woman) is mentally ill and lives with her sister, Bettina Dadovich, mother of Dan Dadovich, Daddy-O’s Pizzeria owner. Rhys agrees to drop charges against Hazel if she will answer her questions regarding the woman’s allegations. Plans are to meet with Hazel before lunch shift on Thursday, 10/15/15 and provide answers regarding her aggressive behavior. Possible threat, based on Hazel’s delusional nature and connection via a possible shared history is high.

The whole time the interview went on, Ayers said nothing. Just sat there watching from beneath scrunched eyebrows as Barbara excused herself to the front porch and blew cigarette smoke into the night, no jacket so her arms would stipple in the chill river breeze. When I was done giving my statement, Sergeant Whatley, a widower, like Ayers, was the one she got on the hook. He went through the front door, coat shrugged off and in hand. About twenty minutes later, while heading towards my apartment, I saw her wearing it as the two walked back to his cruiser. I’ve made a wager with myself that, this morning, Barbara will show up in it. The only thing she enjoys more than bagging her prey is flaunting it.

Sometimes I wonder if Barbara’s a synesthete, as well. Just one wired more for seduction than signal processing.

I turn to the next card and the pit in my stomach opens up and down I go; simultaneously warm and terrified.

Card three:

10:49 P.M. 10/14/15, The Ship Shack’s Dining Room

2 persons present: Rhys Overland and Ayers Membly.

Discussion of Rhys’s comfort level and sense of security at Ayers’ place.

Possible threat level, high.

I stare at the message, and the threat level, both of them, seemingly mis-categorized. All Ayers and I talked about was his life in Hannibal, Missouri, the place he’d grown up. It was there, on the banks of the Muddy Mississippi that he launched his first canoe at the age of thirteen. Fifty-years later, a month to the day after his wife died, he left those same banks again, this time in a larger, covered canoe, and floated down the Mississippi. It’s how he found the big blue mansion he turned into one-part business, one-part home.

When I asked Ayers why this place, he answered simply, he’d spent enough time on the water. For the first time in a long time, his feet craved the soil.

A threat level three. It can mean one of two things. Either that I might fall in love with this man, or that he’s dangerous. Probably, the answer is both.

I tip up my head, willing the cards as far out of my line-of-sight as possible, and stare at the water-damaged ceiling. The stain just above me looks like the caricature of a woman. I turn my head until I can see her in profile. This splotch on Ayers’ ceiling has wavy, shoulder-length hair, delicately-drawn eyes, narrow, smiling lips, and a nose that bends slightly in its center.

“Not today,” I murmur and close my eyes.

I never remember her until it’s too late. It’s as if she exists in a walled-off part of my brain; a lighting memory, there and gone.

“Please,” I beg, but she floats down from the ceiling anyway, taking me by the hand and leading me back into last night’s dream.

It began with thick, liquid blackness. Then a name, Kathryn, spoken by a young woman, her voice both unknown to me, and familiar.

I tried to wake myself up. To move my arms or my legs. To move my fingers, turn my head, but something was holding me down. Or, rather, in. I was inside something. I was floating inside something, and it was warm. Almost hot.

I was in water.

Warm, thick water that pressed against me, then, a moment of terrific fear, got inside me.

Kathryn! I hear the shouted voice again, come muted into my ears. I see it as a blue worm of light, wrapped in an ugly brown cord. It floats through the mucus water. An electric glowworm with a long, curling tail.

Kathryn! I hear the woman call again and new sound waves, bright, blaring orange, as tall as they are wide, appear in my water-filled tomb. They tap against my scalp and face. Jostle me in this hot stew.

Help me! I hear another voice, another woman’s voice, so much nearer. I see it as a set of vibrant blue waves, threaded through with a growing green-black. There’s an infection in the woman’s words. As soon as they break against me, I can see this discoloration wanting to stick.

Kathryn! Listen to me! These new sound waves come in hard and wide, the woman’s name, along with the command, stretched out over many tall peaks. They are concussive, bone-deep. Painful.

I bear them as they come, eyes squinted. The thing inside me that wants to buzz starts up.

There are other sounds now. Metal clinking against metal. High-pitched clangs and electronic beeps. They delve into me like acoustic knives and the hot generator that’s been activated in my belly sends up a firebrand current that comes, vibrato, through my open mouth.

Help me! is what I mean to shout. I'm afraid!  But, already, and in a manner I can't explain, I know that my fear is not the message they'll choose to hear. 

Again, the near woman’s voice enters my world, this time as a pure black mass of waves so large and misshapen, I don’t recognize them. Anything they crash into is fractured. Infected. Decayed to such an extent that the walls of my underwater home begin to heat up and glow red.

Terrified, I hum. And hum. And hum, my diaphragm flapping against its hot core. Filling my tight world with explosive, indigo blue mountains that crash into the walls around me, which then move.

Eager to spring myself from whatever bands are tethering me, I hum louder.

Kathryn!

I fill up my diaphragm and enunciate, one vibration at a time, my demand to be let out of this horror show. This hell in which I’ve been living, aware and watchful, for more time than I care to remember.

The great clock, somewhere high up above me, stops and, almost immediately, my watery bed grows chill. I am aware of something happening outside my watery environs and try to cry out that I’m here, but can’t.

The walls collapse and the pressure changes. 

A light opens up above.

Through a maze of sticky, stretching membranes, I watch the thick water of my grave as it falls away. The blinding light pours in, taking its place. I try to cry out but my lungs no longer work.  There's a strange emptiness there, like I'm starving for something I've not yet had. This new craving for something unknown provides a new kind of terror. 

I’m swept up and swaddled then placed in the fresh hell of a see-through jail. It takes me a moment to realize, this is birth. It feel so much more like death.

“Rhys?” I hear a man’s voice, distant.

In my nightmare, I’m staring at see-through boxes of watercolor bodies. This one pink. That one blue.

“Rhys?” The man’s voice is no longer so faraway.

I hear a door opening, then footsteps. I turn up my head and see the massive face of a woman just over me. Her expression, pure hate.

“Rhys?”

The woman’s face morphs into Ayers’. He’s standing above me, concern threaded into his brow.

Panicked, I push into the slippered edge of the clawfoot tub. Both arms over my chest.

Ayers looks away. “You OK?”

It takes me a few breaths to answer. “I fell asleep.”

Ayers gathers my bath towel from the floor and passes it to me, eyes averted. “We’re in the kitchen when you’re ready,” he says, and walks to the door.

Next Chapter: Chapter 3. And, go.