Prologue:
She was walking down a long dark passageway. Far ahead she could see an opening, and from it shone a radiant light. Slowly she moved through the darkness; her hands skimming the surface of the cold stonewall for guidance, as she tentatively placed each bare foot in front of the other. The debris, of what seemed like generations, crunched and then crumbled to dust under her feet. The air was thick with the smell of decomposition, and her lungs felt like they were filled with cotton wool.
Step by step she pressed on, though she had no idea why, or for how long she had been doing so. She knew only that she must continue; every fiber in her being compelling her forward, urging her toward the light.
The closer she got to it, the easier her way became. The surrounding stone, seemingly reluctant at first, released its grip, and the passageway broadened into a large chamber. Suddenly, the floor in front of her cleared; the rubble covering it swept away as if by magic. Her lungs expanded with the wholesomeness of fresh clean air, and as the fog inside her head vanished, her determination and excitement grew. Just ahead, not more than thirty paces from where she stood, was a simple stone archway and the source of the radiant light.
Constructed from wedge-shaped stones place vertically one on top of the other, then curving inward and held together at the top with a single keystone, the archway was the ultimate expression of strength and stability, and yet the whole thing was alive with movement. Each stone seemed to be made up of a thousand tiny crystals, and the light from the other side of the archway reflected from one crystal to next, moving in a flowing rhythm of bursts and flashes.
As she stood there, rapt in the wonder of such a thing, she realized that the rhythmic movement of the light from crystal to crystal, from stone to stone, felt oddly familiar to her. The pulsing of the blood through her veins, each beat of her heart, every breath she drew, the bursts and the flashes, all were in perfect harmony. It was as if the light, the archway, all of it, somehow existed because of her, and she because of it. If one were extinguished the other would surely cease to be.
She could feel her heartbeat quicken as a warm sense of confidence and determination enveloped her. This was her reason for being, her purpose, and it was all within her reach. All she had to do was to pass through the archway and into the light.
Suddenly, she was outside, no longer standing before the archway, but standing at the edge of a forest, looking down onto a lush green valley. The sun shone brightly above her; its light shimmering in her hair as the warmth of its rays melted away the tension in her muscles. Her feet were no longer bare but clad in soft leather boots, and her dust-covered jumpsuit had been replaced with a brushed cotton tunic and trousers. Over her right shoulder lay draped, and fluttering slightly in the breeze, a long and flowing red cape, and in her left hand she held a wooden staff with a smoky blue crystal set on its tip. She felt happy and fulfilled as she stood looking down at the peaceful valley below.
… Then someone screamed.
Making it Right
Startled, Chris sat up in her bed. Something woke her but she didn’t know what. Straining her eyes and ears she searched the darkness of her attic room. Nothing.
“Eddie let go of my arm; you’re hurting me!”
Chris frowned. Her parents were fighting again. She pulled the blankets up around her neck, and leaning back against the headboard she closed her eyes. If she closed them tight enough she found that her hearing improved, but her father was speaking now, and her parents’ bedroom was downstairs and at the opposite end of the house. Chris couldn’t make out what her father was saying unless he bellowed, which he often did, and at Chris herself more times than not, but when he argued at night with her mother, he spoke mostly in low deep tones.
Huddled there in the dark, Chris could just imagine how her father looked sitting there on his side of the bed, or standing, it didn’t matter which, it was the look on his face that you’d never forget. He’d have this self-satisfied grin that looked as if he thought he had something over on you, and he did, and you could tell by the calm, almost laughing tone of his voice, that he liked the power he had to make you cry.
“I’m leaving you Eddie…”
“Ha ha ha. Go ahead, leave, good riddance to bad rubbish then!”
Chris could hear her father’s voice now. Whenever he laughed in that slow mocking tone of his, it was so loud that you could feel it reverberating all the way through to your spine.
“Where do you think you are going to go, Charlene? Ha! You don’t have anywhere to go, do you?”
Chris knew what was coming next. This scene had played out so many times before, she almost knew it by heart.
“Then I’ll kill myself; anything to get away from you!” Her mother screamed.
“Good! Go ahead. See if I care.” Her father laughed; this time his laughter was real. “Make sure you get it right, and don’t come crawling back if you don’t!”
Chris could hear her mother crying in the kitchen below her bedroom. She heard the cupboard door opening, the tinkling of glasses, and then the squeak of the fridge door. Her mother was probably pouring herself a glass of rum and coke to steady her nerves. Shortly after, Chris heard the porch door open and close, and then everything was quiet.
She lay there for a few minutes, listening to see if her father would go after her mother. He never had, but Chris always held onto the small hope that he would.
Without turning on the light, she got up and got dressed. In her sock feet she slowly crept down the stairs and stood for a few moments in the kitchen, listening. She could hear her father’s heavy breathing coming from the open bedroom door. She couldn’t tell if he was sleeping when he sounded that way, or if he was just pretending to, but it didn’t matter; Chris knew that it meant that he wasn’t planning to go after her mom, and that if anyone was going to bring her mom back home, it had to be her.
She didn’t want to waste time tying her sneakers, so she pulled on a pair of cold rubber boots from the pile in the porch, grabbed a coat, and slipped quietly out the door.
It was cold outside as well, but she hardly noticed. She had an idea where her mom would be, and finding her was all that mattered. With her coat open wide, and her one size too big rubber boots scuffing loudly against the gravel, she hurried down the road. Once she passed the grouping of houses where her family's house stood, the street lights were further apart, but there was just enough light between each post to see where she was going.
It wasn’t until she got to the west side of the harbour and started to climb Drummond’s Hill that it became too dark to see, and she had to drag the side of her boot along the edge of the pavement to guide her way.
She could feel her heart thumping wildly inside her chest. She hated the pitch black. Usually there was enough light that if you waited long enough your eyes would adjust, but not that night. Drummond’s Hill didn’t have any houses along it, so the county didn’t have any reason to put up street lights, and it was overcast and there wasn’t a speck of moonlight poking thought the clouds.
On Halloween the boys would hide in the ditches along either side of the hill and toss eggs at the unsuspecting trick or treaters, knowing that the darkness would provide plenty of cover to hide their identity, or to get lost in, if anyone came chasing after them. Chris knew to avoid the hill on Halloween, but tonight was different, and she was being childish being so afraid of the dark. Besides, she was nearly thirteen years old and she could take care of herself.
As she slowly climbed the hill, she remembered just how well she could take care of herself, and that gave her the courage to continue. Kenny, the next-door neighbour’s boy, used to tease her all the time. He said her hair looked just like a tumbleweed, and he would taunt her again and again by calling her that name.
“Tumbleweed, hey Tumbleweed, you’ve been doing a lot of rolling lately, I can tell” and then he’d laugh at her, with the same self-satisfied grin on his face that her father often had. So this one time, Chris had had enough, and she pinned him down and held his mitten-less hands in the snow until he started to cry. That evening, his mother phoned her mother and complained.
Chris listened in on the conversation and watched the expressions on her mother’s face from her seat at the kitchen table.
“Yes, yes, umm hum. So you’re complaining that my little girl beat up your son who’s nearly twice her size?”
Chris thought her mother had been smiling when she said that, but she couldn’t be sure.
“Well, maybe your son shouldn’t be such a bully, then my daughter won’t have a reason to beat him up. ... Yes, uh huh, you do that. Good night.”
Chris’s mother hung up the phone. Chris had at least expected a talking to, but her mother never once spoke to her about that conversation, and later, when she thought about how her mom had smiled, Chris had got the feeling that she just might have been proud of what her ‘little girl’ had done.
If she could handle a bully, she could climb Drummond’s hill in the dark by herself. “It was just the same as it was in the daytime,” Chris thought, trying hard to calm her thumping heart, “just darker, is all.”
When she reached the top of the hill, the street light in front of her mother’s friend’s house made her going much easier, but the fact that there wasn’t a single light on in the two story building left Chris with an empty feeling, and no place else to look. The house was the last one in the village, and beyond it there was nothing but unlit road and ditches, until you came to the next town, three miles away.
“Mom?” Chris chanced into the darkness, and then again a little louder; “Mom, are you there?”
“Christine, is that you? What are you doing out here so late?”
Chris let out the breath that she didn’t realise she’d been holding, as she saw her mother’s shadow pull away from the boulder beneath the town’s sign post. “I couldn’t sleep”, she answered, her voice cracking in the cold night air. “ I came to get you.”
“You came to get me? Christine I’m fine. I just wanted to go for a walk, that’s all. You know your father.”
Chris nodded, looking up at her mother, who still carrying the drink glass from the kitchen, now stood next to her on the side of the road.
“Come on, let’s go home and get you to bed.”
Drummond’s hill didn’t seem quite as frightening on the way down as it did coming up. They didn’t speak much during the twenty minutes or so that it took for them to get back home. As they neared the house Chris’s mother asked Chris if her father had been asleep when she had left, and when they got to the back porch she gestured to her daughter to be quiet, as she slowly pressed down the latch and pulled open the door.
“Now you go to bed” Charlene whispered, trying to sound as normal and reassuring as she could, but when she saw her daughter just standing there watching her, she answered her unasked question. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I just want to sit here on the couch for a while. I don’t want to wake your father.”
Chris nodded; she knew why that was. “Goodnight Mom”, she said, as she mounted the steps to the attic.
“Goodnight” came her mother’s whispered reply from the kitchen as she headed off to refill her glass.
When Chris reached the head of the stairs, she stopped and listened to see if her brother was asleep. “Michael, are you awake?” she asked into the darkness. There was no reply.
Back in her own bed, Chris tried to stay awake for as long as she could. Everything was right with her world once more, but she needed to listen to the sounds coming from down stairs long enough to make sure. The comfortable warmth of her bed, however, soon pulled her down into a deep and dreamless sleep, and even the restless stirrings of her mother in the living room below, didn’t wake her once.
The next day was Saturday so Chris could sleep in, but she hadn’t yet reached the age when she consistently stayed in bed until eleven or twelve, so she was up before nine like she did every Saturday morning. She was greeted by her mother, who sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and an untouched piece of toast, and her father complaining that the sugar bowl was empty. Sighing, her mother stood and filled the bowl from the canister on the cupboard next to her fathers chair.
Chris poured herself a bowl of Rice Krispies and sat down in her usual seat to her mother’s left. Michael came into the kitchen next, and without a word he went to the cupboard looking for his breakfast.
“Michael, the Rice Krispies are open and on the table”, Charlene told her son, to which he mumbled something about how he never got to choose what cereal they were going to have next.
Scowling, Michael sat across the table from Chris. The four of them then sat there eating their breakfast in silence, just as they usually did. The only thing out of the ordinary was that her mother hadn’t even touched her toast yet; she just sat there sipping her tea.
After breakfast, Chris’s father turned on the television and sat back in his easy chair with a Bloody Mary sitting on the end table next to him. Chris and Michael did the dishes as they always did, and her mother went into the bedroom and closed the door. It was a normal Saturday morning.
When the dishes were done, Chris went outside and built a fire on the beach. The quiet there seemed more natural to her somehow. For a long time she just sat and watched the flames leap and dance, wiping away the tears that refused to stop running down her cheeks, and not understanding why she was crying. Everything was back to normal; everything was right with her world again, and even if it wasn’t, she was almost thirteen, and she could take care of herself.
Letting Go of Baggage
We played this game, she and I, that when I cleaned, she would show her appreciation by giving me a lap dance. In a way it was a very serious game; it was meant to give me back the power that I felt drained from me by spending my days keeping house, and it all started back when we first met online, when we were doing what we often did back then, talking about what it would be like when we finally got to live together.
You see, she knew I had this baggage about cleaning. She knew I had grown up, just like so many of us had, watching our mothers sweat and slave and not be appreciated for it, and how I had ended up in a similar situation for nine years of my life, feeling equally unappreciated and unfulfilled. And even though she had a job and I didn’t, and it was my baggage, and my responsibility to deal with it, she created this wonderful way to help me get over it.
Of course, it was just a fantasy, and you don't really expect fantasies to come true, but this one did. So every time I cleaned there was a sexual reward waiting for me when I was finished, not always a lap dance, but always something that would make me feel content, powerful, and once again in control.
One day while I was giving our home a complete going over, I remembered something she had said to me that very first day when she had introduced the fantasy. She told me how it would surprise her if I happened to be wearing a strap-on when she came to give me my reward.
As I loaded the dishwasher, finding it difficult to concentrate on getting the little bits of egg and cheese off of the plates, I remembered my initial reaction to her proposal and I chuckled. I didn't think I'd get off on the lap dancing thing; I thought it carried with it way too much of the dirty old man connotation. But that didn't last very long as she described what she would do.
She told me of how she would come to me naked, and straddle me where I sat waiting. How she’d press her breasts against my face, teasing her taut nipples against my mouth, letting me suck on them for just a bit, and then lowering her weight down onto my lap, intending to rhythmically move against me, running the palms of her hands over my body, undressing me, seducing me with her feather light touches, till I could no longer contain the fire inside of me, till I took what she had to offer, till I took her.
... But as she’d lowered herself onto my lap she’d feel the hardness between my legs and she’d know that I was already wanting to take her. It was just a matter of time, a matter of prolonging the pleasure for both of us for as long as we could...
As I took the vacuum out of the hall closet and plugged it in, I felt the same rush of heat at my crotch as I had that very first day when I took over the fantasy, describing to her what would happen next. I told her how she would smile at me as she unzipped my fly, and how I’d hear the intake of her breath as she saw her favorite blue silicone dil spring out of the confinement of my jeans.
I remembered how my voice had grown husky and my mouth felt dry as I spoke of how I’d pull her close to kiss her deeply, her legs straddling my hips once more, and of how much pleasure I’d have watching her lower herself down onto my silicon appendage, knowing that it was filling her, ... that I was filling her.
Slowly she would begin to move up and down, finding her rhythm. With each downward push I’d feel more and more of her weight, aware of how the roughness of my jeans and the coldness of its zipper must now be rubbing against her soft flesh. I’d watch her eyes as the pleasure began to consume her, and see that far away look. I’d hear her moaning as she moved faster and faster, my own muscles contracting underneath her as I felt the power inside of me pushing to match her rhythm, grunting myself as I felt her weight pushing the back of the dil hard against my own swollen clit.
My finger tips would be raking into the flesh on her back as she leaned forward, completely lost now in the fuck, and I’d be lost in her, in her scent, in the softness of her breasts bobbing against my face, in the wild look in her eyes, … feeling the animal inside of me straining to break free as well.
“That’s it baby, let it go”, I’d say; “let it go for me”. And then as she sat back, plunging the dil deep inside of her, her hands clenching the back of the chair, her head flung back, and her eyes closed, she’d come; her orgasm wracking her body in spasms, breaking free from her open mouth with a long, low, guttural cry.
Still moving on me she’d slump forward, and I’d hold her close, kissing her wherever my lips touched, running my hands gently over her glistening body.
“Now it’s my turn”, I’d whisper, “And I’m going to take what’s mine, right here and now”.
And she’d know what I intended to do, because she’d see the look in my eyes, and the set of my jaw, and she would smile, knowing just how hard it was for me then to stay in control, despite the forcefulness of my words. She’d then raise herself off of me, always with that little sigh of regret, and she’d lay prone over the tabletop, vulnerable, presenting me with her voluptuous ass.
“I am yours you know.” She’d say in that silky soft voice of hers, and I’d agree, quickly removing my jeans and the strap-on; telling her in turn how much I loved her, and how much I wanted and needed her.
And then hungrily I’d press against her, pushing hard and fast against her soft flesh, my clit so swollen I could feel it sliding between her cheeks with each thrust, lost in her, driven by my need for release....
Realizing that I had been scrubbing the bathroom sink for much too long, I cleared my throat, and standing back I examined the porcelain to make sure that my efforts had at least been effective. Everything looked just fine; it looked perfect in fact. The whole house was spotlessly clean. Our little game certainly was an efficient way for me to keep my side of the bargain.
Stripping off my Comet smelling clothes I climbed into the shower and let the hot water pour over my face and shoulders. “I don’t think there’s a more content housekeeper out there”, I thought with a chuckle, “but tonight things are going to be just a bit different. It’s about time she reaped the rewards of what she’s been giving to me.” And that thought, more effectively than the hot water or soap, washed away the remaining traces of cleanser and drudgery from my soul.
You see, she knew I had this baggage about cleaning. She knew I had grown up, just like so many of us had, watching our mothers sweat and slave and not be appreciated for it, and how I had ended up in a similar situation for nine years of my life, feeling equally unappreciated and unfulfilled. And even though she had a job and I didn’t, and it was my baggage, and my responsibility to deal with it, she created this wonderful way to help me get over it.
Of course, it was just a fantasy, and you don't really expect fantasies to come true, but this one did. So every time I cleaned there was a sexual reward waiting for me when I was finished, not always a lap dance, but always something that would make me feel content, powerful, and once again in control.
One day while I was giving our home a complete going over, I remembered something she had said to me that very first day when she had introduced the fantasy. She told me how it would surprise her if I happened to be wearing a strap-on when she came to give me my reward.
As I loaded the dishwasher, finding it difficult to concentrate on getting the little bits of egg and cheese off of the plates, I remembered my initial reaction to her proposal and I chuckled. I didn't think I'd get off on the lap dancing thing; I thought it carried with it way too much of the dirty old man connotation. But that didn't last very long as she described what she would do.
She told me of how she would come to me naked, and straddle me where I sat waiting. How she’d press her breasts against my face, teasing her taut nipples against my mouth, letting me suck on them for just a bit, and then lowering her weight down onto my lap, intending to rhythmically move against me, running the palms of her hands over my body, undressing me, seducing me with her feather light touches, till I could no longer contain the fire inside of me, till I took what she had to offer, till I took her.
... But as she’d lowered herself onto my lap she’d feel the hardness between my legs and she’d know that I was already wanting to take her. It was just a matter of time, a matter of prolonging the pleasure for both of us for as long as we could...
As I took the vacuum out of the hall closet and plugged it in, I felt the same rush of heat at my crotch as I had that very first day when I took over the fantasy, describing to her what would happen next. I told her how she would smile at me as she unzipped my fly, and how I’d hear the intake of her breath as she saw her favorite blue silicone dil spring out of the confinement of my jeans.
I remembered how my voice had grown husky and my mouth felt dry as I spoke of how I’d pull her close to kiss her deeply, her legs straddling my hips once more, and of how much pleasure I’d have watching her lower herself down onto my silicon appendage, knowing that it was filling her, ... that I was filling her.
Slowly she would begin to move up and down, finding her rhythm. With each downward push I’d feel more and more of her weight, aware of how the roughness of my jeans and the coldness of its zipper must now be rubbing against her soft flesh. I’d watch her eyes as the pleasure began to consume her, and see that far away look. I’d hear her moaning as she moved faster and faster, my own muscles contracting underneath her as I felt the power inside of me pushing to match her rhythm, grunting myself as I felt her weight pushing the back of the dil hard against my own swollen clit.
My finger tips would be raking into the flesh on her back as she leaned forward, completely lost now in the fuck, and I’d be lost in her, in her scent, in the softness of her breasts bobbing against my face, in the wild look in her eyes, … feeling the animal inside of me straining to break free as well.
“That’s it baby, let it go”, I’d say; “let it go for me”. And then as she sat back, plunging the dil deep inside of her, her hands clenching the back of the chair, her head flung back, and her eyes closed, she’d come; her orgasm wracking her body in spasms, breaking free from her open mouth with a long, low, guttural cry.
Still moving on me she’d slump forward, and I’d hold her close, kissing her wherever my lips touched, running my hands gently over her glistening body.
“Now it’s my turn”, I’d whisper, “And I’m going to take what’s mine, right here and now”.
And she’d know what I intended to do, because she’d see the look in my eyes, and the set of my jaw, and she would smile, knowing just how hard it was for me then to stay in control, despite the forcefulness of my words. She’d then raise herself off of me, always with that little sigh of regret, and she’d lay prone over the tabletop, vulnerable, presenting me with her voluptuous ass.
“I am yours you know.” She’d say in that silky soft voice of hers, and I’d agree, quickly removing my jeans and the strap-on; telling her in turn how much I loved her, and how much I wanted and needed her.
And then hungrily I’d press against her, pushing hard and fast against her soft flesh, my clit so swollen I could feel it sliding between her cheeks with each thrust, lost in her, driven by my need for release....
Realizing that I had been scrubbing the bathroom sink for much too long, I cleared my throat, and standing back I examined the porcelain to make sure that my efforts had at least been effective. Everything looked just fine; it looked perfect in fact. The whole house was spotlessly clean. Our little game certainly was an efficient way for me to keep my side of the bargain.
Stripping off my Comet smelling clothes I climbed into the shower and let the hot water pour over my face and shoulders. “I don’t think there’s a more content housekeeper out there”, I thought with a chuckle, “but tonight things are going to be just a bit different. It’s about time she reaped the rewards of what she’s been giving to me.” And that thought, more effectively than the hot water or soap, washed away the remaining traces of cleanser and drudgery from my soul.
The Missus and the Troll
This Story is dedicated to my two nieces, Amadea and Chloe, so that they might learn from my mistakes, and to the friends that I have lost because a troll once befriended me.
Not so long ago, in a small village not far from Hoonose Weir, there lived a young boy name Justin. Justin lived with his Uncle Hubert, a grouchy old man who didn’t seem to like his nephew very much at all. No matter what Justin did to try to win his uncle’s approval, Uncle Hubert would tell the boy repeatedly just how much of a disappointment he was.
Justin worked twice as fast to finish his chores, studied three times as long to get good grades in school, and concentrated four times as hard to get things just right, but he never could please his uncle. No matter how hard he tried he always got it wrong, and that made him very sad.
Once, Justin had spent a month of Sundays building a model boat to give to his Uncle Hubert as a Christmas present. Late into each night he worked, paying close attention to every detail, measuring and carefully cutting bits of balsa and pear wood, gluing those bits into place, and then painting it all with just the right shades of blue, green and red, a perfect replica of his uncle’s fishing boat, ‘The Missus’.
On Christmas morning, Justin could hardly contain his excitement as he handed his uncle the present he had made. The model Missus looked just like the real Missus; it was perfect in every way. It was so well balanced, and with that extra two coatings of finish, it would even float if you wanted it to.
On Christmas morning, Uncle Hubert opened the packaged and hmmphed. He spent a long time examining Justin’s handiwork, checking out every detail, poking and prodding here and there with his thick fingers, opening the hatch, adjusting the rigging. After a time, Uncle Hubert cleared his throat and spoke in the softest tone that Justin had ever heard him speak.
“It’s very pretty, boy, but what use would I have for such a thing? Better if you’d used your hands to repair some of those fish traps sitting in that pile out back.”
Justin felt his heart sink. He had been certain that his uncle would have been pleased with his gift; he had put so much time and care into building it. “Yes, uncle” he replied, trying very hard not to let his disappointment show.
“You see to it right after breakfast then. Just because it’s Christmas, doesn’t mean there ain’t any work to be done. We gotta make a living out of this godforsaken place. No time to be frittering about with fancy things.”
Secretly, Uncle Hubert really had been impressed with Justin’s skill at building the model, but his Nephew spent so much time day dreaming as it was, he didn’t want to encourage him. “Life is hard enough without wasting effort on such nonsense,” Uncle Hubert thought. “The sooner the boy learns that lesson, the better off he'll be.”
After breakfast, Justin went out behind the house and looked at the huge pile of fish traps that needed to be repaired. Untangling one from the rest he examined it. “This will be easy to fix” he decided. “All it needs is a bit of twine to keep it from falling apart.”
Methodically he went though the pile, separating the traps into smaller stacks according to how easy they would be to repair. Next, he got the bale of twine and a knife from the shed, and sitting on a log he began to work. He was determined to fix as many of the traps as he could before his uncle came back from the fish shed for his midday meal. But as he sat there tightly weaving the twine through the slats and around the wooden rings, Justin’s mind wandered back to when his uncle had opened his gift that morning, and he continually had to wipe the tears out of his eyes so that he could see what he was doing.
“Old Uncle Hubert was wrong you know.”
“What?” Justin croaked, looking this way and that and nearly falling off the log as he tried to figure out who was speaking, and from where the disembodied voice was coming from. He had been taught to always be polite, but the voice had startled him.
“That model boat is a beauty; yep, a work of art, she is.”
“Th...thank-you” Justin stuttered, for just then, out of the shadow of the pine trees behind the house, walked a creature like he had never seen before. “What are you?” Justin shrieked, again forgetting his manners.
“Haven’t you ever seen a troll before?” the creature replied, moving into the light of day.
Next to the pile of broken fish traps, proudly stood the ugliest, the shortest, the hairiest, and the most knobby jointed, spotted faced, snotty nosed being, that Justin had every seen.
“We’ve no time to waste on introductions; I know who you are. I know everything about you, and you can call me A... Gregory, if it suits you. I’m here to help you.”
“Did you come to help me repair the fish traps then?” The thought of finally being able to please his uncle was just enough of a temptation to stop Justin from running away in fear.
“Fish traps?” Gregory seemed insulted that he was even asked such a thing. “No, I’m here with a much nobler mission than to help you with those ... things.” He dismissed the pile he was standing next to with a flip of his gnarly knuckled hand. “I came to help you find your confidence son, and to teach you how to take care of yourself.”
“You’re not my father.” Justin frowned.
“Clever boy you are, eh.” The troll snorted. “Yep, I can see we are going to get along splendidly. That’s right, I’m not your father, but that uncle of yours is a poor excuse for one too. He doesn’t treat you with respect, and doesn’t appreciate you like he should. Here it is Christmas Day, and you’re sitting outside in the cold working, just like it was any other day.”
Justin shrugged. “Just because it’s Christmas, doesn’t mean there ain’t any work to be done.”
“You’re just repeating what your uncle said, and you know it. It’s not how you feel is it?” The troll didn’t wait for an answer; he just kept right on talking, his face getting redder and redder with each word he spoke.
“I’ll tell you how you feel. You feel sad and hurt that the old man didn’t notice how much effort you had put into that model boat. You don’t understand why you are not getting to have any of the wonderful things that other boys at school get on Christmas Day. And what did you get? Nothing but a pair of mittens and an extra spot of jam on your bread for breakfast, the same thing you get every year. That’s just not fair, is it?”
Justin stood there with his mouth hanging open, watching what looked like steam puffing out from the trolls enormous pale green ears, and not being able to get a word in edgewise, even if he had an answer to his question.
“You would like it if your uncle would smile at you, maybe once,” the troll continued, taking a moment to flick a stream of mucus out of his right nostril. “... Or pat you on the head, anything to say that he cared, just like you see the fathers do with the other kids in the village. And another thing....”
Gregory was just getting fired up, but just then, he heard Uncle Hubert’s bellowing coming from the bottom of the hill, and in a blink and a snap, the troll vanished into the cold winter air.
“Justin! I don’t see any smoke coming from the chimney. Knowing you, you let the fire go out. Head always in the clouds, I say. Can’t rely on you for a single thing.”
Was it midday all ready? Justin wiped the tears from his eyes and hurried around to the front of the house, his heart pounding in his chest just as quickly as his legs were moving over the frozen ground. He wanted to get inside and at least get some bread and cheese on the table before his uncle stomped into the kitchen.
That night on the way up to his bed, Justin stopped for a moment and looked at the model he had made. It still sat on the table where his Uncle Hubert had pushed it aside in his disgust. “It really is a spitting image of ‘The Missus’” Justin thought, and for the first time in his life he was proud of something he had done.
Over the next year or two, whenever Justin felt like he was going to cry, Gregory the troll would show up at his side to reassure him that it wasn’t his fault, that he had been misunderstood or mistreated, and Justin began to believe in himself. He began to think that he wasn’t hopeless after-all, despite what he had always been told, and he felt angry at his uncle Hubert for telling him such things. “Everyone deserves to be treated with respect,” Gregory had told him, “so if everyone deserves to be, so do you.”
As time passed, Justin’s confidence grew and so did his anger. Once, that anger had even given him the strength to stand up to his uncle’s badgering, but it didn’t do him any good. Uncle Hubert would never change his opinion of his poor dead sister’s wayward son, and Justin’s outburst had only gotten him a spanking and nothing of the respect he thought he deserved.
In the school yard though, it was a different story. The bullies no longer saw Justin as someone they could pick on, and they left him well enough alone. He had even gained a friend because of his courage to stand up for what he believed in, and that friendship meant more to him than anything else in the world.
“You’ll be sorry!” Gregory chided, leaning back, leisurely twisting the long thick hairs sprouting out of his left ear. “You can’t trust anyone but yourself ya know. You learned that lesson this spring when that farmer boy offered to go into the village to buy your uncle’s medicine. You trusted him to do , and see what it got you, red faced embarrassment when he laughed at you in front of everyone, and a red backside from the walloping your uncle gave you when you told him where the money had gone. You’re too soft I’d say, and you’re putting too much faith into that friend of yours.”
“I am not!” Justin protested. “Thomas is my best friend; he likes me!”
“Then don’t come crying to me with your feelings all hurt when you find out you’ve misplaced your trust. Thomas is just like everyone else; when push comes to shove he will let you down. Mark my word.”
“You’re wrong!” Justin shouted, just as angry with the troll as he had ever been at his Uncle Hubert. He couldn’t believe what Gregory was saying, he just couldn’t. But the seeds of doubt were planted, and he worried about it all the way home.
Half way there, as he was crossing the bridge just before the turn off to his uncle’s cottage, he came to overhear two trolls speaking and he stopped to listen.
“That Angry sure is losing his touch with that young feller.”
“What do mean? Looks to me like he’s doing a great job teaching him how to take care of himself, and the boy’s picking it up quickly too. A chip off the old block, I’d say.”
“I think Angry’s been feeding off the boys doubts and fears for so long he’s gotten lazy. I bet it won’t be very long before the boy calls him by his true name and puts an end to the whole thing. Why, just now I heard that he even let the lad talk back to him today, and no troll would take that kind of guff.”
“Ah, he’s just priming him up for more disappointments, is all, so he can reap the rewards later on. Don’t you worry, ol’ Angry knows what he’s doing”
Justin didn’t have a clue what the trolls under the bridge were talking about, who the boy and Angry were, and all that stuff about feeding off of doubts and fears, well, that just didn’t make any sense. His curiosity would have kept him standing there for a long time listening, but he had to get back to the cottage to make the evening meal before his uncle came home with the day’s catch.
Justin soon forgot about the two trolls under the bridge. He had more important things to think about. Gregory’s warning wouldn’t stop playing over in his head, and no matter how hard he tried to forget what the troll had told him, the thought that Thomas just might not be a true friend, kept him awake almost every night. He started watching Thomas and it surprised him just how many reasons he could find to doubt his friend, and Justin began to think he must have been blind to not have seen those things before.
One day, while the two were sitting on the bank by the river, Thomas asked Justin what had happened to the model boat he had built.
“You did a great job on it. I would love to have a boat just like it. I would sail it everyday, and when I got too old to sail it, I’d put it on a shelf to display it for everyone to see.”
Justin felt the anger rising up to his face. He knew that Thomas couldn’t mean what he said. No one ever liked anything he did; Why would his friend do that to him? He had told him that his uncle had packed the boat away in a box and stuffed it in the cupboard with the rest of the useless things, that out of politeness, you never threw away.
“Why are you bringing that up now?” Justin asked, not even bothering to hide his anger.
“I don’t know” Thomas shrugged. “Those leaves floating down the river made me think about what it would be like to have a sail boat, is all.”
“You’re lying!” Justin stood up and glared down at his friend.
“I am not! Why would I lie about something like that? I really liked that boat.”
“You are too” Justin shouted, knowing that he was sounding childish, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say; he was so angry.
Thomas stood up as well, ready to defend himself. “Why would you think me a liar? I’ve never lied to you before. Take it back Justin.”
“I will not! For all I know you’ve been lying to me forever, and probably laughing at me behind my back too. Two faced is what you are, a lying two-face!”
Thomas’ mouth dropped open and his eyes began to burn with tears. He couldn’t believe what Justin was saying, but there he stood, his fists clenched at his side, calling him two-faced loud enough for the whole world to hear. “You’re not my friend anymore if you think that!” Thomas croaked, wiping his tears away with his sleeve as he climbed the embankment. “You’re not my friend!” he shouted, and without looking back once, he ran down the road.
Justin’s anger carried him all the way home. To think that Thomas would ask such a thing, when he knew it was a sore spot of his. Thomas must have had a reason, either that, or he just wasn’t being very considerate.
For the rest of the evening and well into the night, Justin fumed, but by morning his anger had vanished and a heavy sadness took it’s place.
Thomas had cried real tears when he told him that he was two-faced, and he had looked very much like how Justin himself might have looked like whenever his uncle didn’t believe something he said.
“Maybe Thomas is hurting just like I am” Justin thought, and he began to feel like a hunk of something rotten that you’d want to scrape off of the bottom of your shoe.
The more he thought about it, the worse he felt. Thomas was his best friend, why would he have reason to doubt him? Justin was confused. By afternoon, he was downright distraught over how he had behaved, and as he stacked the firewood that his uncle had chopped that morning, he let the tears fall freely from his eyes.
“You’ve no doubt learned a valuable lesson then.” Gregory gloated, suddenly appearing on the top of the woodpile.
“Leave me alone.” It no longer surprised Justin that the troll would show up unannounced like that, but it astonished him that Gregory seemed to have grown twice in size since the last time he had seen him, and he wondered if his imagination was playing tricks on him.
“I told you not to trust that boy, but no, did you listen? When will you ever learn that you can’t trust anyone but yourself? ...and me of course. I am your only true friend.”
“You’re not my friend” Justin scoffed. “Leave me be.”
“Gregory puffed up his chest. This was much better than he had anticipated. The lad was so angry, he was even barking at him! Gregory was so proud of his handiwork; he could feel his body growing larger and stronger by the second. Never had he felt so powerful, and to think that it was only two years ago he had been the scrawniest troll under the bridge. “I sure know how to pick em," he patted himself on the back.
“Now Justin”, he said in his most fatherly tone of voice, “don’t kick the dog for sounding the alarm, son. I don’t want to tell you I told you so, but....”
Justin felt his anger rising. fuelled by his rage he tossed the armload of wood he was carrying aside, but just as he quickly as he turned to face the troll, he stopped dead in his tracks. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Sitting there on the top of the pile, Gregory appeared THREE times larger than he had been only minutes before.
He wasn’t imagining things; the troll was growing before his very eyes. Suddenly, Justin remembered the conversation he had overheard that day on the bridge. How the two trolls spoke of a troll named Angry, and how he fed off of a boys doubts and fears. …It was all beginning to make sense to him now.
“Your name isn’t Gregory, is it?” Justin asked, his anger calmed by his newly found knowledge.
Gregory stopped preening. He made a point of watching the piece of dried skin that he had peeled from his chest float slowly down to the ground. He hadn’t expected this, and he needed a moment to think. “Why would you say that?” he asked, trying to keep the shock he felt out of his voice. A troll couldn’t tell his true name to a human, it was simply how it had to be. And why they got all bent out of shape when they found out that they had been lied to was a total mystery to him.
Justin didn’t answer. He just stood there watching the troll squirm, watching the spots on the trolls face turn from a vivid green to a pale yellow.
The troll knew what was coming next. Eventually, it was bound to happen. Sooner or later they all came to the conclusion that anger distorted how they saw the world, no matter how much it gave them the confidence to believe in themselves. Gregory had thought he could have had at least another year or so with Justin; maybe the other trolls were right; he was losing his touch after all.
“Now Justin” he said, trying very hard to sound like he cared more about the boy than where his next meal was coming from. “Think before you speak. If you say what I think you are going to say, I will disappear from your life forever. You don’t really want that, do you? Remember how I taught you to believe in yourself, and how to protect yourself from all the bad things your uncle said about you.”
Again Justin didn’t answer, but stood there seeing the troll for what he really was for the very first time.
“What will you do without me?” The troll snivelled. “How will you defend yourself, or stop the hurt when something someone says makes you question your worth? How will you cope? You can’t live without me boy. Think!”
“This is it,” Gregory thought as he flipped a string of snot off of the tip of his fingers and sighed. “I’m a goner.”
For a few moments Justin did panicked as he wondering just how he would manage without the troll’s help. Then he remembered how his temper had made him see things that weren’t really there, and how he had behaved like a monster, when he really truly wasn’t one at all. The troll had tricked him, and what he had taught only made him feel worse. Justin could do much better on his own, especially if he stopped behaving like an angry ol’ troll.
He knew what he had to do.
“You’re name isn’t Gregory, is it?” Justin said; this time it was more of a statement than a question. “You’re name is Angry!” He shouted in triumph.
“NOOOOOOO...” Angry wailed, and then in a puff of black smoke, that stank of sulfur and something quite similar to seven-day-old rotting fish, he was gone.
Justin watched the smoke billow and then fade. There was nothing left of the troll but an oily smudge on the top of the woodpile. To Justin, it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, but at the same time he was frightened by the thought of being on his own.
More than anything else, he was sorry for how badly he had behaved toward Thomas. If someone had told him that they didn’t believe something he had said, he would have been twice as upset as his friend had been.
“The wood pile can wait” Justin decided. “There’s something more important I have to do.”
Justin pulled the dusty old box from the back of the cupboard. It seemed like such a long time since that day when his uncle had hidden the model boat away, and he thought he would have to make a few repairs, but the boat looked just as fine as the day he had finished building it. His uncle wouldn’t miss it he was sure of that, and if anyone would appreciate the gift Thomas would, … along with the apology Justin owed him.
Of course he couldn’t blame Thomas if he didn’t forgive him, but this was something Justin still had to do, and the knowledge that he finally was getting something right filled him with a sense of purpose as he headed down the road.
Molten Lava
She was hot. Now I don’t mean the kind of hot that means sexy, or that her appearance would make you weak in the knees, but she had a fire, a passion that you could see in her eyes, and you knew the minute you saw her that beneath her skin her blood flowed like molten lava, just waiting to erupt with the joy of living.
That was what attracted everyone to Leslie, her exuberance for life, and everyone wanted a piece of it, wanted to make it their own somehow. Some fell head over heels in love with her the moment they met her, others clung to her like groupies or disciples, wanting to fill their lives with excitement, or somehow learn her secrets. But it was only those who managed to get close enough to her that knew just how hot that fire really could be, and I knew, because I was one of those who fell in love with her.
I was luckier than most, because I actually believed that she loved me too, and instead of smoldering in the ashes of unrequited love, my spirit soared like a phoenix, reaching heights I never knew it could achieve. For three glorious months I felt the flames of her love caressing my senses, every nerve in my mind and body alive, waiting for its touch. I woke, slept, and breathed in that fire whenever it was directed towards me, as if it were the oxygen in the air and I needed it for my very survival. I was obsessed, and I needed nothing else.
Before I had met Leslie, I had felt there was something missing in my life. Sure, there had been the occasional spontaneous trip where I’d just take off for months at a time and go off looking for that illusive something, and other than not telling anyone when and where I was going, I basically lived a responsible life. This time though, things were different.
Leslie’s attention seemed to fill that empty place inside of me, and I lost sight of everything else. I stopped attending my housing coop meetings, let my subscription to Writer’s Monthly slide; I even brushed off my agent’s pleas of “Jane, please get back to me” left on my answering machine. Things that would have normally had me rushing off to take care of, no longer seemed to stay in my focus long enough for me to pay them any heed, nothing, that is, besides Leslie.
Money happened to be one of those things that I no longer concerned myself with in flavor of my newly found obsession. Of it, Leslie seemed to have an endless supply, and because I was along for the ride, I never asked about it. She bought me a bike so I could travel with her, a chrome and black Honda Shadow, that I had mentioned to her once that I had always dreamed of owning, and together, side by side, we hit the road without a care in the world. We were free.
For those three months we traveled the continent, coming and going as we pleased, and never outstaying our welcome in any one place. Leslie always seemed to know someone wherever we went, an ex-lover, or an old friend that would never turn us down, and you could see it in their eyes and in their body language, whenever they were near Leslie, just exactly why that was.
I was just the necessary baggage that they had expected to be tagging along, so Leslie’s ex’s put up with me. But this one time in a small town in Saskatchewan, when after riding most of the day, both of us tired and hungry, we arrived on the not so welcoming doormat of a farmhouse owned by an old flame of Leslie’s. Wanda, I think that was the woman’s name, had apparently only been expecting Leslie.
As we pulled into the driveway, and before the dust even began to settle, we both heard the squeak and slap of the screen door and heard Leslie’s name being called out in excitement, and then nothing. Both Leslie and I took off our helmets and looked up at the same time, and we both stopped dead in our tracks when we saw Wanda just standing there, still and speechless, at the bottom of the stairs.
It seemed like ages before anyone spoke, all three of us just standing there staring, and no one saying a word. Finally, I just had to say something, and stepping forward I reached out my hand and said: “Hi, I’m … “, but I never did get the chance to introduce myself, because just then, all hell broke loose.
“Don’t you step another foot closer”, this Wanda woman, or whatever her name was, said. But she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes never once left Leslie. “How dare you come here with that woman, after what you put me through. You have a lot of nerve.”
“Aw Wanda, please; all that is ancient history, and I thought you and I had resolved everything. Don’t you remember, we both agreed that it was best if we …”
Just then a saucepan came flying through the air, clattering against the gravel, and bouncing off of the front tire of Leslie’s Harley.
“Wanda, please baby, we’re tired and…”
“Don’t you please baby me! WE never decided anything, you decided. You decided to sleep with Rebecca, and YOU decided that a weekend off skiing with Janice would somehow be good for our relationship.”
“But you told me yesterday that we could stay, and it’s late, and we’re tired. Can’t we just come inside and we can talk about this in the morning?”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort”, and with that, Wanda turned and went into the farmhouse, slamming the screen door behind her.
For a few moments everything was quiet except for some muffled clanging and banging inside of the house. Then Wanda reemerged, carrying an assortment of dishes and pans and she began hurtling them through the air in our direction.
Just as a teacup smashed against the ground beside me, its tiny pieces plunking against the leather of my spats, I saw Leslie gesture with her head for me to get back onto my bike. So as glassware shatter to pieces around us, and pie pans bounced and clattered, we quickly turned our bikes around and jumped on the throttles. Leslie first, and then me following close behind like always, we made our escape down the gravel road and back onto the highway.
About a mile and a half away, we turned onto another dirt road and then into a hayfield. Leslie slid off her bike and down onto her back into the tall grass, laughing as she tossed her helmet aside and kicked off her boots.
“Did you see the look on her face when she came out with all those dishes; if looks could kill! … And that teacup just missed your head! Maybe I should have warned you to keep your helmet on!”
Laughing, I joined Leslie in her makeshift lodging, the tension of the encounter and the days ride evaporating from my body in minutes. She had that way about her, an easy way about things that made you forget the gravity of any situation. It never occurred to you to question anything, or to worry about what was coming next. The moment was all that mattered, and with Leslie, life was good.
We spent the night in that hayfield, making our supper from the basic supplies we habitually carried in our saddlebags. The roaring hum of the eighteen-wheelers kept us awake well into the wee hours of the night, until finally our laughter faded away to exhaustion, and we fell asleep in each others arms beneath the stars.
That’s one thing that there always was with Leslie, laughter, but there was a point when that too finally faded away. I think that was when I began to feel jealous of the affections that were always showered onto Leslie. Maybe not so much the affections, but it was Leslie’s reaction to them that finally began to take its toll. Let’s face it, she loved the attention she got; she even thrived on it you could say. But the thing was, she was never stingy about returning those affections, and so the very thing that made her so attractive to me in the first place, was ultimately the thing that tore us apart.
We were in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when the shit finally hit the fan. We had been staying with another one of Leslie’s ex-girlfriends, a potter with a name I could hardly get my tongue around at time, let alone spell for you now. For some reason, the woman’s name reminded me of a summer’s night breeze, and her personality was very much like that as well, refreshing and light. She was easy going, just like Leslie, and she welcomed both of us with a broad smile and a warm embrace.
Unlike a lot of Leslie’s ex’s, this woman seemed to take my being there in stride. She didn’t seem to have a jealous bone in her body. It was my aching jealous bones however, that had caused the problem for us this time, and they’d been aching for quite some time now, having been all bent out of shape since the day I’d caught Leslie kissing and fondling some woman in a bar back in Denver.
Of course Leslie told me that she’d never do that again, and of course I believed her, but something naive died in me that day, and something pure and simple died between Leslie and I as well. The more I tried to hold onto her, the further she pushed me away, and so it was only a matter of time before she took solace in the undemanding arms of another.
That’s how I found her that day in Albuquerque, in the summer’s night breezy woman’s arms.
I had been out in the driveway working on my bike, changing the spark plugs and adjusting the timing, and I needed something to drain the oil into next, so I went looking for our host to see if she had anything that I could use. The last I knew, Miss Breezy had been teaching Leslie how to work the clay on the potter’s wheel, but when I entered the studio I didn’t see them and had thought they had gone back into the house. I was just turning around to head back out of the door when either something caught my eye or I heard something, I don’t remember which, but there on the tattered and faded mat on the floor lay the two of them, their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies covered with the slip from each others hands, totally unaware that they had an audience.
I must have gasped, or made some other sound loud enough to break through their total absorption of each other, because just then, both looked up at me.
Then the most awkward few moments of silence I had ever experienced in my life happened. I remembered thinking at the time how funny it seemed that neither looked the least bit remorseful, and I might even have laughed out loud. But I didn’t stick around long enough for that joyful invitation to join them that I had imagined being offered next. So still carrying the greasy rag that I had been wiping my hands on, I ran out of the door and back to my bike. I jumped on the throttle as hard as I could and screeched out of the driveway; the abandoned crumpled rag and tools scattered across the pavement, left behind as evidence of my hurried departure. I had to get away.
I rode as hard and as fast as I could, barely aware of the traffic surrounding me, until finally the rational thought that I didn’t have any idea where I was going penetrated the fog inside my head, so I let up on the gas and turned into the first motel that I saw.
I paid for my room in advance, and bought a half a dozen mickeys of Jack Daniels from the sneering desk clerk, and I found myself sitting on a broken down mattress in a rundown room, just outside of Albuquerque, on route 66, not knowing or even caring what I was going to do next. That’s how Leslie found me the next day when she finally caught up with me.
It was about eleven in the morning, and I had just refreshed my supply of whiskey and was focusing on the task of consuming them as quickly as possible when I heard a quiet knock on the door. Out of habit more than anything else I opened it, and there stood Leslie. Without an invitation, or speaking a word, she entered the motel room, and dropping both of our saddlebags onto the floor, she sat on the edge of the bed.
Again, out of habit, I joined her.
We didn’t say a word to each other, but our love making felt heavy with sadness, and the next day, without even discussing it, we headed back in the direction from which we came. We stayed together for a couple more days after that; Leslie said something about wanting to hook up with a friend in San Diego, and for the first time in three months the commitments and deadlines that I had left behind in Vancouver began to weigh heavy on my mind.
We said our goodbyes just outside of Bakersfield, where highway 99 connects with Interstate 5. We hugged each other awkwardly, and we recited the usual things that people say when parting. We told each other that we’d keep in touch and that we’d look the other up if we were ever in their home town, but we both knew the truth of the matter; what we had shared had run its course, and it was time for us to go our separate ways.
Leslie said that I could keep the Shadow to remember her by, and since my savings were dangerously close to depletion, and I had no other means of returning home, I accepted her offer. I caught one last glimpse of her over my shoulder as I pulled off the northbound ramp and onto the highway, and then she was gone.
I think the hardest part of that journey home alone was getting use to hearing the sound of only one bike. For three months my Shadow and Leslie’s Harley purred together side by side, in perfect unison. It just didn’t sound right to me with only the one engine, and the single hollow sound of it echoed the emptiness I felt inside the whole trip home.
My apartment looked smaller and drearier than I had remembered it being, and I was greeted with a mountain of bills and a full inbox of messages from concerned family and friends, and from my agent, worrying about my ability to meet that deadline that she had worked so hard for me to get.
For the next couple of weeks I hardly left my apartment. I spent most of my time sleeping, with the occasional trip to the corner store to restock the refrigerator with frozen pizzas, ice cream bars, and beer. Mechanically, I began to write replies to my family and friends, telling them not to worry, that I was fine, and apologizing for yet again going off without informing anyone of where I was going or when I’d return home.
I wrote to my agent and assured her that I indeed had a story to write and that I wouldn’t let her down, and could she please arrange for me to get another advance since I was running low on funds.
Eventually my life began to take on something of the rosy colour that I kept insisting to everyone that it was. I made that deadline that my agent had been so worried about my being able to keep, and many more after that, but occasionally, whenever I’d feel my normal life feeling too normal, I’d take my Shadow out onto the open road and feel the freedom of wherever it took me. During those times I’d think of Leslie and what the two of us shared, but it wasn’t until three years later that I would ever see her again.
I was at a convention in Berkley and I was having a drink in the hotel bar with my partner Diane, just before we had to catch the bus to the airport to make our flight back home to Vancouver, when who saunters into the bar but Leslie.
She hadn’t changed a bit. She was still surrounded by a bunch of starry-eyed woman, all wanting to somehow make her magic their own. For a brief moment our eyes met, and my heartbeat quickened at the memory of what that once could do to me. But this time the fire didn’t seem quite as bright as I had remembered it being, and there was something that looked very much like loneliness in her eyes that I had never noticed before.
I’m not sure if she recognized me from across the room; there wasn’t any acknowledgment in her fleeting glance. My hair was also shorter than it had been, and I no longer lowered my eyes when someone looked directly at me like I used to do.
Watching her from across the room like that, it suddenly occurred to me that even though I had learned a lot about freedom and unselfish loving from Leslie, there were a few things that she could have learned from the experience as well, and it made me very sad to think that she hadn’t.
“You look far away; are you thinking of another story?”
“Huh”, I said, focusing my attention once again onto the smiling woman sitting across the table from me. “Not a new story, an old one”, and finishing off my drink, I continued, “C’mon baby, let’s go home.”
That was what attracted everyone to Leslie, her exuberance for life, and everyone wanted a piece of it, wanted to make it their own somehow. Some fell head over heels in love with her the moment they met her, others clung to her like groupies or disciples, wanting to fill their lives with excitement, or somehow learn her secrets. But it was only those who managed to get close enough to her that knew just how hot that fire really could be, and I knew, because I was one of those who fell in love with her.
I was luckier than most, because I actually believed that she loved me too, and instead of smoldering in the ashes of unrequited love, my spirit soared like a phoenix, reaching heights I never knew it could achieve. For three glorious months I felt the flames of her love caressing my senses, every nerve in my mind and body alive, waiting for its touch. I woke, slept, and breathed in that fire whenever it was directed towards me, as if it were the oxygen in the air and I needed it for my very survival. I was obsessed, and I needed nothing else.
Before I had met Leslie, I had felt there was something missing in my life. Sure, there had been the occasional spontaneous trip where I’d just take off for months at a time and go off looking for that illusive something, and other than not telling anyone when and where I was going, I basically lived a responsible life. This time though, things were different.
Leslie’s attention seemed to fill that empty place inside of me, and I lost sight of everything else. I stopped attending my housing coop meetings, let my subscription to Writer’s Monthly slide; I even brushed off my agent’s pleas of “Jane, please get back to me” left on my answering machine. Things that would have normally had me rushing off to take care of, no longer seemed to stay in my focus long enough for me to pay them any heed, nothing, that is, besides Leslie.
Money happened to be one of those things that I no longer concerned myself with in flavor of my newly found obsession. Of it, Leslie seemed to have an endless supply, and because I was along for the ride, I never asked about it. She bought me a bike so I could travel with her, a chrome and black Honda Shadow, that I had mentioned to her once that I had always dreamed of owning, and together, side by side, we hit the road without a care in the world. We were free.
For those three months we traveled the continent, coming and going as we pleased, and never outstaying our welcome in any one place. Leslie always seemed to know someone wherever we went, an ex-lover, or an old friend that would never turn us down, and you could see it in their eyes and in their body language, whenever they were near Leslie, just exactly why that was.
I was just the necessary baggage that they had expected to be tagging along, so Leslie’s ex’s put up with me. But this one time in a small town in Saskatchewan, when after riding most of the day, both of us tired and hungry, we arrived on the not so welcoming doormat of a farmhouse owned by an old flame of Leslie’s. Wanda, I think that was the woman’s name, had apparently only been expecting Leslie.
As we pulled into the driveway, and before the dust even began to settle, we both heard the squeak and slap of the screen door and heard Leslie’s name being called out in excitement, and then nothing. Both Leslie and I took off our helmets and looked up at the same time, and we both stopped dead in our tracks when we saw Wanda just standing there, still and speechless, at the bottom of the stairs.
It seemed like ages before anyone spoke, all three of us just standing there staring, and no one saying a word. Finally, I just had to say something, and stepping forward I reached out my hand and said: “Hi, I’m … “, but I never did get the chance to introduce myself, because just then, all hell broke loose.
“Don’t you step another foot closer”, this Wanda woman, or whatever her name was, said. But she wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes never once left Leslie. “How dare you come here with that woman, after what you put me through. You have a lot of nerve.”
“Aw Wanda, please; all that is ancient history, and I thought you and I had resolved everything. Don’t you remember, we both agreed that it was best if we …”
Just then a saucepan came flying through the air, clattering against the gravel, and bouncing off of the front tire of Leslie’s Harley.
“Wanda, please baby, we’re tired and…”
“Don’t you please baby me! WE never decided anything, you decided. You decided to sleep with Rebecca, and YOU decided that a weekend off skiing with Janice would somehow be good for our relationship.”
“But you told me yesterday that we could stay, and it’s late, and we’re tired. Can’t we just come inside and we can talk about this in the morning?”
“We’ll do nothing of the sort”, and with that, Wanda turned and went into the farmhouse, slamming the screen door behind her.
For a few moments everything was quiet except for some muffled clanging and banging inside of the house. Then Wanda reemerged, carrying an assortment of dishes and pans and she began hurtling them through the air in our direction.
Just as a teacup smashed against the ground beside me, its tiny pieces plunking against the leather of my spats, I saw Leslie gesture with her head for me to get back onto my bike. So as glassware shatter to pieces around us, and pie pans bounced and clattered, we quickly turned our bikes around and jumped on the throttles. Leslie first, and then me following close behind like always, we made our escape down the gravel road and back onto the highway.
About a mile and a half away, we turned onto another dirt road and then into a hayfield. Leslie slid off her bike and down onto her back into the tall grass, laughing as she tossed her helmet aside and kicked off her boots.
“Did you see the look on her face when she came out with all those dishes; if looks could kill! … And that teacup just missed your head! Maybe I should have warned you to keep your helmet on!”
Laughing, I joined Leslie in her makeshift lodging, the tension of the encounter and the days ride evaporating from my body in minutes. She had that way about her, an easy way about things that made you forget the gravity of any situation. It never occurred to you to question anything, or to worry about what was coming next. The moment was all that mattered, and with Leslie, life was good.
We spent the night in that hayfield, making our supper from the basic supplies we habitually carried in our saddlebags. The roaring hum of the eighteen-wheelers kept us awake well into the wee hours of the night, until finally our laughter faded away to exhaustion, and we fell asleep in each others arms beneath the stars.
That’s one thing that there always was with Leslie, laughter, but there was a point when that too finally faded away. I think that was when I began to feel jealous of the affections that were always showered onto Leslie. Maybe not so much the affections, but it was Leslie’s reaction to them that finally began to take its toll. Let’s face it, she loved the attention she got; she even thrived on it you could say. But the thing was, she was never stingy about returning those affections, and so the very thing that made her so attractive to me in the first place, was ultimately the thing that tore us apart.
We were in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when the shit finally hit the fan. We had been staying with another one of Leslie’s ex-girlfriends, a potter with a name I could hardly get my tongue around at time, let alone spell for you now. For some reason, the woman’s name reminded me of a summer’s night breeze, and her personality was very much like that as well, refreshing and light. She was easy going, just like Leslie, and she welcomed both of us with a broad smile and a warm embrace.
Unlike a lot of Leslie’s ex’s, this woman seemed to take my being there in stride. She didn’t seem to have a jealous bone in her body. It was my aching jealous bones however, that had caused the problem for us this time, and they’d been aching for quite some time now, having been all bent out of shape since the day I’d caught Leslie kissing and fondling some woman in a bar back in Denver.
Of course Leslie told me that she’d never do that again, and of course I believed her, but something naive died in me that day, and something pure and simple died between Leslie and I as well. The more I tried to hold onto her, the further she pushed me away, and so it was only a matter of time before she took solace in the undemanding arms of another.
That’s how I found her that day in Albuquerque, in the summer’s night breezy woman’s arms.
I had been out in the driveway working on my bike, changing the spark plugs and adjusting the timing, and I needed something to drain the oil into next, so I went looking for our host to see if she had anything that I could use. The last I knew, Miss Breezy had been teaching Leslie how to work the clay on the potter’s wheel, but when I entered the studio I didn’t see them and had thought they had gone back into the house. I was just turning around to head back out of the door when either something caught my eye or I heard something, I don’t remember which, but there on the tattered and faded mat on the floor lay the two of them, their arms wrapped around each other, their bodies covered with the slip from each others hands, totally unaware that they had an audience.
I must have gasped, or made some other sound loud enough to break through their total absorption of each other, because just then, both looked up at me.
Then the most awkward few moments of silence I had ever experienced in my life happened. I remembered thinking at the time how funny it seemed that neither looked the least bit remorseful, and I might even have laughed out loud. But I didn’t stick around long enough for that joyful invitation to join them that I had imagined being offered next. So still carrying the greasy rag that I had been wiping my hands on, I ran out of the door and back to my bike. I jumped on the throttle as hard as I could and screeched out of the driveway; the abandoned crumpled rag and tools scattered across the pavement, left behind as evidence of my hurried departure. I had to get away.
I rode as hard and as fast as I could, barely aware of the traffic surrounding me, until finally the rational thought that I didn’t have any idea where I was going penetrated the fog inside my head, so I let up on the gas and turned into the first motel that I saw.
I paid for my room in advance, and bought a half a dozen mickeys of Jack Daniels from the sneering desk clerk, and I found myself sitting on a broken down mattress in a rundown room, just outside of Albuquerque, on route 66, not knowing or even caring what I was going to do next. That’s how Leslie found me the next day when she finally caught up with me.
It was about eleven in the morning, and I had just refreshed my supply of whiskey and was focusing on the task of consuming them as quickly as possible when I heard a quiet knock on the door. Out of habit more than anything else I opened it, and there stood Leslie. Without an invitation, or speaking a word, she entered the motel room, and dropping both of our saddlebags onto the floor, she sat on the edge of the bed.
Again, out of habit, I joined her.
We didn’t say a word to each other, but our love making felt heavy with sadness, and the next day, without even discussing it, we headed back in the direction from which we came. We stayed together for a couple more days after that; Leslie said something about wanting to hook up with a friend in San Diego, and for the first time in three months the commitments and deadlines that I had left behind in Vancouver began to weigh heavy on my mind.
We said our goodbyes just outside of Bakersfield, where highway 99 connects with Interstate 5. We hugged each other awkwardly, and we recited the usual things that people say when parting. We told each other that we’d keep in touch and that we’d look the other up if we were ever in their home town, but we both knew the truth of the matter; what we had shared had run its course, and it was time for us to go our separate ways.
Leslie said that I could keep the Shadow to remember her by, and since my savings were dangerously close to depletion, and I had no other means of returning home, I accepted her offer. I caught one last glimpse of her over my shoulder as I pulled off the northbound ramp and onto the highway, and then she was gone.
I think the hardest part of that journey home alone was getting use to hearing the sound of only one bike. For three months my Shadow and Leslie’s Harley purred together side by side, in perfect unison. It just didn’t sound right to me with only the one engine, and the single hollow sound of it echoed the emptiness I felt inside the whole trip home.
My apartment looked smaller and drearier than I had remembered it being, and I was greeted with a mountain of bills and a full inbox of messages from concerned family and friends, and from my agent, worrying about my ability to meet that deadline that she had worked so hard for me to get.
For the next couple of weeks I hardly left my apartment. I spent most of my time sleeping, with the occasional trip to the corner store to restock the refrigerator with frozen pizzas, ice cream bars, and beer. Mechanically, I began to write replies to my family and friends, telling them not to worry, that I was fine, and apologizing for yet again going off without informing anyone of where I was going or when I’d return home.
I wrote to my agent and assured her that I indeed had a story to write and that I wouldn’t let her down, and could she please arrange for me to get another advance since I was running low on funds.
Eventually my life began to take on something of the rosy colour that I kept insisting to everyone that it was. I made that deadline that my agent had been so worried about my being able to keep, and many more after that, but occasionally, whenever I’d feel my normal life feeling too normal, I’d take my Shadow out onto the open road and feel the freedom of wherever it took me. During those times I’d think of Leslie and what the two of us shared, but it wasn’t until three years later that I would ever see her again.
I was at a convention in Berkley and I was having a drink in the hotel bar with my partner Diane, just before we had to catch the bus to the airport to make our flight back home to Vancouver, when who saunters into the bar but Leslie.
She hadn’t changed a bit. She was still surrounded by a bunch of starry-eyed woman, all wanting to somehow make her magic their own. For a brief moment our eyes met, and my heartbeat quickened at the memory of what that once could do to me. But this time the fire didn’t seem quite as bright as I had remembered it being, and there was something that looked very much like loneliness in her eyes that I had never noticed before.
I’m not sure if she recognized me from across the room; there wasn’t any acknowledgment in her fleeting glance. My hair was also shorter than it had been, and I no longer lowered my eyes when someone looked directly at me like I used to do.
Watching her from across the room like that, it suddenly occurred to me that even though I had learned a lot about freedom and unselfish loving from Leslie, there were a few things that she could have learned from the experience as well, and it made me very sad to think that she hadn’t.
“You look far away; are you thinking of another story?”
“Huh”, I said, focusing my attention once again onto the smiling woman sitting across the table from me. “Not a new story, an old one”, and finishing off my drink, I continued, “C’mon baby, let’s go home.”
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