Someone Else's Story

She hated to admit she was so out of shape, but two minutes after almost missing the bus her heart was still racing and she was still gasping for breath. She was still struggling to keep her breathing quiet so that people would stop giving her looks and pulling their children out of her line of sight. "Come away from the strange lady, my Dears. She is obviously sick and probably dying and whatever it is we don't want you to catch it or for her to inject you with it."

Linds hated the bus. She hated it so much. But at the moment it was the only way she could get to work, since her car died weeks ago. Besides, the bus was so much less expensive than parking every day.

People crowded in. Linds actually had a seat, which was miraculous considering the quarter mile dash she had made just to catch the damn bus. She had spilled coffee all over her skirt and had to pull pants out of the hamper at the last minute. She hadn't had breakfast. She hoped they'd be having one of those business meetings this morning so she could sneak a muffin while reception looked the other way. And maybe a coffee. She hadn't even finished her coffee.

Some man's jean-clad ass was staring her right in the face. Someone coughed a hacking, mucous-filled cough. It smelled like wet dog.

Linds looked down and pretended to brushe lint off her pants. Her black... soft pants... wait. These weren't her pants. They LOOKED like her pants, but they weren't her pants. They were too new. And too soft. Linds had black pants that were almost blue and felt stiff. She did have pants that felt like this, but they were brown cords. Not black slacks. So... "Oh, crap. I took Jill's pants!" she thought.

How did she take Jill's pants? How had they eneded up in her hamper? Had her roomate been dressing and undressing in her room? Had she been going through Linds's things? Why? Jill had much better taste and much better clothes! Oh, well, too late now.

Linds stood up as the bus turned the corner and started pushing her way to the door. "Excuse me," she mumbled, actually having to elbow one young teenage guy out of the way, his IPod blasting music so loud the whole bus could have sugn along... if it had been that type of music. She lobbed a "Thanks!" at the bus driver as she got off, and the heavy woman threw a " Good Day Now" back at her.

Linds glanced at her watch as she started the walk towards the small office park, trying to avoid the slush, trying not to get anything on Jill's pants, hoping Jill wouldn't be angry she had borrowed them accidentally.

"Excuse me, Miss? Excuse me!" Linds had kept walking, not even assuming the shout out was for her. How long had it been since anyone but a very old man had called her "Miss?" But the thump of boots on pavement closing in on her turned her head. A young guy, twenty-something, held out his hand. "You dropped this, I think, when you got off the bus." A hat. A cute hat. A soft red hat embroidered with black and yellow flowers. Not hers. Jill's. Her roomate's. Again.

"Thanks!" she said, reaching out for it. "I didn't even know I had it. It must have been in my jacket pocket..." she looked down, and saw that she was wearing Jill's jacket, the shiny black parka she liked so much. What was going on! Jill was going to kill her! She looked up at the guy, who was still standing there, smiling at her. How long had it been? Since someone smiled at her like that? "Not a problem," he said, grinning. "Can I get you a coffee? You look like you might need one."

It was going to be a strange day.

Awakening

There's nothing I hate more than being dragged out of a deep sleep. I hate that sick feeling my stomach turning with the confusion and trauma of suddenly having to FUNCTION. I hate the few moments of not knowing, the inability to distiguish dream from reality, and even then, once it has been established that the dream is gone, the few moments of fitting the facts together to complete the puzzle of the AWAKE.

What is going on? Can I just go back to sleep? Quick, before it's gone completely, I want to go back to my dream. Let me go. Stop shaking me. That alarm? Maybe it will just go off by itself and let me sleep. I just want to sleep. I JUST WANT TO SLEEP. Nothing else matters... Not getting to work on time, not the phone, not anything you have to tell me. A burgler can have my entire CD collection and my old laptop and the one necklace I have that's actually worth more than $5. I don't care. I'll toss in my car keys if he drives off this second and lets me sleep. If there's a fire call the fire department and they'll put it out around my sleeping body. Please, please don't make me move.

The trouble is, even if it's nothing, even if the crisis that woke me up was something as minor as my roomate not being able to locate the corkscrew, I will then be AWAKE. I will have missed the boat to slumberland. Well, I made it, but I chose to jump off. And now the captain of the sleep ship is unforgiving, and will not let me back on until I swim to shore. I am awake. I can no longer sleep. And my stupid roomate is drinking with her stupid friend in my stupid apartment and I can hear them giggling through the walls, drunk giggles about stupid, petty things, things that only seem funny at 3am when you're wasted.

God, I hate being awake.

Best Friends

She had best friends when she was small.

Mary had lived in the house behind hers, both backyard gates openeing into a small fenced in area where Mary's family stored wood. She and Mary had thought it was their own secret place. They would meet in the dank, crouching down in the dirt with the bugs and the worms, telling each other secrets and pretending to save the world.

They had been so close. Best friends. They played together every day, it seemed, although looking back that couldn't really have been possible. They went on walks together, visited the town shops, pooled their pocket money to buy candy and toys. They sang secret songs with secret made up words. Kelly always remembered to invite Mary to the movies, and Mary invited Kelly to sleep over. They camped out in a make-shift tent, curled up in sleeping bags on the floor.

Junior High changed it. Mary went to the Catholic School... Saint... Saint something. Kelly went to Truman, with everyone else. She was jealous at first, stroking the plaid skirt Mary told her she had to wear every single day. Catholic School. Kelly had the idea that Mary would make Mary even softer and more pure than she already was, until Mary would shine like the virgin she had been named for. Instead, mary started smoking. She started bringing home strange girls who smirked instead of smiled. Together the Catholic girls looked like a gang, mmanaging to look unkemp in their matching uniforms, but still sharing lip gloss they lifted from the drug store in town. The last time they hung out Mary stoe a candy bar and a tube of Oxy, which she handed over to her friend. "You really should start using this," she had said. Kelly had felt her heart break in two at that moment.

She had had other girlfriends, all company for movies or lonely weekends. All were potential roomates or dinner dates, But there was always something in the way. And now... now that she was married... now that she had children... she only saw these friends on occasion. Two or three times a year. Tops.

She never thought that being grown up would mean being so lonely. She had always assumed she would have someone to go shopping with. Come to think of it, wasn't that what Greg was for? Weren't they supposed to do all those things together? wasn't that what she had been looking for while dating all those other guys? Someone to tell secrets to, who would let her pick the movie half the time. She didn't realize that Greg would tire of her - and she of him - after awhile. She hadn't realized that taking vows didn't mean she wouldn't need another person to talk to.

When she pictured her new friend, she pictured another Mom. Someone close by who would come by just before lunch. Their kids could play together and they could chat about some soap opera or TV show... or about a movie they both wanted to see. They could take turns going to the gym or out with their husbands while they babysat for each other. They could even watch each others houses and feed each others pets during vacations.

Fantasy. All fantasy. She guessed that friendships like that only happened in movies or on TV, or in books. Like those marriages where they guy comes home from work and sets the table or gives the kids a bath, and still kisses his wife on the lips when he leaves for work. People, grown up people, just weren't that close.

More Kelly

In college her life had been a constant drama. It was the boys. She had been such a nobody in High School, and suddenly there she was, guys falling all over her, calling her, talking to her, suddenly kissing her when she least expected it, catching her completely off guard and sending her into a whirlwind of emotional highs and lows. She was flattered. She didn't know how to turn them away. She wasn't sure she wanted to turn them away. Not all of them. Not most of them. She fell in love with ach one she settled on, enough to have her hopes dashed, shattered beyond repair, each and every time the relationship inevitably crumbled, like a sugar cube dipped in coffee. You know it's going to dissapear, but when it does...


**********

She couldn't make coffee to save her life. She fumbled with the filter, forgot how many scoops to put in, and the end result was a watery substance that reminded her of cigarette ashes. She found herself remembering cheap morning-after breakfasts.

Greg never woke up early enough to go to breakfast. By the time he made it out of bed the rush had begun, and he refused to wait even fifteen minutes for bad coffee and cold eggs. Besides, with the kids it was just easier to stay home. Kelly agreed, but she loved going out to breakfast. The smell of the coffee - or was it the cigarette smoke - mingling with the heavy scent of bacon and syrup, catching in her hair so she would smell it for the rest of the day. A smiling lover across the table sipping hot coffee. She ordered eggs and bacon. Maybe a cheese omlette. Toast.
These days she never made eggs. The kids didn't eat them - Jimmy threw up the last time he has tried them. It was always cereal or frozen waffles, and that was the extent of the breakfast fare. Greg sometimes joked that she nver cooked breakfast anymore, but she didn't like cooking breakfats when it was almost time for the boys to have lunch. Besides, cleaning up was always such a letdown.

***********

She shifted John's weight to her other hip as she looked down the road, both ways, for any cars that might be coming. Which was silly. There were never any cars coming down their road. But she always went through the motions, setting a good example for her boys. She pretended they would learn to look both ways, too, and that otherwise they would get mowed down one day in town.

The mailbox stood there, a presence. She almost held her breath as she helped John lower the little door and they peered inside. She didn't know what she expected to find - a letter, maybe. Something besides junk mail and bills. A postcard from a friend on vacation - from one of her friends that still took vacations. A letter from someone who missed her, or just remembered her. Someone thinking of her.

Sometimes she did get cards or lettersm and when she did her heart warmed with the silent thrill of it. The high lasted through the afternoon and evening, coloring the second half of the day with the thought that someone might be thinking of her at that very moment.

But more often than not, there was nothing, and she was surprisingly dissapointed. Like checking her email basket and finding nothing but Spam or forwards. It made her feel invisible, as though she had been banished from the real world, as though she were forced to live in her house, with her kids, and her life, instead of it being her choice to do so.

The mailbox wasn't empty. A form letter from her Alma Mater asking for money. The town newspaper, photos from a pancake breakfast on the front page. A catalogue of guns and outdoor gear. A credit card application.

Kelly sighed and handed John the credit card application. He happily took it and tried to open it, delighted. She smiled, kissing the side of his head. She glanced beyond the house into the yard where Jimmy was diggin in the patch of dirt where she was trying to grow flowers. Jason's carrier was right next to him, the baby sleeping, the occasional clump of dirt landing on his blanket.

"I'm invisible" she whispered to her middle child, and immediately wished she hadn't. Even though he was only two (almost two) he might catch the emptiness inside her, or worse feel responsible for it. She wanted nothing more than to hide this feeling, the existance of this feeling, from her boys.

"I love you, "she whispered to make up for it. And also because she meant it. "You boys are my everything."

Four Weeks

Summers were spent at the lake house. They would wake in the morning, in the cold and misty air. They would drink hot tea, hot cocoa, hot coffee. They would take long walks though the woods, up hillsides, sometimes truly getting lost and not being able to return until they found the main road. They would drive out to Hinkley's and get turkey or Balogna sandwiches, hostess cupcakes or bags of chips, and sodas. Then they would swim in the lake for the rest of the afternoon, until the air became too cool to be wet in. They tracked mud into the house, leaving muddy footprints behind them as they dashed to their rooms, pulling on whatever warm clothing they could find. Evnings they would budle up by the fire outside, burgers on the grill, or else they would huddle indoors and have soup, watching the lights move on the lake, wondering what the day would be like tomorrow.

a sense of proportion

She glanced around the small apartment. There weren't that many people there - maybe six. They all looked relaxed and slightly bored as they munched chips and nuts from the bowls around the room. Most of them had arrived late.

Kelly had shown up at exactly 7:30. She knew it wasn't cool to be the first person at a party, but she just couldn't help herself. Her social calendar was anything but full, and she had, in fact, been counting the days to this affair from the moment she received the invitation (via email) three weeks ago. A week before the party she had already planned her outfit. She purchased new shoes for the occasion, and has scheduled a hair appointment. The night before she sat up late waxing her laegs and doing her nails.

No one else seemed to have gone through half as much effort. They had thrown on a fresh coat of lipstick or changed into a fresh shirt, but that seemed to be it. WHY? She thought. Why do I think these things will be so important?

Henrietta's Box

She knew it had to be a dream.

The label was clearly addressed to her, Marcy Sherman, 44 Gatesman Drive. That was her. This was a package that someone had packed and sent to her. It was the return address that didn't make sense. Henrietta Jones, 68 Maple Street. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong, and once more, wrong. It couldn't be. Someone was playing a joke. They wanted her to believe that Henrietta, her grandmother, had sent her a package. Which wasn't possible. Because her grandmother had been dead for fifteen years.

But the address - 68 Maple Street - that had been their old address. It was where Marcy had lived as a girl, where her grandmother had lived when she had been declared too old to live alone. For years she lived with Marcy's family, until suddenly she became sick and was rushed to the hospital. Three weeks later she was dead. Marcy had been thirteen.

Marcy glanced around her kitchen as if the practical joker would be standing there, pointing and laughing. She ran her fingers across the handwritten post office label. Her wedding ring clicked softly as it hit the cardboard, and she wondered what Henrietta would have thought of David. She would have been thrilled, Marcy knew, about the baby due in four months.

Marcy didn't know if she should open the box or not. She didn't know if she should call the police and report a suspicious package, or wait for David, or if she was just being ridiculous. She didn't know if a camera crew was shooting her reaction through a window and if she would see herself on one of those fool-your-friend TV shows two months from now. What if it was a bomb?

What if it was something else?

A kingdom far away

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. She was - oh - about thirty or thirty two, something along those lines. But her kingdom had a rule that prohibited marriage of any girl younger than the princess until she herself was wed, so it really wasn't that big of an issue, even though her parents were more than a little irritated at the time it was taking for her to make a decision, and they had started drawing up legal documents as a back-up in the case that she issed her childbearing years completely.

Not surprisingly, she ended up dissapearing into thin air one day. The detective her parents hired didn't come right out and say it, but he insinuated that she had been murdered by someone angered at the inability to get married themselves. Maybe a young girl in her twenties who was tired of waiting around. Or even a young man, who was tired of waiting around.

The moral of the story is, if you try to get other people to live up to your own personal ideals, they will eventually kill you.

moment of clarity

The seat position was all wrong. I was clearly too close to the steering wheel. I hadn't noticed it right away, but after a few minutes on the road I became exceedingly uncomfortable. The mirrors were wrong, the seat was wrong. Somebody had been driving my car.

It was probably Tina, my daughter. At fifteen she thought she knew how to drive, but I had NEVER given her permission to climb into the driver's seat of my Toyota. This was inexcusible. I was distracted from my discomfort for awhile, thinking of how I was going to punish her... no driving until she was twenty. No dating. No going out with friends. No TV, no phone, she could have KILLED herself!

And then I noticed the bag.

That bag, on the floor of the passenger seat, the one that wasn't mine. It just... well, it wasn't mine. But it was here, in my car. Clearly someone had left it behind. One of Tina's friends. Or even Tina herself. I reached over, keeping one hand on the steering wheel and trying not to take my eyes off the road for more than a second.

The bag was small, like a cosmetics case, but it was stuffed full of something. And it was light. I placed it on my lap and kept driving like that, bag on my lap, afraid of what I would find. Cigarettes? Drugs? Probably pot. But this would be a LOT of pot. I hoped it wasn't pot. I reached down with one hand and unzipped the bag, keeping my eyes on the road until the bag was completely open... I looked down.

Diapers.

Three diapers and a small plastic bag of wipes. That's it.

What the hell was Tina doing with diapers, I wondered. I just couldn't come up with an answer. I flung the bag back into the passanger seat and ran my fingers through my hair. I checked my reflection in the mirror, wondering if I had messed it up too much... and I saw the stuffed animal in the back seat. Stuffed animal?

I looked down. The floor mats were not scuffed with sand and dirt, but there were cracker crumbs. I opened the glove compartment. My snow scraper was gone, but there was a package of fig newtons.

Oh my God, I said. This is not my car.

Flashback

She was sitting on one of the swings, her head leaning on one the the hands gripping the chain. The look on her face was sad and thoughtful, and it reminded him of one of the first times he had actually spoken to her, before the air around them had become so charged with electricity that they couldn't look at each other without drawing attention to themselves.

He had been sixteen, actually, the same age she had been when he caught her dancing. Sixteen, and on his way to becoming a father, although he didn't know it at the time. He had actually been headed to the playground himself, hoping to sit on one of the swings on the edge of the field and think things through. He was wondering if he should break up with Wendy, if maybe things had gotten too serious, but he felt guilty about it because she HAD slept with him, and he didn't want her to think that he didn't appreciate that...

Dana had been on the swings, though. It was 9pm, dark out, and she was twelve, a kid, her hair handing loose in knotty clumps around her shoulders, her knees and elbows dark with dirt. It was chilly but she wasn't wearing a jacket.

Dan had been irritated to find her there. He couldn't ever get away from the crowd of people in his life - in his family, his girlfriend's family, and now this family next door... But Dana turned when she heard his footsteps and smiled at him. "Hey, Dan!" She had said, as though it were perfectly natural for her to be out in a park after dark, as though she met people here all the time. "What's going on?"

Dan had shrugged and sat down on the swing next to her, thinking maybe she would go home, that one of her parants would call her, sticking their heads out of the front door, or maybe one of the windows, and she would jump off the swing, her limbs flailing, sprinting off to get back.

Looking back, Dan realixed she had been avoiding her family. He wondered what was going on there that night, and if her father had been angry with her or if he had just been lashing out at his famly in general. He wondered how Dana had managed to escape that night, if she had been crying, or afraid. But at sixteen, involved with his own problems he wasn't able to look that deeply into her life. If it had been Carla herself, then he would have been all over her, lecturing his sister about the dangers of playing in the park at night, pressuring her for her reasons. If it had been Ben he would have simply understood the need for privacy and respected his wishes to remain silent. But Dana was only Carla's friend. Only Ben's sister. She wasn't a real person, at least not one that was deeply involved with his life. She was just someone who was IN THE WAY a lot of the time, and she had been in the way that night.

They had stayed there on the swings for almost ten minutes, not swinging but more rocking back and forth on the swings, before Dana hopped off. "Bye Dan," She said quietly. "I hope it works out."

"Thanks," he replied, raising his hand in farewell. He didn't know what she was talking about, but then he wondered if he had been speaking aloud, or if she had read his thoughts and knew all about Wendy.

Dana had headed back to her house, which was mostly quiet. He had watched her from the swings as she crossed the deserted street and quietly opened the front door to the house next to his.

the garden

Everything in this place is gray and hard. The sky is turning dark, but more than that the very air is getting thicker and harder to see through. The lights on the street and in the windows slowly become brighter and brighter until they are what enables the seer to see.

I can't really breathe here. I never really could. As a kid I would ride the elevator to my dad's office, smiling past the receptionist, and bustle my way into the staff kitchen. I would heat up a mug of hot cocoa in the the microwave and do my homework in the waiting room among people waiting to get their teeth cleaned. Then they would step out into the hard gray air while I was still here in the filtered air, smelling the smell of teeth and cleaning agents. Then my dad would finish up and we would walk home, or take the bus.

My bedroom faced an ally where I could hear car alarms and cats. The sun wouldn't stream in through the window because there was a wall ten feet away that went up as high as the sky itself. The room was lit by a light fixture and a bedside lamp and the lights to my little stereo.

I moved away at twelve, when my parents got their divorce. My mother took me to the country, far far away, to live with her father and her sister. It wasn't really country, more a suburb, but it seemed like country to me. There was a brook. There were trees. By 8pm the whole street was dark - well, except for the one streetlamp. No hoards of people streamed the streets. No constant traffic noice, only the occasional passerby after dark.

And grass. There was a yard. A garden. My garden. The one I made and planted and grew with my wn two hands, to the amazement of my mother and the amusement of my grandfather. The one that awakened the interest in horticulture and agriculture.

bookshelf

You can tell a lot about someone from the books they read. She had heard this somewhere, and so she started keeping a running list of all the books she actually read, from cover to cover. Not just the books on her shelves, which included unfinished autobiographies, textbooks and required reading from her school days, and a few older books she just thought would look good in her small living area.

Over the past year she had read constantly, adding each new book to her list with a sense of accomplishment. Now, more than fifty books were on the list. She should feel proud. But instead she glanced at the titles and felt small. Most of these books were vampire books. Trash, really, or at least Mrs. Andrews would have called it trash. Fantasy books - the kind with dragons and mythical beasts. Horror books, with serial killers and sometimes even monsters. Light reading with flaky heroines and a closet full of supporting cast characters that entertained the reader while teaching absolutely nothing. There were no classics. Nothing enduring or thought provoking.

She slowly tore the page out of her notebook and held it in her hand. She couldn't leave it in there for people to see after she died. They would know. They would know how truly shallow she was. In life she was tolerated, but if these lists were found she would be discraced in death.

something different

She drove slowly, carefully, glancing at her father in the seat next to her for clues. Yes, she knew where she was going, but she wasn't really sure it was the right place anymore. Something was always changing, and you never knew what it was going to be. If roads had changed during her absence, or if her father had moved again, she wanted to catch it from her father's look before she got too lost and had to find an explanation.

Each time she flew on a plane this happened. The changes. One or two things, usually, sometimes more. They could be big things, like Mike, or the could be small. The color of her bedroom walls. The name of her goldfish. Sometimes it was how streets fit together. Once, when she was a kid and just figuring it out, she went bike riding and got completely lost, lost in her hometown, where she had been bike riding millions and millions of times before. All because one road had become a dead end, and the other road she chose had a house where the next street should be.

But the trip went smoothly. Her father didn't get upset or confused at any of the turns she made, and when they finally pulled into the house she let out breath she didn't know she'd been holding. Of course there would be something different. There always was. It would be the last thing she expected. She tried to stop wondering about it, knowing it wouldn't change anything.

miss you

She closed her eyes and felt the grass on her cheek, breathing in the green of it. It was like his perfume. She could remember them both together, stretched out in the grass, smoking Camels, closing their eyes to the sun that bathed their faces. He would run his fingers through the grass, laughing about the world, not caring about the world, about the classes they were cutting, about the papers they had due.

And now he was gone. He had left her, and then left the whole world, jumped off of it like a moving train, into the blurr of death. And she was here. She was still here, years later, her life plodding on as usual, nothing outstanding, nothing spectacular...

She missed him.

Wait

It's so incredibly dark that I just can't stand it. And quiet. It's oppressively quiet. The loudest noise is my heart pounding through my chest, bursting through my ribcage and the flesh of my breasts, pouring down the front of my T-shirt. The next loudest sound in my breath, ragged and raspoing, tearing through my throat, bringing my lungs with it into the humid night air. I try to keep it in, to keep it quiet so I won't be found croushing there in the brush - it is very dark, after all, and I don't think he could see me unless I moved or made a m noise. But the need for air betrays me. I have been running too hard. All this time training, running on the treadmill, at the park, at the track, increasing my speed, my time, my distance. I should have been practicing quiet and peaceful breathing.

I can hear footsteps approaching. Careless footsteps. Apparently this guy isn't worried about being caught, or at least about me hearing HIM. He just assumes he's got the upper hand. He doesn't know I'm hiding here, not ten feet from him, in the brush, cltching this knife. This kitchen knife. A bread knife, actually. A stupid bread knife.

The panic rises in my throat like the scream I haven't let out. This is absurd! I should be in bed! I should be dreaming! I was having a nice dream where I couldn't get the elevator to stop on my floor and had to keep using the stairs, but for some reason I was always missing my floor - as though the stairs went right past it.

The next thing I knew there was a manin my room. It took a second or two for me to realize I was awake and this wasn't part of my dream, that this nightmare was REAL... and then I swallowed my scream.

I rolled out of bed and ran out the door, glad he was at my dresser, rifling through my jewelry box. He can have my jewelry. Most of it is cheap plastic anyway.

I thought he would leave once he saw I was awake - theives don't want trouble, they want a quick in and out, no trouble, no one to identify them. But instead of leaving through the back door he followed me, slowly and in no rush, into the kitchen where I had picked up the phone and started dialing before I realized there was no dial tone. And that's when I grabbed the knife from the counter and hopped out the window. I don't remember leaving the window open - I never leave windows open, even when it's this hot, just in case, you know, something like THIS happens. But this one was open. I guess I wasn't as careful as I thought. I shot right up onto thr counter and through the screen, getting tangled in the bush beneath and my T-shirt. The moment I found my feet I rushed toward to wooded area in back.

Brilliant.

So here I am with a bread knife, crouching in the brush where I could be shouting at the Deegans's front door across the street. They are a nice family, the Deegans. They would have helped me.

Maybe he won't find me.

Maybe he won't see me.

Maybe he will change his mind.

Eventually the footsteps stop, and I imagine him hovering over me in the pitch dark, leering, sneering, whatever it is he does, waiting for me. But after forever I look up and there's no one there.

I don't move. What if I'm wrong? What if her's waiting for me?

I'll wait until daylight. I'll spend the rest of the dark hours here with my bread knife, which is better than nothing, really, when you think about it. I'll wonder who the guy is, and how he found me, and why he's disconnected my phone. I'll wonder if he's gone for good or just watching from afar... or if he's back in my house, hiding, waiting for me, in some closet I hardly go into.

At least in the daylight I'll be able to see him coming. I'll make it to the Deegans's house. I'll cream and ring their bell and pound on their door. I'll frighten their two little girld and their little scottie dog. I'll make them call the police.

Unless he finds me before then.

I'll wait. Here in the dark.

I'll wait.

The beginning

She peered over my shoulder as I typed. "Just what the world needs. Yet another amature blog."

I sighed. "Thanks. You're support and enthusiasm are encouraging." I kept typing.

"It's not that I don't think you should write," she explained. I could hear her voice grow distant as she walked into the kitchen and grabbed a coke. It got louder as she walked back into the den. "It's just that... do we really need more stories about spaceships or dragons?"

"It's fantasy / Sci-Fi, and it's what I like to write!" I protested.

"Well... on a blog? I mean, what's the point? Won't the blog owners own the stories?"

"I AM the blog owner."

"No, I mean the... the people... the company that SUPPORTS the blog. I'm pretty sure they now own those words you're typing."

I sighed. "Not until I click the publish button. Besides, this is just to keep me writing. Like practice. I can post as often as I want, and then, if people are so inclined, they can comment and tell me just why they think my work is crap. "

"Aren't you embarrassed?" she said. "I mean, putting your name on all these stories? That are probably really... no offense, but they are probably really mediocre at best, and here you are putting out there for the whole world to see?"

"That's the magic of blogs. There are so many. How many people will actually see this one and comment on my mythical space creatures? And even if they do, and even if they hate me, I can do this almost completely anonymously. I mean, who knows it's me? I'm not telling anybody."

"Then what's the point of doing it?"

I stopped typing. "I'm not really sure."