Monday, January 16, 2012 9:25:41 PM
Lucid Dreams
I did go back to bed, and, after a while, I fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning, the light was coming through my window full throttle, and Cumulonimbus was deep asleep in his cage.
I walked out to the living room/dining room/kitchen. My mom was only about half-way through her breakfast extravaganza, my dad was rifling through the sports section, and Jonathan wasn’t out there, so I assumed he was still asleep. The doors to the office were closed with the blinds pulled down. I wondered if my aunt had stayed up all night watching those eyes. I shivered at the thought of looking at them for more than a few seconds.
I stood there sort of awkwardly. I really didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t even remember what I did back in California when I woke up before breakfast was ready.
I’m honestly not a TV sort of person. Most shows are just too stupid. I’d occasionally get into one show, but I always preferred hanging out with my friends. We went to the beach, the mall, the movies, and the roller-rink all the time. We loved rollerblading and swimming. Now, I didn’t have any of those things. I didn’t have any of my friends.
I retreated back to my room. My mom’s eyes caught me as I was backing down the hallway, but she didn’t say anything to call me back. I went back to my room and looked around. E-mailing was out. There was no way my friends had returned my last messages, and they’d probably freak out if they had more than twenty messages from me in their in-boxes. I really didn’t see anything else to do. So, I did the only thing I could do. I grabbed my scissors and sat on the floor, looking for split ends in my hair that needed to disappear.
The morning just seemed weird. Breakfast was quiet and sleepy. It tasted good, but that morning felt off. After breakfast, I went into my room to try to find something normal to do. Anything that could shake the feeling of oddness that I was getting. My aunt had followed me, but she was so quiet that I didn’t even notice. She scared the heck out of me when I turned around to shut my door.
My slight scream woke Cumulonimbus up, but he just fell back asleep after giving me a dirty look.
“I need your help setting up some flood lights for the back yard,” my aunt yawned.
“Why?” I asked as snarkily as I could after having a heart-attack.
“Because it’s your duty too.”
I wanted to tell her that duty was subjective and get the heck out of my room, but I wanted something to do even more. I ended up helping her with the flood lights.
We had to go to the hardware store to get them. I won’t bore you with the details, but store was dirty and under stocked. We managed to get out of there with everything we needed, which included three giant flood lights, electrical wire, electrical wire cutters, and for some odd reason landscaping tiles.
I wouldn’t recommend doing what my aunt and I did with the lights. Because there was only one back yard light already wired (which we replaced with a flood light) we had to wire two flood lights into the electrical ourselves. We aren’t electricians and shouldn’t have been doing it. It was really lucky neither of us got zapped.
My aunt did seem to know what she was doing. Using the tools from my dad’s truck, we attached the lights to the house. My aunt explained everything she was doing to me so maybe someday in the future I would be an electrician or something.
As we were finishing up the last one, I finally asked her, “Why do we need flood lights?”
“They turn on when they detect motion,” my aunt said.
I was wondering if she had deliberately not answered my question.
“Who fricking cares?” I snarked.
“Use your head Ava,” my aunt said, sounding tired.
“No, just tell me.”
She obliged. “The dragons are only out at night because they’re fog. They can’t hold their shape in the light. It weakens them.”
“So this will kill them?” I asked.
“No,” my aunt said. “This isn’t sunlight. It doesn’t burn as much so it won’t even hurt them as much. But they won’t want to approach the house any more. Not with a foghorn and lights.”
“Cumulonimbus doesn’t do anything to them, though. What does having him around do?” I asked.
“You mean other than being able to wake every human in a half-mile radius up in one tweet?” I think she enjoyed being sarcastic when I asked her these sorts of questions. “He can fight them as well. Well, at least one at a time. His chirp can separate fog. Of course, certain foghorns are good at certain things. I once met a foghorn who could knock down a tree with one chirp. That’s the sort of thing we really need.”
I thought back to that first night. “That’s definitely not what Cumulo’s good at.”
“Well, he’s not developed yet. Foghorns feed off of their Shadow’s strengths,” she said as she sunk the last screw into place. She grabbed a hold of the light and tried to shake it. It didn’t move. She slowly descended her ladder and I followed. “Your a new Shadow so he's still young. Eventually, he'll get stronger at everything and find a particular strength. I just hope he finds that strength fast. They want to get rid of us.”
“Huh?” I swear she was trying to confuse me.
“The dragons don’t want us here,” she enunciated each word.
“Did you watch them the whole night?”
“Yes, until dawn started to come and he went back to his Shadow. I’d love to know who it is.”
“Why don’t you just follow it?”
“It would know and kill me.”
“Oh,” I said. We were back at her truck, and she handed me some of the tiles. “What are these for?”
“Do you see the specks?” my aunt asked.
“Yes,” I answered. These tiles had the most reflective specks of all the tiles at the store. “To reflect the light more?”
“Yup.” She smiled at me proudly.
“Whatever.” We started laying them out on the ground along the back of the house. It was slow work. “Hey, Aunt Macy, what was Smoke’s strength?”
She stopped moving for a second. “He was fearless,” she answered softly.
I felt like I had hit a nerve and changed the subject. “So, how do you kill a dragon?”
“Fire and light should do the trick. That’s what kills every fog-being I’ve ever seen.”
I thought about what the environmentalists back in L.A. would say. “Why are we worried about it in the first place?” I asked, realizing too late that it didn’t make much sense without the rest of the words that were floating around in my head. “They’re animals, why should we upset the natural order of things?”
“We’re not,” my aunt said. “They aren’t supposed to be here.”
I rolled my eyes. How could she possibly know that?
“Shadows are still human, Ava. They bring their fog-beings around the world with them. If the Shadow dies and is unable to rerelease its fog being, then they are trapped there. Wolves are a great example. They weren’t indigenous to most of Europe, but after centuries of getting stuck different places, they are all over the place. I’m not talking about normal wolves, just fogdogs or werewolves.”
“Werewolves?” I’m sure I sounded about as condescendingly skeptical as possible.
“Dragons are myth too, aren’t they?” my aunt Macy replied. She easily matched me in the throwing-it-back-in-your-face category of speech. “When a shadow releases a fogdog, they combine in one body. Then, they can shift back and forth between the two forms. You can see where the myth about werewolves came from. Here’s the interesting part: if they die in human-form, then the human is dead and the dog retreats into the nearest fog. It’s all mythology.”
“What if the dog form is killed?”
“The dog is stripped away and the human remains to release them.”
That seemed so much cooler than my annoying bird. “But there’s no way to kill them?” I double checked.
“Kill them entirely?” my aunt asked. I nodded. “Not that I know of. How do you kill something made of fog?”
“You said they mate though, right?” I asked.
“Of course they mate,” my aunt answered. I could see her thinking about it. “So, there has to be a way for them to die.”
“Or they’d over populate.”
“If they can die, then it might be possible to completely kill them,” my aunt speculated.
“So, we just have to find someone who knows how to kill them.”
“Not likely.”
“Why not?”
My aunt sighed, “Because dragons aren’t indigenous to America. Asia is where they originated.”
“So, we’re not going to find anyone who knows how to kill them.”
“And the myth lives on,” my aunt said, very depressed.
“What about foghorns? What myth is that?”
“A phoenix, of course.”
“How? I mean, the dragons look like dragons, and I understand the werewolf thing, but how do you mistake a tiny grey bird for a flaming one?”
“They were originally sighted in Egypt. They didn’t live there long though.” My aunt was smiling to herself and I could see her tripping down memory lane. “You’ll see in due time,” she said, coming out of it.
I, of course, rolled my eyes and continued laying down the tiles.
Monday, December 12, 2011 2:32:30 PM
Lucid Dreams
My aunt finally left my room, and I sat down at my computer desk. I had an old computer, but a computer nonetheless. Cloud left my shoulder and turned on the humidifier. It hummed incessantly as it moistened the air. He then flew back into his cage and slept. I returned my eyes to my computer monitor and set to work remembering my home.
I don’t know what my first sign was that I might fall asleep at my computer. It could have been my fingers typing clumsily. Or my eyelids drooping similar to an overly baggie a pair of jeans that have to be pulled back up constantly. Or the fact that I did fall asleep for a few seconds, my head tipped forward, and as I woke back up, I hit my head on the screen.
After that last one, I did go to bed and fell asleep immediately. There was something intoxicating about this sleep, though; I felt vertigo take hold as I drifted. My breathing slowed with the weight of the humid oxygen as I sank into this new sleep. I felt my lungs draw in refreshing breaths of air as I entered the dream world. The air was cool and boundless as I drew them deep with the taste of atmosphere. It tasted like early morning down by the beach in Cali. Water dispersed in the cool morning air, the same taste that follows a rain storm.
Then, there was the view. It came slowly to my eyes; grey out of the black. Dark green treetops emerged, reflecting the small amounts of light from the moon along with outlines in red and blue. I was soaring about the trees; flying unaware of where I was going. I was just watching the trees as they disappeared and more appeared; each one fluttering by at a rapid pace.
I noticed the feel of the air around me after that. The air moved by me as I flew. But it wasn’t the feel of air against skin that I felt. It was something a kin to a small force field upon my skin, and I could feel the air move across it without touching my bare skin. It’s like when someone moves your hair without you knowing. You feel it move where the root is. I could feel the air through my pores as if my body had a lot more hair than it did. It was weird, but I couldn’t have cared. I was flying, letting my body carry me to whatever destination it seemed to already have decided.
The edge of the trees appeared; a great, flat, grey blur beyond. I dived into the trees, and, at the last tree by the edge, my arms tilted up and my forward motion stopped. My legs came forward, and I stood on a branch. I noticed that the tree seemed very big. I was near the top and its thin branches were barely smaller than me. I stood up without hitting my head on branches above. But I was flying a second ago, so at that point I knew it was a dream and there really isn’t anything odd about strangely sized objects in a dream.
The grey blur turned out to be the fog patch. It could not have been described as a sheet or blanket of air; it didn’t even resemble a cloud. It was a wall; a six foot tall wall of breathing, living fog. It was terrifying and wonderful at the same time. Wonderful because I could see it living. It moved and danced. Every once in a while I would see a tiny bit of the fog pull together and all of a sudden it was a little bird flying around in its home, like a fish in a fish tank. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the bird disappeared and the small bit of concentrated fog would fade out to its normal consistency. I watched these movements change the fog, causing it to move with little waves. More and more, my eyes caught the little birds fluttering in and out of existence.
But terror would not let my mind forget the other residences of the fog. From far away, I could see the waves, large waves. They were becoming more rapid. I saw the eyes first. In the distance, it seemed like one tiny spec of iridescent red. Out of that came two spots, until they were large and close. Then, its body formed. I watched it appear because I couldn't look away; the fog spiraled in from the sides, top, and bottom. Pulling in and wrapping into the body of a dragon. It snaked five feet away from where it appeared then disappeared, swirling fog outward with a wave. Its red eyes never disappeared. They moved along with the invisible dragon.
Before I could see where it reappeared, something caught my eye. There was a pair of red eyes to my left. They were way too close to the tree line, the end of the fog patch. And I was off again; flying towards the beast. I found it just as it had entered the forest and flew above it, calculating its direction. Then, I flew faster, heading in its direction as fast as I could.
Then, I was steadily waking up. I didn’t want to, but I was. My heart beat was quick and light, but I could feel a larger, slower beat against it in my chest. The wind against my odd bubble slowly disappeared into warm sheets. Then, everything in front of my eyes was replaced with the dark of my eyelids.
When my eyelids opened, my eyes searched the outline of my room’s objects, finding the cage in the corner and the absence of Cumulonimbus. I knew I should get up and find him. Mom wouldn’t care to have him wandering around the house, and she’d think I let him out. But I didn’t want to.
I was suddenly thirsty, the sort of thirsty that’s hard to ignore and therefore inhibits all ability to fall asleep. I grabbed my empty glass and headed quietly out into the hall. As I crossed the open space to the kitchen, my eyes accidentally caught sight of my aunt’s silhouette. She wasn’t in bed; she was sitting up by the large windows in the office, staring out at the trees that grew far too close to our house. I walked into the over sized doorway. She was practically a statue staring out there, and I was making plenty of noise for her to notice.
I glanced around the room. “Is Cumulo in here?”
“No, Ava,” she said, still so statue-like that I could barely see her mouth move. “He’s out patrolling the fog.”
“Why?” I asked. My memory wandered back to the night he’d saved me. His obnoxious call had had an effect on the dragon, but didn’t damage it. I could hardly see him being able to enforce the boarder.
“So, we know what we're up against,” my aunt responded.
Cumulonimbus came darting out of the trees and through the screen of the window without slowing down. I gasped, thinking he was about to collide with the glass, but my aunt lifted the window pane at exactly the right moment. She was so in sync with him that it was awe-inspiring.
Cumulonimbus flew in, turned around, and landed on my aunt’s knee, staring out the window with her. I looked out there too. Two red eyes were staring back. They were glowing out there in the forest; just red eyes watching us, knowing its limits.
“Go back to bed, Ava,” my aunt told me without really moving. “Cloud and I have it covered.”
Wednesday, December 7, 2011 12:16:01 AM
Lucid Dreams
After dinner (that sort of was the end of dinner for me), I set up Cumulonimbus in my room. The last owners had left a hook in the ceiling for a hanging plant. I put the bird cage up there. And the bird looked at me like I was challenging it. Stupid bird.
There was a knock on my door. Preoccupied by the bird’s look, I automatically said, “Come in,” realizing seconds later that I didn’t want anyone in my room.
I tore my eyes away from the bird as my aunt entered. She was carrying a bulky humidifier under one arm. “Hey, thought I’d help you set up,” she said. She eyed my placement of the cage and smiled like she knew about the challenge and that I would lose.
She placed the humidifier in the corner under the cage and plugged it in. She didn’t bother turning it on. She just stood up and turned to me.
“The solution is water, but you can add different things to it. Sugar, juice, or tea. The humidity helps him keep his shape. It’s basically food.”
“Wonderful,” I responded.
My aunt looked troubled, like I was some sort of crossword puzzle that she couldn’t figure out. “I’m surprised you haven’t said anything yet.”
“About what?” I asked.
Did she really expect me to take an interest in this bird?
“About Cloud or the voice at least.”
“What voice?” I asked starting to think my aunt was more than just a little loopy.
My aunt’s eyes widened. She turned around to look at Cumulonimbus. I sat down on my bed and watched her, waiting for her to either tell me what was going on or leave. Either one was fine with me, but I really was partial to the latter quite frankly.
She turned back to me. “You haven’t been hearing him?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Cloud. Your foghorn. Shadows can hear their foghorns in their heads,” she said with more force and frustration than I think the situation really warranted.
“Yeah, no voices in my head,” I said, fully aware that I needed to contact the closest hospital because clearly my aunt needed help.
“What about the colors? Red and blue outlines, have you seen them?” my aunt asked.
I thought about my dreadfully boring week. “Only the night I went into the fog.”
“Not even around me?” Her voice was quiet. I wasn't sure if I was really supposed to answer.
I looked at her and shook my head. I looked down at my hands. I still had the grey glitter spots, but, other than that, nothing was different. “Do all Shadows have the outlines?” I asked not really meaning to vocalize the vague curiosity I felt.
“Yeah, but you can’t see your own. It would drive a Shadow nuts to see the outline so close all the time,” my aunt responded. “I can still see yours.”
“So you’re still a Shadow without your foghorn?” I was asking because if she said ‘Yes’, that meant I couldn’t get rid of this.
“I suppose so. My powers aren’t disappearing.”
“So why can’t I see yours?”
“All the powers develop in time. Maybe the separation from Cloud was slowing them down. I was hoping yours would develop quickly, though so you could see if the kids at school had outlines.”
“Why? So I can start a bird club?” I asked.
“The people who set free the dragons might have the outline too, they still need a Shadow to…”
“Whoa, wait a second,” I interrupted. “Are you telling me I can see Shadows that let different fog-thingies out?”
“Yes, a Shadow, by definition, is anyone who let’s a fog-being loose; they are a human host that develops a particular relationship with the fog-being depending on what type of being it is. Foghorns need to save someone. Either way, they’re all outlined as far as I know.”
I scowled. Now she wasn’t sure.
“I don’t know how dragons operate,” she explained at my disgruntled face. “Each fog-being has a different purpose, therefore different releases. I’m not sure what a dragon’s purpose is.”
“But you’re pretty sure they’ll have an outline?” I inquired.
“I’ve never met one that hadn’t,” she responded.
Well, that’s a fallacy in logic: she could have met one but didn’t realize it because they looked like an ordinary person. Whatever moving on.
“So why the kids at school?” I pressed further.
“Teenagers would be my first guess to let a dragon loose.”
“Why teenagers?” I asked, somewhat insulted.
“Because adults are usually too tired by the time the fog develops. And an adult would most likely run; a teenager might be fooled.”
I had to admit, I knew plenty of teenagers that would have found that pretty trippy.
I shrugged at my aunt. “So how did you know I would release a foghorn? I was outlined with red and blue, but for all you knew, I could have unleashed a dragon.”
“I suppose you could have. But with a foghorn-Shadow as family member, I figured the odds were you’d release a foghorn. You came out with a foghorn so that’s what you were meant to have.”
I thought over her naïve logic for a moment. My mind went back to that day that she first explained Shadows. Her plan was to kill anyone who had let a dragon loose. I momentarily was terrified wondering if she would have killed me for doing so. I shuttered and thought up some random question to get my mind away from that. “Can anyone become a Shadow, or just those who are outlined?”
“Anyone can walk into the fog and try to release a fog-being, but some are meant to be Shadows and they’re outlined beforehand.”
“And I was ‘meant’ to have a foghorn?” I continued to return to my scary train of thought.
“You already had those spots on your hand before you stepped into the fog didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“That's Cloud's print. It's like a finger print. You were meant for a foghorn.”
“Then, why can’t I hear him?” I enjoyed being difficult.
Cumulonimbus flew out of his cage. Just went right through the bars like they weren’t there (now I understood the looks). He landed on my aunt’s shoulder. Aunt Macy lifted her left hand and placed one finger on its head.
“I suppose we could try,” she said to the bird after a second.
“Are you talking to him?” I asked, disturbed. If I hadn’t seen some pretty weird things in the fog that night, I would have thought my aunt was insane. Wait a second…
“Yes,” my aunt responded. “Foghorns speak to their specific Shadow's mind directly without contact. But any foghorn-Shadow can hear a foghorn if they place their hand on its head.”
I nodded lazily. “So, why do they think to us?”
“They understand human languages but they can't vocalize it. They have telepathy, though. Don’t ask me why. They say it’s a secret they can’t reveal,” she said, sounding perfectly annoyed. “We can hear the thoughts they wish to share but they can’t hear ours. It’s just how we communicate.” I felt like my aunt was annoyed with explaining this to me and getting more and more anxious. It was kind of fun. “We were going to try something.” The bird left her shoulder and landed on my lap. “Try placing your hand on his head.”
I took the suggestion with a flick of the wrist and rested two finger tips on the top of his head. There was a momentary pause. “I don’t hear anything.” The bird closed its eyes. After a few moments I repeated myself, “I don’t hear anything.” The bird started to shake out of concentration. “Just stop, I can’t hear you,” I said. I took my hand away to discourage anymore bird-y thoughts. “So, what does this mean?” I asked my aunt.
“It means you’re deaf to your foghorn.”
I actually felt disheartened, now. Even though I didn’t like the whole foghorn idea, I felt like a disappointment. A Shadow that can’t hear her foghorn sounds like I fail at being a Shadow.
“Has that ever happened before?” I asked.
“Not that I know of,” Aunt Macy said. “Cloud,” she said, holding out her arm. He flew to her and she placed her finger on his head. “He hasn’t either.”
“Would he know?” I asked in doubt.
“Foghorns are reborn, but they never completely die. They also remember their past lives. He’s lived longer than you could imagine, and therefore, knows more than either you or me. What’s more, the only people he has ever known have been Shadows. Don’t worry. Every Shadow is different. You guys will just have to find a different way to communicate.” I felt like she was giving me a puberty lecture.
I rolled my eyes. “So, you’ve met other Shadows before, right?”
“Yes, Shadows help other Shadows understand their foghorns. Foghorns don’t talk about their past Shadows, so we need to talk to other Shadows for advice.”
Obnoxiously long answer. Yet, there was something interesting.
“What kind of advice?”
“Like what other powers our foghorns have or that we gain. Sometimes it’s just the nice stories. Shadows and foghorns tend to get into trouble. It’s lucky so many of us survive.”
“You never knew one that lost their foghorn?”
Her voice went softer, “No, I’ve met as many foghorns as I have Shadows. They can return to a fog patch willingly to heal or mate and fly out to find us again whenever they want. Smoke always came back quickly. Or, on the off chance that they stay in sun light too long and just disappear, they wait to be released again by the same Shadow, as long as the Shadow's still alive. It happens to all of us. Smoke ‘died’ multiple times. But that last one...I figured I would just have to find him again in a few weeks, a month tops, that’s all it should take. But...,” she inhaled, “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again, but I still have my marks,” she said, holding up the back of her right hand. She had grey glitter spots too, but I instantly recognized that it was a different pattern.
My aunt drifted off staring at her hand. I watched her. Cloud flew over to my shoulder, which annoyed me, but I didn’t want to be disparaged for telling him off while she was reliving whatever memory had entered her consciousness. Her eyes focused on the back of her hand suddenly and the fingers of her left hand, which had been tracing her marks, froze.
“What?” I asked out of shock of her sudden return to the land of the focused.
She looked at me, holding up a finger which bounced with her words. “There was this one women, she might have been a Shadow. She pushed me out of a tree. Smoke saved me and that’s how I got him. I never saw her again. I never saw her with a foghorn either.”
“That doesn’t mean she was Shadow, though.”
“If she wasn’t then she wouldn’t have seen the aura. I hate to think of how many people she just pushed out of a tree waiting for the right Shadow,” my aunt said with a look.
I smiled against my will, and then grimaced in retaliation.
Thursday, December 1, 2011 1:51:53 AM
Lucid Dreams
For the rest of my first week, lunch was the most human contact I got at school. We didn’t talk. He didn’t try to get me to talk (wise of him), and I definitely wasn’t going to start a conversation. I decided the silent treatment was the best idea; he’d get bored eventually…right?
If it weren’t such an insult to Fridays, I might suggest that they were invented in Utah. I took my biggest gulp of Utah air when I stepped out of school that first Friday. The air of freedom automatically equaled Cali air. I scanned the parking lot for my mom’s car (you know, seeing as she doesn’t have any skills than involve sand, which left her unemployed). I found a wreck instead our SUV. For some reason (we’ll get to the why later), my aunt was picking me up…with her old truck. It would have been embarrassing in Cali, but in Utah, it didn't really matter.
I hesitated just slightly and walked to the truck quickly because the only thing worse than Utah was its school and at least my aunt’s truck had traveled the world. I got in without a word. It actually smelled clean (given all the junk she kept in it, only half of which had vacated). I associated the smell with England, mostly because that’s what I associate most with my aunt.
I’ll be honest, the truck rode rather smooth. No strange engine sounds, door squeaks, or mysterious ticking noises for that matter (if you don’t understand the last one, too bad, I’m not explaining it). The only small little hitch with the truck, other than its age and unfortunate position on the globe, is that it made a metallic-clink sound every time it went over a bump larger than a grain of sand.
As I sat there, debating whether the tires falling off would be an improvement of my week or not, my aunt decided to be spontaneous (have you ever been locked in the car with a spontaneous person before?).
Outside of Cutlerville (the same side of town that we rode in from), there’s an intersection right before the town buildings (5.81 meters to be exact). The north side and south side had stop signs. The south one ran to the school, the north out to more desert. In your head you should have already figured out that my aunt should turn right. But she’s being spontaneous so you know she didn’t. Go ahead and take a guess on which direction she chose (flip a coin if it helps… and if you happen to have a three sided coin). (Drum roll please) She chose to go North.
I wasn’t sure if taking the time, energy, and breath to enter into a conversation with my aunt was worth figuring out where we were going. It’s lucky I paused because it was a short distance. Set back from the road and with a patch of separation from the town buildings, was an old shack (I was getting the feeling my aunt liked old things). The “house” had a two stall garage on one side. The shack was about the size of the garage and the pouch on the front had just enough room to spare for an old boot to sit. The metal roof sloped down and the dark blue paint looked in good shape except for the fact it was dark blue. And of course, there was a “for sale” sign out in the yard that had somehow caught a tumble weed.
We pulled into the driveway.
“Take down the number,” aunt Macy requested.
Gladly.
It was a matter of seconds until we were on our way home. I had every intention of locking myself in my room with e-mail and live vicariously through my L.A. friends. But unfortunately, I was surprised out of my intentions for a few moments. My mom was gardening. In the corner of our front yard (because we don’t really have a back yard), my mom was digging in the dirt. I’ve never seen her garden, but I know what it looks like and there was no doubt about it: She was gardening.
My mother is a business woman. She wears suits, skirts, slacks, and anything else that is appropriate for a lawyer. So, it scared the heck out of me to see her in shorts, an old Harvard tee shirt, and a ridiculous straw hat while digging in the dirt. My mom couldn’t keep a hanging plant alive, and now, she was growing a garden.
“Mom,” I said announcing mine and my aunt’s presence, “what are you doing?”
A part of me was still holding out hope.
She turned around and looked at me. “I’m planting strawberries,” she said. She was smiling so goofy that I resolved to shut off our water at the earliest convenience.
I blinked at her approximately three times in close sequence, turned on my heels, and walked into the house. I was constantly bombarded by the smell in the house. No matter how many times I entered over the past week, the smell of firewood still bothered me. The bonfire smell, which is charming in its own regard but really has nothing on the sweet openness of my beloved ocean home, made me feel like a pack-a-day smoker with its thick intoxication.
I moved quickly through the house, closed my door, and threw open my window, so I could kick my dirty habit (a.k.a. get that blasted smell out of my personal space). I didn’t emerge again until after my dad came home from work, and Jonathan finally got home from his friend’s house (how did he make a friend so fast? No. Why did he make a friend at all?). I came out to help with dinner, but my least favorite person was in the kitchen cooking.
I paused for a moment to debate my options: help or hide. She chose that moment to look up.
“Hey,” my aunt addressed me as if I had forgiven her. “Dinner will be ready in a few moments.”
I glanced at the table and realized that she’d already set it. My mom came up behind me wearing fresh clothes.
“It smells great Mace,” she said.
My aunt picked up a pie plate that appeared to have mashed potatoes in it and carried it to the table using pot holders. “Well, come and get it.”
My brother and dad appeared immediately and everyone took their seats. The whole situation was rather irking. However, in order to not draw attention to myself, I sat down too.
“So what is this?” I asked, though clearly asking, “Why are we letting you cook?”
“Sheppard’s Pie,” my aunt responded with a slight British accent.
“Yum,” I said sarcastically. “I didn’t know you cooked.”
“Oh, I’ve picked up a few things in my travels. I should teach you some time,” my aunt said. All I could hear was her warning me to play nice.
I wasn’t afraid of her, but I was wondering what she had up her sleeve. She didn’t have anything on me that my parents would have cared about. In fact, no one else at the table seemed to pick up on our true conversation. Apparently, Sheppard’s pie is that distracting.
Out of curiosity, I allowed her proceedings to go on.
“Well, I have a few announcements,” my aunt started while everyone was halfway through their second piece of pie (everyone except me). “I found a house today.” I almost snorted at her misuse of the word “house”. “And I thought it would work well as a business too,” she added.
“What sort of business, Mace?” my dad asked.
My aunt looked at my mom as she answered, “An auto repair shop.” My mom’s eyes lit up. “If you’re interested.”
“Of course,” my mom answered immediately.
I know my mother and aunt grew up fixing cars, and there are a lot of good memories in all that for them. But really, my mother was overreacting to the idea. They continued discussing fix-up plans for the building, and prospective names the business. I wasn’t paying direct attention because my aunt had used the plural “announcements”, which meant more was coming.
“Ah, yes,” my aunt said as she came down from a laugh about something that sparked no curiosity from me. She began to get up while saying, “I also have a present for you, Ava.”
She disappeared into the office (her bedroom) for a moment and came out holding the very thing I hoped she wouldn’t be, that blasted bird. She had placed him in that old bird cage that I’d seen in the back of her truck.
It doesn’t take a genius to know what was going on: She wanted me to have the bird, and I took no interest in the thing. So, in order to have me take the bird, she was going to give it to me publicly. It doesn’t take a genius, just someone that knows all the facts, which my parents didn’t.
“Oh, that’s nice, Macy,” my mom said. My mom doesn’t entirely care for pets, and I wondered for a moment if my dear auntie had slipped something into the pie. Then, I realized that picking me up from school so my mom could garden, and relieving her from the stress of cooking was probably all it really took to get her to loosen up. That and the cage.
I took the cage from her. “Thanks auntie,” I said but we both knew that I was really saying, “You suck.”
Monday, November 14, 2011 5:05:15 PM
Lucid Dreams
Welcome to Cutlerville High, home of the Suicidal thoughts. Don't bother trying to defeat this football team, they’re too depressed to win, I thought on my way into my new educational prison for the first time.
My first day of high school (the day after my enlightening talk with my aunt) seemed like rock bottom. The sort of rock bottom where rocks are burying you once you’ve hit the ground. The first time I saw the tiny, square adobe building from a distance, the light hit it in a way that made it look like one of those random square rock formations. I would have liked it better if it had been. I was stuck in this dead sand castle until I graduated from said adobe mirage. At least, I wasn’t going to find any bizarre surprises like dragons, foghorns, or murder-ready relatives inside.
The day proceeded with an eye roll and false smile in the office as I picked up my schedule; a wrinkled nose for the smell and size of my locker; followed by purposely slamming the door shut; five depressed sighs at my assignment in Geometry with eight stabbing glares at anyone who tried to say “hi” or ask for help; an evil scheme involving frogs, shaving cream, and the girls’ locker room in Gym class; a thoroughly depressing journal in English; and over all nausea as I saw the cafeteria and lunch of my wonderful new school.
It was as I sat there not eating, perfecting my scheme, and reading the lips of some girls at a random table (I can multitask) that a figure obstructed my view. Color me annoyed. It was a guy: tall, dark hair, and nice eyes, wearing a charming, welcoming smile. I glared at him the same way I had at my brother the night before when I wanted to watch TV (Jonathan quickly changed the channel and excused himself from the room). The guy didn’t budge. Clearly, there was something in the water here. And apparently, stupidity kept my glare from melting flesh. Pity.
“Can I help you find your way back home?” I offered in a way that no human would consider nice.
He raised his eyebrow and smirked as if he knew he was right about something. Then, he pulled out the chair he was standing in front of and sat down. I have to admit I was shocked. So far no one had tried to sit at my table, and I figured that since there were approximately 153.5 students in this school (my lack of enthusiasm makes me the .5), that word must have gotten around: don’t mess with the new girl.
“I’m Nate,” he introduced himself. His voice sounded clean (clear, normal volume, no sign that he was feeling indescribable pain from my glare).
I no longer had any weakness for boys. He was cute but it was a Utah version of cute, akin to drinking watered down juice instead of wine. Getting rid of him was my first priority.
“I don’t care,” I told him. You know how if you feed a lost puppy it’ll come back for food? So, if you don’t want the puppy you just kick it? Well “Nate” was a lost puppy, and I’m allergic.
“I know,” Nate responded to my statement.
A really dumb, lost puppy.
“Then, why tell me?” I asked.
“Because it's polite.”
“Did you skip the chapter in your Emily Post book about not bothering people who don't want to be bothered?”
“No, it was an enlightening chapter pointing out how no one actually wants to be bothered because by definition bothering is negative and people tend to avoid the negative.”
I rarely meet anyone who is a quick with the sarcasm as myself, but this guy wasn't having any problems keeping up. Change of tactics. “Cut to the chase, why are you over here?”
“Because I feel like it,” Nate said.
I was running out of options of how to respond to this guy. Clearly, he had been living in the desert so long that any part of his brain that would be telling him to run had been fried by now.
“Why?” I blurted out for lack of any question that would get rid of him or at least give me enough leverage to get rid of him.
“Because you’re alone,” Nate responded as if it was completely obvious and I was the one drinking too much Utah water.
“Okay,” I said slowly, enunciating my words, “that’s for a reason. I want to be alone.”
“I know,” Nate said.
I don’t know what kept me from slapping him, but I’m betting it was the five foot diameter table between us. So, he was sitting down to annoy me? Even my little brother wasn’t that immature.
I didn’t say anything. I kept my mouth shut and just stared at him. It generally makes people feel awkward, but if he felt awkward at all, he hid it well. He ate his lunch quietly under my scrutiny.
The next day he was back again.
“Go away,” I told him.
“No,” he responded bluntly.
He took his seat.
“Why?” I exploded. “What do you get out of torturing me like this?”
“I’m not trying to torture you,” Nate said. It was the first time his voice didn't sound clean. I could hear what else he didn't want me to know in the words that he told me. He wasn't trying to torture me, but it was a fun side-affect.
“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?”
“Just as much as you enjoy staring at that group of girls. Any of them catch your eye?” Nate smirked.
My mouth fell open, and he laughed at my expression. “Did you just accuse me of being attracted to girls?”
“No,” Nate answered, but I knew he'd add more. “I asked which one you were after.”
“That’s it, leave!” I told him. He didn’t move. “Why are you still here?” I sighed. “Stop with your smirky smile and tell me.”
“Fine, I’m trying to stop you from alienating yourself,” Nate said.
“I’m not about to turn green and build flying saucers, so mission accomplished.”
“I mean, you need to talk to someone,” he said, rolling his eyes at me.
“Aren’t you a little young to be a school counselor?” I asked.
“I mean friends.” I was clearly starting to annoy him. It was a nice change of pace.
“I already have some, so go friend someone else,” I told him.
“You need some friends here.”
“You mean you?” I asked, this guy didn't seem to have any logic. When I made my friends, I didn't try to annoy them into talking to me.
Nate shrugged non-nonchalantly.
“Sure, I’ll be your friend; you know when Utah water has poisoned my mind,” I told him.
“So, it is the move,” Nate said, nodding. He’d slipped back into the smirky I-was-right person that was nothing like his blabbering-self. “Where did you used to live?”
“The coolest city on Earth,” I told him.
“New York?” He asked with too much enthusiasm. He was making fun of me, again.
“You already know where I’m from, don’t you?”
“You have a patch on your back pack that says ‘I heart LA’,” he informed me.
I rolled my eyes. “Stop bugging me. I’m not interested in being your entertainment. ‘Let’s annoy the new girl’,” I mocked.
“I can’t stop bugging you,” Nate said.
“Why not? Utah law?” I asked.
“Because to stop bugging you I would have to leave you alone,” Nate explained.
“I know,” I said. “Isn’t that a lovely coincidence?”
Nate laughed and added, “And I already promised you that, if no one else, I would be your friend when… what were the words you used? The ‘water has poisoned your mind’?”
“I’d be fine with it if your broke your promise,” I said, knowing it wouldn’t work but attempting just the same.
“Yeah, well I’m not,” Nate said. “It says something about a man’s character, his ability to keep a promise. I don’t want my character scarred.”
The only thing that kept me from “scarring” his ego with a very rude comment about his inferring he was a “man” was that I sort of agreed with him. I also drank a glass of Utah water from the faucet the night before, so one of the two was affecting me.
Thursday, November 10, 2011 8:03:42 PM
Lucid Dreams
Before I exited the trees and went back inside, I took the bird off of my shoulder and placed him off the path surrounded by thistles. He looked confused. I sighed and walked into the house to escape the world of Utah.
Lucky for me, I awoke the next morning well rested and without memory of any Utah-ness in my head. I actually thought for a second that I was still in California. Sure, I was disappointed when I realized I wasn’t, but it was nice to be closer to California than I had been for a while.
Once I remembered I was in the state of Utah, I remembered what had happened the night before. I hoped that my aunt didn’t bother coming back and got out of bed to find out… and to eat breakfast.
My mom was getting breakfast on the table. Jonathan and Dad were up and yawning, discussing some football game that could not have meant less to me. As I approached the table, my mom greeted me with a snap of her head and a huge good morning smile.
“Wake your aunt for me,” she told me nicely. My mom was always at her happiest in the early morning; it was strangely enchanting back when we were home.
I didn't argue (half because I don’t like talking in the morning and half because I didn’t want to say something that would regrettably bring down her mood) and walked over to the office doors.
I knew it before I opened the doors, but I figured fate owed me some sort reimbursement for its current enjoyment in tearing my life apart. Apparently, fate didn’t see it the same way. There she was, asleep on the pull out couch. Worse yet, the freaking bird was asleep on its own pillow on one of our book shelves. I considered walking back out quietly and telling Mom (she would have freaked out because she hates animal so close to anything she has to clean), but then I realized that I would be capable of waking her up rudely without putting Mom's good mood into jeopardy.
I walked over to the side of the bed that she was closest to and picked up an unused pillow. I made sure no one was watching before I hit her on the head with the pillow. Her eyes snapped open and focused on me through her messy hair. I stared back at her trying to convey that I would torture her for last night until she no longer lived here. It was the least I could do. I then tossed the pillow aside and walked out without a word while plotting other ways to get her back for the previous night.
“Time to eat,” my mom called. My plotting was set aside momentarily so I could focus on food.
My dad and brother sauntered in almost instantly (the smell alone of my mom’s cooking could do that), but Aunt Macy took a little longer. My mom puts on a breakfast buffet that would make you cry; home-made biscuits, jams, bacon, sausage, potatoes, and eggs in at least two varieties. I will admit (however bitterly) that her cooking tasted as good in Utah as in Cali.
Usually we didn’t bother talking with such a delicious spread but this was Utah.
“So, Mace,” my dad said between bites, “how long have you been in Cutlerville?”
“A couple days, the evenings are so nice here,” my aunt answered. I got the hint from her voice, something only I was supposed to hear. It was her response to my threat to torture her; good luck.
“Do you think you’ll stay?” my mom pressed earnestly.
“You asked me that last night,” Aunt Macy reminded her.
“Well, sometimes you make rash decisions so you could have an answer now,” my mom pointed out.
My aunt sighed, “Sometimes I wish you were wrong, Lil. I have made up my mind, and I’m staying.”
There was a short but nonetheless annoying outburst of “Wow”s and “Really”s.
“How long?” my mom demanded.
“I plan on settling Lil,” my aunt answered a hint of laughter in her voice.
“So, hopefully as long as England?” my mom joked.
“Hopefully longer. I’m going to find a house as soon as I can, but do you guys mind if I…”
“You can stay for as long as it takes Mace,” my dad told her.
“Thank you,” my aunt said, “and I’m going to make myself useful too. After breakfast, I’ll crop some firewood, I’ve had some practice before. I’ll even teach Ava,” she contended turning to me. My head snapped up and the shock kept the indignation off of my face. “You really should get to know the woods. You wouldn’t want to get lost.”
My parents were freaking thrilled with the idea (did I happen to mention my mom is a morning person?). So after breakfast, my aunt and I put on our shoes and headed out to her truck to get her ax. Hmm, an ax…
Her truck looked old and worn out. The rust was probably older than I was, and it need more than just a little paint.
Here’s a little family background for you: my grandpa owns an auto repair shop. My mom and aunt grew up and worked there most of their lives. So, my aunt knows a lot about cars, but the fact that she was capable of keeping that thing running was somewhere near a miracle.
Aunt Macy hopped into the bed of the truck and struggled with the hog wash of stuff she had back there. As she dug through everything, I looked at the items more closely. Clothes were scattered in the cab while a sleeping bag, camp grill, tool box, humidifier, tent, bird cage, and a mysterious, long, silver box were unarranged in the back.
“Do you travel much?” I inquired. I knew she lived in England from the beginning of college until the day before, when she mysteriously appeared. But as far as my family and I knew, she lived in one place, had some mysterious job, and lived in a house. The back of her truck seemed to contradict this.
“Yeah, for the past ten years,” she answered finally locating the ax and starting to figure out how to get to it.
Well, that might have been nice to know. She’s traveled for ten years without telling us, and she sent me into the fog. I’d classify her as a psychotic manipulative freak with acute communication issues. And she’s living with us. Great, maybe I will die here after all.
“Yup, I’ve traveled just about everywhere. England, France, Spain,” she listed dislodged the ax from its pile, “Luxemburg, Germany, Russia, Romania, Lithuania, Thailand, China, Australia…I think that’s about it.”
“Thanks for all the post cards,” I snarked.
“Well, I was a little busy,” she said as she finally found a way back to the end of her truck.
“Yeah, partying.” It wasn’t a question. My mom went to Harvard for Law, but her sister went to the cheapest college she could get into that offered oversea programs in England. My mom was hard working, but my aunt was more of a party, let's-travel-around-the-world girl.
My aunt laughed, in fact she’s snorted. “There wasn’t a lot of time for partying,” she remarked and headed off for the trees with her feet firmly on the ground again.
I rolled my eyes as I started after her, and I knew I’d regret it (let’s just say I was used to regret). I caught up with her stroll as she broke through the edge of the trees. “So what were you doing all that time?”
“Searching for my foghorn,” she replied like it was as normal a statement as a remark about the sky color in Lithuania.
I was of course confused, but she made no twitch in the direction of clarifying. “I’m not going to ask, so just tell me,” I told her.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye like I was a worthy opponent in this game she'd begun to play. “The grey birds that live in fog are called foghorns. I had one once,” I felt her reverent tone stick to me like the morning dew. “His name was Smoke. I loved being his Shadow. He was beautiful.”
“Shadow?” I inquired not interested in hearing her write a poem to a bird.
“We’re Shadows,” she answered flickering an index finger between the two of us. “Anyone who unleashes a fog being is one. You see the fog beings, like foghorns, are trapped in the fog until they make a connection with a human.”
Great, I unleashed it.
“Foghorns connect by saving someone. They always protect their Shadows. For ten years he stuck by my side, died and returned to me. He always found me. And then one day he didn’t.”
“Why not?” I inquired hopeful.
“I don’t know,” she said. Her voice was drenched in so much sorrow, passion, and loyalty that I stopped without even noticing. She stopped too and faced me. Her emotions were on her face; she wasn’t crying, but her face was. “I’m trying to find him. When foghorns die they are usually deposited into the closest fog patch to be reborn. All I had to do was find him and walk out with him. He didn’t need to save me again, just needed me there to get him back out. But he never appeared in the closest fog territories. So I traveled looking for the places the fog collects.”
“So that’s why you’re in Cutlerville, for the fog?” I asked.
“Why else would I be in Utah?” she said, allowing a third of her sorrow to melt into sarcasm. I continued to stare at her. Her eyes looked at me differently than they had; she was looking at me like her equal. “I finally was brave enough to call home a few days ago. Mom told me you guys were moving here. I stayed to see how close you guys were living to the fog; I planned on moving in to protect you guys.”
“Protect us from what?” I asked, well aware that I was sixteen and there was nothing I couldn’t handle.
“The dragons. They’re dangerous, Ava,” she told me. “You should hear the stories about people disappearing. Dragons feed off of humans. This isn't the first time I've seen dragons. I've just never seen so many so far from Asia. I might not have a foghorn to protect me, but I still know about fog. So I stayed to help, but then I saw you.”
My face crinkled in repulsion. “What did you see?” I asked.
“You have the Glow. It’s like an aura with red and blue. Anything that has been touched by the fog or anyone who has the capability of becoming Shadows are outlined. It’s the best way to recognize other Shadows,” Aunt Macy explained.
“You sent me in there to...” I tried to figure out her motives.
My aunt smiled adoringly at me. “To give you a foghorn.”
Okay. I sensed there was more to her plan than that. “So what now?”
“Now we stop the dragons.”
“And how is that done?” I asked ignoring the “we”.
Aunt Macy shrugged. “They’re fog, they can’t be completely destroyed.” Great. “They’ll keep reappearing, but it's possible to keep them imprisoned. If we find the person who released them and kill them, then they would have to be re-released by someone else to get out of the fog.”
“Released them? You mean they save people to get out of the fog and then kill people?” That seemed deceitful.
“Only foghorns have to save someone. Just like you were in trouble when you released…your foghorn,” Aunt Macy said her face wrinkling up. “What are you going to name him?”
I rolled my eyes, tired of the distractions. “Cumulonimbus,” I suggested.
Aunt Macy lifted her eyebrows. “Like the one over your head or up your butt?”
“Does it make a difference?” I countered.
“No,” Aunt Macy smiled. “Just like you released Cloud,” I noted the nickname, “the dragons must be released from the fog. Someone has to make a connection with them for them to wander free. But that connection is different for every fog species.”
“But either way they would need some human connection to be released?”
“Yes.”
“And we’re going to kill this person?” I checked.
“Person or persons. Then, we kill the dragons, they go back in the fog, and we make sure no one releases them again.”
“Oh, well that’s simple. Have you decided what we’re going to do with the dead body yet?” I asked sarcastically to keep the horror from setting in.
“No,” she responded, but I got the feeling she had.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011 4:35:10 AM
Lucid Dreams
About half-way into the fog, I noticed the back of my hand, still sparkling with the same grey spots. I stopped; I could swear they were in the exact same formation as before. All at once, I was overwhelmed by the peculiarity of the dream. The spots plus the path through the trees was the same even though I'd never walked it before. But I hadn't paid that close attention to my surroundings, so maybe I was just being paranoid. I pulled my hand closer to my face to prove to myself that the dream was just a dream. Then, as if trying to be helpful (but really not), the clouds allowed the moonlight to break through. The grey spots started to shimmer, in a fast, scary sort of way, and darkened (which is never a good sign).
The fog didn’t start turning dangerous right away, and I stood my ground hoping that my nightmare was just a nightmare. The fog moved around me in its nauseating waves that tried to thrash me. Sickening fear gripped my stomach. And then I saw the eyes; those terrifying red eyes.
You know those dreams where you wake up twice? That’s not what happened.
I’m not sure if I threw up. I know I wanted to, but all I remember was that the eyes were closer to me than in my dream, and I stood no chance of getting away. I was frozen where I stood.
It moved slowly towards me this time as it whispered its chaos. I felt distrust in the whispers, like they were trying to lure me. With a three foot gap between us, it stopped, never taking its eyes off of mine. My horror kept me from being enchanted by its beautiful details; feathers woven and matted back like scales but all etched out of fog. A big round face with a fluffy mane-looking thing, broad nose, and a mouth pressed into a hard invisible line.. It looked just like a grey Chinese dragon. The only speck of color came from the glowing red eyes.
Then, it reared up, not on its back legs (as far as I could tell, the closest thing it had to legs were short fin-like ruffles that ran the length of its body). It reared up on the back of its tail, like a snake. Though it was taller than the fog above it, it did not break through the wispy layer. The fog stretched up with it, like standing up in a tent; fog moving like fabric.
Then, clashing with its whispering song, came a loud, obnoxious, word-less shout. It was like the sound of a car horn but different with texture and overtones mixed into it like a voice. The dragon’s whispers stopped and it looked around behind my shoulder. Before I could glance back, a little, grey bird came darting over my shoulder and fluttered to a stop in front of me. Like the dragon, he seemed to be made of nothing more than condensed fog.
The dragon glanced back and forth between the bird and me for a moment, then smiled (it was a really creepy, sickening smile) with its mouth appearing out of nowhere. It reared up a little further and the bird made the same honking sound I had heard earlier. I saw the wave reverberate against the dragon’s skin or feathers or whatever they were. Sending ripples into him, but not the fog between him and us. The dragon glanced at its body as if checking that it was still intact and smiled at us again.
The bird fluttered to my side, and rammed its head into my shoulder as if nudging me away. I saw the giant tail of the dragon come sweeping towards us. I ducked, and, once I was clear of the tail, I ran. I didn’t stop to check if the bird was okay; I just ran. I ran towards the edge of the fog, and I was determined to give my aunt a piece of my mind when I got there.
As I ran, I could hear the sound of the dragon slithering after me, and I ran harder. Then, I heard the bird call again, and I knew without a doubt what it was trying to do. It was slowing it down. Calling again and again to distract the beast and give me time to get out. I wasn’t planning on stopping until I was all the way back to California.
I did stop, panting, once I was out of the fog. Being in clear air removed the panic from me. I turned to my aunt, still out of breath but ready to glare, and noticed she was looking around me, frightened. She seemed shocked and looked back to the fog. Then, the bird came flying out, and my aunt breathed a sigh of relief. She was worried about the stupid bird!
The bird collapsed on my shoulder. The only thing that kept me from sweeping him off my shoulder onto the ground was that he’d just risked his life, and I wasn’t sure if he had the energy to stop himself from hitting the ground.
I rolled my eyes at my aunt as she took a few happy puffs from her cigarette. Finally, I turned to climb back up the rise.
I heard her say quietly, very sad and hurt, “Ava…”
I didn’t want to hear it. Whatever had happened in there, she’d known it would and sent me in anyway. She was more concerned for the bird than my well being. She was just another reason to hate Utah.
Friday, October 21, 2011 1:25:29 AM
Lucid Dreams
Where is it written that just because some strange relative, who has not kept in touch for the past nth years, appears completely unannounced that you have to talk to them for an extended period of time? I think I’d like to punch whoever thought that one up. I have dark circles under my eyes from my aunt’s visit. She’s staying here (in the office with the cool fire place I might add) and we get to continue to talk to her tomorrow, so why stay up half the night? She might even move to Cutlerville. That’s just another wonderful reason to leave this place as fast as we left our last home.
I glared through my dark eye lashes at myself in the mirror until they each seemed to disappear behind black lines. I was sure my aunt was one of those annoying people who wake-up remarkably early (like my mom) just to bug me even more in the morning. I shut off the bathroom light and stumbled through the hallway to finally crawl into bed, too exhausted to fully make my bed before curling up with just a blanket and laying my head on a bare pillow. The light outside was keeping me awake even though I was used to the bright lights of the city. I crawled and sat at the edge of my bed to get a better view of the source of the light. The moon was somehow reflecting its light strong enough to break through the branches and pester me in my room.
I was at my rope's end, now. I needed to calm down with some fresh air if I ever wanted to get some sleep. The stupid screen in front of my window was inhibiting it; choking it off as it tried to comfort me. My old window didn’t have a screen because there weren't as many bugs to keep out.
Unable to take my growing anger any longer, I grabbed my jacket and headed out of the house. A crazy combination of fury and rebellion driving me down the trail in the woods without a particular plan for where I was going. The grove of trees felt strangely alive. I felt paranoid enough to stop dead in the middle of the trail. Complete silence all around me, the only source of motion was...the light. The light was doing weird things, flickering. It was weirder than that though; the leaves were casting their nightly shadows and shuffling in the wind so the light shifted around. But colors flicked as they did this. The brown trees, green leaves, closed purple flowers, and crystal-clear dew drops all had a blue line around half of their outline and a red line around the other half. They were thin and barely visible, but I couldn't deny their existence when everything was surrounded by them. As the moon’s light was blocked and unblocked, these lines switched places. Where once the blue stood, the red suddenly glistened, and then back again. This sent a shiver down my spine, but I continued to press on. This place could not get to me.
I moved down a slope, dead leaves sliding with me. I fought and kept my balance. When I felt most confident that I would stay on my feet, I lost and gravity ripped me down the rise on my butt. I stopped mere inches from the bottom. Most remarkably, I was facing a wall of fog that seemed to tower over me in challenge.
I stood up in awe and had to consciously close my mouth. It didn't weave its way in among the trees, giving the impression that it wasn't allowed beyond the very edge of the grove. Above the fog was clear as far as I could see, meaning I stood in front of a clearing full of fog. The clouds now hid the moon. The only evidence of its existence was that of strange beams of red and blue light that tried to pierce them but was over-ruled and dispersed.
The fog seemed to move in front of me. Like like an ocean, it's current a language only it could understand. It seemed like a beautiful ballet. Nervously, I lifted my hand and slowly stretched it to the surface of the fog. It didn’t shudder at my touch, but continued its ballet like no interruption had occurred. A small wave came along and washed over the back of my hand. I gasped. It felt so real, so solid. It was almost like water or fabric had barely brushed my skin, but fog was moisture suspended in air. It didn’t feel soft; it didn’t feel like anything. Or at least it shouldn’t.
Something glistened on the back of my hand. I moved it closer to my face to get a better look. They were little dew drops but tinier and they seemed to glow and shimmer on top of my hand. The drops quickly dried as tiny sparkles of grey. I rubbed at them with my thumb but they would not disappear. I put my hand down and faced the fog again, curious.
Out of some strange, stupid courage, I proceeded with the idea to enter the fog. The ballet on the outside continued on the inside. The fog moved and swayed like it was alive. I was surrounded by it but it didn’t include me in its motions. I continued to move in it and be in the midst of the ballet without trouble. The fog still felt solid as it wrapped my body in its wonder. None of it felt as soft or left glittering spot as that one little wave had against my hand.
Without warning, the clouds up above moved, and I froze. I looked up at the clouds through the whispy amount of grey fog that hovered above my head. The moon shone its light down. I suddenly felt claustrophobic, sensing the proximity of danger before I even knew danger existed. The fog changed, instantly violent. The gentle ballet morphed into a sea-sickening attack. It found its way into my hair, catching it roughly. I admit it even seem to tear at my clothes.
This was not the danger I felt, but it wasn’t long until it appeared. Two red dots pierced through the fog looking at me without ever changing to blue. Focused on me, they slid closer until I could make out its barely condensed fog figure. It was like a Chinese dragon with large, red, LED eyes. It moved snake like on the ground with its head raised to torso level, steadily focused on me.
I turned and ran as fast as I could out of the fog. But I had been far from the edge that I had entered on and had a long blind run ahead of me. The dragon was the faster. I couldn’t hear it breathing; making a sound I’d never heard before, like a soft whisper of nothing pooled together in chaos. But I was near the edge of the fog, where I was sure the monster could not follow me beyond the trees.
Something hard caught my foot, and I was torn into a fall for the second time that night. I hit hard and could hear the monster behind me. It had stopped moving, but I could still hear the whispers. I accessed that it was raising its head.
I moved to turn around and was quite suddenly sitting up. Something soft hit my legs. I jumped a little. My legs were tangled in my blankets and my pillow had fallen from my face onto them (I had no idea how my pillow had ended up on top of my face). I breathed relief that I was safely in my room and fell back on my flat, now pillow-less, mattress. The red eyes seemed to have left an impression in my eyelids though. I push my bangs straight back, wiping forehead sweat into them.
It was just a dream, I told myself. I slowly shook off my paranoia, and my heartbeat slowed itself.
It was still night and the moonlight was dimly coming through the window, now. Nothing in my room did a strange color change. Normal and boring were beautiful peace to me suddenly.
I heard the back garage door open slowly and then slam shut in a very snappy way. I crawled to the end of my bed to see who it was. I wasn’t going to let Jonathan sneak out into the dark. It was my aunt instead.
I couldn’t really let her walk around out there alone either. I grabbed my jacket and went after her. The trees gave me the same dark paranoia again, but I kept moving, entering the grove of trees on the trail I'd taken in the dream. I caught sight of her once or twice, but she seemed to be staying just far enough ahead of me as we trekked the same path down to the clearing. the path curved down the slope, and I took it easy. This time, I didn’t slip, but I was losing ground on my aunt. I got to the bottom, and it was like my dream. There was the wall of fog and the moon hidden within the clouds above. The only difference was my aunt.
As I approached her, I saw a red-orange glow. I gasped before I noticed the white paper of a cigarette stuck in her mouth. I sighed relief. My aunt turned to me with a smile on her face. She raised an eyebrow like she was expecting me to say something.
“Well, Ava, step into the fog,” she said and nodded her head to the fog. She continued to watch me like a cat watching a bird.
There was a moment of complete silence in which the sun could have risen and fallen infinitely or halted completely. I was so detached from it all as I accept it as fate: I was going into the fog. I faced the fog, so close to it that my breath should have stirred it around in the ballet, and took a deep breath. I held it and stepped in; the smell of my aunt's cigarette disappeared so suddenly that I hadn't noticed it was there until it was already gone.
Monday, October 17, 2011 11:37:32 PM
Lucid Dreams
After leaving the safety of Los Angeles that had traveled with us in the car, I retrieved my backpack of car ride entertainment, and we walked into the house.
We entered through the garage; you know, the sort of garage that from the front looks like the house is just really long but if you were to walk along the side, you'd see that that last portion is actually the garage pretending to be the house. Confession: I’m not entirely sure why we entered through the garage and not the front door, especially since as we didn’t park in the garage. Maybe the lack of L.A. air was making my family illogical. Great.
So through the garage and into the house. The door took us right into the main living space, a room that (from almost any other point seems spacious but) was very claustrophobic right where we entered. The kitchen, dinning room, and living room was all one space. The reason that particular spot was claustrophobic was because someone placed the refrigerator to the left and a pantry to the right. If you imagine the fridge and pantry making a little sudo-hallway (which is exactly what it felt like), the hallway for the bedrooms on the other side of the main living space, lined up with the sudo-hallway perfectly.
To the left of the perfect line of regular and sudo-hallway, was a retangular space. The half closest to us was the kitchen and furthest was the dinning room. The living room was on the other side of this imaginay line.
The front door was on the living room side by the wall that separated the living space and the bedrooms. there were french doors in the dinning room that led to my dad's to-be office.
As for the actual hallway, the first door on the left was my brother’s room, the left back was inevitably my room, across the hall was my parent’s room, and the first door on the right was the bathroom I got to share with my brother.
Ta-dah, the grand tour.
Luckily, I didn’t care about which room I got, so we avoided the usual sibling bickering cliché that is generally the first sounds to be heard in a new house.
Then with the beautiful noise of squeeky, sand-crusted tires, the moving van arrived, pulling down our road-sized driveway. My dad directed it as close to the front porch as possible, and we let the unloading commence. My dad and the moving guys handled the heavy items pretty well while my mom directed them cheerfully. My brother and I unloaded our own stuff separately, though I was forced to help with some of his larger items like his dresser that apparently didn’t qualify as “heavy”. He helped with my dresser and trunk in turn.
There weren’t that many boxes left by the time Jonathan and I were done. And after the way my parents were telling me to get out of the way when I tried to walk down the hall, I really didn’t feel like helping anymore. My brother was already setting up the computer in the office, which didn’t entirely qualify as helping either. So I started to unpack our bathroom stuff so I could shower.
When I was done and dressed, I sat in my room with the door closed, looking down at all the boxes. I didn’t dare open them. There would have been an inevitable worm-hole resulting from L.A. stuff in a Utah house. There was no way said worm-hole would lead to L.A. either. Clearly, the Universe hated me; I wasn’t going to give it a chance to make things worse. So, I just sat on my bare mattress for a while.
I didn’t want to emerge either. My mom would have put me to work, and I really didn’t want to cause the worm-hole while she ordered me to move dishes from one shelf to another because they had to be just right.
The phone rang, and I jumped in hope. As I had zoned out while staring at the floor, I forgot that the cable and electricity was set up the day before and all anyone had to do was plug in our phone. The ring was the same as it was back in L.A. and, since I had zoned out and forgotten myself, the ring gave me hope that maybe I had been asleep or hallucinating all this time. I wasn’t.
But my mom was now busy talking on the phone so I was safe to get out of my room for a few seconds. I only walked to the end of the hall to observe all of them. The first thing I noticed was three giant beams on the vaulted ceiling like some stupid prairie house, and I snorted as I shook off my A.D.D. Mom was on the phone talking with her back turned in the kitchen. Jonathan was on the couch making sure he set up the TV right, which really means he was seeing where his favorite channels were. And dad…
“Hey kiddo,” he said spotting me on his way out of the office. “Want to go get some fire wood with me?”
No.
“Sure,” I said somewhat convincingly, though I think my nose involuntarily wrinkled when he brought it up.
I almost forgot to tell you. The reason we needed fire wood was because this stupid house doesn’t have a furnace. Yeah, I know, isn’t that great? So I had to go (right after my shower) and pick up dirt laden sticks for us to burn. Yay.
Dad and I went into the garage and put our shoes on (my mom has the no-shoes-in-the-house rule) then we left out yet another garage door, this one to the back yard. I nearly walked straight into a branch. I glared at the felonious branch as I side-stepped it. We picked up the thicker branches from trees that had fallen. My dad had yet to buy an ax and even if he’d already had, my mom wouldn’t have let him use it without first doing research online. So, we came back with some semi-log sized dirt branches, which we left in the garage to be burned later that night, and went inside.
There were more people in the house when we came back than when we had left. Only one new person actually, namely my aunt. My mom was laughing and sitting across the table from this stranger when we walked in. My brother sat nearby, smiling, though looking confused.
“My word,” my dad gasped, “Macy, is that you?”
The woman smiled. “Who else do you know that makes my sister laugh?”
My dad laughed and responded, “One time Mace, that was one time.”
I rolled my eyes at their silly inside joke and walked to the table with my dad. My dad hugged her (avoiding a cigarette), and I made some quick observations: she smokes, she looked like she was in her mid-forties (even though she was still late thirties), her hair was light brown with unruly waves, her eyes matched my mom’s calm blue, and her long sleeve sweater was a pretty dark blue.
I sat down next to Jonathan as my dad sat down at the head of the table. We had made sort of a semi-circle facing her.
My mom turned to me to tell me, “Ava, this is your aunt Macy.”
I'd figured that much out for myself.
“You’ve never met her.”
But I’ve heard about her my whole life.
I smiled anyway and turned to Aunt Macy, “Hi.” I was trying to act charming and not angry to the nth degree to be in freaking Utah; therefore, the shorter the sentences, the better.
She was already looking at me when I turned to her, and I made another strange realization: she was looking at me funny. Sure, she was smiling and her greeting was friendly, but beyond those eyes that she shared with my mom, I could see something else. The look just wasn’t right. It wasn’t the look of “Wow that’s my niece that I’ve never seen” or even “It’s nice to see you”. She was looking at me as if she’d finally found what she’d been looking for for a long time.
No one else seemed to notice and by the time she started talking and greeting me back the look was gone. But for the rest of the night I could see the corners of her lips pull up slightly, like a cunning smile, and that slight cloudiness to her eyes, like when someone is thinking. She definitely put me on edge.
Friday, October 14, 2011 1:35:26 AM
Lucid Dreams
I was never a fan of road trips or traveling. I especially hated leaving Los Angelos to move to Utah. The scenery didn't really change much during our drive. In fact, it didn't seem like it moved at all once we were out of the city. It was all just sparkly, tan sand. But with every glace to the front, my fears were confirmed, we were indeed moving towards Utah. I looked again and again, eventually finding my eyes drawn to something amiss. Or rather something extra that wasn't supposed to be there. A little black dot further up the road, just close enough for us to tell that it wasn't the road or the heat playing tricks with our eyes. Soon the black dot became a possum interupting the beseig scenery on my side of the car.
A dead possum. How exciting. The black and grey of the fur stunned my eyes which were still functioning fine despite my best efforts to blind myself with sunlight so I no longer would have to see this boring desert. Its tiny pink tongue, the only source of real color I'd seen in miles, protruding out one side of its slit-like mouth. The possum was far enough off the road that it's cause of death didn't seem likely to be the crushing force of tires. Yet, there wasn’t any doubt in my dark, little mind that it was dead. From the time I spotted it until our SUV had fully passed it, all it did was lie there as its fur dance half-heartedly in the air currant. It looked like it had just dropped dead of boredom, and I really couldn't blame it.
“Awe,” my mother cooed from the front seat, “it’s playing possum.”
I shifted my eyes to look at her without moving my head. Her dark curls bounced around the head rest of the front seat and received the full impact of my glare.
“I don’t think it’s playing,” I suggested dryly.
“Darn it,” she replied thoroughly enjoying herself. “I hate serious possums.”
My smile burst through my generally gloomy facade. I withdrew it painfully. Nothing could be smile-worthy in Utah, and I wasn’t about to let a stupid possum brainwash me into submission. My smile was simply protesting my recent sadness. For weeks, all I could do was cry as we packed our things and said good-bye to our home in good, old Los Angeles. But my smile and I needed to stick together now and resist all pull to laugh at stupid, dead possums.
Let me describe to you what Utah looks like; there’s desert, a few rock formations, some mountains…oh, what do you know, a tiny patch of grass. I used to go to the beach all the time in California, so I don’t have anything against sand. But Utah equals sand overload.
Now, you might be asking, “Ava, if you didn’t want to move to Utah, how’d you get roped into it with only a few tears?”
Glad you asked. I have four reasons, and they are as follows:
1. I didn’t have a choice (that’s the big one)
2. I’m sixteen now and tantrums are below me, especially if I ever want to borrow the car to head back to L.A. on school breaks
3. My family was excited about it for some odd reason. And while I think that they are entirely insane, I didn’t want to crush them by explaining how lame the entire idea was because we sort of had to move, and
4. …umm I can’t think of a fourth reason. Well, three is easily enough to support my tears-only policy.
I guess you deserve the story from the top. So, here’s my pathetic tale from the beginning to sad car ride to our new home. Deep breath and…
My dad works for a construction company, based in L.A. It was great because, duh, there are a lot of buildings being built. Well, they (the bosses who better be hoping I never meet them) were starting a new little branch in this map-speck of a town in Utah. They wanted the best to get it going, and, unfortunately, that was my dad. The reason my mom agreed to leave her job and move was because technically it’s a promotion. My dad will be the new regional manager in charge of blah, blah, blah… My mind went on the fritz when I heard the word “Utah”.
So I sat, far from content but not complaining (at the moment) either, in the back seat of our SUV with my little brother, Jonathan, who was deeply submersed in a hand-held video game that I’m pretty sure he “borrowed” from one of his friends back in Cali. At least, they didn’t insist on singing ridiculous songs on our eleven hour drive. My parents were politely leaving me to sulk while they discussed my dad’s plans for the business, my mom’s plans for the house, and their plans for their darling children.
Darling? I seriously considered going emo because our move; half because I felt like letting my anger out in some way and half because it seemed very appropriate given my dark little mind. I didn’t, it would have made them feel guilty, and then, I would feel guilty for making them feel guilty. I was a little too busy feeling sorry for myself to feel guilty. One emotion at a time. Okay, half-darling, half-despondent, fully deranged. Yay for words that begin with ‘d’!
Oh, well. I will have you know, I’ve formulated a list of things to learn to curb my inevitable boredom while I spend the remainder of my high school years locked away in said rocky desert.
1. Reading lips- I don’t really intend on speaking to anyone in Utah (that may or may not include my family). But reading lips is sort of like reading someone’s mind, which would be totally awesome. Plus, it’s good practice in case I ever become a spy. I doubt anyone is interesting enough to keep me entertained for longer than 2.8 seconds, though.
2. Hot-wiring a car-Just in case I feel like becoming a juvenile delinquent.
3. Italian-The only justification I have for this one is I like Italian.
4. Yoga-Because I seriously doubt they even know what Yoga is in Utah, and it’s a part of my Cali identity (even though I never learned). It might help with some peace of mind too (or provide serenity for my evil plots).
5. Become a music critic-I know movies because of the whole Hollywood thing but music not so much. My CD collection consists of five mixed CDs. Time to change that.
6. Computers-Beyond e-mail and general typed documents, I know nothing about computers. That needs to change because the internet will be my only connection to the sane west coast.
“Welcome to Cutlerville,” my dad interrupted my loathing from the driver’s seat. I think the name does it justice, and my dark sarcasm is unnecessary. I would like to point out though that Los Angeles doesn’t sound suicidal.
I turned to the window to view the torture that was beyond my scowling reflection. Funny thing about Cutlerville: it looked identical to the desert we'd been driving through for hours: sandy and vacant. As far I could tell, the town consisted of the sign welcoming us to this sandcastle. A small town is one thing, I was prepared for that, but I preferred to live somewhere that didn’t require a magnifying glass to view. Here’s a little fun fact for you: they considered Cutlerville big enough to include on an ordinary map.
Then, another sign came along our car. It was a speed limit sign with a pathetically small number written on it. I’m pretty sure a tumble weed passed us.
Then, a not so welcome distraction from the patheticness: commercial buildings were abruptly on either side of the car. You know those flat front buildings you see in stupid westerns? That’s exactly what these looked like. They even had those wooden fence-like things out front for horses. There was actually a horse tied to one of them!
“Oh look, Ava, there’s the hair dresser’s. We should get your hair cut before school,” my mom suggested from in front of me. I looked down at my long, straight, black hair that had swept itself to the front of my shoulder. My mom was always trying to trim my hair right off my head. Let’s just say I wasn’t in the mood to deal with it that day.
“Yeah, I wonder how short I have to get my hair cut in order to spike it into a Mohawk. I bet they have purple hair-dye somewhere around here,” I jested. I’ll be honest; I was actually tempted to try it.
Luckily, my mom didn’t push it (because I might have gone ahead with the idea) and quietly shook her head.
The town, which had fewer buildings than a nature preserve, ended just as suddenly as it had appeared. At least, the buildings had hide the desert from sight, but, once again, sand overwhelmed my view as we continued east turning down a few roads. Then, we came to a hill of (what else?) sand. An alarm went off in my head at the sight and I thought, that shouldn't be physically possible. A hill of sand should not be able to support a road. Nevertheless, we drove up. Amazingly, it didn't crumble (I actually felt a little disappointed that it didn't).
I didn't have time to analyze that emotion because there was a surprising sight waiting over the hill. There was a tall red mountain a mile away, directly in front of us. The road stretched all the was across the flat desert abyss between our pathetic hill and the mountain, disappearing into a tiny line somewhere near the base. Along the road, the desert landscape was specked with texture. As we dropped down the hill, I recognized that texture as weeds. I'll take weeds over plain sand any day. Best of all, there were trees. Along the right-hand side of the road were a gathering of loosely packed trees. They didn't stretch the entire length of the road to the mountain, but the greenery was the happiest color on earth to my eyes.
We drove in the shade of the trees and eventually turned down a dirt road that led into the trees. The trees weren't as close together in the traditional sense of the word “woods”. “Grove” was probably the better term for them. But years of only seeing trees in orchards made a grove fine with me. We stopped in the middle of a dirt clearing, and I recognized the sad, one-story house sitting there in the shade. It was the dreaded house that my parents had shown me pictures of thinking it would get me excited about the move.
I seethed out loathing of this inadament object as my family climbed out of the car. My mom closed her door, saw me, put her hands on her hips, removed them to open my door, and placed them back on her hips to address me.
“It’s not that bad sweetie. C’mon.”
I unbuckled myself reluctantly and took a deep breath before stepping out. It was official: I was in Cutlerville, Utah.
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