Chapter 1.
A friend nice told me that every artist has his muse. It was Autumn of 1995 when mine more or less stumbled into my life. I like to call her Claire.
I was in a pretty bad state at the time, mentally and emotionally. I had, from about the beginning of the year, gone from what I consider to be a reasonably normal kid to a very tormented and lost young man. I wish I could blame all this on puberty, but it seems other forces were at work. I had about reached the pique of my horror in August, and that event had pretty much left me sinking in a swamp made up of overwhelming nihilism, unwavering pessimism, and the deepest, most thorough form of confusion one could imagine.
On the day in question, I was sitting in front of the computer, typing away as I munched on my usual Ritz crackers and drank coffee mixed with hot chocolate mix -- a cheap form of mocha my friend, Ned, had introduced to me. The computer I was working on was actually my parent’s computer and was situated at the far end of the family room. I had wanted one in my room for forever, but in some small ways it was pretty cool having it down there. When I wasn't writing I could shoot some pool on the table behind me or play the piano situated at the other end of the room.
My mind was far away from the piano or the pool table that day, however. As a matter of fact, I hardly noticed where I was physically located at all – I was very wrapped up in my writing. I was working on this short story involving a lost young man who is about to commit suicide on a bridge over water one night when he meets a girl, who turns out to be a vampire. It was going along pretty well, too, until my mind was pulled back to the mundane world by the sound of a familiar voice. And that's when I pulled out of that grand universe of chaos in my head and turned around to see my friend, Dante.
Dante. This guy was an excellent guitarist, and he played lead in a band called Wastelands that had formed the year earlier, my freshmen year of high school. They practiced habitually at the house of the rhythm guitarist, Aaron. As a matter of fact, as Dante quickly revealed, Aaron was the reason he’d stopped over: the guy was MIA and he wondered if I'd seen the guy. Why Dante would think for a second that I had a clue where the guy might be was beyond me, and I told him as much. Not to be harsh or anything, but I had never fancied Aaron that much. The guy was annoying, he never bathed, and his dandruff was atrocious. Other than that he had less than admirable qualities.
I thought perhaps Dante had just used Aaron's disappearence as an excuse to stop by, and I was fine with that, so we started getting wrapped up in some conversation. It didn't take too long at all, though, until I was struck by an unfamiliar presence. Struck like lightning. Struck by the purest manifestation of absolute beauty.
It was this girl that was with him who I had never seen before. She looked damned attractive. An odd being, yes, but a damn fine looking being with her cute face and her deep, blue ocean eyes. Her shoulder-length, hot-pink hair made her even more difficult not to notice. She wore one of those weird green shirts with the collar and those little dinosaurs in front. I was absolutely drawn to her. To everything about her. And instantly I was reminded of that girl Claire Danes off My So-Called Life, who I'd found attractive ever since I'd first seen the show. Actually, I had been wishing for a girl that looked just like her for some time, but I wasn't actually serious...
When Dante introduced us she kind of had her arms crossed and nodded a sarcastic "hi" with a tilt of her head. Ah, I thought, a cocky woman. Anyway, as any conversation with me ever starts on my behalf with a person I've never met -- espeically an attractive girl -- I started making fun of her. Yet to my surprise, this playful, pathetic and childish attempt at opening the lines of communcation was actually successful. The teasing that went back and fourth between us led to talking, and the talking led to pool-playing, and that led to more teasing and more talking. The feeling I got around her was tremendously strange. I rarely, if ever, felt that way around a girl.
I noticed a certain conflict in me then. I had lost all belief in the instincts that came with being human. I had lost trust in all drives that I did not entirely understand. I felt that by this point in human evolution we should have trancended such urges. It seemed to me that the concept of love was merely a romantic veil we placed over our animalistic instinct to procreate -- some genetic drive to achieve species immortality. I kept reminding myself that I could not be fooled by these lowly instincts and that I had to make sure it was something in her that I admired beyond the flesh before I even considered trusting this overwhelming, warm and intense feeling her presence gave rise to in me.
After we had played a few games of pool, I took Dante aside as subtely as I could. It wasn't really pre-planned, it was just something I found myself doing. And then I found myself very quietly asking him just where this beautiful girl had come from. He explained how she had used to live up in California, but that her father had lost his job and they had to come live with Dante’s parents.
Dante lived half a block from my house. This pink-haired, Californian beauty lived not a block from my house.
I was excited. He had liked my cousin, Trish, at the time so I asked him if half-jokingly if he wanted to exchange cousins. When he looked confused, I was more clear: I’d set him up with my cousin if he’d set me up with her, I told him. He said that this would be cool and all, that this would be beyond cool, as a matter of fact, save for the fact that Claire already had a boyfriend.
Some kid named Nick who was living with Aaron. I jokingly – well, half-jokingly – asked Dante how much it would be to kill him for me. He laughed and said he wasn’t sure he could do anything, but he’d see what he could do.
I felt a release. A tingly feeling. A lightness, a playfullness that I had a faint memory of feeling some time long ago. Any hope, especially around that time, was more than I could ever ask for.
After we had played more pool, and eventually got bored, Dante ended up standing by the computer and asked what I had been writing. I told him it was a short story, and Claire immediately jumped and said she had wanted to read. I was a bit nervous, because I wasn’t finished, so I tried to get my ass in the chair before she did. We struggled for a bit and she ended up sitting on my face. It was strangely comfortable. Dante stood over us, a bit amused, a bit disturbed, spell-checking my story as Claire read it.
When I told her it involved a vampire, she told me she was a Moonbeast. I lifted an eyebrow in confusion. When it had become clear that I didn’t know what she was talking about, she sort of pushed it out of the way and said she’d tell me sometime later.
The following day, Date gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come over to Aaron’s place and watch them play. I did this occasionally, as way back when the band first formed they’d played with the idea of me coming a member. It was brought up that perhaps I could be lead singer. Fortunately I had heard myself try and sing before, so I saved them from this. But it was still cool to be in the same environment as these creative individuals, so I occasionally came over to watch them play.
I was bored, so he came over to pick me up. I didn't have a car at this time, because I was phobic of driving.
When Dante walked in through the door and I followed, the evening opened as I had predicted, as it always did every time I walked through that door. You see, Aaron has a funny way of greeting me at the door. He always takes a look at me, takes a step back, widens his eyes as if he’s surprised that I’m still alive, and says my full name in a very astonished manner. And then I look at him without blinking and say his name in a spooky, threatening way. It’s nothing personal, it’s just some strange way of relating we developed some time ago. If you haven't noticed, I have a variety of social problems.
So their band room was the basement. That basement was classic. Dimly lit, full of cigarette smoke, littered with beer bottles. Microphones, amplifiers, a mixer, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, drum set, coffee tables, side tables, ashtrays, posters, calendars of half-naked women on the walls. Everything you think of when you think `band room'. It was beautiful. And a black leather couch pushed against the far wall, behind all the instruments, right below the banner on which was embroided `Wastelands', with a bull skull right in the center. Ah, that couch.
And that’s where I was sitting. I think their bassist was tuning and someone else was pissing around when I was sitting there, burned out from my insomnia and too much coffee. My head ringing and numb by the sounds of wailing gutairs and violent drum solos.
Then, out of nowhere, I felt the couch move and I almost fell over to the left. I instead braced myself, leaned my body to the right, and turned my head to the left. And my brown eyes met with a familiar, life-giving, vibrant blue pair of eyes. Like pools offered to me by some Virgo moon goddess, in which I could bathe my shit-coated Scorpio soul. Not to trail off into astrology and metaphor or anything.
It was, of course, Claire. I was especially impressed by her strange, black cloths, which I had to assume was typical for California girls. If it turned out it was not typical, I was certainly of the opinion it should be. She wore these very short shorts, her big boots, her funky socks. Her beautiful blue eyes gave me a sinister gaze through the pink hair that hung across her face as she sat there smoking her cigarette.
Me? I was still in an antagonistic mood.
"You know those things kill your lungs," I'd said, nodding my head towards her cigarette. She responded by blowing smoke in my face.
I gave her a scowl, she gave me a teasing glare back. I nudged her arm, and she nudged me back.
Crap. I liked her.
Off and on throughout the night we talked, joked, teased, flirted. And throughout all of it there I was, realizing more and more that I liked her and beginning to hate that fact all the less. I mean, why should I despise the fact that I actually liked someone? That I was so drawn to such a strange, beautiful creature? Truth be known, I felt alive with her, something I'd lost a long while back and left for dead. And yet here it was, the glowing feeling, as if it had never left.
I should go for it, I thought, I should go for her. Flow with it and see what becomes with it. I was good as dead, and I had nothing to loose. But yes, there was that tiny little annoying detail about her having a boyfriend. That kick of reality that was bound to shake my coffee-table mind and collapse the house of cards that was this dream. So far things had been unbelieveable, like the opening of a dream. It seemed inconcievable that anything would become of it. All dreams ended the same way: you woke up. Nightmares apparently worked in accordence with another logical system. I ahd to remember that I was in a nightmare, and the brief flashes of dreams were just a reminder of what I could never have -- something to further the nightmare. All this thought of hr being mine and mine alone, that was silly. Preposterous. An insane thought cooked up by an insane mind. It was a dream, and dreams weren't reality, reality was a nightmare that had no forseeable end and no true intermissions.
And yet, a voice reminded, stranger things have happened. Ever since December, as a matter of fact, strange things have seemed to be the rule.
By the time I got home that night, my mind was buzzing with thoughts I never had before. The life I felt around this girl was amazing. What was wrong with me? Suddenly the hell I had been engulfed in the previous ten months seemed light years away. I had become a corpse as the result of my own personal apocolypse, and it was like she had breathed life into me -- the unprecedented appearence of a new genisis at the end of the world as I had known it. Proof of some death-rebirth cycle of sorts. I had tread through my own shadows, fought my own demons, and just when I thought it was all going downhill without a flow or a pause, without any hope of reversal, a light had appeared on the other side. A beautiful girl with pink hair and ocean blue eyes and funky socks.
On a bridge, on the verge of a death of sorts, a blakc blacker than black, there she stood -- the light of my life.
I got a call from Dante the following evening. He asked if I’d still take him up on that offer about exchanging cousins. I asked him specifically what he meant. He then informed me that Claire had broken up with her boyfriend. I got excited and totally immobilized with fear simultaneously. He said that she was very interested in me, but that I had to do the work if I really wanted her, and that he was going to hand her the phone now. Before I could protest, a cool, sexy female voice said hi from the other end of the line.
Hope was on the line. Reel it in, I told myself, reel this in. She's quite a catch.
We seemed to talk for hours that night. She told me all about her misadventures in California. She asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no, not currently, that I decided it probably wasn't a good idea because I was a little on the insane side. I had a problem relating to people who were, well, normal and stuff.
She informed me that she was no stranger to insanity. As a matter of fact, she’d chased a bunch of pills with a bottle of Jack Daniels one night after a fight with her parents and woke up in a hospital having her stomach pumped, and after that, she got thrown in the loony bin. And then she came to Ohio. Which one might consider just a bigger rubber room.
I was fairly certain at that time that the loony bin was a place where I was going to end up, so I listened very closely to her strange tales. And the more she talked the more I realized that I was absolutely, totally, one hundred per cent, without a doubt, completely into this girl.
She asked me why I was so sure I was insane, and I told her that it was a long story. She told me she had plenty of time, so I flipped through the excuse files in my mind to try to find a better way to dodge the question. I came up empty. I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn't want to lie to her, and though silence wasn't a lie, it wasn't an option at this point, so I did all I thought I could do. I summed it up. I told her that it had something to do with UFOs. For some reason I thought I should dodge the whole out-of-body experiences, seeing aliens, remembering past lives, being attacked by evil entities from another plane of existence, being informed that the world was going to end thing. That’s never a turn-on. But she had surprised me so far.
And to my suprise she didn't seem suprised. So I figured California must be one hell of a place. She told me she had seen a UFO once, or thought she had, when her and some friends from the loony bin were trying to escape out window. It was just a light, glimmering and bouncing in the darkness. She did warn me that they were on a stew of prescrption drugs at the time, though. I smiled and asked her if she’d ever seen anything else like that; anything in the area of the paranormal. Then she said yet again that she was a Moonbeast, and I asked her to elaborate.
She said that when she had just gotten out of the loony bin, just before her father had lost his job and moved out here to Ohio, she had been walking by an old clock tower and some guy had come by and asked her if she wanted to be a Moonbeast. She wasn’t sure, she told me, but she thought it was supposed to be some type of werewolf or vampire. I secretly rolled my eyes, but reminded myself of what had happened to me, and told myself that nothing should be shoved into the category of the impossible anymore.
Anyway, she said that the guy had bit her, and she had fainted, and that ever since she’d been obsessed with clocks. It sounded pretty out there, pretty cheesy, but so did inter-dimensional entities draining your vitality and getting probed by aliens, so who was I to talk?
We eventually got back around to the fact that she was single again, and I said that I was, too. I had been, since that little thing with Anne. I think I told her about Anne, how I’d met her at a water park with my cousins over the summer, how we’d met just before I’d gone completely insane and started seeing stuff. I told her it just hadn’t worked out. She suggested I go out with her now, because her and me, we could work out if I gave her a chance. And I said that I promised myself that I’d never ask out a girl over the phone again, that I should have guts and do it in person – and then I cracked down and asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend.
And she said yes.
And for the moment, as they say, it was good.
A friend nice told me that every artist has his muse. It was Autumn of 1995 when mine more or less stumbled into my life. I like to call her Claire.
I was in a pretty bad state at the time, mentally and emotionally. I had, from about the beginning of the year, gone from what I consider to be a reasonably normal kid to a very tormented and lost young man. I wish I could blame all this on puberty, but it seems other forces were at work. I had about reached the pique of my horror in August, and that event had pretty much left me sinking in a swamp made up of overwhelming nihilism, unwavering pessimism, and the deepest, most thorough form of confusion one could imagine.
On the day in question, I was sitting in front of the computer, typing away as I munched on my usual Ritz crackers and drank coffee mixed with hot chocolate mix -- a cheap form of mocha my friend, Ned, had introduced to me. The computer I was working on was actually my parent’s computer and was situated at the far end of the family room. I had wanted one in my room for forever, but in some small ways it was pretty cool having it down there. When I wasn't writing I could shoot some pool on the table behind me or play the piano situated at the other end of the room.
My mind was far away from the piano or the pool table that day, however. As a matter of fact, I hardly noticed where I was physically located at all – I was very wrapped up in my writing. I was working on this short story involving a lost young man who is about to commit suicide on a bridge over water one night when he meets a girl, who turns out to be a vampire. It was going along pretty well, too, until my mind was pulled back to the mundane world by the sound of a familiar voice. And that's when I pulled out of that grand universe of chaos in my head and turned around to see my friend, Dante.
Dante. This guy was an excellent guitarist, and he played lead in a band called Wastelands that had formed the year earlier, my freshmen year of high school. They practiced habitually at the house of the rhythm guitarist, Aaron. As a matter of fact, as Dante quickly revealed, Aaron was the reason he’d stopped over: the guy was MIA and he wondered if I'd seen the guy. Why Dante would think for a second that I had a clue where the guy might be was beyond me, and I told him as much. Not to be harsh or anything, but I had never fancied Aaron that much. The guy was annoying, he never bathed, and his dandruff was atrocious. Other than that he had less than admirable qualities.
I thought perhaps Dante had just used Aaron's disappearence as an excuse to stop by, and I was fine with that, so we started getting wrapped up in some conversation. It didn't take too long at all, though, until I was struck by an unfamiliar presence. Struck like lightning. Struck by the purest manifestation of absolute beauty.
It was this girl that was with him who I had never seen before. She looked damned attractive. An odd being, yes, but a damn fine looking being with her cute face and her deep, blue ocean eyes. Her shoulder-length, hot-pink hair made her even more difficult not to notice. She wore one of those weird green shirts with the collar and those little dinosaurs in front. I was absolutely drawn to her. To everything about her. And instantly I was reminded of that girl Claire Danes off My So-Called Life, who I'd found attractive ever since I'd first seen the show. Actually, I had been wishing for a girl that looked just like her for some time, but I wasn't actually serious...
When Dante introduced us she kind of had her arms crossed and nodded a sarcastic "hi" with a tilt of her head. Ah, I thought, a cocky woman. Anyway, as any conversation with me ever starts on my behalf with a person I've never met -- espeically an attractive girl -- I started making fun of her. Yet to my surprise, this playful, pathetic and childish attempt at opening the lines of communcation was actually successful. The teasing that went back and fourth between us led to talking, and the talking led to pool-playing, and that led to more teasing and more talking. The feeling I got around her was tremendously strange. I rarely, if ever, felt that way around a girl.
I noticed a certain conflict in me then. I had lost all belief in the instincts that came with being human. I had lost trust in all drives that I did not entirely understand. I felt that by this point in human evolution we should have trancended such urges. It seemed to me that the concept of love was merely a romantic veil we placed over our animalistic instinct to procreate -- some genetic drive to achieve species immortality. I kept reminding myself that I could not be fooled by these lowly instincts and that I had to make sure it was something in her that I admired beyond the flesh before I even considered trusting this overwhelming, warm and intense feeling her presence gave rise to in me.
After we had played a few games of pool, I took Dante aside as subtely as I could. It wasn't really pre-planned, it was just something I found myself doing. And then I found myself very quietly asking him just where this beautiful girl had come from. He explained how she had used to live up in California, but that her father had lost his job and they had to come live with Dante’s parents.
Dante lived half a block from my house. This pink-haired, Californian beauty lived not a block from my house.
I was excited. He had liked my cousin, Trish, at the time so I asked him if half-jokingly if he wanted to exchange cousins. When he looked confused, I was more clear: I’d set him up with my cousin if he’d set me up with her, I told him. He said that this would be cool and all, that this would be beyond cool, as a matter of fact, save for the fact that Claire already had a boyfriend.
Some kid named Nick who was living with Aaron. I jokingly – well, half-jokingly – asked Dante how much it would be to kill him for me. He laughed and said he wasn’t sure he could do anything, but he’d see what he could do.
I felt a release. A tingly feeling. A lightness, a playfullness that I had a faint memory of feeling some time long ago. Any hope, especially around that time, was more than I could ever ask for.
After we had played more pool, and eventually got bored, Dante ended up standing by the computer and asked what I had been writing. I told him it was a short story, and Claire immediately jumped and said she had wanted to read. I was a bit nervous, because I wasn’t finished, so I tried to get my ass in the chair before she did. We struggled for a bit and she ended up sitting on my face. It was strangely comfortable. Dante stood over us, a bit amused, a bit disturbed, spell-checking my story as Claire read it.
When I told her it involved a vampire, she told me she was a Moonbeast. I lifted an eyebrow in confusion. When it had become clear that I didn’t know what she was talking about, she sort of pushed it out of the way and said she’d tell me sometime later.
The following day, Date gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come over to Aaron’s place and watch them play. I did this occasionally, as way back when the band first formed they’d played with the idea of me coming a member. It was brought up that perhaps I could be lead singer. Fortunately I had heard myself try and sing before, so I saved them from this. But it was still cool to be in the same environment as these creative individuals, so I occasionally came over to watch them play.
I was bored, so he came over to pick me up. I didn't have a car at this time, because I was phobic of driving.
When Dante walked in through the door and I followed, the evening opened as I had predicted, as it always did every time I walked through that door. You see, Aaron has a funny way of greeting me at the door. He always takes a look at me, takes a step back, widens his eyes as if he’s surprised that I’m still alive, and says my full name in a very astonished manner. And then I look at him without blinking and say his name in a spooky, threatening way. It’s nothing personal, it’s just some strange way of relating we developed some time ago. If you haven't noticed, I have a variety of social problems.
So their band room was the basement. That basement was classic. Dimly lit, full of cigarette smoke, littered with beer bottles. Microphones, amplifiers, a mixer, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, drum set, coffee tables, side tables, ashtrays, posters, calendars of half-naked women on the walls. Everything you think of when you think `band room'. It was beautiful. And a black leather couch pushed against the far wall, behind all the instruments, right below the banner on which was embroided `Wastelands', with a bull skull right in the center. Ah, that couch.
And that’s where I was sitting. I think their bassist was tuning and someone else was pissing around when I was sitting there, burned out from my insomnia and too much coffee. My head ringing and numb by the sounds of wailing gutairs and violent drum solos.
Then, out of nowhere, I felt the couch move and I almost fell over to the left. I instead braced myself, leaned my body to the right, and turned my head to the left. And my brown eyes met with a familiar, life-giving, vibrant blue pair of eyes. Like pools offered to me by some Virgo moon goddess, in which I could bathe my shit-coated Scorpio soul. Not to trail off into astrology and metaphor or anything.
It was, of course, Claire. I was especially impressed by her strange, black cloths, which I had to assume was typical for California girls. If it turned out it was not typical, I was certainly of the opinion it should be. She wore these very short shorts, her big boots, her funky socks. Her beautiful blue eyes gave me a sinister gaze through the pink hair that hung across her face as she sat there smoking her cigarette.
Me? I was still in an antagonistic mood.
"You know those things kill your lungs," I'd said, nodding my head towards her cigarette. She responded by blowing smoke in my face.
I gave her a scowl, she gave me a teasing glare back. I nudged her arm, and she nudged me back.
Crap. I liked her.
Off and on throughout the night we talked, joked, teased, flirted. And throughout all of it there I was, realizing more and more that I liked her and beginning to hate that fact all the less. I mean, why should I despise the fact that I actually liked someone? That I was so drawn to such a strange, beautiful creature? Truth be known, I felt alive with her, something I'd lost a long while back and left for dead. And yet here it was, the glowing feeling, as if it had never left.
I should go for it, I thought, I should go for her. Flow with it and see what becomes with it. I was good as dead, and I had nothing to loose. But yes, there was that tiny little annoying detail about her having a boyfriend. That kick of reality that was bound to shake my coffee-table mind and collapse the house of cards that was this dream. So far things had been unbelieveable, like the opening of a dream. It seemed inconcievable that anything would become of it. All dreams ended the same way: you woke up. Nightmares apparently worked in accordence with another logical system. I ahd to remember that I was in a nightmare, and the brief flashes of dreams were just a reminder of what I could never have -- something to further the nightmare. All this thought of hr being mine and mine alone, that was silly. Preposterous. An insane thought cooked up by an insane mind. It was a dream, and dreams weren't reality, reality was a nightmare that had no forseeable end and no true intermissions.
And yet, a voice reminded, stranger things have happened. Ever since December, as a matter of fact, strange things have seemed to be the rule.
By the time I got home that night, my mind was buzzing with thoughts I never had before. The life I felt around this girl was amazing. What was wrong with me? Suddenly the hell I had been engulfed in the previous ten months seemed light years away. I had become a corpse as the result of my own personal apocolypse, and it was like she had breathed life into me -- the unprecedented appearence of a new genisis at the end of the world as I had known it. Proof of some death-rebirth cycle of sorts. I had tread through my own shadows, fought my own demons, and just when I thought it was all going downhill without a flow or a pause, without any hope of reversal, a light had appeared on the other side. A beautiful girl with pink hair and ocean blue eyes and funky socks.
On a bridge, on the verge of a death of sorts, a blakc blacker than black, there she stood -- the light of my life.
I got a call from Dante the following evening. He asked if I’d still take him up on that offer about exchanging cousins. I asked him specifically what he meant. He then informed me that Claire had broken up with her boyfriend. I got excited and totally immobilized with fear simultaneously. He said that she was very interested in me, but that I had to do the work if I really wanted her, and that he was going to hand her the phone now. Before I could protest, a cool, sexy female voice said hi from the other end of the line.
Hope was on the line. Reel it in, I told myself, reel this in. She's quite a catch.
We seemed to talk for hours that night. She told me all about her misadventures in California. She asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no, not currently, that I decided it probably wasn't a good idea because I was a little on the insane side. I had a problem relating to people who were, well, normal and stuff.
She informed me that she was no stranger to insanity. As a matter of fact, she’d chased a bunch of pills with a bottle of Jack Daniels one night after a fight with her parents and woke up in a hospital having her stomach pumped, and after that, she got thrown in the loony bin. And then she came to Ohio. Which one might consider just a bigger rubber room.
I was fairly certain at that time that the loony bin was a place where I was going to end up, so I listened very closely to her strange tales. And the more she talked the more I realized that I was absolutely, totally, one hundred per cent, without a doubt, completely into this girl.
She asked me why I was so sure I was insane, and I told her that it was a long story. She told me she had plenty of time, so I flipped through the excuse files in my mind to try to find a better way to dodge the question. I came up empty. I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn't want to lie to her, and though silence wasn't a lie, it wasn't an option at this point, so I did all I thought I could do. I summed it up. I told her that it had something to do with UFOs. For some reason I thought I should dodge the whole out-of-body experiences, seeing aliens, remembering past lives, being attacked by evil entities from another plane of existence, being informed that the world was going to end thing. That’s never a turn-on. But she had surprised me so far.
And to my suprise she didn't seem suprised. So I figured California must be one hell of a place. She told me she had seen a UFO once, or thought she had, when her and some friends from the loony bin were trying to escape out window. It was just a light, glimmering and bouncing in the darkness. She did warn me that they were on a stew of prescrption drugs at the time, though. I smiled and asked her if she’d ever seen anything else like that; anything in the area of the paranormal. Then she said yet again that she was a Moonbeast, and I asked her to elaborate.
She said that when she had just gotten out of the loony bin, just before her father had lost his job and moved out here to Ohio, she had been walking by an old clock tower and some guy had come by and asked her if she wanted to be a Moonbeast. She wasn’t sure, she told me, but she thought it was supposed to be some type of werewolf or vampire. I secretly rolled my eyes, but reminded myself of what had happened to me, and told myself that nothing should be shoved into the category of the impossible anymore.
Anyway, she said that the guy had bit her, and she had fainted, and that ever since she’d been obsessed with clocks. It sounded pretty out there, pretty cheesy, but so did inter-dimensional entities draining your vitality and getting probed by aliens, so who was I to talk?
We eventually got back around to the fact that she was single again, and I said that I was, too. I had been, since that little thing with Anne. I think I told her about Anne, how I’d met her at a water park with my cousins over the summer, how we’d met just before I’d gone completely insane and started seeing stuff. I told her it just hadn’t worked out. She suggested I go out with her now, because her and me, we could work out if I gave her a chance. And I said that I promised myself that I’d never ask out a girl over the phone again, that I should have guts and do it in person – and then I cracked down and asked her if she wanted to be my girlfriend.
And she said yes.
And for the moment, as they say, it was good.
), thanks to the fluidity of form and the clarity of imagery/emotions involved. It reads like a favourite memory plaing over in your mind.
Smiley
