Act 9

Alexis woke me up the next morning to go get breakfast with her and Tom, and that Mike was possibly going to come along. I wasn’t feeling at all hungry, but I’d hardly seen her all weekend as it was, so I went ahead anyway. Tom made plans for Alexis, Kate, and Lilly to go to the mall and hang out for the day so him and I could get some racquetball in. I was fairly apprehensive about my game playing abilities, as my body was sore and stiff from skating the day before, and let Tom know I probably wouldn’t be at my best performance to chance beating him. This was nothing new of course, as Tom, always played to his opponent abilities, as it was.

We got back home and Kate picked up Kid, and they went off to do their own thing, Tom and I then suited up and drove around the corner to the park. Amazingly enough, the best court was open for once. Tom could tell almost right away, I wasn’t feeling it and asked where I was almost all day yesterday. I told him a little about the trip with heather, and how later I went skating on the old route to the center. It was a new distance record between us, as previous to this the furthest we had skated was 16 miles, but since we now lived 6 miles further I had upped it to 21 miles.

The first game, was still a warm up fro me, as I fought against my bodies unwillingness to move, and after a 2nd of 5 games, I was beginning to feel loose enough to exert more effort. Closing the near shut-out to a 7 point lose. Midway through the third Tom asked if I was conserving energy for later, when I was likely to play again with Heather, strangely enough, hearing her name didn’t send me into the mind numbing state I was beginning to grow accustom to, instead I concentrated on the lower right corner of the front wall, and hammered a kill shot to win the serve. I explained to Tom that it was very unlikely Heather and I would be playing racquetball together for awhile, and took this as a moment to find out what was going on. Tom’s pretty good at reading the overall picture of things, so it didn’t take much for him to piece things together.

Ironically the entire time he was talking I was playing at my normal level of game play and moving up. Feeling this may be Tom’s way of letting me catch up I began to mount a comeback, as thoughts of her and I playing in this very court started to flash across my mind. I was feeling angry, I wanted them to go away, I didn’t want to deal with them, not now, possibly not ever, but they were the only fuel I had to, so I used them. With every thought, every image, there was an equally level shot I made, the smaller the thought the weaker the shot, the stronger image, the harder the shot. Before I knew it we were tied and close to game point, I’m almost sure Tom was enjoying this, as he simply kept talking, I don’t remember exactly about what but I know whatever it was, was making me think about her, and the hits just kept coming. I took the lead, for the game point play, when Tom said something about kissing, I wish I could say, I hit an ace but I didn’t Tom returned it to the wall, at close range. I could escape the sight; the walls were the same color as her apartment complexes doorway, the spring air, blew through the open ceiling, with the same scent of flowers on the bushes along the walkway to her door, it was that first kiss, which had feelings behind it. “THWAPP!” kill shot to the lower left corner, no chance for return, the ball just rolled towards the back wall then stopped midway, still spinning on it axis. The game was over and I was exhausted, it was sound of the lock being closed, once again.

We played 2 more games, in which my efforts and my level of play dwindled until I was barley able to focus on the ball at all, and simply allowed once ace after another, but enough so I could at least save myself the humiliation of a complete shut-out, Tom’s favorite type of victory. After significantly winning the last games we decided to head back to the apartment, I could barely concentrate on anything; I was exhausted, and only craved a shower and then my bed.

As I lay there, I waited, I didn’t know exactly for what but it was as if I knew something was going to happened, no something had to happen. I couldn’t sleep again, my mind wouldn’t allow it, it would allow itself to go into its sub level without it, but it wouldn’t initiate it. I had to on a conscious level. I may not be a brain surgeon and know everything there is to know about the human brain, but what I know about my own, I sometimes hate. I got up and made my way to the computer, with a few clicks of the mouse, the show had begun, the play list, I normally play to go to sleep to was now softly playing throughout my rooms, filling every corner with a soothing melody of various artists. I hadn’t been playing it since the first night I came home, almost every song reminded me of her, ironically enough that’s why they were there to begin with. Now that I didn’t want to think about her, I was being forced to, simply so I could go to sleep. Tonight would be different though, with the added element of the music, there stood a very good chance I would be controlling whatever dreams I had that night, which meant I would be having a very tired Monday at work. This also meant I was being forced into dealing with something I just wanted to put behind me.

It was like watching an old Technicolor movie, everything I saw inside my head was colorized like it was originally something else, like it was artificial, but every experience seen was a reality, or at least at some point it was. It started out with tiny snippets of past conversations, and then to flashes of experiences. The drives in the middle of the night, chasing storms, sitting up all night talking, driving to the river, the batting cages, the trip to Sierra Vista, the countless movies seen together, the nights hanging out with her friends at the bar, Chinese restaurants, and then as if they had been laid out on a story board, and orange tint began to fill in the spaces, and then red, and then yellow, until it was almost golden. I tried backing away but I couldn’t, I felt heat all around my body, it was fire. I had laid it all out there, and now it was burning away like it was nothing. I finally backed away as it turned from a golden yellow to scorched black. I felt an eerie wave of relief for a brief moment, and then the images all reappeared again. It was like a video stuck in a never-ending loop, but with each pass the images were more intense, have more details, more sensations to them, I could smell the rain, and I could feel the cold night air. Each time I didn’t want them to burn, I wanted to keep those memories, but with every effort I made to preserve them, the quicker they burned. Eventually I let them go, there was no way around it, no way to keep all the things I cherished about being with her, and they all ended with a swirl of ashes being blown away into the darkness.

With nothing more there I went towards the direction they had drifted, the further I went the darker it became until I could see nothing but a few glinting hints of burning embers in the air. Slowly I became engulfed in the ambers, they seemed to never extinguish, and began to circle about. Slow at first and then faster with each passing moment, I began to have to move to avoid being hit by them, a few had managed to brush against me and I could feel the tinge of it burn, as well as the scent of burning flesh. As I began to back out the same way I came I realized there were even more behind me, It was as if the amber were alive, and just has a came to that conclusion is when they began to streak past me, as if to provoke me. I stood my ground, thinking that they were still inanimate pieces of material, until on grazed my cheek, searing my flesh, and piercing my skin like a razor. Soon after another darted towards me and I moved, and then another came. A small groups of them gathered and started towards me but stopped, as I turned to look around me again and 2nd group had gather to the other side of me, perpendicular to the group to my right, and without any noticed they both struck out to me. I stepped back just as they reached either side of me and watched them in slow motion collided and shatter into a small explosion of sparks and disintegrated. The once calm group of ambers, now resembled and swarm of angry fireflies, only they were sharp as razors and hot at molten steel. It was as if I was inside a globe they had now formed as they swarmed in multiple direct angling for the best approach, as they moved faster they produced a glow that seemed to illuminate everything around me, making it difficult to pinpoint them. I tried to focus a decrease the lighting but the more I did the brighter it became. I just wanted to get out, this was now becoming annoying and pointless, If was being forced into dealing with something then I’d rather be doing that then with something so apparently useless. One thing I’ve found when it comes to controlling my dreams, is that when I don’t like how things are going I can usually stop and start the entire thing over again. Of course this was now becoming the only option, so I did and each time I ended up back in the same place to matter what I tried. Damn this was going to be a long night.

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