| In My Dreams |
"How's everything on the farm? How's your ma? She didn't send me a pie this time… I hope she's not mad. I meant to write."
Annie stared to the "Great and Powerful Oz" that sat across from him in his small caravan. Not much had changed about him from their last meeting. Maybe he had picked up a bit more of an obsession with music boxes and the far east, but to her, he'd always be the peculiar boy from her small farm town.
Also to her, he'd always be a crush. Forever preserved in her mind as an athletic, charming, young man with enough passion for life to drive them to the moon and back.
So, that was why what she was about to tell him pained her so.
"I need to tell you something, Oscar."
His smirk altered, "well, that's never a good start to a conversation."
"John Gale asked me to marry him," she practically choked out."…that's why I've come."
He didn't say anything, but the disappearance of his smile told her everything she needed to know.
"Thought you should know," she concluded curtly.
"Oh…" he began quietly, "well that's – that's wonderful, Annie."
"I said I had to think about it."
He laughed a genuine laugh in the moment of bleakness, "men love that answer."
"I wondered what you thought I should do."
He gaped to her. "Him? Why would she care what the traveling circus loser thought?"
He got up and began to toy with a contraption of his. He had to do something - anything to make the current situation less heavy.
There were many reasons Oz decided to join the traveling show. Leaving Annie was not one of them.
She was beautiful and had every man at her beckon call. He flirted with her, like he did every young girl, but again there had always been something special about he simply girl from the country. Once he realized he loved her. It was too late.
And everything changed when his father died.
"I'm many things but a good man is not one of them," he solemnly admitted to her.
She protested, like she always did. But he ignored her.
She acted as if she could see right directly through him. Through every slight advancement, every gentle touch, every passing term of endearment, every romantic lie. Perhaps that's why he could never be with her. She was too smart and too good to get strung up by the likes of him.
Just then, Frank, Oz's abused stagehand pushed through the door. "I think you should take a look outside." He proclaimed urgently.
Oz was met with the realization that a past flame had come back to ruin the moment, and also, end his conversation with the only woman who had ever held his intrigue.
"I have to go," he said to Annie quickly, "congratulations on the engagement."
"Oscar…?"
"I'll see you in my dreams."
And with that, he had been chased out of her life for good.
It was a few days later as Annie stood in a small slightly wooded area. It was windy, perhaps remnants of the twister that had destroyed half their town still hung in the air.
She looked around. Only about three people had remained from his service. It almost made her want to laugh. If only he could see whom the people who had truly cared for him were.
The young woman then found herself staring at a slab of granite that protruded from the ground.
She no longer felt like laughing.
They found his body under the twisted remains of a house. Though, at least they had found a body. For many in the town an air filled coffin would have to make do.
"Did you ever notice what his initials spell?"
Annie glanced to her side to see Oz's stagehand Frank suddenly there. He had been quiet during the service. She hadn't seen him project any sort of emotion. Again, the tragedy had only just occurred. Maybe he was still in shock.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
He gestured to the gravestone. "Look; Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Issac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs."
She examined the marking and a small smirk crept on her lips. "Oz Pinhead. Well isn't that unfortunate."
Frank smiled a bit too before changing the subject.
"Last way I'd imagined he'd go. That balloon. I thought it'd be an angry husband, father, or brother – or hell… even an angry family pet," he said with a humorless laugh glancing to her as she starred down. His face fell to a concerned frown, "I'm not upsetting you am I?"
Her head darted back up, "No of course not. You were his closest friend weren't you, Frank?"
Frank furrowed his brow, "Probably not how he would have described it but… You could say it was something like that."
She nodded and they stood in silence for a moment.
"I - I only wish I could have seen him more," she finally stated. "We were close once. I thought I could get him back. Oh, how I wanted to…"
He sighed scratching his head. The Oz he knew was a demanding man. He understood it was because he was just overly passionate for his art. Still, he saw many women hurt by him. It was a side of the magician he never could stand.
"Listen, you seem like a smart, put together, young woman. And you have an ounce of self-respect, not exactly the type that conjugated around that man."
She shook her head, "You didn't know the true Oscar."
"Perhaps not, but I knew Oz. Oz the Great and Powerful. It was almost like he didn't belong here… ya know?"
She nodded distantly not hearing a word he said.
"Do you ever regret something so much, Frank… that you wish you could crawl into yourself and never talk to another person again?"
He frowned, "Uh, I'm not certain what you mean by that."
A tear fell down her face, she quickly wiped it away. Frank noticed this and moved in front of her, placing his hands on her shoulders.
"Annie. Oz - I mean Oscar - was a lot of things. He wouldn't want to see you like this. You know he wanted you to be with a better man than himself."
She shook her head. "No. He loved me too much to ever think that. And I loved him. I thought I could have talked him out of his circus life, out of all the blasted smoke and mirrors, but…"
"I'm sorry," he said tenderly. "I know this… this hurts. But maybe… just maybe he's finally somewhere where he can be happy. Heck! Maybe even a place where magic is real."
She practically wanted to roll her eyes.
"I lied to him," she exclaimed feeling a burst of relief as she cleared her conscious.
"About what? I mean- you don't have to tell me but maybe it would help if you—"
"I'm not getting married," she blurted out cutting him off. "I told Oscar I had been proposed to by this man - a man I can't stand. But I said it because I knew it was just the type of man he only wished he could have been like.
I only wanted him to feel only a bit of the pain he'd caused me for through all these years."
Frank starred to her, "Annie…"
She turned away from him and back to Oscar's grave, next to his father's, next to his mother's.
It was then that she removed the kitchen towel from a circular container she had been holding.
"Pie?" questioned Frank.
"Yes. From my mother. It's boysenberry. His favorite," she answered in a whisper, tears again pricking her eyes as she placed it next to an arraignment of white lilies lying in the dirt.
Frank backed away, suddenly finding himself dazed by his emotions. He had no idea why, but she truly did love that bastard.
"Well," he said before leaving her, "I bet wherever he is. He's thinking of you. And he's forgiven you."
She smirked. "Thank you. I think I need just a moment alone with him now."
He nodded before making his way toward a small cottage in the distance.
She waited until he had left before reaching into her bag and taking out a music box.
"I know you tell this to everyone Mister Diggs. But, I doubt you stealing this from your grandma's desk just to give to me for the school dance was a lie. You were punished for a month, after all."
She wound it up and let it play it's twinkling tune.
She placed it next to the pie.
Suddenly, she imaged him there, in the woods with her. Slowly dancing yeas ago.
"You can put your hand on my back if you want, Oscar," she had said as hey swayed.
He made a flustered laugh as she moved his hand for him.
"This… this is nice, Annie," he said with the largest grin he could muster.
She nodded coyly, "Oscar…?
"Yes?"
"You could kiss me, if you'd like."
Young Oscar could only laugh, as she did as well. But after along moment, they found themselves holding onto each other tightly, they lips joined together in young curiosity, under the star embellished night sky.
Annie blinked, and she was back to the present, looking back to what she thought was an impossibility.
And yet, there it was – there he lay - as real as day.
She turned away as the wind whipped at her light hair and black dress.
"See you in my dreams… Oz the Great and Powerful."