It was somewhat fun at first, having these weird dreams with the world's sexiest voice from the darkness asking me questions and hinting that, like my favorite yellow and black Camaro, I'm more than meets the eye.
Somewhat.
At first.
After the sixth time in a month, however, it was getting downright annoying. Not the voice, or even the questions, but the entire day spent dragging ass like I'd been up all night was getting to me so much I actually snapped at a co-worker today.
Ms. Bimini has worked for Sturgis & Sons Accounting since the nineteen seventies and she's usually one of my favorite people in the world but in my sleep deprived and highly irritable state I was in such a mood that I very rudely told her to butt out of my life when she so sweetly offered to introduce me to her "hunky and smart" grand-nephew. She's a doll and I feel horrible about biting her head off like I did, so, on my home from work I decided to stop by Barnes & Noble to pick her up a copy of the latest large print 'Cat Detective' novel from the series she's been reading on her lunch hour for the past six months. I hope she'll forgive me.
If I hadn't been so distracted by my concerns over my mistreatment of sweet Ms. Bimini I might have noticed sooner that I was being followed. Maybe. As it was, though, I didn't notice until I caught a good look in my rearview mirror at the driver behind me when we both stopped for a red light. I almost screamed out loud when I instantly recognized the shaggy black hair, sharp cheekbones and full lips of my imaginary avenging angel. Correction - my apparently not so imaginary avenging angel.
My heart leapt into my throat where it proceeded to pound away at triple speed. One side of his far-to-lush mouth hitched up at the corner and he gave me a tiny head nod which I immediately took to mean he knew he'd been spotted.
Sure, I'm always as bold as brass in my interactions with him in my dreams, but like most people - I'm way braver in dreams than I ever manage to be in real life! A blaring horn nearly made me jump out of my skin as it jolted me from the staredown I hadn't even realized I was having with the smirking man in the mirror.
"Fucking green means GO, asshole!" Some random guy in an old minivan with peeling paint screamed at me through our mutually lowered windows as he rolled slowly by on the shoulder.
I glanced up at the light a moment before the bright green circle flicked off and the amber light flicked on. Without even thinking about it I stomped the accelerator and jerked the wheel to the left. I glanced back and saw a deep scowel turned in my direction from behind the closed window of the big black SUV that hadn't moved an inch from where it had sat behind me a moment ago.
Two black lines now crossed the intersection and a blue haze filled the air between me and that shiny new Escalade.
"Good job, Cammie." I say as I pat the cracked leather dash, imaging the purr of it's powerful engine is as much a display of contentment and affection as a cat's own purr.
I love my car. It's old and it eats more of my paycheck every month than my rent does, but it's worth all the extra costs to me because it was the only car my dad ever owned. He bought it during his senior year of high school with money he'd been saving for college from every birthday and Christmas since he'd been born and every lawnmowing, lawnmower repair, fastfood and odd job he'd had since he was eight years old. He gave the black and chrome piece of mobile art to me two weeks before he died from pancreatic cancer - a month after my sixteenth birthday. He had insisted that my mother take me down that very day to put the car, which he had rebuilt - from the chassis up, with his own two hands - in my name.
My gut was telling me that, whoever my mysterious stalker was, he would catch up to me in less than five minutes… unless I floored it. I could make it to the next town and be ten blocks from the highway before he could catch up to where we'd meet up in a few minutes if I continued on at this speed.
The back of my mind kept trying to sidetrack me with the idea that maybe, just *maybe*, the dreams that usually began with being kidnapped by a big, scowling, black haired, avenging angel and ended with a delicious smelling, sexy sounding man asking me questions while I'm strapped to a table in pitch black darkness, making witty retorts and sarcastic comments weren't dreams at all but memories cutting through a wall of some type of Men in Black neuralizer sort of shit.
Cammie used to have what my dad called a "fuzzbuster" sitting on his dash to alert his driver to speedtraps, but since the lighter housing shorted out five years ago I threw that old thing away, choosing to obey traffic laws and save myself a thousand bucks on replacing the lighter assembly in my dad's otherwise cherry 1967 Camaro Super Sport. A nearly hysterical wish that I had repaired the cigarette lighter and kept the fuzzbuster shot through me as I floored it.
Dad would have been proud of the way the tires squalled even though I was doing sixty miles an hour when I stomped on the chromed gas pedal.
Old he may be, but Cammie is no slouch when it comes to hauling ass. My tightly coiled bun came loose and the resulting ponytail was being yanked around like an inflatable noodle-man in a windstorm, stinging my face and neck like a cat o' nine-hundred-thousand tails, by the time I topped one-fourty a few seconds later. I was too afraid to look away from the road or take my hand off the wheel long enough to crank up the window do I held on for dear life and prayed I didn't whip myself in the eye at this velocity as I rocketed down the road doing almost three times the legal speed limit.
I don't have a clue what the Caddie can do, as I've never been an SUV type of person, but I figured it probably can't keep up with my daddy's muscle car if I kept it pegged. Hell, most cop cars with interceptors probably couldn't keep up with Cammie if my dad was driving him.
In nothing flat I found myself breathing a massive sigh of relief as I glanced in my Caddie-free rearview seconds after the exit I was running for appeared on the horizon.
Winchester is a decently sized city compared to my own little blip on the map, but since I'd grown up in this area I knew it well enough to confidently wend my way deep into the heart of one of the more affluent residential sections. Nothing bad ever happens in these types of neighborhoods, so I drove around slowly and thought over the possible reasons for my unexpected close encounter with Mr. Hotasfuck.
Did this mean my dreams were somehow actually happening? Was he following me with the intent to kidnap, question, and neurolyze me? Had I never noticed him following me before, or did I just forget about that part when I woke up with fuzzy, dreamlike recollections?
Suddenly it struck me - if the dreams were real, then he knew where I lived.
I caught a glimpse of my grimace as I checked my rearview for the eleventy billionth time since spotting my dream stalker. "If he knows where I live, I can't go home," I say to my car. "But if I can't go home, where the hell am I supposed to go?"
My mom died shortly after my dad, I'm an only child with no close relatives and all of my friends are of the social media mutuals variety. I literally have nobody to run to for help in this unprecedented predicament.
Shaken, I pull into the empty driveway of one of the professionally manicured mansions along the winding road I'd been driving aimlessly for more than ten minutes.
"What would Leia do if she found herself in this situation?" I asked the emblem on the center of my steering wheel.
Princess Leia has always been my favorite fictional character and I've asked myself this exact question many times throughout my life - usually with good results - but this time all my mind can come up with is well timed sarcastic remarks and images of strangling the dark stranger with a chain... neither of which is a useful thought.