4

Alone for the evening, Bernadette cleaned up her apartment again and piled Penny's clothes on her bed. She did the dishes and ordered in some Thai Food, having had a craving for it all day. As she was sitting and reading in bed waiting to go to sleep, her mother called and told her about the charming young man she had met and wanted to fix her up with at dinner. His name was Leonard Hofstadter, and he was a scientist of some sort at Cal Tech. She wasn't really partial to dating other scientists, possibly because her own internship was as stagnant as Penny's acting career, but she had promised her mother she'd meet him and let nature find its way. If they were meant to be together, maybe something would happen… like convincing her mother not to fix her up with anyone else. As sleep ascended, she looked at the clock and noticed Penny wasn't back yet. Promptly at 11:30, she laid her glasses on her nightstand and turned to go to sleep.

At 12:45, Penny came stumbling into the building slightly inebriated and half asleep. Johnny had let her off at the curb. The tables, mobile cookers and chairs were all gone by now from the sidewalk as she stumbled in, fussing with the entrance code a few times before she got it right. A deep yawn from her body, Penny wandered forward into the building and into the elevator, glancing closely at the numbers before finding the right one on the Third Floor. Upon pressing it, she was on her way back to the apartment. The partying, drinks and music at the Los Posada Restaurant was still echoing in her head along with a tiny headache wafting in her brain. Another big yawn on the floor, she was drunkenly swaying side by side as if she were a doll in the hands of a five-year-old. Pulling her key from her purse, the tip danced around the entry of the security lock before slipping inside and unlocking the door. Pushing it shut and locking it again on the other side, Penny paused and detected the scent of Midnight Fresh in the moonlit room.

"Oh God, she's been cleaning again."

Stumbling forward, Penny moved across the moonlit apartment for the bedroom. In front of her, she noticed Bernadette asleep in the first bed close to the door and became awkwardly quiet. Her hands pulled her shirt off over her head, dropping it to the floor where she stood. Her feet glided further inside to the far end of the room near the bathroom door. Her head swaying, her legs trembling, she reached her bed, lifted the pile of clothes upon it and dumped them upon the floor, sitting on the edge of the bed and opening her blue jeans, loosening them to push down her long legs to the floor where she pulled them off with their shoes and socks trapped inside. Clad just in a fabric top and her underwear, she wearily stretched herself out on the bed, placing her head on her pillow and stumbling to pull her bed sheets up over her. A deep gasp filled the quiet room as she slowly settled in for the night. She wasn't sure if Bernadette had heard her, but as her eyes tiredly looked over, she realized the tiny blonde hadn't roused from her sleep. Either she was deeply asleep or she was faking it.

Tired and worn out, Penny surrendered herself to the realm of Morpheus, the god of dreams, falling into that world where her mind and desires played games with her senses. There was utter darkness, signs of shadows moving around and the impression she was not alone. Her thoughts wandered and her dreams came to life in vivid realistic detail within her mind. Through the haze of shapes and movement, she had the impression she was traveling; it was not under her control, and she was moving forward toward another place. There was a sound followed by the voices of several hundred people, and her dark world opened up to another reality. A hand reached in and pulled her forward into the light where Penny found herself at the maw of a huge structure. A red carpet stretched out from her into the opening of the structure, and fenced off by the velvet ropes were the throngs of her fans cheering, jumping and calling to get her attention. When she looked down upon herself, she noticed she was clad in a long floor-length silver gown that trailed behind her. She was a star, a celebrity and these people all loved her. This felt right. It felt natural. Feeling compelled to move forward, she reached to touch her fans, have them touch her and push pens and paper to her for her autograph. She loved it. She wanted this. A big smile stretched across her face to live this kind of glamour and glory, but when she reached the darkness of the building, she became afraid. What was waiting for her in there, and why did it scare her? Not wanting to go further, she looked behind her for her fans and found nothing but darkness. It felt like a long dark corridor in a spooky dark house. What was this place? Where was she? Far ahead of her, she saw another person ahead of her, and though she was afraid, she pushed on forward to meet this girl. She was blonde and attractive, clad in a loose purple tank top with pink shorts.

It was herself.

Penny was looking at her reflection in a mirror. Gone was the silver dress, the jewelry and the expensive white shoes. She was looking at her reflection as she really was, an insecure sometimes short-tempered and often untidy girl from a rural town outside Omaha, Nebraska. She was nothing special. She wasn't a star. She was barely even remarkable. There was nothing to set her apart from the thousands of other blonde actresses vying for roles in Hollywood, but as her movements in the reflection mocked her, her reflection came to life, tried reaching out to her and looked down upon her. Her twin seemed to be looking her over with clear delight. She lightly tilted her head to the side, palmed her head to the side then turned and started walking away inside the mirror. Unsure what was happening, Penny backed away from the vision trying to leave and hit the wall behind her. As she felt around, she felt herself enclosed on all sides. The hall behind her had vanished. She was now blocked on both sides and behind, enclosed in her own tiny universe, and that's when she realized what was happening. The girl in the mirror was her, and she had become the girl in the mirror. She started screaming and calling for her to come back. Panicking, screaming, she tried to free herself as her reflection went on to take over her life. Penny started crying out and yelling at Bernadette to wake her up from this nightmare.

Her eyes opening wide, Penny woke and sat up in her bed. Her heart pounding, her breath racing, her eyes looked up to the moonlit windows of the bedroom. A long deep breath came from her as she relaxed, raising her hands up and holding them before her, turning them over and again and then somehow noticing her long blonde hair falling off her shoulders for the first time. She looked at her necklace briefly, grinning covertly and assuredly to herself, but then, Bernadette squirmed in her bed, and she slightly jumped unaware she was there. Looking around as if she were unsure where she was, Penny slipped off her bed, noticing her pants on the floor where she had left them. Checking Bernadette several times, she started pulling them back on, pushing her feet into her shoes once again, tying them, and then quietly ascending to her feet. Slipping out like a shadow, she moved unsure and carefully, glancing around her surroundings with confused intention, noting everything. It was a small one bedroom apartment overlooking the street, one door in the outside living room between herself and freedom. Unlocking the latch, she turned the doorknob and clandestinely pulled herself through it. Once freed, she looked around once again in the corridor and noticed the elevator. In mere minutes, she was soon fleeing the location, taking herself along as a hostage.

Outside the building and on the curb of a long urban roadway stretching several blocks, she smelled the last visages of barbecue, fried chicken and other delicacies in the air. The sky was dark, but the traffic was busy. Looking around the other structures, she tried to see the sky, but the night sky was overcast. The road was unfamiliar to her, her surroundings foreign. On the corner, she noticed a cab parked at the curb, its driver looking over his receipts for the day. Prancing lightly up to the vehicle, Penny pulled the back door open and slid inside, surprising the driver.

"What city is this?" She asked.

"What?" He reacted confused.

"What… city… is… this?" Penny repeated herself quite haughty and demanding with a trace of an English accent to her voice.

"Pasadena." The driver responded. Penny then took a deep breath of relief.

"Thank God, I'm still on the West Coast." She whispered under breath then lifted her head like a British queen, composed herself with regal decorum and looked to this crusty figure of a man with a scraggly beard, bright blue eyes and white hair peeking out from under an old fishing cap. "I wish to go to Altadena." She asked.

"Not a problem…" The driver put his receipts aside and started his engine again. Pulling away from the curb, he turned on to Del Mar Way and turned west along the way. Occasionally looking to his passenger, he watched as Penny earnestly watched and looked over her surroundings. She seemed lost, completely unaware of where she was. She was interested in the cars and impressed by the buildings of Pasadena. When she saw the young adults late at night on the streets, she broke an amused smile and even one time placed her hand to her chest stunned to see the young people holding devices to their heads which they talked to and even got music from. After a few minutes, she turned again to the driver.

"If you don't mind me asking," She once again spoke in a voice of a cultured young woman. "What is today's date?"

"February 22…"

"And the year?"

"2008…"

That was when Penny took a very stunned look of surprise and sat backward into her seat. She reacted very scared and worried, folding her arms before her with the tips of her fingers resting on the base of her neck. Her driver was wondering if was stoned or drunk. Still watching the images whir past her in the cab, she continued studying her surrounding as the cab traveled north on Allen Avenue several blocks, its driver taking a sip from his coffee thermos by his side. It was a twelve to fifteen minute trip for him over three to four miles depending on the final destination, and the traffic was moving smoothly. He yawned tiredly then felt like talking to his pretty young passenger, but when he looked up, she had dozed off with her arms folded before her and her head propped against the window. With that vision, he just turned ahead and kept driving. After around five minutes of stops, traffic and stoplights, he reached East Altadena Drive and turned west, reaching Lake Drive. Knowing he was in the city limits, he reached over his seat and started clapping the back of the passenger side, rousing his customer from his nap as Penny stirred and looked up to him.

"Altadena, ma'am." The driver responded. "Where do you want to be dropped off?"

"What?" Penny gasped and looked around. "Oh, yes… 595 East Loma."

"Yes, ma'am." Her driver knew the area then did a double take. "Wait a second, did you say 595 East Loma?"

"Yes, is there a problem?"

"No, ma'am…." Her driver sounded surprised. "If that's where you want to go." His eyes rounded and rolled to the side. No one drove to the end of East Loma. There was nothing out there, but he kept driving anyway. His pretty passenger started posturing herself, primping herself and tossing her hair back, but as she looked again, she was confused. Something didn't look right.

"Excuse me, what happened to all the mansions? All those big beautiful homes?" She looked at the string of small suburban family homes whirring past the cab.

"Mansions?" Her driver responded confused. "Princess, those were knocked down in the Eighties. It's all residential now."

"What?" Penny looked lost again and drew back into her seat. It was only a mile to the end, but the advance on East Loma was more wooded and less traveled. On the other side heading west were several more small family homes, but at the turn, there was a large brick wall with huge wrought gates. They were padlocked shut. No one had lived on this property in years. Locals knew it had belonged to an old Fifties and Sixties-era actress who had passed away in the Early Eighties. The property now belonged to her estate, which held on to it as a possible future landmark. Upon seeing it, Penny took a deep relieved breath.

"Okay…" Her driver pulled across from the gates and set his car in Park. "That will be $20.25." He looked back at her.

"Oh, yes…" Penny grinned assuredly. "Of course…." She extended the forefinger on her right hand and waved it before her driver, who scowled confusingly for all of a second before tumbling forward into his seat unconscious. With completes darkness and shades of black and dark blue showing the way, Penny opened the cab door, stepped from the back seat and swung the door behind her. Her feet tapping across the desolate asphalt road, she abandoned the cab and its sleeping driver, crossing over to the gate and standing defiant before it. After three seconds, there was a sound of a rusty padlock popping open, the clatter of heavy iron chains chiming to the ground in a neat orderly pile and the gates suddenly parting under their own power with an unearthly creak, granting her access to the property. Stepping through, the gates waited several more minutes before creaking shut behind her once more on their own.

The walk up the drive was over twelve hundred feet and covered a winding driveway over small creeks and past several old street lights taken from a street in Sacramento that had changed from gas lights to electrical in the Sixties. Now rewired for electricity, they would have looked beautiful and unearthly against the surrounding woodlands, but now, they were rusty with peeling paint chips and violated by squirrels and vandals. A few of them had been shattered, some of them bent over at an angle. The tall bushes were growing wild, and the cobblestone driveway was violated and marred by weeds and cracks splitting the pathway. In the distance hidden from view, the signs of a large edifice started coming into view. Pitched roofs, garret windows, and dark windows started coming into view. The driveway came through an archway of an immense estate from the Early 1900s. Crafted from limestone bricks with dark shutters and a black roof, it reared up like a huge mausoleum dirty white in color overlooking a circular driveway and a vine-covered fountain that had not been seen in years. It looked like a haunted house. Penny nostalgically looked over the ruined fountain as the front entrance mystically unlocked itself and swung open to her. Looking up, she lamented over forgotten memories and strolled forward as if it was her house.

The air inside the huge mansion was dead. Desolate and abandoned, the foyer had a ceiling twelve feet high, opening wide to a huge grand staircase under a crystal chandelier covered in dust. Chairs and tables were covered in sheets, resembling fat and misshapen ghosts in the darkness. With the doors closing untouched behind her, Penny hastened to the staircase, her feet carrying her up the dark passage to the second floor. Paintings and fixtures were also covered in sheets, keeping the mansion preserved for another time. Somehow, Penny knew where she was going. Turning right at the top, she passed three bedrooms, pushing her way into the master bedroom at the far end. This room seemed more alive than the rest. The closets were full of dresses, the vanity set up for a forgotten mistress of the deserted mansion. It had a four poster bed with red covers and thick red oak carvings. The table by the door was covered in countless photos in frames covered in dust. Flicking the switch on, a lamp lit up with a dull glow as Penny looked at the dress laid with care across the bed by unknown lost servants. Hoping the water worked as well, she crossed through the French doors into the bathroom and turned on the water in the bathtub. The pipes in the old place sputtered and groaned a few seconds before spitting out old dirty water, but eventually it cleared enough for her to use the shower.

Living in a small cottage on the back of the property, an old woman looked out the window up to the old mansion and noticed the light on in the window of her former mistress. Distressed and upset, she placed a cup of tea down and hurried as best as she could to wake her husband and rouse him from his sleep. It was a small one-bedroom caretaker's hut. It was their job to illicit repairs on the place and deter trespassers and intruders. Stirring her spouse, she woke him up and stood over him in the dark in her long nightgown.

"Janey, what is it? What's wrong?"

"There's someone in the house again."

"What?" George Trout turned over and took his glasses off the table, sitting up in the process to swing his legs over the size of the bed and motioning for his wife to hand him his pants. Seventy-three years old, he was Army retired, a former contractor hired to live on the property and take care of the Brookdale Mansion, the former home of famed 50s actress Elizabeth Whatling. It was his job to keep the house intact until it was ready for historical preservation and to chase off teenagers and trespassers who came here to party, look for ghosts or steal anything they could carry. Pulling on his pants, he looked out first to the mansion from the bedroom window, picked up a ring of keys from the top of his bureau and then motioned back to the side of his bed.

"Did you call the police?"

"Not yet…"

"Give me ten minutes…." He had pulled his shoes on and tied them up, turning afterward to take the hunting rifle down from over the bed and took some shells from the night stand, placing one in the chamber and two more in the pocket of his trousers. "This time, I'm teaching these kids I mean business."

"Don't get shot." Jane stepped out of his way.

"If someone gets shot, it won't be me…." He passed through his living room and paused to unlock the side entrance. "Don't forget to tell the cops to take the back way." He slipped out as his wife watched him traipse through the side patio then up the back stairway to the mansion's pool area. The pool was empty, filled with leaves and debris from the neighbor area, the pool-side lined with old Seventies-era pool furniture. Looking up, he saw the light on in the bathroom of the master bedroom and stood aghast at the sight. That was Mrs. Whatling's old room. Her most cherished belongings were still in there. Hastening his step, he hurried to the parlor doors of the house, quickly unlocking one of the doors and pushing his way inside past chairs covered in sheets and forgotten décor. The stairs were in the adjacent kitchen, taking him up to the top landing where he entered the top hallway and turned left for the main bedroom. Treading lightly, he heard the water running in the house and raised his rifle ready to shoot the first thing that moved. In the room, the lamp by the bed had been turned on, the closet was wide open and the dresses had been parted. His anxiety upon seeing this was wearing heavy on him. His wife had kept this place intact for years, practically museum ready, and now, it was being used by a squatter making themself to home. Carefully approaching the bathroom, he lifted his rifle and carefully glanced inside. His eyes panned the clothes on the pink bathroom rug and then up to the white counter to the pink marble counter. His eyes passed over the silver brush and bottles under the mirror then over to the white towel resting near the edge. Upon seeing the return of Cleopatra's Eye upon it, he froze in his steps. That necklace had been missing for almost thirty years since the house had been burglarized in 1982. Somehow, someway, it had found itself home where it had originated. George suddenly heard the water shut off and the opaque plastic curtain get pulled back, revealing the naked figure in the shower. He stood in stunned surprise of the nude young woman before him.

"Why don't you take a picture?" The girl responded. "It will last longer."