A Vision
Professor Whelan was late. The bell had rung, and yet he was not present. Murmurs, like weeds, sprung up amongst the students.
"Where is he?"
"Probably hung over!"
"Maybe he's sick…"
"Is there a sub?"
"Idunno…maybe the sub doesn't know where to go."
"Thank you, God! I didn't read!"
Lisa's mind was occupied by heavier thoughts. The growing threat of Burns and his vampyr, the disturbing dreams seemed to foretell only dread things.
At last the young professor appeared. He was wearing the same suit he had worn the day before, and it was wrinkled and stained with sweat and dust.
"Class, there'll not be a quiz today on Confessions, today will be a study period."
Lisa repressed the train of thoughts and feelings brought on by this. She had other classes to study for, so this was a blessing. Yet she could not help but gasp when she saw her teacher turn his head, revealing a black eye and three long cuts on the right side of his face.
When class ended, she picked up her books. And left for her next class. She had hoped she might talk to Professor Callahan, just to see if he was all right, her mind half-lied, but he left as soon as the bell had dismissed them.
After another trying day, after which she felt she had learned very little, Lisa stopped by the Judeo-Christian Ethics classroom.
The room was dark, and filled with the dust of autumn. The light fell it bright sheets through the tears and gaps in the curtains, casting long, warm lines across the wood floor. A gentle plucking of guitar could be heard. She recognized it as the opening chords of Alice Cooper's "Welcome to My Nightmare". She sauntered over the door to the professor's office and opened the door. He was at his desk, his back to the door, typing on a computer. The radio was on, most likely of Bart and Jessica's station, judging by the music.
"Yes Lisa?" he intoned.
She felt a bit surprised.
"If you are wondering how I discerned it to be you, well," he said, turning to face her, "I am gifted, let us just say."
"Professor-"
"Just "Mr.", or "Brian", if you like-outside of class, of course."
"Your face-"
"My first encounter with one of the UnDead in years. I got him, I think. Staked him anyway. The cops showed up so I had to just chop off the head and stash it in a dumpster somewhere. If the two weren't reunited he should be permanently gone."
"Are you alright?" she pressed, her worries hardly allayed.
"Oh yes, just a few scratches. Didn't have a chance to bite me. I'm rusty; I haven't fought since I was a student, not like I was good then. Still, most drunken frat boys don't get burned by contact with a holy medal either."
There was a pregnant pause. He continued to look at her, and she glanced at him. His swollen face lacked its usual stoic blankness, a broad and lopsided grin stretching his mouth. His eyes were still gray, and alight with such sadness and longing.
"Well, if you're okay…"
"Miss Simpson...!"
She turned, startled.
"Yes, Professor?"
"Are you overly busy this evening," and as he paused, a look of anxiousness crossed his faced, "because I would love to take you to dinner."
Lisa was caught flat-footed.
"Where?" she asked, a girlish smile blossoming as her voice betrayed her glee. After her freshmen and sophomore years, no one, except, of course, the desperate, clingy Millhouse, had extended her such an offer.
"Pimento Grove, I should think," and he added wittily, "They have good salads."
She grinned.
"Seven okay?"
"Seven is okay."
Another pause of anxiousness.
"So- chuckle -see you then."
"All right."
It was exactly at seven that Lisa heard a loud, sharp whistle. She looked out her window, and saw Brian standing in front of a small carriage. She laughed at the whimsy of it, and hurried down to meet him. She scuttled out the door, only to turn around quickly and rush back to lock it. She dashed again to the elevator and, once out, sprinted across the lobby.
"See ya, Mercury!"
"THE CROW TURNS LEFT! BRAAAK!"
Puzzled by the strange proclamation, Lisa opened the front door. Brian was waiting for her. He wore a white flannel shirt with no tie, and a brown overcoat and slacks. In one hand he had a tweed cap and a pair of gloves, in the other a bouquet of bright and vibrant colour.
"Hi…" she said shyly.
"Good evening Lisa. These are for you," he said in a quiet and civil voice, handing her the bouquet.
"Thank you. I should go put them up in my room…"
"No need!" said he, and he took the flowers out of her hands, stepped back from the building, and chucked them up and her open window. They undershot the mark and fell on a balcony below.
"Woops…"
"Its okay. Marty would've tried to eat them anyway."
"Your cat, Marty?"
"Yes."
He cleared his throat, then, donning his hat and gloves, said, "Well then, shall we depart?"
"We shall." She said with a confident cheeriness.
He helped her into the rig, then took his place on the left side. Lisa noticed a "Club" holding the reins.
"You can never be too careful in this town," he said as he unlocked the device. He looked in the rearview mirror, and pressed a button for the left turn signal.
"Just because it's horse-drawn doesn't mean that it can't be high-tech," he said gaily, and as he jiggled the reins to get the horses going, he pressed a button. A sonic blast came from several speakers that Lisa had neither noticed nor expected to find in a small buggy.
"THIS IS JESSICA LOVEJOY HERE! TIME TO CLASS IT UP WITH "KILLER QUEEN", BY QUEEN, A BAND COMPOSED ENTIRELY…OF QUEENS."
And so they rumbled down the boulevard. Brian explained, as he changed lanes, how he had installed a battery in the buggy, powered by a generator attached to the wheels. He had bought a car radio and installed electric turn signals, headlights, and a speedometer and an odometer.
"And yet it retains all the charm and eco-friendliness of driving a carriage!" he mused.
"But what about the…feces…"
"Oh, there's the genius-I installed catch bags that can be changed every-so-often, either discarded or saved for fertilizer. It's the way of the future. I mean, with gas prices, and the Saudi's funding terrorism with petrodollars."
"And don't forget the finite nature of fossil fuels and the impact the drilling and use of them has on the environment."
Brian rolled his eyes, and turned his head back straight ahead.
"What? Don't tell me that you don't believe in air pollution and limited natural resources!"
"No, no. It's just that there was a time I did. Really. I am cognizant and concerned by the effects our industry and technology has on the environment. There are just two big problems I have: global warming, and the fact that human problems are more pressing and we are obligated to solve them before turning to anything else."
"Well, I agree with the second part, but how could you not believe in global warming!"
"It all matters on whose data you are going by. I mean, there are many, many northern ice caps that are not melting; in fact, they have grown slightly in the past eight years. Some computer systems show that the world is warming, some don't. Some measurements of temperature show no rise at all, show some an overall decrease. And, even if the world is warming, there is considerable proof that it has happened several times before, long before man even existed, which proves global warming a natural phase of the climate, akin to ice ages, completely independent of human pollution."
She looked at him, then looked away shook her head, sighing lightly.
"Shit!" he screamed as a car came rushing in front of them, honking loudly and spooking the horses.
"Whoa! WHOA!" he yelled, tugging on the reigns and pulling the parking brake. He horses whinnied and reared. Brian rushed out and tried to calm them. Slowly, their screeching stopped, and they were dumb and statues.
"Whoa…whoa…thatsmelady…that's my lady…" he cooed gently, stroking the old mare's head.
"How about you, Bruce? That's good," he said, hold it's nose and petting the velvety fur.
Lisa felt her heart softened by his treatment of the animals. Though in his lectures in class he had stated that animals were dumb, soulless brutes meant to serve man, she saw now that he loved these two horses as friends.
They started again, the horses a little more jittery, and they arrived at the Pimento Grove, one of the classier dining spots in Springfield. Thankfully, their table had not bee given away, and they took their seats.
"So tell me," she inquired, holding her glass of wine precariously in her alcohol-increased gregariousness, "What would you say your solution to world energy problems is?"
a
"Well, let's see," he said, putting out his cigarette (the Grove was one of the few restaurants left in town that allowed smoking indoors, 'Just so we look cool," the owner once said), "I say, first of all, we get Russia to allow drilling in Siberia, create an independent state of Southern Sudan so we can get Sudanese oil not mixed with the blood of Christians and Animists, and drill in America wherever we can."
"That's horrible! Even if you could do that, it would only be a short-term solution. Oil's gonna run out, sooner or later!"
"Yes, but short-term solutions are sometimes needed while a long-term one is prepared. For automobiles, we should look to electric, hydrogen battery hybrids, propane, and natural gas, as well as battery hybrids of all three…except for the electric, because that's already battery. They are all, except for hydrogen, cheap and abundant, and, in the cases of hydrogen and battery, almost completely waste-free. For electric and industry, we should phase-out fossil-fuel and nuclear power, and replace them with hydroelectric, wind, tidal, solar, geothermal, hydrogen, and biomass. If we can ever develop a safe and sustainable fusion reaction and are able to use it for energy, we should by all means turn towards fusion, but I don't we'll se that anytime soon. So for now, we need to get off of Saudi oil and works towards getting off of oil altogether. Don't you agree?"
Lisa sat silent, looking at him the golden haze of candlelight. Her mind, too, was ablur.
"What? Oh, yes. Most definitely."
Brian grinned, understanding. He looked at her too, as she had been doing. Her eyes looked back. For a crystalline moment, they saw each other through the Eyes of God. She looked away first.
"What do think about the war?" she asked in French, employing the formal 'vous' form.
He paused, lighting another cigarette.
"I do not support it, though I support our troops' courage and hope that they all can be brought home safely as soon as possible," was his answer. He used the informal 'tu', a subtlety not lost on Lisa.
He is a very clever man, one who does focus heavily on detail and subtlety. What was his purpose for doing it though? An expression of his superiority? Perhaps. Perhaps it was just a way of responding to my deliberate use of 'vous'. He may simply be using it as a formality our teacher-student relationship expresses. Or was it from friendship. 'Tu' is the familiar tense…
"What of building democracy and western civilization in Iraq? Would not a man of your political views find such a noble venture?" she asked. She used 'tu'. She followed his queue.
He grinned broadly, and drew a long puff from his cigarette. He exhaled through his nose, enjoying and hating the burning, smutty taste. He looked at her, his eyes meeting hers. She felt both frightened and entranced by the way he stared at her with his steely grey eyes.
"Democracy, ma cher, can not be imposed upon a people. If they did not spontaneously rise up, overthrow Saddam, and install a constitutional democracy, then they were not, and are not ready for democracy now. Democracy, at its very core, is an expression of the will of the people. A democratic government governs fairly, because it receives its authority from God through the people."
"Well, it is a complex situation," she ceded, in English now, holding her glass with both hands, elbows on the table.
"A very complex situation. But if you boil a complex situation down, all the factions and minutiae melt away and you are left with a problem and a solution." he said, a smile of one with secret knowledge slapped across his glowing face.
"And what does the situation in Iraq all boil down to?"
"First of all: Iraq, as a nation, need not exist. The Shiite regions can be given to Iran, and the Sunni triangle and the empty regions to the west can go to Syria. Out of the Northern Region, and parts of Turkey and Iran, a new Kurdish nation can be created. Thus, the issue of 'Iraq' goes away entirely, and America gets a new friend in the Middle East, Kurdistan, a friend who just happens to have oil coming out of the wazoo."
"Secondly, it is a tenet of the Islamic faith that church and state should not be separated. Islam teaches that a Muslim is only 'free' when living in a state ruled by the Sharia. And the Sharia, as it is practiced in most Muslim countries, means cruelty and oppression to women, non-Muslims, and anyone who objects to the practices of the regime or its religion. Take Saudi Arabia, for example. Women aren't allowed to drive cars, or even leave the house alone. Just last year, a family of foreigners was arrested for holding a private Christmas party in the privacy of their own home! Quite simply, secular constitutional democracy with separation of powers and of church and state is contrary to what Islam teaches."
He is an intelligent man, and very polite, she thought.
The night proceeded as such, bantering back and forth about politics, religion, and philosophy, and the couple was feeling quite jovial by the time the valet brought their carriage out to the front.
"Here's your carriage sir," croaked the Squeaky-Voiced Teen.
"Thank you my good man. Here's a tip," Brian replied, handing him a five dollar bill.
Brian helped Lisa into her side of the carriage, and rounded about to the other side.
Lisa sat on the smooth leather cushions, lost in thoughts and dreams. She felt truly loved, not just loved, but appreciated, seen as an intellectual partner. She blinked. The world of warmth she felt was torn away, shredded by sharp claws. In was dark. The room was faintly blue. A cold hand pressed over her mouth, while another held her hands by the wrists. She felt a cold, pallid breathe upon her neck, and a dry, snakelike tongue ease across it. She screamed, her voice muffled into the pale, clammy palm.
"What's wrong?" Brian asked, knowing that whaterever it was, it was quite wrong indeed.
A knife was drug across her throat. Blood and spittle gurgled from her mouth as she coughed.
Brian was holding her now. She had fallen from the carriage. Before she could even realise that her throat was still intact, her reality faded away.
She was lying on the cold stones. Her lifeblood spilling forth. Her vision driften upwards, out, out of her body. It turned. Eric, Eric was dead too. But it was not her own body lying beside his, but Maggie's.