Disclaimer: Look at previous chapter.
Chapter 1: Smokey Mirrors and Memories
Palo Alto, California. Mid October 2005.
"Becky, its getting worse. He isn't sleeping and he sure as hell isn't talking to me. I don't know what to do."
She was frantic, that much was obvious. This cold as ice worry for her friend, for Sam, was getting to her, possibly too much. "Every time I ask him about it, he gives me this blank look and then pushes me away."
She can hear the exasperated sigh long before Becky exhales. "Have you tried getting in touch with his parents?"
"Beck, you know as well as I do, that that is more frustrating than studying for the worst final. But yeah I've tried. All I get are their voice mails. All three of them. It's almost as if they've never even stepped foot in that house they're supposedly living at."
"Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Sam never did say what his parents did for a living."
"Hey he told me what his mom does, and from what Sam told me about her, she sounds so awesome."
"What about his dad, doesn't Sam talk to him?"
"...I don't know. But it isn't like his parents are divorced or anything."
"Well if that isn't strange... try harder to reach them, they have e-mail addresses? Use that. If you can't, you do know what this means. Don't you?"
And Jess does, watching as sharply dressed men and women with tapping pens on their desks, asking a million questions about everything and nothing trying to gouge the crazy from some poor hopeless soul. Her Sam lying on a couch, eyes cold and unresponsive wasting the hour away with nothing more than a meager hello and frustrating silence.
...
Lawrence, Kansas. November 2, 1983.
Mary turned over in bed, her eyes opening to little slits as she shook off the last remnants of her dream. She peered sleepily towards the baby monitor on her night stand; the snap crackle and popping noise hadn't really registered in her state of consciousness. She ran a hand over her face, swiped away some of the sweat from her brow and sank back into the plush comfort of her sheets. It only took a moment, but she finally realized that something, more like someone was missing. And that someone was John.
Mary never did realize that the other side of the bed had been cold for hours.
Missing the warmth that having her husband sleeping next to her brought her, Mary tried to fight off the sleep that was pulling at her behind her eyelids. Where is he, she wondered not hearing any movement from the hall. Or anywhere for that matter. It was just her, her breathing, and the scratchy noise coming from the monitor.
Wait, What? What's going on?
Fully awake as she was ever going to get now, Mary shoved off the covers and swung her legs over the side of her bed and stood on her wobbly feet. After a moment to stave off another yawn, she wandered out of the bed room. Mary tip toed as silently as possible towards Sammy's room, and tried to not let her emotions get the better of her.
When she got to Sammy's room she found the door half open, and peered in. The dark shape of whom she assumed was John having been woken up by the noise, was consoling Sammy. Everything was fine. Yet for some reason she needed to make sure.
"John?" She'd asked feeling a little disoriented and slightly stupid. She wanted to ask more, she wanted to walk in the room and see Sammy for herself, but she didn't have to. Everything is fine, she had reminded herself even with the small inkling of doubt that buried itself in the recesses of her mind. All thoughts of strange sounds and baby monitors were put on hold for the moment.
"Shhh", he'd said without even turning around.
"Um ok..."
Just like that the conversation was over, and she found herself walking back towards her bedroom wondering why she got out of bed in the first place. She started thinking about random things, like what she was going to do tomorrow now that she could finally go back to work, what she was going to wear, what she was going to say to her Co- workers. Her friends.
Mary passed the bathroom and came across a closed door, leaned against it and prayed that there would be a young child there buried underneath the covers. She knew there wouldn't be because that was the hard and cold truth of it all. She a hand on the knob and felt the urge to open the door and peek inside. Instead she let her fingers rest there for a moment before she let her hand fall limply to her side, trailing after her as she walked away.
She felt the first gathering of tears behind her eyes and blinked, to try and will them away. There wasn't any use getting upset, she could have just slept it off and forgotten about it for the moment. He's still out there, Mary, pull yourself together, she berated herself. And because her eyes itched from lack of tears, she promptly looked up at the hall light and saw it flicker on and off. She touched the light and wondered if there was a screw loose.
Nope.
She could have sworn that she didn't hear any thunder, in fact it was supposed to be a clear and crisp night.
In that split second she made her decision to turn around and walk downstairs to check the other lights. Then she would probably go ask John about it afterwards, see what he could do to fix the problem tomorrow. And then she would fall back to sleep and stop thinking about small blonde children and sunny days at the park.
As Mary walked down the creaking stairs, she heard noises that were most likely coming from the T.V. that was never turned off. Halfway down the stairs though, she looked over the railing and at the T.V and saw something that made her blood run cold.
There lying on the couch with his mouth dropped open in a snore, was John.
"Oh my god!"
Mary ran the rest of the way down the stairs, and she felt like screaming, like hitting John, or maybe running back up that stairs. She didn't do any of these though. Instead she crossed over from the landing towards the other side of the couch so she could block the T.V.
She bent over, and put both her hands against John's arm and shook, hard. "John", she whispered as though it was almost too painful to form the words. It wasn't that hard to wake him up, with him being such a light sleeper. True to form, John shot up, a well placed "Mary!", dying on his lips the moment he looked at her.
It must have been from the expression on her face but John looked at her, fully awake, ready to take away all of her problems. Maybe even shoot something in the process.
"John", she called, more frantically and because it was the only thing she can say. She felt weak and feint. Not again, not again, her mind screamed. She didn't even realize that she was jabbing her index finger towards the stairs like a mad woman, until John grabbed her and shook her once, twice, and smacked her across both cheeks.
"Mary honey, what is it?" John's normally deep and gentle voice, rough with sleep, soothed her but it wasn't enough. She still couldn't say anything though, her throat felt raw and thick with unshed tears.
"Another nightmare?" He'd asked. She shook her head no and wanted to smack him for not suggesting what he should have in the first place. Their children, child, should always come first.
John sighed and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, a weary expression flitted across his face and almost dreading what he was about to ask next. "It's Sammy, isn't it?" And Mary knew that that really shouldn't have been a question.
One second after her shaking her head yes, John was already three or four paces ahead of her and took to the stairs two or three steps at a time.
When John was frantic about something, he didn't go head first into anything without being prepared. Sure enough he bypassed Sammy's room entirely and was heading towards their own faster than she had ever seen him run.
Mary counted to ten, in her head before she silently slipped into the room. Upon entering she noticed two things. One was that her youngest was in his crib looking as fine as he did when she put him to bed a few hours earlier. Second was that the man that was standing over Sammy's crib was gone. Almost like he disappeared into thin air.
And then she noticed that it was completely silent in the nursery. No sound what so ever from Sammy himself, no sound of harsh breathing. Mary felt her hands clam at her sides as she curled them into fists. I'm not crazy, I'm not going crazy.
In that moment, she could feel her heart thump painfully in her chest; she hadn't felt this much fear in a while. The only other time...
She walked over to Sammy's crib and didn't want to think the worst, but a tiny little voice was telling lies, all of them lies. That Sammy wasn't breathing, that he was dead just like, like. NO!
The pinching between her eyes grew stronger almost blinding her as she took the tentative steps towards the crib. She tried to breathe in and out through her nose but nothing was working. Part of her wanted to get this over with, find out what condition her son was in and suck it up like John would. But the other part of her, the terrified part of her, didn't want to, she just wanted to stop moving and scream and stop fighting.
Mary finally made it towards the crib, the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she felt her apprehension. She felt the twist in her gut and bile rising in her throat. But most of all she could smell the o-zone that was crackling and popping around the room, and something that oddly reminded her of rotten eggs.
And then out of the corner of her eye she saw something move, something small and clumsy. Her heart in her throat she jumped a little but then after a few calming yet wheezing breaths she focused. It was a hand. Just a hand. No wait, it was Sammy's hand.
Mary looked down and she saw her son smiling that adorable baby smile he always wore and she pinched her index finger and thumb around the bridge of her nose; headache pounding behind closed eyelids.
With her other hand Mary grabbed on to Sammy's out stretched one and she caressed the skin there; holding on for dear life.
He's alive, yet she still felt that sense of dread.
After she bent over to pick him up, she heard it. A small squeak of the door but she ignored it and went back to picking up her Sammy.
...
Palo Alto, California. June, 2005.
As he brushed a hand through unkept bangs, Sam appraised his reflection with a stern glare that could possibly wilt even the most resilient of flowers. Lines and curves hardened over time with an age of experience often seen but disregarded under mountains of the common observer's denial. Hand fed straight into the mouths of lions shredding, tearing and poisoned by a figment of spoiled meat from yesterday's garbage pail.
There was never a rhyme or reason to be had with those glittering hazel irises fueled by thousands of please help me's and get me out of here's. A fish hook's dream, passion brewing a stormy current and reeling in so many, wearing his heart on his sleeve. Dying a little each day, aging like fermented wine, locked in the cellar's leather cushioned upholstery, for safe keeping. Far away from the fight, from that. From which his parents never told him until he'd begged and begged and hated his father for ever since.
Scruffy stubbled jaw, strong but not proud whip lashed with a small white line, jagged and old, the remnants of a scar almost faded into nothing. He scrubs and scrubs but finds nothing of his old self in this melancholic disaster just waiting to happen. This burnt out excuse of a man who'd had a purpose suddenly having thrown two sheets to wind on food stamps and odd jobs that meant nothing. Absolutely nothing. Caution of an upcoming danger zone, head on collision of chapped lips;peeling in places, some bloody others dry, and tongue lapping at the sensitive skin there, killing both evils with not a stone in sight.
I don't belong here, he'd whispered huskily, sound reverberating off tiles that cut through the silence at point blank range exploding into thousands of tiny echoes. His hands matting down the too long and sweaty hair, pulling at his scalp, twisting strands around shaking fingers debating if he should just pull or if he should use shears.
He doesn't though, at her demand inside his head. Her soft as silk tones washing over him like honey, drizzling down the recesses of memory. Pouring through a yard's length of destruction, cracking through the surface and he lets her stay. Please Sammy, can't we just be friends? And he'd hated her for saying that, referring to a person that never existed acting as though he did, and maybe he did once. But he's gone, just like his brother before him, a brother he never knew and maybe deep down in the pit where his heart should be, he still wants him.
Those specific words of wanted friendship, spoken of new beginnings and promises, where words like; you broke your promise and you threw away the key to my heart, don't belong. And he hates her for that want, that need to not let him go because they were and still are friends. Those long blonde locks falling in a straight wave passed her rounded shoulders, tense in anger directed towards him, as he stood cowering in the corner. Her face stained red and her blue grey eyes, wet, as she'd lashed out and threw the one thing holding him together at his face; not caring when it's jeweled surface clattered to the floor, taking his heart with it.
He'd cared, it was his heart after all.
And so with one last glance at his reflection he lets himself breathe in the deadly stench of cancer on a stick. He ties the silky strap of tie around his forehead looking for all the world like a bastardized new age hippie. Taking a drag, he lets his mind fog until he can't see her smile, her laugh, and her loving him, like paradise, now lost.
Falling toward the never ending greatness of the best of The Guess Who.
...
It had to be, Sam thought while watching the smoke rise and swirl around him up to the ceiling, one of the most powerful songs in the history of classic rock.
Bass thumping through the plush carpet and straight to his body, had Sam almost writhing along with that voice made of silk and grime. It was effective in both lyric and song, speaking about days Sam had never wished more than that moment, he had lived through. There was a rawness that not very many people could capture nor create, and for the first time he could sympathize with his parents when they adamantly yelled at him to 'turn off that racket'. This was pure bliss compared to the music he had decided was for him.
Oddly enough it was a song about the atrocities of America during the harsh times of war, from an outsiders perspective. Here, right now, listening to this song; he felt like an outsider. A true honest to god outsider, traveller of the back roads, walking on foot against the heat of the sun with just a back pack on his shoulders. And not lying in the silence of his small apartment, not needing and not really wanting to think of the emptiness that resides in this place, that after not even close to four years of living here it doesn't even feel like home anymore.
Where is home anyway? He still hasn't found the answer to that one.
That he's wasting precious study time by trying to calm his weary head with music he had sworn to his mother's face that he was done listening to.
Fucking hypocrite he is.
Sam takes a drag from his cigarette, letting it fester until he can't breathe, exhaling the stale smoke, watching it's remnants evaporate into thin air. He's blissful, seeing kaleidoscope patterns in the ceiling spinning slowly around the room looking vaguely like mandalas. Geometric and beautiful all the same, and so full, bursting with color. Senses alive, Sam feels like he's standing on top the tallest building in the world ready to jump off the edge, and soar through the sky, like Superman. Like nothing can stop him now.
If only he felt like Superman, every damned day when he truly felt he needed to. Instead he feels like Clark Kent, wearing the weight of the universe on his shoulders, hiding behind that facade.
Not caring about stupid classes that'll make or break him, he starts singing along, voice choking a little on spit and smoke, but thats alright because in the end it mellows out and becomes dark, haunted. Pretty good for a guy who can't sing no matter how hard he tries.
...
"American Woman, Sammy?" Her voice strangles him with memories of hours old focaccia and honey suckle and expensive wine, heat of the sun on naked skin and sweaty limbs caressing and writhing on the balcony.
And there that name is again, the one he's dreaded hearing since she drowned him in the murky waters of a forbidden sea. She's been trying to tell him that he's screwing up his life, screwing up his chances at doing something amazing, something wonderful, powerful. That the smoking, the drinking, and the listening to music he hates isn't him. "Do you hate me that much?"
It isn't a secret that he does hate her, her golden beauty and charm and everything he used to love about her. That hate has twisted his normally sweet face and marred it with a bitterness that was only ever directed towards his father. Has opened his jaded eyes to who he truly is and what he could never in a million years escape from.
I'll let you think about it, she had said as she walked away closing the door behind her with a firm click. He had thought about it, thought what it would be like to fake meeting over, pretending their love never happened. To start over, and the smack against his skin as he punched himself correlated through his brain, breaking every aching bone in his body, abusing him with the truth. That it was stupid and it would never just take away the pain, the want, the need.
Right now as he looks at her, buzzing slowly coming to a halt, his eyes explode into hazel flames brandishing her skin with his fiery passion. The yes that spilled from his lips caused her own lips to quiver and shake, eyes to glisten with an onslaught of tears and he just ignores the stab of a thousand apologies in the pit and looks the other way.
Sam looks at his record player, and tries not to count the hundreds of times he's heard a door slam with so much pain, because of him. And when he turns over and looks at his door, he tries to look like he isn't fazed when faced with the nastiest bout of loneliness he's ever felt.
...
"I'm sorry, dude. Bummer." Zac sat with his books strewn all over his lap and all around his legs like he was buried in sand at the beach. "I mean, friends? Last time I checked she was all over you. Maybe we should have waited a while?"
"Nah, I don't know, I have a feeling it wouldn't have worked out anyway."
"You still love her", Zac blurts out, a statement, not a question.
"Yeah, I guess I do", he says swiping his hand over his face, a weary sigh escaping his lips. "She told me to think about it. The friends thing."
Zac continues when he doesn't say anything. "Well have you? Thought about it I mean."
"I have."
"And?"
"I told her I hated her."
"Ouch." Zac shoves the books he was reading off of his lap and brushes off the invisible lint from his shorts. "Dude, you need to get out of here, for a little while at least", and stands. "No sunshine, and for how long? How can you stand this?"
Zac grabs his shoulders and playfully shoves him towards the door.
"Oh I know. Beer! Becky and the others will be there, and you look like you could use one."
"Yeah", he says disinterestedly. "And dude, I still don't get how you and your sister can be so buddy buddy."
"Whatever dude", Zac brushes off the comment, and opens the door dramatically, letting the sunshine pool through. Sam's eyes ache and water from lack of being outside and in the sun. "She's always been my best friend."
"I wouldn't know", Sam whispers, as he steps out into the real world before turning back around to close the door behind them. "I wish I did."
Sam knows that after his beer, he'll come back to this place and wallow all over again.
...
Through itchy eyes and a nauseating haze, Sam can hear the door creak open and feel the soft scraping of feet against the carpet. She hasn't left yet, and it's been a day or two, he thinks.It should bother him, anger him that she blatantly stayed, probably to claw him a new one, but it doesn't. It only strengthens his pathetic need for her to be here, to never leave his side no matter how angry at her he is.
If she does smack him, he'll be ready and deserving, and some fucked up part of his brain, wants it, wants the pain. Wants to be able to feel some semblance of normalcy and to feel grounded in this world of so much destruction caused by hellish figures only found in nightmares, because he isn't real. Not a day goes by where he wishes he was.
She walks slowly like her thoughts are in sync with her movements, and Sam smells that signature citrus that he couldn't ever get enough of.
When her fingers brush through his sweaty brown locks, he leans into her touch, keening and almost mewling with need. She leans over his face, eyes boring holes into his, so close, her breath mingling with his own. When he feels her lips touch his, soft and sweet, a butterfly hair's breath away, so far away from the real thing, that he knows this won't last. Was never meant to be, and he takes all that he can get though.
He watches as she pulls back, eyes fluttering open and closed as she lets his kiss wipe away all of her worries and fears. And gives a nod of relief when she swoons and sways until she lies with her head near his hip; reaching out to pull the joint from his fingers.
They lie in perfect harmony, at least for the moment where only the soft puff of staccato breaths and staring with hazy eyes at he ceiling, sometimes at each other, a place where painful words don't exist. Where nothing else matters. They find themselves lost in the depths of their own song, a new one etched in the goose bumps on their skin and the look of awe in their eyes. That, is freedom, what is real.
Sam takes the joint from her limp fingers, pads brushing lightly, electric and dead at the same time, almost pouting when he notices that it's almost all gone and takes one last pull before sighing. He feels her tense with anticipation like she knows he's got something important to say, and he does. As their fingers brush once again, he finally feels something click into place. He knows now what he's going to say, and he'll make it count.
"I want to try", he chokes and patters off, drowned out by the sweet ballad sung by one of his mother's favorite groups.
"I know", she says, smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
Locked in this room, at this moment in time, Sam and Jess know that they're together in this. For what? They don't know and maybe they aren't lovers anymore, but they can be something different, something they can't really put a name to. All they have is each other, and with a shy awkward glance at Jess, Sam knows this is their new beginning.
He starts to slowly feel a small weight, one that still leaves too many worries and too much mayhem, lift from his shoulders, gliding away with each exhale.
But for the moment, its enough.
...