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This page was last updated: June 03, 1999
ŠJune 1999
URL: ../../STO/sog2/vifc2.htmlShe took a long walk soon afterwards.
It seemed the thing to do. She was uncomfortable with the pictures that were slowly, but agonizingly, coming to her through the drawings. Some of them weren't even realistic, more like vague shapes with knowledge pounding behind them. But the others....made the house feel too crowded with the ghosts of her mind. Bernice felt like she was trying to decifer a frightening and foreign language; one that brought a unique kind of dread to her heart and caused her to ask too many uncomfortable questions of herself. The most important of all, was "just what was real?"
That's why she needed the walk, to ground her and take her past the questions and too much thinking. She focused on her surroundings instead, working very hard to stay present, to resist the urge to apply meaning to anything. The night air, however, felt good and smooth against the exposed parts of her body; her forearms, neck and face. And if she were trying to avoid meaning, she couldn't avoid the judgement of her experience. She was enjoying the walk, as jangly as her nerves were. Her hair drifted with the gentle brush of the air's current. She held a flashlight in her hand, and her keys jingled softly in her jean's pocket. Her old yellow teeshirt, white in the dark, was stained with color from the afternoon's art escapade. It was a disturbing reminder of what she was *trying* not to think about.
Bernice felt an urgent hankering to go somewhere, like a taste in her mouth, but she wasn't quite sure there was any place to go to. She didn't really want to be surrounded by people, so the bars were out. She wasn't hungry, so the available fast food places were not an option. The young woman determined that the local stop-and-rob, otherwise passing as a gas station/grocer, would have to do. She could hang out without causing a disturbance and it was far enough to feel like a walk and close enough that going home was no burden.
The moon was very bright; silvery, and just on the edge of being full. It made the night seem both very dark, because of the depth of the sky, and very light, because of all that she could see. Bernice left the flashlight off, trusting her night vision, which lately had been improving. The vitamins helped, she thought. The flashlight hung upon her wrist from the wide band attatched, but she kept a firm grip on it, just in case. The wide, long metalic barrel could serve as a weapon if needed. Bernice was no fool, even if she wasn't in any real danger, as she suspected.
The colors of the late evening, just past twilight, were vivid and she knew the sensation had to be an effect, a consequence of having been so absorbed in her drawings. She noted, with unusual clarity, the silvered blue of the grass when it wasn't in shadow, the flickering amber of the lamp ahead, the grey and pinked cast of the sidewalk under her feet. Each step she took made a sound, pecking and squeaking. She needed to get new shoes soon. Some cars passed by her. The exhaust fumes were sweetly poisonous, but the scent fanned out as the wind blew it away.
She was hyperalert and anxious. More importantly Bernice was aware of the fact. It seemed as if the even hairs on her arms were acting like antanae, picking up minute details of the flow of cooling air around her. If she didn't know better, she would have said her skin was tingling, but that was just the involuntary shivers the cool breeze was causing. She felt as if she could close her eyes, here and now just paces away from the gas station, and take a new step and find herself in another, wholly different world. It was a ridiculous sensation, an illusion brought on by the confusion of her life. This was why she was in therapy.
That whole episode with the so called Amazon Incorporated was an illusion too. She'd looked it up in the telephone book, in a dozen directories at the public library. If AI existed, it wasn't anywhere near her little village. She found that very discomfiting, since she was convinced it should be close by. She'd even driven to the spot she *thought* the place might be. There were only hills and tall round trees that might have hidden the original amazons had *they* been real.
That thought made her angry enough to tilt at a medium size stone. She kicked it across the empty parking lot she was passing by. The rock rolled into the darkness of an alley to escape her wrath. Bernice laughed at herself. Then she looked away without curiousity, noting the shadows and choosing not to place any significance to them. If she saw people there, it was only her imagination. The alley was just another place to get lost in.
She wasn't interested. She'd chosen her direction.
Maybe she'd get a candybar while she was gas station. She would chew it carefully, dully. Then, when her wrapper was empty, she would walk home the back way. You were supposed to take a different path when you went back home. Or so all the safety tips said.
Paths and paths and paths. So many choices to make. So many pictures to draw.
With a sigh she made her way to the entrance of the building. The door felt pleasantly heavy against her hand as she pushed her way inside. The door was real, she thought, even though it was an assumption. She could just as easily have told herself the door was a dream and it would have felt just as true.
That was what was so difficult. She felt no reassurances, no certainty except in the notion that *she* must be ...something. Alive? Alone? She couldn't decide which ached her more.
Her hand picked up the candy bar without consulting her mind. Her feet trod the familiar path to the teller's shelf. She paid with an old, wrinkled dollar and accepted the change with a nod and a civil thank you. Then she made her way to the red chairs and tables, tucking herself into a booth way in the back.
Gingerly, almost unhappily, she unwrapped the chocolate bar. It made an odd time to the music playing in the background. She paused and looked outside at the gas pumps and the people in the background. The brightness of everything made her want to close her eyes. But she didn't. Instead she turned her attention to the hardness of the table her elbows rested on, and to the sweet in her hand. Then with a sigh timed to the bell, she leaned in for a bite and paused.
The woman was tall, powerfully skinny, with short white hair. Bernice felt the recognition as soon as the woman's gaze fell upon her. The candy bar fell from her fingers. The woman's name fell softly from her lips.
"Hecate."
Katrina's Fan Fiction | Fan Fiction Site | Home Page
This page was last updated: June 03, 1999
ŠJune 1999
URL: ../../STO/sog2/vifc2.html