Otter, Alone

January 19, 2018April 8, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 1 Comment

Rain was falling on the window. Rivulets fled down the red tile of the roof and gurgled, as water charged down the drain pipe that led to the gutter.

Jan buttered a bagel inside. Steam from the tea pot misted on the glass.

In her heart, it was summertime and she was swimming, on her back, down the river – the water, warm, leaves and twigs going by. Sunlight struck her eyelids.

The rain was filling up the cave behind the house, swirling in puddles, saturating the sand. Buried in the ground was a simple gold chain, with a silver heart.

The tree branches outside the window groaned under the weight of the wind. The shutters rocked. Jan got up and used a mitt to pick up the kettle and pour water over ginseng tea leaves.

The cave was flooding, the water picking up dirt and stones – and the forgotten necklace.

Jan drank the tea in front of the fire. She waited to hear car wheels squeal over gravel, but only endless white noise met her ears.

In the summer, they walked in the woods. They visited the cave, with its tiny shell fossils pressed into the shale and ancient air pockets in the soft rock.

The forest floor twigs and soil stuck to the bottom of their feet. They walked through the forest, to their “secret” cave. They had buried the necklace to commemorate their love.

“There’s a pool of electrons all around us,” Alli had said, “The currents of the collective unconscious will bring me back to you.”

Alli practiced meditation and psychokinesis. A Zener card “expert” had come down from New York, with an offer to be in a psychic experiment. A native New Yorker herself, Alli was haunted by her ancestors’ memories, the spirit world and time.

But, Jan suspected there was something else: this new esper, Dallas. Bending spoons and speaking of an illustrious alien inheritance, Dallas had lured Alli away, in the waning days of August. Suddenly, Alli was speaking about quantum mechanics, auras and human magnetic fields, instead of just “ravens, spirit world birds.”

“You used to have your shaman feathers,” said Jan, “Now, you’re trying to build this mythic couple!”

Alli, of course, had denied this. But, by the time of fall’s first frost, Alli had packed up and moved back up north with Dallas, to New York.

“Planetary ocean of electrons, my foot.” Tired of the fire, Jan stood with her tea, watching rain paint the bay windows.

Alli had said Jan was a “3-Sigma event,” with “real-life ESP.” It was Alli who had called them “Otter and Bear.”

Today, it was just Jan – Otter – alone. If the floorboards creaked at night, Jan imagined it was Alli’s ghost, her living spirit, an astral projection, walking around, still looking for the remote. But no, only ravens disturbed her porch now.

During some night of incredible humidity, Alli had whispered to her, “Love is a haunting,” and Jan had no idea, at the time, what Alli had been meaning to say.

peaceful home

Songs:

Sam Smith, “Stay with Me”

Taylor Swift, feat. Ed Sheeran, “Everything has Changed”

Erasure, “Always”

—

Prior Alli story-arc: “The Vampire,” and “Island Get-Away.”

The Vampire

January 18, 2018April 5, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 2 Comments

gengar lol

Alli and Dani met in their usual pho restaurant on Lorimer Street, for two bowls of beef noodle soup, with sriracha and bottles of Perrier.

“I am being haunted,” Alli said.

Dani cooled her pho. She was not unused to such sentiments from her friend. Alli had Jupiter in Leo and Scorpio in Pluto, exalted in its house. Dallas was currently overseas on a several-week business trip to Victoria, Australia, and Alli often spoke of an astral tug.

“Love is like being haunted by another person, even when they are not physically there,” Alli said.

She had been to a palm reader that afternoon, who had traced her life and love lines. The psychic had said Alli was a shaman, standing with one foot in the spirit world, like the angel in the Book of Revelation: one foot on water and the other foot on dry land. The Tarot card of the Star had come up.

“It’s not necessarily an unpleasant experience, but it is a strange experience,” Alli said, “Like being in a haunted house as a kid, or a house of mirrors, full of spies.”

“Like aliens and ghosts?” Dani said helpfully.

“It’s having a psychic link with a living ghost, the astral projection of someone.” Alli said.

Alli could remember dancing with Dallas under the purple, blue and teal lights of their favorite club in downtown Manhattan, Labyrinth.

The spirit world was like morning air beyond a gossamer veil, and one could be close enough to fall through the veil, like falling into a pool of water, the Soho talisman collector had said.

“You could walk down the street and feel her walking behind you?” Dani asked.

“In an ethereal sense,” Alli said. They had been together for only a few months before Dallas had left for a remote island retreat off the coast of Tasmania.

“The tulpa follows me around, down pavements and past alleys,” Alli continued, “I write about it in my poetry night class.”

“You are on a line, spelunking out into the unknown, dangled out above a dark cave of great depth – like an astronaut, reeled out into space,” the oracle had said, kneading a Buddhist rosary.

“So, love is a haunting, then?” Dani said, pouring another glass of water.

Alli was drawn out of her reverie of candlelight and incense, in that closed room, furnished with beaded curtains, “Paintings askew, nightingale song off-kilter, the memory of a discordant note on a grand piano. You feel it all, walking home late at night, from 7-Eleven,” she added.

Dani stirred the espresso she had ordered for dessert. “‘The body exists only to verify one’s own existence,’” she quoted.

oolong tea