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Not as far away as one might think, locked behind dirty doors and buckled under the privacy of secrets and darkness, Cole met the man who would end his life, although he did not know it at the time. He sat in lotus for eighteen hours now, letting the drips of rain cascading down the patchwork ceiling couple with the blowing wind to form an unholy mantra. The place was condemned, and not even the homeless dare enter such a room. Cole had made this place his own approximately three years ago, when he had passed his rites and slain his mentor. It would be a splendid place to work, and so it had become.Cole was inside the cat, as he was inside Susan Harris. Not in a physical way, not even mental for that matter. His passage to them took long hours of concentration and a willingness to enter the doors that warn all sleeping minds never to enter. The raindrops rattled off a solo on planks of wood, crooked with age and weather. Since he had taken there, the room itself had grown darker both with the smoke of such incense and candles lit and the breath and sweat of dark men doing dark deeds. Where humanity was bred to shrug its shoulders and avert its attention, the room had no choice but to absorb what it witnessed.Things had gone well with the woman he had seen in some random place on some random day, and his nonsensical plan was proceeding predictably. Cole’s only surprise was with the cop, for he was Sighted and Cole had to step carefully.His dreams were queer that night, largely in part to the Harris woman. She would stand from her crimson bed on the sidewalk, the sound of wet sucking and ripping almost too much for him to bear, and speak to him through accusatory foreign tongues, pointing with a rigidly bent finger dripping with blood and fingernail and flesh, asking not for help but forgiveness at one moment, cursing and screaming the next. A few of her teeth had made small holes in her cheek, which stretched and slackened as she spoke. Her blonde hair, now strawberry and matted, stuck to her neck and held that which wanted to rush out each time she took a breath. Steam rose from her figure in the evening air and he wondered if it was her soul. Sometimes he hoped it was.The sounds of busy typewriters and angry telephones focused and reality rushed forward again as he forgot his dreams and Frank entered his office, turning the fluorescents on as he did. Frank spoke like a drummer in a jazz trio. Years of ritual and experience gave his cadence a synchronicity of well-practiced use, but he threw in breaks and rolls every once and again to make sure his conversants were still listening. He listened attentively and filed the information away in some faraway part of his brain. What Frank said wasn’t really important anymore, for it was always the same now. Some pilot flew on his last jet, some streetwalker took the wrong client, some drunken husband getting mad at the meatloaf on his plate. The codes were ingrained in his mind, the actions ingrained in his body. If he went too far away, he could do his job without realizing it.He was on the street again, this time rolling instead of walking. He had come to hate his office very much in the past few months, but not nearly as much as his prowler. The smell of leather, prior arrests, and prostitutes was too much for him now. He always ran with his windows down, taking the occasional ridicule from street punks or abominable weather with clenched jaws. Where was he going today? Where had he been yesterday? He drove through the dark city, and it accepted him with cold apathy.His hunch was right: Susan Harris was a junkie. The report on his desk told him as much. Smoke from his Lucky clouded his desk lamp and defined the boundaries of its illumination in swirling liquid wisps. She was a quite pretty, if somewhat young, woman when she was brought in for petty larceny eight months ago. Even then, the sunken eyes and slight frame gave her away. He’d seen blasted jumpers before, guys jittering out of their windows after their credit has finally been cut off by the neighborhood dealer, or women too coked out and fucked up to care anymore, leaving a kid or a pet and not much else. Susan Harris was no different in motive, and would be just another case for him were it not for his dreams.She wouldn’t leave him alone. Every night was a new dream, varying in gore and sheer terror. Sometimes it was quite pleasant, a deep cello layering over a soft melodic voice as the two of them ate together. Susan smiling warmly, her face luminous in the candles glow, she would speak in hushed and whispered tones, barely audible above the cello’s resonance. He would smile himself and lean in, inviting her to kiss his cheek, her lips as soft as anything he could imagine. He would close his eyes and imagine silk running across him, blood rushing to his face despite himself. He opened his eyes and met hers, her face brightened by her smile, her blonde hair framing her as more than reality, closer to an impressionistic painting of the most beautiful thing in the world.Other nights they’d be dancing. A smoky meeting filled with sultry turns as an unseen sax player seduces his instrument. She would keep up with his novice skills quite easily, gliding along the rumbling bass lines and coming close to him when it mattered. Close enough to smell her floral scent and vivrant life. Close enough for her to be alive. He and Sarah moved with perfect grace, two swaying and swooning as one. Although the floor was seemingly crowded, no one interfered with their poetry, their bodies’ greeting, their rhythmic seduction of one another. He could see it in her flaring green eyes as easily as she could see it in his. In his dreams, he was falling in love with her.Next
©2002 Brian Miller
