It's Monday.

Time to wake up.

No. I cover the sheets over my head and pretend I am invisible. Maybe if I hold my breath and lie perfectly still she won't come back into the room.

I see through the sheets that my lamp was turned on lighting room while it was still dark outside. There is a small rustle of pots coming outside my door in the kitchen. I hear the sound of water running from the sink and then silence.

Footsteps.

And again the voice calls out to me.

This time louder than before.

Time to wake up. You are going to be late!

I feel her presence as she is not walking out of the room this time.

Waiting for me to move underneath my protective cover, my invisible shell of security.

But it's useless. I submit and pull the sheets down from the head. And light in the room. The light. It is blinding and I squint to make out the shape of the figure in front of me.

And then I wake up.

Again.

In my bed.

But not the bed I was in before. In my room. But not the same room as before.

I am much older now. And this is a different place. Yet the voice of the figure is still the same.

Mother…

Saturday morning

        The alarm did not even go off before his eyes opened up for the first time. There was a small sliver of light that crept into the bedroom illuminating a section of the blue patterned comforter that lie across the bed. Slowly the light moved up and towards the sleeping individual residing under its warm covers. When it eventually arrived at its final destination the warmth triggered a release from the slumber that had kept the person silently passing time in the space.

His awakening was slow at first. One eye, then the other, and finally both were able to stay open long enough to gather his surroundings. Many mornings he would awake and for the first few fleeting moments he would not know where he was, lost in his surroundings and still believing he was living inside the fictional dreams of his imagination. But as the seconds would drift away those moments and feelings would dissipate and become mere fragments of broken memories that he would struggle to hold onto but eventually wash away. The only feeling left resonating inside him some days was that their was a hidden message or meaning to what he was dreaming about during the late hours of the night.

Sometimes he would write down these ideas or feelings in a small red journal that was now underneath his bed next to a few old candy wrappers and a Boy's Life Magazine that he got last year. The pages were old and yellow had a strange smell of lemongrass and some other plant that he was not familiar with. His mother had a cabinet full of strange ingredients in the cupboard and every day while he would wait for his breakfast to be prepared he would open that cupboard and step inside it and take a deep breath to inhale and fill his nostrils with lots of strange and peculiar scents. All the ingredients were kept on the top three shelves of the storage space. He was only tall enough to reach the lowest of these shelves, but he could stand back and read (or try to make out) many of the names on the labels of the small and medium size jars.

The lemongrass jar was on the bottom shelf and he had on occasion taken it down to open get a more precise smell of the plant. He had even so far as to take some out from the jar and kept it inside his red journal that now lied underneath his bed.

Pushing himself forward against the backboard of the bed he rubber the little crusty flakes that decorated the edges of his eyes and waited for the blurriness to subside until he could focus across the room. A small desk with a backpack lay strewn with a few school books on top of it. An old poster for a music group The Blue Hawks was pinned up above the desk.

There was a small clink-clink-clank and the curtains sheltering the room from the incoming light brushed across the window as the vent for the air conditioning turned on to blow a cool breeze of air into the room. The images of sailboats sewed onto the curtains swayed with the motion and simulated the constant push and pull of the ocean water as the crew would run and scuttle across the planks to raise the masts to catch the wind just at the right time to help them sail to the destination of origin, their home port far across the horizon of the ripples of the curtain that abruptly ended six feet down.

There was a patter of footsteps that seemed to be coming from the wall down to the door of his room and then silence. Suddenly the door opened with a great swoosh and a bright eyed, blond haired girl no older than five entered the room. She had prefect ivory skin with a hint of rose tint to the flesh and electric blue eyes that seemed to had a hypnotic effect to them if stared at for a long period of time. She was wearing a Snow White pink night gown that had a picture of the damsel in distress walking down a colorful garden of flowers accompanied by a small amount of forest animals on here sides. Her hair was slightly tangled and gnarled up on the ends.

"Henry, wake up!" she screamed with enthusiasm and vigor. "It's Saturday morning and you promised me…" But before she could finish her sentence the person in the bed retorted back to her. "Jill! How many times have I told you not to come into my room in the morning?"

The smile on her face slowly receded as her hand retracted from the brass door knob. "I'm sorry Henry, it's just that it's SATURDAY and there is no school today and I thought that we could go out to the…"

"Yes, yes, I know what I told you this week." Henry said with a short gruff. He had made the mistake of telling his younger sister that he would be bring her along this beautiful Saturday to the secret hideout that he and his collective of other young boys were assembling on the outskirts of the town. Normally this notion would be taboo as "girls" were not allowed to be within 500 feet of their hideout for the main reason of constructing this building was to counteract the opposition's structure that was already erect at another girl's house in town. Violet Blackside's house to specific. Out of all the students in West Chambly's Middle School there was only one person whose parents would cater to their child's every needs and wants and spoiled wishes. And that one girl was Violet.

She had a way about her when she would walk down the halls in between classes. Colorful and ornate dresses and purses would adorn her day after day, and Henry actually believed that he never saw her wear the same outfit more than once at school. Not that he actually noticed that much about her. Well, maybe he did notice, but it was hard not to when the sound her voice would echo down the halls as she parade around with her entourage of other girls in the 7^th grade who all looked up to her with great regard and humility.

Violet's parents had for her 11^th birthday constructed their back guest house into a giant doll house (mansion) for their daughter. Henry remembered it well as it was blatantly advertised across the school for at least a month before the actual event. Of course Violet had a select few group of boys and girls invited to the special engagement. And Henry was not one of them. Not that Henry would have cared to go to some stupid party with a giant four layer birthday cake, bowls filled with chocolates and bubble gum, presents and party favors adorning the whole house not just for the birthday girl, but also all the guests. No, he thought better of himself to get into a sticky pot of trouble by hanging out with them.

This of course is what spurned the young boy to band together with his crew of other rag-tag boys and build their own super fancy, ultra cool, adventure fort. This headquarters for them would not be painted pink with yellow and gold curtains hanging from the windows. It would be green and brown and camouflaged blending in with the rest of the forest that surrounded it. It would be simple too; only the most essential pieces of furniture would be required.

Unlike Violet who had the luxury of having her parents and "hired help" furnish her doll house with couches and tables and silly tea cups and flower jars, the boys slowly rummaged through the junk yard by the train yard and hoisted a couch, a broken table with only three legs and a few cinderblocks for chairs to complete the decorating of their fort.

"So Henry…can I still come with you today?" Jill asked again. This time her voice was coyer and it came out in a slightly mumbled voice as if she just got scolded for getting into trouble.

Henry let out a deep sigh and paused again before responding to his sister. "Yes, I told you that we would go together and I will keep my promise to you. But like I said, you cannot touch anything that I say is off limits. And if you start to embarrass me in front of the other boys you will have to go back home immediately."

After Henry finished his lecture to Jill she lifted her face back up to look at him. A single strand of her golden blond hair that was slightly curled at the edge fell back across her cheek and a small smile started to creep back up into her lips as she just stood there in the door way for a moment and without warning whisked back around closed the door to her brother's room and screamed in joy as she raced down the hallway.

Henry fell back against his bed and slid down underneath the covers for another few minutes and contemplated exactly what he promised to his sister just a few short days ago. He was hoping that the other boys in the group would not think badly of him for inviting a girl out to the fort. But this was his sister and she was kind of like the boys, well she always seemed to find out where Henry was at on the weekends.

He put the thought to rest as he drifted back into a dream for a few more minutes. He remembered thinking how the boy's fort was going to be the biggest and best fort in the whole town once they got done building it. Violet's doll house would never stand up to theirs. Not according to Henry that is.

 Breakfast at the Bettleheim's

            It was another twenty minutes after the personal invasion of his space by Jill before the young boy made it outside his room. Scratching his brown and slightly shaggy head he trudged on down the hallway into the bathroom. He looked up into the center mirror above the porcelain sink that was adorned with the children's toothbrushes, Cooljet Toothpaste and a small but growing collection of barrettes, hair clips and rubber bands. Obviously these last items belonged to his sister who had a horrible habit of leaving these things all across the house and would constantly scream out in anger when she could not find them. It did not help the fact that Jake, his golden retriever and best friend would occasionally come across one lying on the ground or on a small table or chair and take it upon himself to consume only to later have it returned to the owner with the rest of his puppy mess outside. But it still did not detract from his sister to continue to lose them as fast as they were supplied by his mother every week.

Henry reached to turn on the cool, cool, cold water and shivered as it hit his hand and splashed it up upon his soft and slightly tanned skin to awaken him from his lackadaisical slumber. Immediately his eyes sprung wide open and he thrust his body in an upright stance from the shock that flooded through his body in that very instant. Now that he was coherent and aware of his surroundings he proceeded to dry of his face and hands with the yellow hand towel that lay half strewn on the stand adjacent to the toilet and exited the bathroom back down the hallway past his room and down the stairs to the kitchen.

As he descended down to the front of the house the smell of eggs and bacon began to fill his nostrils and his stomach started to awaken inside him with a small rumble. One of the benefits of the weekends was that his mother took the time to make a nice breakfast for him and his sister since their was no school to go to. There was no rush to consume there breakfast and make it out the door and down the street to catch the bus.

Weekday breakfasts usually consisted of cold cereal or oatmeal with the occasional surprise of French toast, but even then it was a rare occurrence. On the weekends though that was a different story. Saturdays were always bacon and eggs with toast and sweet marmalade spread. Sunday mornings were even better as his mother would make blueberry pancakes from scratch and Henry would always try and eat at least six in one sitting. His mother would make the kids smaller size pancake rather than traditional size ones. It was not that size had any pronounced effect to the overall taste of them, but Jill and Henry did think it was special that they had a smaller size round cake that they could pile up twice as high as a normal one so they could carefully pour fresh maple syrup over the center and then turn sideways against their plates and watch how it would slowly ooze on over the edge of the tasty morsel and drip on down like rain traveling on the side of a roof during a shower.

As Henry turned around the base of the stairs and made way into the kitchen the smell of bacon sizzling on the frying pan became even more pronounced and the morning sun was beginning to creep its way across the sink and down the floor up the kitchen table and finally ending at the end of the room below the silver clock that read half past nine.

Henry's mother was a slightly slender woman with dark brown hair like his son and was of average height. She had green eyes and showed no signs of age of stress in her facial features. Her hands were small and her skin had a pale light tone that seemed to be inherent in both children. Henry had his mother's eyes. Mrs. Bettleheim had a way about her as she seemed to float across the kitchen as she finished preparing the last of the breakfast for Henry and his sister. She was wearing a simple flowered dress with pale yellow shoes with a simple purple insignia on the front. She was humming some song unaware of the person in the room as she scooped up the bacon from the pan and evenly separated the portions between two individual plates. And as she turned around to drop the plate into the sink of hot sud-filled water she was slightly startled, but only for a brief moment to discover the boy standing in the kitchen behind her with an old Journey t-shirt and checkered pajama bottoms on.

A bright smile came across her face as she relaxed her shoulders slightly and dropped the hot frying pan into the water and walked over to help brush the long lock of hair out of Henry's face.

"Just in time, why don't you go grab your sister from the living room and let her know that breakfast is ready Henry? Will you please?" she said as she turned back around to douse the flame on the stove and grabbed the spatula to remove the scrambled eggs from the other pan onto the children's plates.

Henry turned away from the kitchen and proceeded to enter the living room where his sister lay on the floor with a bright yellow pillow resting underneath her head as her eyes remained locked onto the glass plate of the Panasons television no more than 3 feet away from her.

"Jill, c'mon. Your breakfast is almost ready." Henry said scratching the back of his pajama bottoms that were once bright red and white checkered but have long sense faded and now were starting to fringe apart at the seams and the waist.

His sister did not flinch once. She remained astute and solid like a log on the ground otherwise concealed except for the low hum of some unknown song emanating from her mouth.

Henry decided to take decisive action to resolve the situation and marched over to the front of the living room and walked directly in front of the view of his sister and turned off the television with a quick snap.  Immediately like the sound of a bell his sister bolted up from the position she lay in from the floor and was screaming at the top of her lungs at her older brother.

"Henry James!" She pelted with her squeaky and almost pleading voice. "I was right in the middle of my cartoon show! You had better turn the television back on this instant!" Her face began to turn red and her hand came up to her hair and began to twirl it around nervously.

Henry knew her all too well. It was not that difficult to get her upset. Little things like holding the door to the bathroom shut when she would try and leave or putting up one of her "dollies" in a branch on a tree just outside her reach would really make her angry. He was not a bad brother. On occasion he would do something like this to help her know he was the one in control. But he had a soft spot for her as she really looked up to him. He really admired her for that and was proud.

But at the current moment in time he felt his actions were justified and merely folded his arms on top of each other and planted his feet apart while looking down at his sister. Very calmly and in a direct tone he told his sister, "Jill you have to get your breakfast from the kitchen. You are a big girl now. Mom is not going to carter to your every need."

Jill opened her mouth to retort back with one last quick plea but simply inhaled the air around her and lowered her head slightly. "Alrightie Henry, but you had better turn my show back on by the time I get back in here or else…"

Henry again did not let her finish her ultimatum and turned her around with a quick gesture and pushed her into the kitchen as he marched behind her, left foot in front of the right and so forth imitating a military march.

 Breakfast came and went very quickly. Henry was quick to finish his pancakes and orange juice as Jake patiently awaited his master to move onward with the activities of the day. He noticed the dog scratching on the tile of the kitchen floor every so often in anticipation of finishing.

After dropping of his plate in the sink he bolted back upstairs past Jill who was lost in her cartoons in the living room and ran upstairs to change into his clothes for the day. Rummaging through the dresser he found a shirt and pair of brown pants that had seen better days to wear. He grabbed his Dodgers cap from the rack by his door and was greeted by Jake finally making his journey from the kitchen to meet up with him.

Racing down the stairs again missing the last 3 steps Henry slammed on the first floor of the house with a loud smack and signaled for his sister to finish her breakfast.  Jill was lost in the moment and then got up from the floor and dropped the remains of her breakfast into the garbage disposal. Her mother was just finishing making out the grocery list for the day at the kitchen table as she pulled her daughter aside just as she was inches away from the table.

"Now don't forget to brush you teeth all the way before you head on out with your brother. We don't want another trip to Dr. Muller again do we?" she asked.

Dr. Muller was the family dentist, the town dentist whom all the folks went to get cleanings twice a year. Unfortunately for Jill she was more familiar with the office than others as she had soft teeth and a bad tendancy to not stay up with her dental hygene. She was diagnosed with 3 cavaties in the past 2 years. Her mom was not too happy when she had to get the last filling just a month ago.

"I know mom, I know. I promise that I will brush my teeth before I go! But I have to hurry or else Henry is going to leave without me. I just know it!" she pleaded as her mom tugged with a brush at the back of her hair trying to get the snarls out of it.

"Your brother won't leave this house without you. Don't worry, just go upstairs and change and don't forget to brush before you leave." Her mom replied as she got the last of the snarls out of her golden blond hair.

Henry was growing impatient and Jake had started to bark anxiously as the two of them stood by the front door. "Jill I am going to be right out front of the house. Hurry up and change. I am not going to wait all morning for you!" Henry said as he opened the front door and let in a bright ray of morning light into the front entrance.

"Waaaaaaaaaaaait!" Jill screamed as she bolted past her brother and up the stairs to her bedroom.

Henry began to snicker as he heard his mother's voice once last time call out to him.

"Henry James. You be sure and wait for your sister before you head out now. And make sure that she does not get too dirty when you guys are out. She has to stay clean for her ballet class this afternoon at 3pm with Ms. Durman."

"Yes mother." Henry replied as he walked outside into the warm summer air. Jake let out a quick bark as he spotted the mailman across the street delivering letters to his neighbor.

The Night Shift

Load, unload, drive and repeat.

After 8 years of service at the school Robert Baluski had just about worn a path into the ground with the golf cart carrying all the garbage, cleaning supplies and miscellaneous junk during his shift working every night. He never did complain though, the job did not pay shit. At 14.65 an hour he could finally work into a retirement after just a mere 22 more years of duty at his current pay scale.

22 years did not seem like a long time for the single man who just recently moved into his own apartment at the ripe old age of 39. It was not by choice mind you. His fathers health was greatly deteriorating and unfortunately the social security checks from the government were not enough to cover the cost of the mortgage on the house and pay for his medical treatment. So he was moved to a rehabilitation center downtown and would spend the rest of his short natural life confided to a small institutionalized room with just a small window to grant him light and hopeful sense of freedom to someday escape into when his time on Earth here would expire.

Roberto, as his boss would call him before he left the man alone with the concrete and smelly waste remains, was content with working alone at night. The shift ran from 7pm till 6am and he was granted a hour lunch break every night. This consisted of the dark haired, slightly overweight man to drive his makeshift golfcart into the beginning of the football field and hit found golf balls across sometimes making over the football goal post. He could imagine the lights on the scoreboard spelling his name and the cheer of the fans in the stands crying out in applause as the little white Number 7 ball would zing in the air like a meteor and arc just so gently over the aging, slanted yellow post. Luckily having the school across the street from a private golf country club was a boon for the janitor would make a small excursion from his path of delivery every night to scour the basin across the street with his flashlight for extra balls that seemed to have lost their way and wound up on the other side of the greens.

But aside from his leisurely date with his bent 8 Iron every night there was not too much excitement to be held onto. Especially not after eight years of service.

As he walked out the of mens locker room at the far end of the school dropping the remnants of the garbage into the back trailer cart the wind picked up ever so slightly and caused him to stop and turn in the direction of the football field.

It was ghostly silent and he could just barely make out the silhouette of the home bleachers resting in the distance. All was normal until he saw it. At first he dismissed it completely. Just his wild imagination running ragged with boredom. But instinct took over immediately. What was a silly type of passing became a more intensified stare into the dark over 200 yards away past the chain link fence and cool green football field.

Like a wolf in the night the light from the half filled moon glistened in his eyes and he slightly squinted to just make out more detail to the spot that caught his attention. The hum and ra-ta-tattle from the air conditioning unit around the corner of the gymnasium started up like a huge lawn mower and it began a rhythmic pattern of churning up and down.

Bob waited patiently past the distraction trying to hone all his sight and focus into the field waiting for the light and darkness to switch places so his eyes could focus ever more slightly into the bleachers. Waiting.

And then he saw it again. The slightest little shimmer of a reflection in the middle left side of the bleachers, not more than 3 or 4 rows up. It was small, maybe the size of a golf ball from his distance, but somehow the light above the walkway caught the angle of that object and cast back a quick reflection that caught his attention. Bob was frozen with fear for a brief moment. He reached to his hip where he had holstered his cell phone and for a second humored the thought of contacting his boss.

But then again it was approaching midnight and the last thing he would want to do is wake up his boss just as he was most likely sleeping to inquire about what to do with a strange light reflecting in the distance on the bleachers of the football field.

"What the hell do you want me to say? Why dont you hop on your golf cart with your overweight ass and drive out there and find out what it is.", he could imagine his boss say in his strong Cuban accent and slightly smokey voice. "And while you are out there why dont you do the morning crew a favor and pick up your little golf balls. I dont know how many fucking times I have to remind you that this is not Pebble Beach and you are not Arnold Palmer."

Calling his boss, Enrique was not a good idea. He would just have to suck up the courage to get into his cart and drive on out there. But first he would take a nip from his bottle of Jim Beam waiting ever so patiently on the passenger seat of the cart. The pint was almost empty already and the janitor had just begun on the bottle at the start of his shift. He would have to conserve the rest of it through out the night as he would not be getting paid for another three days and was down to one last reserve bottle stowed away in his locker.

After taking one last hit from the bottle Bob finally got the courage to get into his cart and drive out carefully around the exterior of the campus down the darkened path of the cobble stone road till he reached the side gate of the football stadium. Ahead in the distance was the bleachers that were being partially lit from a series of apartments behind it. But the front of the stands where the origin of the light emanate from lay draped in a blanket of darkness. Stopping at the old rusted fence to the side of field he turned to the back of the golf cart and groped in a old stinky cloth bag that smelled of cleaning supplies till he found what he was searching for. He produced a rikity blue JOHNSON flashlight that was in dire need of some new D size batteries. Upon switching to the ON position the light produced a faint yellow cast of light that would may penetrate about 5 or 6 feet ahead of it before dropping into nothing.

Not the best piece of equipment to use at a time like this he thought, but he could drive back to the work room to get a better flashlight. Nah, this would have to do he thought.

The smells of cloves were fresh in the air and the mix of the vapors from the smoke machine gave a heightened sense of electricity to the tobacco. Ruby red and neon green lights shot out from a mysterious dark cubby hole at the top of the room and in the slight fog of smoke could you make out a figure standing in the small area moving back and forth only being illuminated from below while he swayed back and forth with a pair of puffy headphones and bright yellow sunglasses.

The music shifted from Ah-ha to Joan Jett. And the crowd below immediately adapted to the short dissolve between songs. Up above the lights continued to shout out across to the lyrics coming out from the onslaught of speakers that lay spewed across the club.

A dark haired girl with hot pink streaks for bangs and a red fishnet stockings and a beat up orange t-shirt was strutting across the floor to beat of the song. The crowd around her began to form a circle to give her a small area to make her performance present to the rest of the people dancing.

The music shifted again to the Pet Shop Boys. And suddenly a whole new set of people came out on the dance floors. Couples began to dancing with one another to the new beat strumming out from above. The new alternative kids were out with their black and gray suits and new hairstyles that were short and spiked with dabs of color here and there, but mostly black and filled with mousse and gel that smelled like perfume.

Brian and Tom sat on a make shift dance platform and watched the people move across the floor from one song to another. Talk-Talk came on next Tom felt the urge to jump off the platform and grab the young blonde haired girl dancing by herself in one corner of the club. She was wearing a Culture Club T-shirt with baby blue suspenders and black pants and checked Converse high-tops laced half way up her feet. The dangling motions of her silver hoop earrings were causing a hypnotic trance that was pulling him without realizing it.

Brian slapped his friend on the back sending back into the moment as he turned to him in confusion and disarray. "Give me a light, will ya?" Brian yelled to Tom as the music changed again to a slower song and the blonde haired girl walked off the floor to the concession stand to get a drink of water.

"Tom? Hello! This is Plannnnet-Earth calling. You know Duran-Duran?" Tom said as he brought his face into his buddy blocking the path of vision of the young girl.

"Yea I heard you the first time!", Tom replied back as he tilted to the side of Brian only to discover that in those few short seconds his potential prospect for now was already being interrogated by some other guy who either was a going bald at the age 15 or was into the punk scene.

Brian grabbed the lighter from his friend and turned behind as he lit up another cigarette to find out what had caught the other boys attention. It took him but just a quick scan of the territory to realize what had caught the deer in the headlights of oncoming traffic as his face grew with a giant smile. "Oh, I see what had you in Na-Na Land mister. That's all you had to say. Then again, not like you WOULD ever get the nerve to go over there and say anything at all."

Tom's face turned slightly red with color, but he had the lap of luxury of not giving away this tell due the fact that the club with dim with lights save for the bounced ambient glare of fluorescents that refracted off the mist floating below and above them.

"What are you saying Brian? That you don't think I could go over there and…"

Brian exhaled from a drag of his smoke and blew it right into Tom's face causing him to stop mid-sentence and turn let out a small cough gasping for fresh air. "Face it man, you are just like me. All talk and no action. Don't try and fool another person in your shoes."

Tom paused for a minute to let his eyes readjust to the cool misty air and he turned back around to respond. "It's not like I don't want to, but look man there is already another guy talking to her right now. What am I going to do? Just walk on up to the two of them and try and strike up a new conversation?"

The slightly taller, black haired boy leaned back with both hands supporting his wait and took a deep drag as he tilted his head back to look at himself in the mirrored ceiling above him. "Sure. Why not? It's that difficult to do ya know. Just pretend she is my little sister Angie. You can talk to her no problem."

"That's because your "little" sister is only eight years old. There is a big difference with that scenario." Tom replied as he sank his head down and stared at his bright blue Doc Martin three holes shoes he was wearing.

"Well the way I see it. It's now or never"

"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Tom shouted as he suddenly sprung back into attention.

"If you don't go over there right now to talk to her you will never, ever get the courage to approach any girl that you want to talk to." Tom replied like he just got writing some self-help book for angsty teenage boys who were having trouble meeting people of the opposite sex. "What have you got to lose? Think about it. Nothing at all. She does not know you; she does not go to our school. If she blows you off that will be the end of it. If she laughs in your face you will not hear about it from everyone else at the lunch room on Monday. The way I see it, you have a win-win situation here. And it's a great learning experience."

"You sound like my dad or something." Tom said with a small smirk coming from the side of his lips. "But you do have a point. What do I have to lose? A brief moment of pride if she denies me or just sticks her finger onto my chest and pushes me away with a hateful scorn of disapproval?"

Brian took one last drag of the cigarette and dropped onto the ground and jumped down of the platform and landed directly underneath the butt as he turned up to Tom as he pushed his hair back from his eyes. "Exactly, now go get her tiger."

And with those final words the 16 year old boy who was able to convince his dad to take out the Lincoln Mark V two door out to the club began to walk away across the middle of the dance floor signaling another boy talking to the DJ who was taking a break from the booth upstairs.

Tom was all alone now and a small down his shoulders and he pushed up his sleeves of his shirt to examine them for a brief moment. "Come on, don't chicken out now!" he told himself as Jane's Addiction came onto the speakers and caused a flurry of panic as everyone began to swarm to the floor to dance to this song. And suddenly without warning he noticed the girl dancing no less than 10 feet away from him. Normally this would be a considerable amount of safe distance, but given the current climate of the situation Tom felt like it was mere inches.

He tried to swallow and felt a huge lump travel down his throat like a rock bouncing against his esophagus. With all his will power he pushed himself off the platform and upon landed he realized that the steel toe shoes he was wearing increased in weight ten-fold as he was paralyzed to the floor unable to move with fear and anxiety. The song was already nearly over and the movements of her body began to take her closer to the young boy.

Across the room he saw Brian dancing with some tall girl with long reddish blonde hair with black and white stockings. He noticed his friend finally standing on the dance floor and gave him a quick thumbs up approval as his hand was immediately taken by the reddish blonde haired girl who whisked him up off the floor in the darkness of the back area of the club.

With all his strength Tom lifted one foot and then the other slowly, but eventually inching his way towards the girl. The song ended and a slower U2 song came across from the album Boy. Tom liked this song just recently purchased it on vinyl at the local Record Land store in the mall. Hearing the song gave him the extra boost of confidence to finally reach his destination.

As he came across the girl her back was to his face and she was slowly swaying from side to side with her arms floating up in the air. The sweet smell of a mysterious fragrance permeated the close space between the couple as he tried one last time to clear the lodging inside his throat which seemed to be the only restriction causing him distress still.

And without warning the girl spun around not expecting anyone to be hovering behind her so close as he ample warm body brushed up against his chest. Slightly losing her balance one of her hands flung forward to stay aloft and it found way to his right shoulder and almost instinctively Tom's left hand swept on down and scooped behind he back to keep it from tilting backwards anymore than it was already.

A small surge of heat rose up from the floor up his legs and traveled up his chest onto the back of his neck as he could swear the hair on his head almost stood up with a small military salute.

The girl did not seem too afraid or upset; she had a slightly puzzled look of amazement to herself as looked into the deep brown eyes of the new stranger who stood in front of her. The sheen from her lip gloss caught the light from a laser above and glistened with a small smile from her mouth.

"Thank ya much. I usually am not that uncoordinated on the dance floor." She said to the young boy as she slowly slid her hand off his shoulder.

A small trickle of sweat traveled down a lone path from the base of his hair line behind him.

"I guess I got just caught up with the music and did not notice you dancing behind me. Sometimes I forget there are other people on the floor out here with me. I know it's silly, but I really feel like I am drifting away when the music really flows through me." She said with a bright smile and big blue eyes that had seemed to lock onto his without blinking yet.

Tom's heart was beginning to speed up to the beat of the music playing. Roy Orbison was now playing. Perfect timing he thought to himself as couples on the floor began taking over to the tune drifting across the floor.

"Would you like to dance with me?" The blonde haired girl asked directly and without hesitation as she grabbed him by the hand and pulled him forward as her back tilted backward and she began to walk backwards towards the center of the dance floor.

"Um, uhh….well. I am not exactly the best dancer." Tom said in a broken down-hoarse voice. "I kinda have two left feet." He said with a silly smile as he reached to wipe the damp area behind the nave of his neck with his only free hand.

That response seemed to have no affect whatsoever to the girl as she continued the tug of war of the young boy onto the dance floor. By the time they reached the center of the stage Tom had given in completely and began to loosen up a bit. He little heart was still beating like crazy though and he frantically turned all around to see if he could find Brian in the mass of the crowd. But unfortunately he was still no where to be found.

One song led to two, The Smiths, Human League, Depeche Mode and The Cure set one song to another that seemed to be one long soundtrack that did not end for what seemed to be an eternity.

Across the bridge

They had just got back from the zoo that afternoon. The smell of the animals was still lingering on the hands and clothes of the children as they imitated making noises and gestures of the monkeys and zebras they had petted and ask to bring home about 20 times.

Patty Klein was on the radio drowning away the mundane trek back to the house as a few spatters of rain began to fall on the front windshield of the wood-paneled stationwagon drifting down the highway.

Pit....splat.....splat.....pit, pit, pit....the rain cried as it ended it short, but happy life traveling down high up above the earth from the skies close, but so far from heaven. Traveling downward and across the skies with no set destination, no regrets, no worries, no empathy at all. Pit...splat...

The windshield had begun to swell with these miniscule beads of water as the windshield wipers were powered up by the rotation of a small switch linked the front dask panel with a generic looking symbol of a blade swinging across a trapazoid. And just as the water had once been resting in its grave of warm, transparent glass so had it merged with thousands of other drops into one homogenous glob of H20 and quickly was transported across the glass plane of exisistance back into the air for it's final moments of life until it fell upon the poarse concrete field of highway.

The car was able to escape the onslaught of mother nature excreting itself upon the earth as it crossed over a short bridge from one town to the next. The sun was bringing its slow decent onto the horizon and the visor in the drivers seat was brought down to cast away the glare reflecting onto the inside of the car. 

As the window was slightly cracked down to ventilate the ever present scent of animal it was replaced the by the noxious fumes of disel from the old red truck that puttered in front of the stationwagon. The licence plate read out of state, far away from it's origin to be precise. And as the stationwagon switched lanes to pass it the children in the back called attention to the driver in the old red truck and proceeded to put on a performance of their enactments of the animals in the zoo for a nominal moment.

The driver of the old red truck who has long past his years looked out at the passing vehicle to it's right and as the car proceeded to accelerate past his own vehicle he noticed the children in the back seat making the silly gestures with their hands and mouths. He suddenly was taken back with amazement and deja vu. As the young brown haired boy with a dark blue izod polo shirt was googling to him with his mouth blown up and his hands behind his ears flapping back and forth he realized exactly what he was looking at.

Himself as a child at that age. Driving back from the zoo one afternoon with his sister and mother. But that was so long ago, so many days and years that he had long forgotten. Until now and he saw that young boy that was an exact replica of himself minus the fact it was some 50 years ago.

And then it was gone. The stationwagon prodded ahead of the old red truck and put on it's signal to move in front of the car as it slowly pulled ahead and away from him. By the time he had reached the end of the bridge the stationwagon was gone in the distance, nothing a tiny spec of color on the horizon which was getting even more difficult to look into as the sun set.

Ending yet another day. Or was it begining a new one? 

8th Grade, right after the new year.

So its a Wednesday I believe, somewhere in the middle of the week if I remember correctly. Wednesday were always the worst days of the week because you still had two more days of school ahead of me and inside I would be struggling to make it to Friday night to go spend the night at buddies house down the street from me. And then the following morning we would wake up early, pack up our stuff and go into the forest to begin our completion of the fort. But that is another tale to tell later.

So we are all waiting at the bus stop, not the most easily accessable places to wait. It was simple a plod of dirt underneath the trees flanked by a metal barrier that would keep cars from driving over the small cliff into the creek below some 20-25 feet down. Why they chose to zone our stop there will always remain a mystery to us all. It's as if the school zoning commission was running late for his dentist appointment when they plotted a stop for us to picked up and dropped off.

Alas, that was our area. Note the word area. Which is a certain distance between two points. Now we obviously could only move in two directions, as the road and the ditch were on the opposite sides of the scale.

But we took liberties (as all 12 year old's do) and would occasionally shift a bit forward or back. We (the boys) would take turns watching for the bus while the others would run across the road to a small little alcove by a man-made pond and smoke Marlboro Reds before the bus would come. Well, we would actually smoke Marlboro if someone had made it up to the Country Skillet and was successful in slamming down 1.50 in quarters to retrieve a pack without getting caught from the hostess at the front of the restaraunt.

So sometimes we would have to scurry back across the street to catch the bus as it would come trucking on down the residential street to retrieve the last group of us before embarking to the school in the mornings.

Well this day we noticed our usual angsty middle aged bus driver was not present. We had a new person in the seat. She was middle aged, angsty and stunk of cheap coffee just like the many others. But unlike her predessors she had an extra ounce of bitterness to her that made an enterance onto our lives the moment the door opened to shuttles us in.

"You kids are supposed to be 30 feet closer than where you are." She pelted as we stomped up the dirty black plastic steps onto the old bus that smelled like cheap vinyl and bubblegum (which was illegal and subject to detention). "If you kids are not in the correct spot tommorow I am going to drive right past you and not stop." She said as the last of the kids shuffled down to an open seat in the bus.

I remember her dark menacing eyes that slightly squinted in the mirror that she used to monitor us as she professed her ultimatum. Who was she to exert such an order to US. And on the first day of her shift to. Obviously she was trying to set a new type of order in the harmonic-chaos of our daily routine of travel.

Needless to say Thursday came around and we all agreed then to stay in the same spot as yesterday. And as the big yellow beast turned onto the street it began to gain speed. We assumed that she would stop and bark at us again with her gritty yellow coffee stained teeth and swager, but the bus only gained momentum as it got closer to the pickup.

Within 300 feet realized that she was not going to stop and sure enough the good old Yellow Bird, Bus #847 kept on trucking down into the distance. I, myself was flabergased and amazed that she did not stop for us. Most of the students walked back to their homes and had the luxury of having their parents drive them to school late conveying the mysterious events of the past two days to during the travel. But for me and friend Brad we walked back to his house and turned on MTV.

We grabbed a few cokes out of the fridge and he showed me the new issue of Playboy that he grabbed from his dad's room. I remember Berlin was on playing a song from Top Gun, Take My Breath Away. It was pretty cool back then.

After about two hours or so we call his dad and told him the story. We hoped if we waited till almost lunch time that we could skirt by missing the rest of the day. No dice. He came and picked us up in time for the last 15 minutes of lunch. No big deal. I rarely ate lunch in middle school. Another story though.

Regardless, that afternoon and the next day we had a new bus driver. We never saw that one lady again. Never caught her name or new what her favorite color was. No idea. But I can only assume it had something to do with her OCD in having the kids wait at the zoned space for her to pick and drop us off at.

Just another Wednesday.

Funny words:

Dork: Try saying a few times aloud. It sounds like it's an abreveation(sp) for a longer old english word that is defined by the number of children you had with your servant. And of course there would a Greek or Latin origin like "doorkicus" or "dorkensli"

Postulate: Not sure what the definition of this, it just popped into head after finishing that last paragraph. Hmmmm.

Sparkles: Should I even go there with this one...

Circumstancial: Latin origin, adjective, adverb. Often confused with circumsized, circumference and ciriculum... has nothing at all to do with the shape.

Absolute: this word is such an oxymoron... is anything really the text book definition of absolute. And if so, are you ABSOLUTELY sure? [ok vodka also]

Dispersion: disapate, disapear, disillusion, dialate. Another word used in the wrong context by many people. Try looking at the other words listed for the correct word ussage. Thanks.

Shat: Yup, that's right. The glorious English language has the wonderful way of combining words together to form new homogenous conglomerate children. Take SHIT FART and you have shat. Next lesson.

Blog: Why not just call it BLAH. Like blah, blah, blah...and some more blah, blah, blah...because that is all people do on here. Well, not everyone.

Despicable: Vile, Nasty, Horrible, Dirty. Yet it also could be used in a positive way. Maybe we could start incorporating it in everyday slang talk and it could become the new "kitch" word around the world. "Yea that show last night was despicable wicked cool!" or "I just quit my job and told my boss to fuck off and now I feel so despicable I could jump for joy!"

Rank: Stinky, Foul, Tainted, Rancid, Spoiled. Yet we have various ranking systems for lots of things in life. And usually the higher you "RANK" the better you are...how does that work out? "Well, I rank 1st in the world in tennis." Well who the fuck would want to play with your stank ass on the court???

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The Corner

There is an old man on the corner. Standing against the tall brick building on the opposite corner of the street from where I am lie. A faded green rain jacket and a pair of ragged blue jeans with a simple brown hat is all the protects him from the cool rain slowly drizzling down outside. He has a long gray beard and lines upon lines of years of experience that sag down around his eyes. I take another drag from my cigarette and my eyes stay transfixed on his presence. He seems to mimic me like a shadow with his gesture staring directly back at me. Who are you old man I think to myself. Where did you come from and why did you stand there in the unprotected elements of nature. Are you waiting for something or someone? Or are you just part of my imagination? Are you representation of me in the days and years to follow from now?

The rain picks up slightly with a gush of wind from the East as one of the trees outside my house creeks like…the bones inside the old man standing there. But he does not move an inch. He stands there like a statue and remains deadlocked in his gaze at me. I try and turn away to break from the trance but I cannot. I cannot make out much more detail of who he is with the amount of distance between him and I but there is a connection there. Where did you come from old man?

I take one last drag from my cigarette and flick it out from my hand and follow the butt as it flies across the sidewalk onto the dead, pale grass by the tree. The wind comes again and the tree now accompanied by another begins another creek followed by a slight moan. The brittle and fragile branches remind me of how the bones of the old man might look if I was able to see through his thin forest colored jacket.

Suddenly without any notice he stands up straight, releasing his weight from the side of the building and I imagine for one second the tall brick structure falling down onto it’s side and collapsing as if the thin frame of the old man was the one piece of stability holding it up.

But the building does not budge. Not even with the wind continuing its relentless and torrent rush down the street onto it and the two of us. The old man begins to walk to the corner of the street and pausing for a moment and then turns and begins a slow walk with feet made of concrete dragging down upon the sidewalk away from me. I still cannot bring myself away from him. Where are you going now? Do you have a destination in mind? A warm protective place to stop and rest you weary bones? He continues to prod down the street away from me until he is no longer in my site.

I turn away and open the door to the warm confides of my house and begin my slow accent up the staircase already smelling the dank stale smell of smoke under my breath as I enter my home and close the door behind me.

So this is how I wound up here. Not a question, a statement. I did not except any type of reply from anyone. It was not like that doctor would be leaning forward from his two thousand dollar imported Italian leather chair and lower his glasses and explain to me what I wanted to hear. He would not even bat an eye for a moment. Nothing at all, not even a single breath exhaled.

That was because there was no doctor. No higher entity, or spiritual being to help me figure out the answer. Dumb ass.

The doors from the train suddenly opened and a gust of crisp cold air came flailing into the subway compartment with a slam. The sudden change in temperature made me snap back into my surroundings. The song playing in my headset stopped and the cassette tape clicked stop telling me to flip it over to side B.

The graffiti on the tops of the subway cart were fresh and the wind on heightened the fact that the glean of the wet paint was evidence of the artist just clocking off for the morning. Must have been tagging during the graveyard shift I thought as middle aged up and coming on his way out business man just barely made the close doors of the train as it the engines tugged back momentarily to start back up.

The ride was congested as always. Everyone was late and rushing to cram into the train as it sped downtown making multiple stops from my point of entry outside the major arteries of the city. I was fortunate enough to steal a seat on my stop. It was a race between me and another girl around my age. We both entered the car simultaneously from opposite sides of the car and spotted the single open seat immediately. There was a time when I would be chivalrous and let her take the seat on the ride downtown. But the city has changed me since I have arrived. Survival of the fittest, and only the quick will be rewarded with comfort in spaces such as these. Anyways, even if I had let her have the seat she would have not given me a second thought the second her ass would touch the seat.

An older gentleman reading the New York Times was standing in front of me flanked by two other strangers dressed similar to him. I noticed his hand holding the folded paper was well manicured and showed no real sign of aging. Yet his hair was a gray in color and was extremely thin on the scalp. He had a small diamond (or what appeared to be a diamond) stud earring in his ear also.

He suddenly noticed me glancing at him for that brief moment and turned toward me with his right eyebrow lifting upward as if he was thinking to begin a conversation. His mouth opened slightly and then he yawned and turned back down to his paper flipping over to the bottom side. With his well manicured hands showing no real signs of age. Damn yuppies.

I looked down at my hip and struggled to squeeze myself to the side to remove my Sony Walkman from the clip off my belt. I opened the cool yellow case and took out the old Rush tape, 2112, and flipped it to side B.

What a great idea the Walkman was. How great is it that you could listen to all your cassette tapes (not records) where ever you went without letting anyone else know what you have playing. And the best part was that you could make awesome mixed tapes of all your favorite songs onto one tape. This way you could mix and match different songs or even different groups onto on single tape! The power of technology…what will they possibly think of next?

The train stopped again at it’s last stop before heading underground. A couple entered the train pushing aside the bystanders at the front of the train with their shoulders with no regard for them. The girl has electric blue hair and it was tied up in pigtails in the back. The boy had blood red spikes, 8 in all, shooting upward in air about 7 inches high. It was shaved bald on the sides, but you could see the individual black hairs slowly reemerging from the scalp that was accompanied by a series of nicks and scratches. Obviously from the cheap single blade razor used to incorporate his do it your-self hair cut.

I glanced down at the floor where they stood and noticed something funny about them. They had matching Doc Martin 13-hole boots on with white laces. The girl was wearing headphones, bright yellow cups that looked like recording studio earphones that obviously could double as earmuffs. She was chewing a giant wad of bubble gum, grape, and the smell was fresh and pungent as it permeated the train in my general direction as we sped back off to downtown.

And I closed my eyes again and drifted back off. The music began to envelope around me and lifted me off the seat like a mother carefully taking a newborn out of the cradle to wrap around her tender warm arms. I sank back into nothingness and imagined that I was back in the office again.

The smell of pipe tobacco replaced the grape Bubble Yum and the old man reading the New York Times was actually the doctor sitting in that fancy imported chair. Yet he did not speak. Nothing was coming from him.

I leaned forward to get back up from lying on the bed to a sitting position on the edge of the furniture. I turned to the wall to examine the time on the clock. It read forty-five minutes past nine. But was it morning or evening? I could not remember and the light that was emanating through the wooden blinds was bright and white, but I could not discern it was natural or artificial.

Did it really matter though? Real or not, day or night, it made no difference. This was a dream after all. Wasn’t it? Suddenly my head felt really heavy and I felt like I was swimming through a pool of warm cement. I tried with all my strength to my head back to the doctor to call for help but when I moved myself, which seemed to take an eternity he was gone. Now sitting in his place was the girl with electric blue hair and Doc Martins. She had her eyes closed and was swinging her head back and forth with her giant yellow headphones on her head. The smell of pipe tobacco was immediately replaced with the smell of that grape gum again.

I struggled to cough up even a single word but my throat was hoarse and dry. My head was pounding now and the cement in that pool that I was swimming in began to harden and I was forced to let my body fall lipless back on the bed.

Darkness. And then I was suddenly jerked awake by the old lady sitting inside the window next to me on the train as she poked away to let me know that she wished to get up and exit the train. It took a moment to regain my surroundings and I turned to look at her old wrinkled faced speak to me with a small studder on her bottom lip. Suddenly I realized I was at the stop where I needed to get off and I quickly turned away from her and grabbed my backpack and got out of my seat.

I noticed the young punk couple were still on the train, but we now engaged in some petty argument over something. I could not hear them as I still had the Walkman playing on the headphone.

As I exited the train at the underground station I noticed more new bumper stickers on the benches with the same political propoganda on it. FREE ALL NUKES NOW! The cold war with the Soviet Union was still up in the air and who knows what Reagan is going to do to solve this scary situation.

But I had more important things to worry about at the moment. Like finding out where to go. I pulled out the crumbled piece of yellow parchment paper that had the address on it for the building. I looked one more time at the information written on it.

9:00am – Dr. Walters

1335 Dorrsey Ave.

8^th Floor – Suite 819

I folded the paper back up and put it in my pocket. As I walked to toward the stairs leading out of the subway I could feel the wind from above creep on down to remind me of the current weather dilemma at hand.

A bum sitting at the base of the stairs looked up at me with an outstretched hand and I approached the steps. I looked down at him with pity and gave him some pocket change I had in jeans. He smiled with the few remaining teeth left in his possession and nodded in thanks.

I then proceeded upward and out into the city for my appointment that morning.