Awake. The clock blinks 3:42 with the red digital dot next to the "AM." I open my eyes to watch the headlights of cars momentarily stain the ceiling. I turn my head and watch her breathe. She's so comfortable with herself awake and asleep. So content in the world she's presented with. It's in the way she gives me those half smiles across the table or the way her almond-shaped brown eyes narrow to a slit when she laughs at something that only she would find humor in. It's in the way she takes a deep breath every single time she steps outside and looks up at the sky before proclaiming "Today is different than any other day!"
Sara and I met exactly one year ago today at a diner down the street. She bought me coffee and invited me back to her place and I've really never left. At twenty-eight Sara is obviously successful at what she does. What that is, I don't know. I've never had enough interest to ask. I do, however, know that Sara's husband, her "soul mate," she claims, died when they were both twenty-two. I also know that Sara loves me more as a son than as a lover. True, we are lovers, by all definitions, but not by design. Sara gives me food, shelter and doesn't ask where I've come from or where I'm going. That seems to be enough for both of us as I lie here watching her chest rise and fall under an old yellow shirt with oil stains that most likely belonged to her husband since I haven't seen her touch a car with any mechanic intentions.
I slide from under the sheets off the bed and grab the jeans I've left crumpled on the floor and I slip into them. I look at Sara resting. She looks so helpless all alone, but I know better. Her petite frame and alabaster skin are so deceptive to the holistic woman that is Sara. Like a mother bear: compassionate one moment, vicious the next (although, never unjustly). I pull an old t-shirt on that Sara gave me when I first moved in. It honestly looks like it was made for a child and has the words "Las Vegas!" printed on the front in rainbow bubble letters. I wonder if Sara's been to Las Vegas before. I don't think I have. After slipping into a pair of old shoes I step out into the dark air and look at the sky: void of all stars, moon, and sun. Coffee sounds good.
Sleep is pointless when you can't dream. As I stroll down the quiet street to the diner, something is amiss. Unnaturally quiet. But not fully void of life. Picking up speed, I keep my gaze ahead of me on my destination. I can see the diner now. Three blocks away. The shadows are coming to life all around me, stirring and inviting me into them. I hear whispers all around me in hushed excitement, as though they know my fate and can hardly wait to watch it unfold. And then… silence. Nothing should be this quiet, so I stop to listen for anything. Nothing. Suddenly, a figure forms from the shadows and steps forth. Time is frozen, I realize, as nothing is stirring but us. This figure wears a frumpy brown robe with a hood making it quite impossible to choose fear, excitement, or disgust as a response until two very feminine and pale hands with what seems to resemble tribal tattoos running down each digit and starting at the back of her hand, reach up to pull the hood back and loose the hair from it's confines in the robe. I can only offer a state of awe in return.
She steps towards me so that she is a finger's breadth away before reaching her hand up to gently stroke the side of my face. Her crystal blue eyes follow her fingers before she returns her soft gaze to mine with a half smile. Her deep brown hair that offsets her pale complexion cascades down her back in hundreds of tiny braids to her waist and she has a chain connecting the nose ring on her left nostril to one of her earrings in her left lobe. Finally, she draws her hand back and opens her silver-stained lips to issue forth a statement: "I've found you." She then runs the pad of her thumb down her tongue and presses it right above where the bridge of my nose ends while I close my eyes and in a rich, deep voice, she leaves me with the words "Come back to me."
***
I open my eyes. The sun is in the sky and everything is as it should be. Did I passed out? Have I been standing in the same spot the whole time? Rather than take time to actually figure this out, I decide to head back home.
Sara must be at work. She's left me a note that dinner is in the refrigerator and that she won't be home until later. It's signed with x's and o's. I'm not hungry. I just want to lie down so I walk to the bedroom and fall on the bed not even bothering to undress.
I close my eyes.
***
I open my eyes. This isn't home. Where am I? I lift myself off the tangle of rusty pipes that I've apparently been sleeping on. The air is yellow and dense with fog so that I can see only ten feet ahead. What is this place? I step forward with a journey in mind. All I see is dense air and tangled rusty pipe as ground, but I hear running water. Everything is so surreal. This must be a dream! It has to be! A lucid dream! I've never dreamt before… how strange. And yet, I continue forward to see what this dream has to offer.
After walking a ways, the ground turns into a dirt path and the air begins to thin out. I follow the path until it begins to descend into a body of water. I kneel to the ground to look at my reflection in the yellow waters. My black shoulder-length hair is disheveled and my eyes seem to be an icier blue than they actually are. I'm naked. Not a stitch on me. I stand up and look at my body and realize why Sara always nags me to eat. I look something like a bag of bones. Some rogue ripples of water quite suddenly interrupt my image and before I can look about the water to see the source of disturbance I can hear her humming. It's a girl bathing in the waters (although, why she is bathing in such water escapes me).
