Maya's Aura: The Awakening

by Smith, Skye

  Maya crept over and looked over her shoulder and read out loud. "Karl, Help, I need a date for a wedding next Saturday. Call me. Please. Emma. Hmmm. I don't know about Karl. He is so busy. Erik might."

  "Uh, he looks a bit too Hitler youth for this wedding."

  "But Erik is Dutch. It is Karl who is German."

  "Ahh, but Karl doesn't look German, he looks..."

  "Like an engineer, a nerd," Maya laughed. "They grew up twenty miles apart in different worlds. They make fun of each other all the time. Usually in German, or in some other weird language they both know that sounds like English, but when you listen to the words it is gibberish."

  "Like Dutch, or double Dutch," Emma suggested.

  "No, some really old language. The name of it sounds cold, like freeze. Frisian. I feel like such a dummy sometimes. English is Erik's third language. I think he knows five and Alicia is teaching him Mexican Spanish. Karl is the same, but he knows Danish, which Erik doesn't know, or something like that. As for me, the dummy, well I speak only English. Even then you Canajuns are, like, always correcting me. Do you have other languages?"

  "Hebrew. I wanted to learn Aramaic but med school got in the way."

  "I'm such a dummy. I barely made it though high school."

  "Want to trade lives?" Emma cooed and swung around on the stool so she could look out at the marvelous view. "That party you went to with Gerry ... did you meet the producer that died? Or did you and Gerry end up going somewhere else? I didn't see his invitation in the pile from the door."

  Maya went very quiet and busied herself making tea. "Why do you ask?" she said weakly.

  "Oh, the task force has taken an interest in the case. Could I ask you to put a robe over that outfit? I find it a bit disturbing right now."

  A wave of fear passed through Maya's chest as she went to find a robe. Next to her robe was a pair of school girl gloves from the thrift store. She put them on for safety. She had to remember to wear gloves when there were people around. She felt like weeping, but she sucked it back. These hands, her hands, had killed.

  "Well?" Emma reminded her of the hanging question. "Did you meet the producer?"

  Maya walked back into the kitchen and saw the raisin bread on the counter. "Toast?" she asked.

  "I knew it." Emma smacked the counter with her hand. "A psycho."

  Maya looked at her in confusion and then looked down at the raisin bread. Bingo. "No, I meant did you want some toast with your tea. What's this about psychos?"

  "Have you been following the case on the news?"

  Maya lied. "No, why, what's happening?"

  "Okay, sit. The coroner ordered an autopsy because there was no obvious cause of death. The first level showed nothing, but they found a few loose pills in his pocket. Viagra and Rohypnol. You know what they are?"

  "Boner pills for old men?"

  "One is. The other is the date rape drug. Put it in a girls drink and she gets all woozy and forgetful so she can be walked out to a car and everyone thinks she is just a bit drunk."

  "Oh, yeah. We were warned about them in school. All the guys immediately tried to buy them."

  "Well, it's a red flag for the police, so they got a search warrant and went to the guy's house. He could have opened a drug store. He had every kind of boner pill on the market, and ludes, and other tranquilizers. The coroner brought down a judgment that he had mixed too many pills and then was drinking heavily. Death by misadventure. The big news, though, and the news that got the task force involved was .... Pass the sugar please."

  Maya wanted to dance around the kitchen. Misadventure. Oh lordy lordy, she was free. Instead she passed the sugar. "Go on."

  "He had a bedroom film studio in his house. Soundproof. All sorts of hidden cameras. And computers and hard drives just filled with movies. Home made porn movies. Girls like you. The task force dropped everything and swarmed all over the stuff."

  "So he was the killer they've been looking for?"

  "I doubt it, and I have told them and told them. Different type of girl. This guy didn't go in for troubled Native street walkers. He liked jail bait. Daughters from good homes. They don't know if he murdered any yet, and that is going to take months to prove, but I'll tell you, if he were still alive he would be up on a dozen counts of rape."

  "So, he was a serial rapist?" Maya asked carefully.

  "It would be hard to prove that the women in his films hadn't given their permission, even the underage ones, but the fact that they were underage makes it statutory rape. Too late for those charges anyway, but the task force has to identify and find every girl in his films and make sure they are still alive." Emma's voice became thin and shaky, and her eyes started to well up with tears. "That's what I have been doing all morning. Helping the women officers clip the best head portraits from all his porn films. That's why I asked you to cover up. Too close to home." Emma was sobbing by the end of her explanation.

  "And so the toast thing?"

  "Did you meet him? Did that charred toast thing happen?" Emma wiped her tears away with a tissue.

  "Yes, that's why I had Gerry bring me home early. It shook me. I still feel ill."

  "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. Oh, what cruel bad luck that he died before we caught him."

  "What do you mean?" Maya said to quickly, too sharply. "Isn't it a good thing he is dead? One less predator to worry about."

  "Exactly. He was a predator. What if he has young girls chained up somewhere? What if he has killed some and hidden the bodies? How can we find them if he is dead?"

  "But he was so well-dressed," mumbled Maya. "Armani suit. Rolex watch. From a wealthy family."

  "And a brand new Porsche outside. Have I taught you nothing Grasshopper?"

  Emma stroked Maya's shoulder and wanted more than anything to feel the goodness of her aura pass through her and push away all that she had seen on those films, away and out of her mind, especially the anal scenes.

  "The poor psychos, the demented-looking ones, are caught early in life. It's the rich ones, the handsome ones, the slick ones, that are rarely found out and yet they are the ones that do most of the evil in this world."

  "But I looked psychopath up on the Internet. There are all sorts of lists of questions you can ask to identify who is likely to be a psycho. I mean, like, they were meant for women to figure out if their bosses or boyfriends were psychos. There were even a few sites that rated multinational corporations according to the questionnaire scorings. Like, they are all psychopaths, all of those big companies." Maya buttered the raisin toast slices slowly and then cut them into halves.

  "There is no surefire way for my profession to identify, or at least, easily identify psychopaths. All those question and answer tests are useful for the victims, but useless when asked of a psycho. They tend to be smart people. Some of them scary smart. Some of them scary appealing.

  They have all read those sites. They know all the questions and all the best 'non psycho' answers. Do you know who are usually the first guys to make parole out of prison? The psychopaths. They know exactly what to say and how to act to make parole." Emma reached over and stole a piece of raisin toast.

  "So, how do you stop one from becoming, like, the president of the USA?"

  "My profession has been pushing for decades to have mandatory psychological screening for all people in positions of great authority. A few corporations do it. The shareholders demand it. Who are we fooling? We can't pick out psychopaths except by what they have already done. That's too late. Well, except for you. You are my new secret weapon, you and your toast."

  "I don't want to be your secret weapon. These guys scare me. I almost pass out when they touch me. What if one catches me?" She dropped her robe to the floor exposing her school girl outfit. "What do you think they would do to me?"

  Emma looked at her, with her pigtails and her mini kilt. She knew exactly what one would do to her. She had been watching videos of it all morning. She felt like she needed to puke and she ran to th
e powder room. When she came back she found Maya looking into her tea cup. "Penny?" she said.

  Maya wanted to tell her how the producer had died, but she daren't. Instead she said, "That I don't like tea without milk."

  "Well, I have to go," said Emma, collecting her handbag and phone. "Thanks for the toast. I guess that means I have to go back to the task force for a while and rewrite my evaluation. When is the casting call?"

  "Tonight after six. They hold them late for people that have school or jobs," Maya mumbled.

  "Break a leg," Emma said and was gone.

  Maya watched the door close. "Bugger this. I need milk." She grabbed her keys and followed Emma. Her Jetta was already halfway up the street. "Oh well. The walk will do me good. Oh darn, I have to walk along the sea front then cut through that divine park with the weeping willows to get to the Chinese corner store".

  She was crossing the street to the willow park when she passed two school girls walking the other way with their arms in front of them, holding their binders. She heard them giggle, and she suddenly felt self-conscious. To a school girl she would look completely unbelievable and way too old for these clothes. She should have worn a coat.

  It was a lovely day to walk through the majestic and graceful weeping willows. Kids were on the swings. There was an old Chinese man sunning himself on the bench. She wasn't sure, but she thought it was his family that ran the shop. There was another man walking the cutest little white dog. It was adorable.

  "Hey, stop that dog," the man called to her. The little white puff ball was running towards her, dragging her leash. She twirled as the dog went by and bent down and grabbed the leash.

  "Oh thanks, little girl. I thought I had lost them both. My other one ran over towards that van. Can you help me find ..." the man stopped talking when she turned around to face him holding the cute little thing and then stood to her full height.

  "Oh, uh, thanks for catching her. Here, I'll take her, miss."

  "She's adorable, what's her name?" asked Maya as she scratched it behind its dainty ears, and it turned and tugged at her gloved finger.

  "Puffy," said the man, looking cross. "Can I have her back?"

  He was looking at her chest. Damn, she should have worn a bra. She tried to hand him the dog but Puffy pulled her glove almost off. The man reached across and hit the dog's nose with a finger to make her let go and then tried to push her glove back on her hand.

  "Sorry about that," he said.

  She was feeling slightly nauseous as the thought crossed her mind that he wasn't sorry at all. It had given him the opportunity to brush his arm against her breasts. He held her wrist to keep her from backing away while he enjoyed it. The smell, the darkness, the charred smell. She wrenched her wrist free and backed away from him and started to feel better. "Stay away from me," she said and walked quickly away towards the shop. She stopped herself from running, and tried to calm her panic.

  The young Asian school girl who was running the shop by herself was dressed just like Maya. She gave her a silly smirk as the other girl counted out her change for the milk and put the liter container into a plastic bag. "I am dressed like this to try out for a movie," Maya said, as if she needed an excuse.

  "Yeah, whatever," said the girl in perfect English. "Just like on the web."

  She walked across the park thinking about how easy it was for school girls these days to see all the nasty porn on the web. Actually, she had watched quite a bit herself just to see what the boys in high school were all talking about. It was pretty boring. Plastic lips, plastic tits, no smiles, no fun and absolutely no hair unless it was on the head of the woman. It was all just sordid cock worship, rather than a celebration of health and beauty.

  She looked around for the psycho with the dog, hoping she wouldn't need to pass near to him. She saw the white of the dog first. A little girl had him on the leash. The man had her by the hand and was walking her to the van. It must be his kid or ... wait. What had he said to her when she was catching his dog?

  She dragged it out of her memory. "Oh thanks. little girl. I thought I had lost them both. My other one ran over towards that van. Can you help me find.." what, it came to her in a flash ... the second dog. Oh no. She started to run. She ducked under a weeping willow that scratched her face as she ran on. She pushed herself harder. The van's sliding door was opening. She was feeling winded. Silly slippery girly shoes.

  He was lifting the little girl into the van. She slammed into him without slowing down, and he tripped over the ledge of the floor of the open door and fell inside with her on top of him. The dog yapped in alarm and the little girl started to cry.

  He was much stronger than she was. He pushed her off him as if she were a pillow, swearing all the time. Maya was pushing the little girl out of the van, while he was dragging her in. "Go and find your mother!" she urged breathlessly, "go quick! This is a very bad man!" She squirmed out of his arms and was trying to get her gloves off at the same time. She made it outside and got her feet on the ground and tried to follow the girl.

  A huge pain in her scalp dragged her backwards. He had her by the pigtails. He was yelling something obscene at her, but she was blanking out. "If not her, bitch, then you'll do just fine!" She tried to twist away but he had her hair tight in his fist. He punched her in the stomach and suddenly she couldn't breathe and every thing started going dim.

  Suddenly he seemed to fly through the air and he hit the open sliding door with such force that the whole van rattled. He bounced off it and into the little old Chinese man who had been sitting in the sun. He flew back against the sliding door again with tremendous force, while the old man seemed to barely move. He slid down the door and sat with a thump on the curb.

  "You okay missy?" asked the old man, not taking his eyes off the man on the ground. He pulled a cell phone out of his old-fashioned Chinese jacket and punched in 911. "You need ambulance, missy?" He spoke into the phone. "Police here plenty fast." Then he looked at her and repeated, "You need ambulance?"

  She shook her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the man move to get up. "Watch out!" she cried. The old man did a standing hop and a tiny kick and the man slumped down again.

  "Him not go anywhere. Me watch. Me see. Him bad man."

  "Don't kill him," was all she could think of to say. "He may have children hidden somewhere. The police need to ask him."

  "Killing wrong. We wait for police."

  She looked around for the little girl. She was sitting on the grass crying and trying to hold onto the puppy. She walked over to her and picked them both up and hugged them to her. "It's okay. Your mummy will be here soon. You're safe now. And look, the puppy likes you."

  "But the other one is still lost," the girl blubbed. "Oh, there's Mummy!" She waved. "Mummy, Mummy, look at the puppy!"

  She walked with her arms full of child and puppy towards the old man. "I can't wait for the police."

  "They want to talk to you, you stay."

  "I, uh, I , I have no papers. You know. Work permit. Immigration will catch me."

  "No papers. You no papers? Okay. Give girl to mummy and then you go. Plenty fast. I hear sirens. Don't forget your milk", he said pointing to the plastic bag on the grass. "You buy my store, you take."

  She picked up her milk and hurried towards the approaching woman and when they were face to face she handed girl and puppy to her. She spoke loudly overtop of the questions the woman was already asking. "That old man over there just saved your girl from being kidnapped by that other man. He almost had her in the van. The puppy was his bait. You have to stay and help the old man explain it to the police, or else the old man may get charged with assault."

  With that she walked away, just in time. Police cars, with sirens wailing and lights flashing, were blocking off both ends of the short side street, while another one was careening over the grass towards the van. She never looked back. She just kept walking. Her stomach hurt, her scalp hurt, her ears were ringing, and she couldn't get rid
of the charred smell. She had to find a bathroom and soon.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  MAYA'S AURA - the Awakening by Skye Smith

  Chapter 12 - In present day Hollywood

  She looked at herself in the mirror. The thing was hideous, like some body suit from outer space, especially with the weird swimming cap that her hair was bundled into. Ted, the technician was explaining it to her. Blah, blah, blah, like she needed to know how the circuitry was organized. At one time she had tried to save Ted from his habits of fast food and twenty hours a day looking into computer screens, but she had given up.

  "So what you are saying," Maya interrupted, "is that these metallic circles all over this body suit are like reflectors that the sensors on your special digital camera can pick up and trace onto a computer screen."

  "Not actually onto the screen, but into a vector database so that we can store how your body moves and then create the stunts using computer animation."

  "Why not just use stunt women? You know that unemployment is a problem in Hollywood right now."

  "Well, the stunts are actually impossible." Ted was eating at his computer. It seemed to be what computer geeks did best. "People can't fly, people can't run along the sides of walls."

  "They could in adventure movies from the sixties," she argued.

  "No, actually that was all special effects as well," Ted told her between munches. He was fatter every time she worked with him. "And the process was laborious and took forever. Once we have your body and how it moves stored in our database, we can do it all on the computer and get it perfect."

  "So you are going to make me look like the chick on that TV cartoon, Reboot? I'm going to need a bigger bra." She sucked in her breath and pushed her breasts out. Eventually she caught his interest and he stopped watching the screen.

  "Similar technique, but way beyond that," Ted said, finally looking up and at her face. "Honest, you will like the finished product."

  Maya smirked to herself. What a difference in how the crew treated you when you were the starlet, and had points in the movie. Everyone was so polite, so helpful. Everyone trying not to get her pissed off. As for her own work in front of the camera, all this technology made no difference. Instead of being dressed like jailbait, she was dressed in this electronic body suit.