She slips into her underwear, but they’re huge. It won’t do, and probably wouldn’t even stay up. She wraps the towel around her and walks on the lush green Persian rug to the threshold, staring into the hall. Into the wilderness. Can she leave the room? Can she do it? Maybe she should just slide into a robe, change her sheets, and go back to bed. That would be progress enough, wouldn’t it? She’s clean now at least. But in her heart she knows getting clean is not courageous enough. It won’t bring Sydney back. Bringing Sydney back will require a much greater degree of risk. She must try. She wants to try. Muttering a prayer, she steps deliberately over the threshold and forces herself down the hallway almost robotically, to the guest suite to rummage through Hannah’s wardrobe for something that fits.
Hannah’s room is a catastrophe. This makes Mitsy nearly laugh out loud. Some things are still predictable. And yet her messy sister can manage to pull herself together enough to take care of Sydney…
The doorbell rings, and Mitsy jumps. Are they home? Did they turn around? Or maybe it’s Aaron? But why wouldn’t he have a house key? She freezes. She needs more time. She’s not even dressed. The bell rings again, more persistently. She walks to the front window where she can see an old red sedan parked in the driveway. It must be a mistake. She doesn’t know anyone in Darien with a car like that. She steps back to wait it out; surely they’ll leave. In the meantime she roots through Hannah’s drawers for underwear.
She slips into a pair of white lace panties, not a thong, thank God, and they fit. As does the matching bra. In all of their sibling history Mitsy has never come close to fitting into anything of Hannah’s. Hannah was the beauty, and God knows, still is. And she loves things. She loves fashion. She has a sense of design that Mitsy never had. Every tiny detail of Mitsy’s house was selected by Aaron and the stunning young female designer on whom he himself had personal designs. Not that this issue was ever tackled directly by Mitsy or Aaron. How could it be? With all that was going on with Sydney, it was just too threatening.
The doorbell rings again and again. She ignores it, although it’s getting under her skin, raising her anxiety. If it keeps up she’ll need more valium, but she doesn’t want the valium. She doesn’t want it ever again, plus it’s all the way across the house in her bedroom. While the bell keeps ringing, she finds a pair of jeans, pulls them on, zips and buttons. Oh my God, they fit! Now she hears knocking—bam bam bam! Relentless knocking accompanied by a man’s voice, though she can’t make out what he’s shouting. In the closet she finds a sweater—soft, rose-colored cashmere. She slips it on. She ignores the pile of boxes and bags of whatever, everywhere on the floor of the huge walk-in closet—shoes and purses and clothing never worn. More than Mitsy could manage to purchase in a decade.
The knocking doesn’t end. She runs a comb mechanically through her short wet hair and walks slowly downstairs. Maybe something’s happened. Something terrible. Hasn’t she been expecting such a thing for years? Maybe it’s here. Finally! Once it’s here, she can lay her body down and die in peace. The thought grips her and it’s all she can do not to crawl back to her room.
“Syd, come on, open up!” says the voice.
Syd? What? Mitsy holds her breath. She can do this for Sydney. She hesitates at the door then unlocks it. Ahead of her is a tall attractive young man with wild black hair, black eyes, and brownish skin. A chiseled physique.
“Can I help you?” she says.
“Oh, hey,” he says. “I’m um, my name is Dane, and I’m a uh, friend of you know, Zelda. Zelda Rodriguez? And also Syd.” He shuffles back and forth on the stone stoop, looking down. “I’m in the band.”
“Sydney has a band?” says Mitsy, incredulous.
He scratches the back of his head. “Yeah, kind of. And we had a disagreement sort of, I don’t know. But I have to talk to her.” He looks up and around. “Is she home?”
Mitsy blinks. “Will you come in?”
He nods nervously and enters.
As Mitsy closes the door, she says, “Unfortunately, Sydney is on her way to Virginia. She’s probably there by now.”
“Oh. What, with her aunt? With Hannah?”
Mitsy freezes. “You know Hannah?”
“Yeah sure. Met her a few times over at Z’s place. Who are you?”
“Who am I?” Mitsy blinks back tears. Who am I? “Well, actually, I’m the uh, the mother.”
“Syd’s mother?” he says.
It feels like a lie, but she says, “Yes.”
His eyes widen. “Oh.”
“Did she talk about me?”
He shakes his head. “Not really. But you know, I haven’t really known her a long time. We just moved here a few months ago.” He smiles, “But we talk a lot, you know? On the phone. And we text. She’s a great kid. Very wise. And smart, real smart.”
Mitsy nods absently.
“I texted her a bunch today, but she’s not picking up. I didn’t know she was going to Virginia. I’m supposed to be in Pennsylvania myself.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Winter break. But I canceled the trip. I um, I just…” He scratches his head again. “I disappointed her, and I feel bad. Terrible, really. I need to…I don’t know, talk to her, but she’s pissed. She won’t pickup.”
Mitsy stares at him. “Is that your car?” she asks.
He turns. “Yeah. That’s mine.”
“You have a license?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. Of course. I wouldn’t drive…”
“What did you do to upset her?” Mitsy says.
He shakes his head. “I just…it was all a big mistake is all. I want to tell her; I want to be honest. But she won’t pick up. You have to be honest to the people who matter.”
“I see.”
“It’s not a good time in her life to lose friends,” he says. “Or mine—in my life. I need her too.”
“Are you sick?” she says.
“What? No. No, I’m not.”
Mitsy doesn’t know what comes over her. “Will you drive me down to see her?”
“To Virginia?” he chirps, wide-eyed.
“Yes,” she says. “Right now. We can take my car.”
His head juts forward in disbelief. “Seriously?”
“Yes. I just have to get some boots.”
“Hell yeah!” he says, excited, then throttles back. “But…why? Right now, I mean. Why now? You know…with me?”
Mitsy looks up at the cathedral ceiling to the skylight where the moon’s already risen. “Because,” she says, “I disappointed her, too.”
He jiggles his keys, hesitating. “I’ll go, of course,” he says. “But she might not want to see me. Just so you know.”
“She might not want to see me either,” Mitsy says as she heads toward the kitchen for her boots.
Pandora
She places her right hand an inch or so above the top of her coarse, braided hair and holds it there for a minute to stabilize her crown chakra which is starting to pickup empath static from one insane source or another. Probably Mitsy’s chronic negative vibe, she thinks, which is like putting your tongue in a live socket. She reaches for her cigarette pack with her left hand, taps it down and pulls one out with her teeth.
She’d like to stop smoking, and fully intends to put the brakes on this little joy ride, but not yet. What she found on the easel last night was too upsetting. And not just upsetting to her—but to Guru also, who arched his back and screeched like an owl before running his claws down the back of the couch. He did so much damage to the corduroy fabric she would have chased him outside if she’d had the wherewithal. But after seeing the painting, she was practically asphyxiated with shock. Guru was only expressing what she could not.
She’d pulled the linen drape back over the canvas so fast she can barely remember what she saw. But not really. It was Elysha, but not Elysha. And the wings—had she painted the wings? She has no memory of it. And so faded; all of it so…faded, nearly devoid of color. Not just devoid as in a
mere absence. Devoid in a way that suggested something had sucked the life right out of it from behind the canvas. Every time she thinks she understands the mystical world, something new comes along and kicks her in the ass. To show her how small she is, she supposes, how insignificant. But where does it end? Every mystic has her limits. At least this one does.
She drives the freakish image from her mind like a serpent. Be gone, illusion! Or what she hopes was an illusion. Or maybe she never painted what she thought she’d painted in the first place. It’s been a long time. Thirty years.
Lighting the cigarette finally, she takes a long thoughtful drag, smoothing the crease on her gold, ankle-length, wrap-around Indian print skirt. But then again, she knows what she painted. She painted a portrait of Elysha before she was injured. She abandoned the painting to care for the actual child. But it was a whiplash of a demise, so not much caretaking all in all. So fast! Now you see her; now you don’t. And no matter what Pandora did, what healing techniques she employed, she got nowhere healing the injury that erased her daughter from view.
Unlike others who have passed over before and since, Pandora has never seen Elysha in her mystical travels. She’s been searching for years. You’d think she would have seen her own daughter, seer of the nether regions as she is, but no. Things that weaken us are actually intended to make us stronger, Pandora knows. We have a choice to accept the challenge or not. Or at least that’s what she tells her clients. But it hasn’t worked for her. Elysha’s death weakened her without a doubt, and she’s never really recovered. The truth is she’s not interested in getting stronger, now or ever. Anyway, in the mystical world, your opponent grows with you. The bigger you are, the bigger the obstacles. Pandora has had enough opposition for a lifetime.
After Elysha died, Pandora abandoned artistic endeavors of every kind—her beloved oils, watercolors, pastels, textiles, pottery, even the wall frescoes she’d been creating for local merchants. And she hasn’t returned to any of it since. Neighbors and villagers sometimes ask her about it; even try to commission work, which is why she doesn’t socialize. Not that she’s the type. What in the world would she talk about? Particles and waves? Ha! She throws her head back in a hearty laugh. Ahh, now that feels good!
God, she is so removed.
If she has the psychic strength, she’ll revisit the painting later on to confirm what she hopes was a hallucination. After all, she was more than a little out of it last night, as evidenced by her residual shaky crown chakra this afternoon, for one thing. Whether the misalignment was caused by her own bad habits, astral travel, someone or other’s negative energy, or the new world order, doesn’t really matter. The effect is the same. Her balance is off; her chakras distorted. No hashish for her tonight, or even wine.
Well, maybe wine; she’ll see. One or the other has to go. Or should go. She needs to be sane and in control since everything around her appears to be unraveling in unprecedented ways. Ways ordinary people would not ever be able to process or even ascertain. Wake up, people! She takes another long drag then squashes the cigarette in the ashtray while she exhales through her nose like the fire dragon she is. That is, if you go by Chinese astrology. She’s tempted to go back to the easel, but she won’t, not yet. She has a blog to write, and it’s long overdue. Not that she’s in the best frame of mind to write a blog, but if she cops another look under that drape her frame of mind will be as disjointed as everything else in her life. She might as well write.
Snuggled into her favorite thick, hand-knit red woolen socks, she shuffles across the house to her office, looking casually for her phone along the way. It’s nowhere so far. She lost track of it last night, so it’s no doubt out of juice and undetectable. So be it. She could use some time without the distraction, anyway. At her desk, she dumps a pile of Raisinets into a small bowl of hammered copper handed down to her from one Peruvian ancestor or another. This gives her the idea to write about ancestral energy, or what she likes to call Energetic DNA, since it sounds more erudite. She types frantically between exquisite bites of chewy chocolate raisins, elaborating on the kind of energetic code that likes to circle the body template like a swarm of bees—ours to accept or refuse. But just the idea of anyone contracting a diseased condition out of sheer ignorance when they could easily have refused the energy, galls her. It galls her because in many cases ignorance is passively deliberate. It’s a choice. She’s had it with ignorant people.
“This code is handed down ancestrally to those too stupid to know what they’re taking on,” she types madly. “Dad’s tendency to injure his head, for example, or Mom’s nervous tics. Even complex diseases. Some conditions and behaviors are caused by physical DNA, of course, but some are not. Some are caused by energy left behind by imbecilic or ill-intentioned ancestors. To be clear, the energy is NOT the ancestor, just energy that was attached to that ancestor’s spirit in its lifetime. Energy cannot be destroyed, so it continues on this plane seeking to attach itself symbiotically to a new host. This host is usually a relative with compatible weaknesses—(i.e., equal stupidity). If the host wakes up to this reality, understands and believes it, s/he can drive the symbiotic energy away. Crisis averted.”
She finishes the first draft and re-reads it, placing the cursor tentatively over the words ‘stupid’ and ‘imbecilic’ and all derivatives, briefly reconsidering. The tone is a tad harsh, she has to admit. But right now she can’t think of equivalent words with less bite, so she lets it go. And anyway, at this stage of the game, why shouldn’t she tell it like it is? Time is tight. Don’t people understand that? No, they don’t. Human destiny is jerked between the so-called experts who rely exclusively on the linear material plane for information and those who give it up to God without taking any responsibility whatsoever for their own endowed power. Power endowed by God! Pandora has had it with all of them. She is so burned-out! If no one sets this straight, humanity is screwed. She digs through her desk drawer for a miniature Snicker’s but only finds a Milky Way. She unwraps it and pops it in her mouth, finding the lack of caramel and nuts insufferable.
By the time she finishes the blog, it’s nearly four o’clock and she hasn’t even been outside yet. Hasn’t eaten anything but chocolate, either, not that she has any regrets. The powder blue sky has dimmed to dove gray. She wanders into the kitchen and gazes through the sliding glass doors to the patio. A late winter flurry settles like Spanish lace on the pine boughs outside. She never tires of this. Nature is all she needs. Nature and the occasional Snicker’s bar.
A few more logs on the fire and she’s set. A few more logs and a glass of chardonnay, and her planet is back on its axis. Simple pleasures. Staring out at the lake, she sucks its glacial refreshment in like a mental margarita. Bliss! But then. Her eyes narrow…what?! She grabs her glasses from the counter because…what is that? Her attention is drawn upward. She steps closer to the door, focusing intently on the distant sky over Heavenly Peak.
The sky surrounding the peak looks…wired. Magnetic. A swirling lava lamp of colors and hues she’s never seen or imagined. Brand new, unnamed colors. Where did they come from? Why are they here? Keeping her eyes on the spectacle, she pulls her tribal shawl down from the door hook and slips into the fleece slippers next to Guru’s feeding station. When she steps out onto the deck, Guru jumps from somewhere in the forest abyss onto the railing which he traverses full length before turning and retracing his steps. And then repeats.
Wrapping the shawl around her, she blurts, “Scarlet Rave!” naming the magnetic red. Then “Zeon Blue!” The names just come to her.
Guru shoots down onto the table, stiffening. She can see how affected he is by the atmospheric change that hovers over the mountain like a storm of liquid light, spreading outward. Dripping, swirling electric yellows and greens, and then this color she’s never seen before…a new primary, perhaps. Not red or blue or anything familiar, really, just…what is it? Where did it come from?
“Eldra,” she hears in her head. “The color is Eldra.�
� She’s never seen anything like it, and wonders if Guru sees it too. Color is her specialty; she’s an artist. Or at least she was. But this! She knows the eye needs cone cells to interpret color, to decipher one color from the next. But is this a new color? Or have her eyes grown new cones? Have everyone’s?
She steadies her hands against her sides. They sting with vibration. The particles around her are charged, the nap of her energetic field pulled taut by the storm. She is in full, almost painful, focus. Are her poles in danger of being reversed? It feels that way. Is everyone in danger? The Earth itself? She wants to ask Anjah, not because she wants to see him; she doesn’t. But he might be the only entity in the entire multi-verse who knows a damn thing about this phenomenon. Sometimes things turn so bizarre you’re happy to see anyone at all with half an answer or a random guess. It’s not as if she has colleagues. Hers is a lonely profession.
As soon as she thinks of Anjah, she wishes she hadn’t. She turns and hustles inside for cigarette ammo to chase the possibility of him away. Just the brief mention of his name can bring him down, she knows. He doesn’t require much encouragement. Hands shaking, she lights a smoke before she returns to the deck, just in case. But it doesn’t matter. By the time she returns to the patio he’s already materialized in the southern sky. She spots him in the distance from the corner of her right eye. He was practically here before she thought of him, anticipating it. He rides a flume of the deepest violet light she’s ever seen. Colors are changing! Transforming! He stops shy of the patio, a hovercraft. Guru swipes the purple air.
“You’re wasting time,” Anjah pulses.
She holds tight, defiantly inhaling the cigarette to neutralize his effect.
“You have less than a month,” he says.
She exhales right at him, interrupting his rhythm. He skips a beat.
“The colors are for you,” he signals. “But that’s all I can do without your cooperation.”
She scowls, thinking, the colors are for me? Why me?
The Anesthesia Game Page 13
