Into Looking Glass III

Posted by Barry Hurd in The Looking Glass

Into the Looking Glass-

The Introduction of Jaquin Sadler- Finding the Path

It was one of those moments of desperation as all of my thoughts focused on the noise of my car engine slowly grinding away. I had been driving at a snails pace for fifteen miles across the desert highway before I reached a little greasy diner surrounded by tumble-weeds and flat sand. My only comfort was that for a few seconds god had graced me with an evening sunset that blazed across the sky, giving me a little hope that someone was keeping an eye on me.

My car crept into the dusty gravel parking lot and gave one last shudder as the engine shut off… for what I imagined would be the last time. I put my forehead against the wheel and sighed in both relief and exhaustion, glad that I hadn’t been left stranded in the middle of the desert all by myself.

Now that I could hear myself think again, the ironic sound of the radio playing Hotel California made me laugh under my breath. This was technically California, and I guess this diner was going to be my hotel for this evening.

I grabbed my bag from the backseat and gathered my stuff. I had been slightly insane to walk out of my wedding earlier today, yet I didn’t feel a bit wrong about it. For some strange reason it just felt like a big relief for my soul, and it seemed like exactly what I was supposed to do.

I left the keys in the car. The beat up thing wasn’t worth fixing and it definitely wasn’t going anywhere. I turned my phone on for a moment to check reception before I realized that I was in the middle of no where. The battery on the phone was dead and it wouldn’t even turn on. I guess that I shouldn’t have talked to my friends for so long as I was driving out here. It took twenty-eight years of living to become such a wise lady.

Without thinking anymore, I strolled over to the dirty glass door and walked into the diner. It was a cute old place that had been sucked right from the sixties. Bar stools covered with red leather seats, an old-fashioned chrome soda machine on the counter, and a somewhat plump waitress casually sipping on her cup of coffee as she glanced over her dark rimmed glasses.

The waitress gestured down the isles and comically smiled at an older gentleman wearing some muddy coveralls at the end booth. “My name is Ang. Sweety, take anywhere you like. Just don’t talk to Tommy unless you want to chat your life away.”

I sat down at the bar. I didn’t feel like chatting, even though Tommy looked like a sweet old guy. He had his checkered ball-cap on and was feverishly circling letters on a cross-word puzzle.

I flipped open a menu and found exactly what I expected. Everything on the menu was from the sixties too. Giant steak fries, juicy hamburgers, and plenty of things that were probably going to kill me slowly.

I told Ang to throw a burger and fries on for me. It had been a long time since I had a chance to have a burger… all the training my coach always had me doing was a guaranteed way of keeping off the pounds, and a sure-fire way of making sure I never tasted anything labelled “fatty.”

The walls had dozens of great old photos on them, everything from high school sweethearts to racing teams who had stopped here for a bite to eat. I always imagined that people back then had simpler and less confusing lives to live. I wish that life was black and white, with simple defining moments like all of the pictures hanging on the wall had.

Ang took up a seat next to me and poured me a cup of coffee. She laughed under her breath as she told me she knew I wasn’t a coffee drinker. I didn’t argue, but I still took a small sip of the dark bitter blend. I needed something different in my life right now; and up until now the basic tastes in my life just didn’t seem to be working.

I paused for a moment and then took another sip, this time it was long and slow. I let the coffee sit on my tongue and I breathed in the aroma deeply. I set the mug back onto the counter and that my dad would be strangely proud of me for doing what I felt was right.

Thinking back to earlier today, I couldn’t help shake the feeling he had been watching me from above. I really wished he had been there to walk me down the isle. I missed my dad. I should have been over it by now, it had been almost three years, but I still really wanted him to be there.

Ang could tell I was lost in thought. She patted me on the shoulder as she glided around the counter and grabbed my plate of food from a short, old cook who could barely glance over the kitchen divider.

She set it down in front of me and asked if there was anything else she could get me.

I said no.

The burger smelled good; as if I hadn’t eaten for days. Then I realized the truth of the matter was that I hadn’t really eaten anything for days trying to squeeze myself into my wedding dress. All that effort and planning for nothing…

I took one bite into the burger and it was wonderful. The flavor was rich and everything was just right. I went to take a second bite and felt something moving in my pocket. I fumbled around in my pants until I pulled out my phone as it quietly vibrated in my hands. I thought it was dead.

I flipped it open and clicked on the button telling me I had a new message. My eyes squinted down at the microscopic screen to read “Between Kingston Racers and The Mustangs. Take a closer look.”

My brain wasn’t up to the task of thinking too hard, but then my eye caught the image of a black mustang painted on the side of a trailer in one of the photos just a few feet from me. Two feet from that was a team photo of the Kingston Racers. Between them was a photo of two couples sitting on an old Chevy convertible outside the diner.

I looked closer at the photo of the couple, and realized that I was looking at my mom when she was my age.

Something in me felt really strange. I looked down at my phone again and it was off. I pushed the button on it to reread the message and remembered the battery was dead. It wouldn’t even beep at me.

I hesitantly closed the phone and put it in my pocket. The waitress saw me gazing at the photo of my mother on the wall and asked me if there was something wrong.

I didn’t know how to answer. Nothing was wrong, but nothing was right either.

I stepped up on the booth seat without saying a word and pulled the photo of the wall. With a moment of unusual grace, I stepped back down without falling. The photo was well kept, as if it had been taken yesterday. Everyone in it was smiling. My mother looked like she was perfectly content in the moment, but I had a feeling she was looking at me.

I was sure the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I could imagine my mom talking to me as my hands clenched the frame and I found myself thrown so off guard. For a second I felt light-headed and leaned against the counter. This was too weird.

The old man glanced up at me from his crossword puzzle. The pencil hanging from his lips fell onto the table and clattered against his glass.

He paused for a moment, then said “It sure is good to see you come home Jaquin.”

And that is when things were just starting to get strange.

Into the Looking Glass- Chapter I

Posted by Barry Hurd in Creative Writing, The Looking Glass

I lost myself, if not for a brief moment of my life, the very thought of failing to fulfill the burden I had sworn to was daunting and inescapable.

The tapping of my fingers on the delicate carvings of the staircase left me wandering in ideas about right and wrong, good and evil, and exactly where I stood amongst the other pawns of this game I had been sucked into.

The noise of the crowd below was relaxing in the strangest of ways, it was almost loud enough that I couldn’t hear my own thoughts. Watching the ballroom from my vantage allowed me to see everyone trying to act casual in such a formal setting. The ladies were all beautifully adorned by lavish dresses, sparkling gems, and amazingly expressive attitudes. The men tried to compete with the ladies, wearing fine Italian tuxedoes and offering the most practiced responses that only a ivy-league graduate could hope to remember.

Yet I was here looking down on them, wearing a fine Italian suit and pretending to understand those same nuances. I’d rather be sitting in my jeans, spending time with my family surrounding a board game and sharing a few heartfelt jokes.

How I ended up here I didn’t know.

The waiter, butler, or guy carrying the food tapped me on the shoulder. I asked him what his title was as I grabbed something that looked like a shrimp of his tray. He said “Evening auxiliary, good sir” and walked away.

What the hell is an Evening Auxiliary?
I guess that I would never know.

The flavor of the shrimp was melting in my mouth, I didn’t dare question what a cracker with shrimp had cost tonight. It probably would have made me laugh uncontrollably or become sick to my stomach. I just had to accept this suit I was wearing was only a temporary requirement to surviving the evening.

As I sipped the last of the red wine from my glass, I saw Katherine walk into the ballroom. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. She had an amazing presence to her and she was comically poking me with sweet irony by wearing that red gown I had given her on our anniversary. She always knew how to dress the part and to attract attention to herself.

I should have remembered our connection was a strong one, she spotted me within seconds a hundred yards away. I don’t know how she always did that, but I couldn’t complain that a beautiful lady could find me in the crowd.

I just wish that I had some idea of what I going to tell her about what I did tonight. I hope she would forgive me, or at least understand that none of us have any choices anymore.

Into the Looking Glass – Prelude, Part III – A Hero Alone

Posted by Barry Hurd in Coffee - Volume Two, Creative Writing, The Looking Glass

I had told her with every word I knew that I loved her. It wasn’t the kind of love I would forget, how could I? It wasn’t even the kind of love I could imagine. My father always laughed at me for having a heart that was courageous enough to brave a minefield of lost trust, shallow promises, and endless nights alone. I didn’t think tonight would have been any different, but it was. The rain was coming down, I was soaked, and the cold steel of the pistol in my pocket was a stark reminder that I probably wouldn’t be seeing the sunrise.

I tried shifting my thoughts over to something more important as I took her faded photograph and slid it back into my wallet. Its moments like this when you fall back a few years into your history and pray that the people you’ve loved have somewhere safe to call home, that they made something else of their life, and that when you fall face first into the gutter of some city alley they don’t even have a memory of who you were. I don’t know how long I’d be waiting for the inevitable outcome of this evening to take place, but I was ready to charge headfirst into chaos to keep people like her safe from knowing the horrors I had found.

I folded my wallet away into my overcoat and found a dry spot underneath an old elm tree. Just then my phone rang and it startled me as it pierced the quiet of the shadows I was standing in.

‘Samuel?’ A soft woman’s voice inquired.

‘Is that you Kate? I didn’t expect to hear your voice at one in the morning.’

She paused, I could hear she knew something was wrong.
‘Yeah Sam, it’s me. The pastor at the church told me what happened to you last night. Are you okay?’

‘Kate, I’m sorry. I don’t know. I am…’ My voice stopped. It felt like I was trying to breathe while someone strangled me. I couldn’t put the events I had seen to words.

‘Sam?’ her voice sounded a little more tense.

‘Devin is dead, Teresa is in the hospital, and Kyle… I don’t know about Kyle. I left him in a tavern this morning and he looked frantic and now I know why.’

‘Oh god. What the hell is happening with you? I didn’t mean to… to fade away.’ I could hear the tone in her voice, she was really worried. I didn’t mean to have her find out about this and I hated that my only choice had already been made.

‘Kate, just listen. A lot of things have happened. There is a lot I want to say. I know you want to hear an explanation, I know you have things you want to say, but I don’t have time. Tonight I’m finishing what Devin had spent the last ten years of his life trying to complete and I’m sorry. There’s only one thing I can tell you that makes any sense of what’s happening… I love you. I always have. You won’t be hearing from me again and I hope that you forgive me for this. Just be happy, and wherever I end up know that I did my best. Take care Kate.’

‘Sam….’, she tried to say something as I tapped the off button on the phone. I couldn’t pull her into this chaos. She deserved more than that, and if what Devin told me was true about the church hiding something from him was true, then my life was already forfeit and no one else needed to go down with me.

Into the Looking Glass – Prelude, Part II – A Model Life

Posted by Barry Hurd in Creative Writing, The Looking Glass

I couldn’t believe things had gotten so bad so quickly. Stephen had told me things would get worse, but I simply never imagined it would come to this. I told myself that it was all for the better, that this was the duty I swore to.No one, perhaps save a few, would ever understand how sane my actions were.

‘For better or worse’, those were the words people used these days. I don’t think they could comprehend exactly what they meant. I guess they really didn’t need to. Who would have thought that someone like me would end up with such an enduring relationship? Not me, that’s for sure. Before this roller coaster of events started I couldn’t even keep a relationship going for three months.

I broke away from my thoughts for a moment and I looked into the mirror at a face I barely recognized. The short hair, the petite nose, and my blue eyes surrounded in black eye-liner. Everything seemed like I was wearing a mask and my eyes were the only thing that felt familiar, the only thing in the mirror that I realized were my own. I knew that there was a huge chance I was insane, aren’t we all, but deep down I knew that I was doing everything right. It just felt like the weight of the world was resting on my shoulders.

Stupid girl. It was.

I couldn’t help but cry. I hated crying. Everything I had seen in the last few weeks was insane. It questioned everything I believed in, and it made me realize how frail everything in life was. At twenty-five I couldn’t even fathom that my world was so incomplete.

I sat looking at my image on the cover of American Vogue, thinking how incredibly beautiful ignorance was. Ninety-nine percent of the world thought I had an ideal life… and a month ago I was perfectly happy being ignorant of the puzzle pieces that had slowly crept into my life. Now that I was seeing a bigger picture my heart felt it was ripping itself out of my chest.

In a fit of frustration I threw the magazine across the room, ironically smashing the sleek art deco frame of my first modelling tour in Paris. Even back then, I always knew there was something wrong with me, there was always something in the back of my head scratching away at the perfection I was trying so hard to fake. Every year it seemed like my life became more and more imaginary, until the truth came to me and shattered everything I had hid behind. The rest of the clutter in my apartment was pretty meaningless at this point, a life of false imagery created for a girl who didn’t know who she was.

I didn’t know what to make of my life or the things that I had collected, but part of me wanted to remember everything I had gone through. I never had the perfect life; I had screwed up plenty of it, but there were people I was definitely going to miss. I gathered a few items, some letters from my mom, my dad’s locket that he gave me before he died, a photograph of my sister, and the drawings I had sketched from my dreams. I didn’t know why the drawings were important, but I’m sure they held some clue to what was happening.

As my emotions played with my sanity, I realized that I was risking too much by just reliving my past in my head and wasting valuable time. I finished rustling through drawers of personal items and I slid everything into a little backpack. By the time I was done my apartment looked like the mob had ransacked it, but at least I had one last chance to see my life before I walked away. With little more than a second thought I grabbed the backpack, threw it over my shoulder, and walked to the front door. My body stopped as my hand touched the doorknob, remembering that I forgot something. The gun.

I wasn’t used to carrying a gun. I wasn’t used to being an action star or getting into fights. I didn’t even know that I could shoot a gun. Yet I walked over to the table, picked up the pistol, and calmly slid the action back to check that there was a round in the chamber like I had done it a thousand times before. For a moment I paused, wondering how I even knew how to do it. Stephen said these things would come back to me slowly, that I shouldn’t be scared of things as they naturally fell back in place.

There were thoughts that didn’t seem like my own dancing around in my head. I walked back into the kitchen and pulled out the drawer, grabbing my old check books and all the little notes with the names and numbers of everyone I talked to. I went into my bedroom, dug to the very back of my closet and retrieved a shoebox I had never seen before. I pulled the lid off and was almost shocked to see an ornate knife resting in an ancient leather sheath.

I took it in my hand and slid the blade out, amazed to see how much craftsmanship was in the blade. It had a handle of silver that felt warm to the touch and had a series of gemstones that were clouded in grey and blue. It was Japanese, no, perhaps it was Egyptian. I wasn’t sure. Something in me told me it was both. Something told me it had been around a lot longer than either. I was confused, more that I didn’t know how it got into my closet or that I knew it was there to begin with. I didn’t like being confused.

I slid all of my newly discovered items into my backpack, glanced one more time around the place I had called home for the past two years, then locked the door behind me. As I made my way down the stairs I didn’t even think about looking back again, that life was over.

Into the Looking Glass – Prelude, Part I – Breaking the Illusion

Posted by Barry Hurd in Creative Writing, The Looking Glass

I know its not poetry. This is the prelude to a story I’m finally sitting down and writing. I spent about an hour on it tonight and wanted to get some feedback. It is the first story I’ve written in a long time. Any thoughts or commentary would be great.

Into the Looking Glass, Prelude****************************

It was four o’clock, five minutes into my commute home. The daily masses were driving through the endless corridors of concrete highway, trying to maintain a slim bit of sanity as they realized how moronic the person driving next to them was. I was fidgeting away, tapping my fingers to the beat of Aerosmith as I lost myself in thought and stared at the dull brake lights of the beamer in front of me.

Traffic was picking up as usual. You couldn’t expect more of an afternoon in Seattle at rush hour and to highlight my day it was the hottest day of the year. The dumb weather man on the television even said we were breaking a ten year heat wave record. That made me feel like an absolute winner. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket too, or maybe a beautiful woman will blindly stumble into me tonight and ask me to have dinner. Yeah Jacob, this is the ‘good life’. Whatever that means.

I tapped the buttons on my radio. As always, my stupid i-pod had ran out of batteries ten seconds before I really needed it, forcing me to wander through the radio stations in hope of finding something that wouldn’t make me nauseous. I swear it seems like anyone with a stupid opinion gets a chance to have a talk show these days, even the poor shock jocks can’t even come up with something to startle me. I don’t know if that makes me an average joe, or if I’m simply that warped with city life to have witness most of what they are talking about.

Five miles in twenty minutes� Here I am in a performance coupe, with 300 plus horsepower under the hood and a whopping twenty-two miles to the gallon and for over half of my drive home I can’t even manage to get the car past ten miles an hour. Just yesterday that cute intern at work was telling me I had the perfect life. If she could only see me sitting here in a sweaty suit, listening to this unbearable banter on my stereo, and pondering if I have enough time to get out of my car and smack the driver tailgating me or not. Yep, perfect life Jacob. Perfect life.

I lost ten minutes more of my life looking at some beat up old truck with a broken set of tail lights and expired tabs as it crawled around in front of me like a dying animal. Another minute would have finally pushed me over the edge of sanity, but to my luck a sleek black convertible slid up beside me, behind the wheel was a fiery redhead who was simply stunning. I looked at her for a second, wondering why I couldn’t ever meet someone like her in my boring office life and as the thought crossed my mind, she smiled at me.

I don’t know what it was, but my gut instantly felt like someone jabbed me with a knife. I locked eyes with her for what seemed like a second as she yanked her wheel and forced her car to slam against the side of my coupe. I brought my eyes back to the road just in time to see my rearview mirror and the image of some monolithic truck slamming on it’s breaks.

All I remember after that was a lot of noise. Violent crashing, metal ripping itself apart, the clanging of bells, a few brief flashes of life, a sudden nightmare of thought, and pain, lots and lots of pain.

*

I don’t remember getting out of the car. I found myself face down against a pool of dirt, blood and oil. My head felt like someone had smacked it with a baseball bat and the screaming around me felt like shrill nails being driven into my spine. I opened my eyes as I pushed myself off the pavement, shocked by the sight of the red head laying face down just feet away from me. I crawled over to her and rolled her over; she wasn’t unconscious, she was dead. I wasn’t ready to see what had happened, her pretty face was covered in blood, and she didn’t die from the car wreck. No, the large bullet hole in her cheek was far more likely to have caused her sudden departure.

My stomach turned. I had seen gun shot wounds plenty of times before, but this time the blood was everywhere. It was on me, it was on her, and the surrounding scene looked like a battlefield littered with smashed cars. A few feet from us was a pistol with a dozen spent shell casings laying on the ground.

What the hell?

For a second my sanity broke just a little bit. My head was swirling and I couldn’t even comprehend what I was looking at. I knew there were other dead bodies laying around me, there were too many cars crumpled into piles of wreckage to have been a car crash. A few were on fire and dark pillars of smoke jetted up into the sky. A piece of metal scratched my face as a car exploded just yards away from me, throwing a wave of terror at my mind as the pulse knock me to the ground again.

“Jacob” I heard a man’s voice in my head. It sounded like someone was standing right behind me.

“I’ve done all I can for you. You need to run. Get out of there. Now!” The voice sounded panicked, like a parent warning a child of an oncoming car. I laughed, probably because I was in shock, or because the warning was just a little late.

“Run. Hide. Now!” The voice shouted in my head.

I don’t know why, but I was compelled to listen.

I picked myself up and managed a desperate run to the side of the freeway just as the sirens of police cars came into ear shot. I pulled over the railing and fell ten feet to the city street below, smashing to the ground in a feat of poor acrobatics as I twisted my ankle. No one was within sight. I hobbled down the street in a dazed panic, not knowing why I suddenly felt like a hunted quarry. Eventually I found a little cubby hole to fall into, which was good because I barely kept hold of consciousness for another thirty seconds before the whole world faded to black.