Posted on by Lydia Ink

Squint

Sure, after three kids, she gained some weight. And yeah, I missed the thin young woman; long shapely legs, straight golden blond hair, and breasts that stood out with no help from me or her clothes. As my girlfriend, she was uninhibited, as my wife; she was without shame, I’d say.

You see, Officer, I’m not an ignorant man; I know women change, as do men. My hair thinned. She shrugged it off. I developed a paunch; it bothered me more than her and I worked to get rid of it. My wife changed little in attitude. Her weight gain didn’t bother her and to be frank, as I grew older, I kind of liked the thicker hips and stronger arms.

No, sir, the issue wasn’t that she grew older and looked older because she was still beautiful for her age. No, the problem was her eyes. She squinted. Something happened when her eyesight started to go. She squinted to see minor details. She squinted when cleaning the kitchen sink. She squinted when cooking. I noticed that when she squinted, a facade…slipped.

Color? Her eyes? Blue. The ice blue of any Nordic maiden. Her dad and mom were both Swedes. Blonde, tall and beautiful, just like her. Her Dad died some years back and I regret to hear her mother has taken this… situation badly.

You know I told my wife to damnit just wear glasses, but she is… was stubborn. I tried to reason with her but she had that LASIK thing done and sure, her distance improved, but her squinting became worse. Worse! And let me tell you, Officer, she wasn’t the same woman when she squinted. She wasn’t! God’s truth.

Anyway, we were up at the cabin, just her and I. The kids were coming up later. David and Ella were coming that night. Jeff and his new wife (I don’t know how many he will end up with… the nervous sort is our Jeff) Janice were expected sometime. My darling Kimmy, who I don’t think will ever marry, was to show up at 8:30 the next morning. My wife kept the schedules. I won’t be on time for another thing.

David and Ella are pregnant with their first and my wife is very conscious of food. I was helping with the dishes because, you know, that cabin kitchen is small, a coffee cup and plate makes the place look overloaded. We had soup, vegetable, on the stove and fresh bread. Any minute, I was waiting to hear the approach of David’s car. Suddenly my wife has this brainstorm to make a batch of cookies. I tell her, no; she had worked that day. We drove up to the cabin; we worked to clean and air the place out. You know all the things you do when the kids are coming. I told her no; we were both tired; we didn’t need cookies, for the love of Mike.

Do you know what she did? She wrinkled her nose at me, squinty eyes and all. I kept it together that time. I knew she was nervous. Anyway, the kids were running a late and she, by golly, was going to make a batch of cookies; David’s favorite. Peanut butter. Not much to tell after that. She started in and I kept washing dishes. Fate, because I was washing the serrated bread knife. She was measuring out the soda or the baking powder; I don’t know which, and she squinted those ice-blue eyes.

Did I mention she was a different woman when she squinted? Yeah, well, you weren’t there. She squinted, you see. Right before me, as her eyes narrowed, her upper lip lifted. It seemed to me her canines elongated and her skin seemed to tinge a lime green. What shocked me the most was her hair, grey-blonde, lifted and tangled in like lightning speed. She looked like a mad scientist–mad. In went the soda or the backing powder and presto-bango she was the woman I married in a blink of an eye. But I saw it. I saw what she was. It took me over 40 years but I saw and without so much as a blink; I cut her throat.

Shocking, really, my own strength. Adrenalin, I suppose. She didn’t suffer. Well, maybe a little bit, but it was over quickly. I will say I could see the young woman I married, despite the blood (lots of that) before her soul left her body. But her eyes, you see, I finally… what can I say… her eyes looked, I suppose, innocent? I can tell you one thing officer, I wasn’t overjoyed or anything, but I was oddly…content. It was like getting an answer to a lifelong question. Funny, huh? David and Ella were shocked, of course; the knife was still in my hand. I don’t know how long I was standing there thinking of her last expression. No questions, no accusations, no surprise, just a sort of smugness. Then I hear this soft voice saying, Dad?

I was mortified he had to see his mother like that. I tried to explain, but you know, you see your mother with her throat gaping open and blood all over, explanations are difficult. You know, I get his anger. He might thank me someday that he never had to see his mother morph into a witch. It all could have been avoided if she had worn glasses like her mother. I mean, her dad and I talked about it, and he always warned me–it’s the eyes that will get you, son, the eyes.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Her Perfect Green Eyes

“You know, I used to date a boy in high-school just like him.”

Cara’s cat like features perfected her green-eyed stare. Gazing out upon the crowded dance floor, watching the gyrating, perspiring bodies weave and bob away the troubles of low pay, glutted administrative jobs and a world tearing apart their parental implanted belief system set a fascinated glow to her luminous eyes.

Watching people her own age thrash about, sweating off makeup and deodorant to banging music and flashing lights left her half philosophical, half angry. The laughing, hysterical crowd before us would wake up to faces they had not seen before and discuss how to increase their sexual performance in a calm, matter-of-fact manner over coffee in a watery grey morning just before another day’s work.

Watching Cara, I worried for her. She took any slight directed toward me as personal. The hours of discussion melted from her mind; as a plain person I am looked over, snubbed and ridiculed. The fact did not distress me and in some places in the world, mostly Europe, my plain jane looks gave me an advantaged over the flamboyant. Here in the United States, my demeanor and my looks did not please. Despite my not being offended Cara’s green eyes gave her away, she was angry.

Cara’s flashing green eyes, her emotion and frankly her laughable sense of injustice drew me to her side, broke me down and weakened me so much that I told her my secrets. When we first met in a darkened alley, she rushed forward to defend me from harm. Glad for the opportunity to study her hunter like prowess, I sense to this day a recklessness about her. The surrounding atmosphere didn’t matter to me; it was a means to an end. To Cara, the crowd warranted a chance to avenge what she deemed the downtrodden. I disliked the loud, disconcerting music, but Cara thrived on it and I thrived on her expression and her perfect green eyes.

“I thought you too old for high-school remembrances,” I said, not focused on comment but on her emerald glow. Wanting her focus to remain upon the man who had just rejected me for another partner, concentrating on the thrum and throb of her calculating emotions, I felt the lift of anticipation.

“What sort of remark is that?” she asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I shrugged and looked away; her question shocking me into disappointing depletion. Perhaps her understanding of me was quickening. Her wrath directed toward me may be interesting. An undercurrent of electric anger between us may enhance an already welcomed partnership… or not. I felt an uptick in my sense of smell and taste when faced with the unpredictable.

The world had long left me flat and rather despondent, Cara surprised and kept me off center. She chose me, selected me, stalked me after our first encounter when she attempted to come to my rescue. I could have left her long ago or perished at her hands, but I allowed her to capture me, so I captured her. Narrowing her eyes, she speechlessly demanded a better answer of me. Looking away, focusing on some other salient point of interest, I countered her childish demand; “You seem timeless, too old for the nonsense of high school and all its silliness.”

“I endured like all the rest of these poor slobs,” she said with a shrug, immediately losing interest in the conversation.

My mind goes dark when confronting the mundane 21st century. Her response disappointed me, and it wasn’t the first time. Hating the hardened soldier, or bitter martyr tone she took, I shook my head in rejection to her response. Knowing the music or what passed as music to these craven and luckless lot I turned to scan the crowded dance floor. I felt the night funneling into dawn and the thought of time wearied me. Teaching Cara to understand that there were better places, stronger people, higher planes of existence than the jungle of despondency she insisted upon, seemed impossible. I returned my focus on my more basic needs and gazed about the long lines of lythe young people about me.

Reading me, connecting to my more basic wants, she looked toward the bar where most men leaned, gazing out at the dance floor; their faces reflecting the flashing lights that glared from the ceiling, floor and walls of the club. Her pristine skin and darkly painted lips attracted the man who had rejected me only moments ago.

When will you allow yourself culture? When will you pull yourself out of these pits? I longed to ask her these questions. Maybe some day.

Facing me again, unaware of my disgruntled emotions, she wore a wicked smile on her face, “Are you worried I’ll turn to extreme tattooing and piercings?” Mocking me was her only defense against the instinct she had in knowing she offended me. Warning her against taunting me with deadly earnestness, she would bring up my threat of having nothing more to do with her if she marred her beauty with smears of unnatural color upon her skin. Barbaric. Narrowing my eyes in her direction, she seemed about to say something more but laughed instead, as if realizing she was about to say too much.

“So what was this boy in high school like?” I asked, annoyed at myself for lowering our conversation to meet her needs and rescuing her from any further embarrassment with me. We both acknowledged our personal needs to each other and there were times I felt cheated by my surrender to her. The man whom she gave a coaxing look moments ago moved slowly toward our small table.

“Oh, you know. After we kissed for the first time and I found him wanting, he went about with any girl who would have him. He wanted none except me, but something inside him drove him to show me how happy he was; how very much happier he was with her or her or even her than with me.” Cara shrugged, looking around again with perfect timing. The man was before her.

It was my turn to laugh, and I did so. I almost felt a joy hammering with the loud, stubborn beat of electronic music which pumped throughout the hellish club. I looked again at the man now dancing with Cara. So simple; we easily catch the certain soul in any trap.

Watching him gyrated and swirl around Cara and looking oh so handsome on the crowded floor and in the flashing light, an animal exultation surged through my body. Examining myself and searching for any falsehood within myself, the thought of my share of the man did not disappoint me. I did not resent Cara’s powers as her beauty did not reflect against time. Did my relationship with Cara draw me down to the level of animal attraction? Yes. Most assuredly. I looked at the man again, his catlike movements and his masculinity exuding out of every flash of demonic light. He could enhance the beauty of the woman he danced with, but the beauty seemed to return to him; keeping what his ego demanded underscoring his selfishness and self-serving nature. I determined to capture his stolen beauty.

Cara’s perfect green eyes connected with me for a moment. In a burst of energy she lifted her long slender arms and danced as if around an ancient camp fire. She felt my determination.

I left the club. I moved into the icy night seeking silence. Cara’s laugher and feigned giddiness warned me of her approach. I pushed forth my desire, and she stumbled against the man she was with. I knew she felt my presence.

She wasted no time in pulling men to her need. I waited, for I understood she had needs too. I regretted their excursions weakened him but when he understood what I was; he put up satisfying resistance. Cara’s fascinated stare baffled him as he sank away into nonexistence.

“You won’t ever feed on me, will you?” she asked. Her partner tonight was more determined than most; more from disbelief that any harm dare touch him than from out-and-out fear.

“You must invite me, Cara.” I said. Her weariness allowed satisfaction from my answer. The invite she will not question which is 21st century style – so literal. So very literal.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Vilmos

Love? No, not love. That idea left me centuries ago. Laugh in disbelief if that buoys your courage. But I do not love her, though I admire and respect her. And yes, I want her with me.

I’ve watched her for some time now. At first my curiosity was simply piqued; nothing more. Her survival impressed me, her resistance incensed me (still does) and her tenacity in seeking truth impresses me. The reason I want her is to save her.

She has no feeble-minded idea that truth is indescribable or a sense or a feeling. She understands words, ideas and striving to know reveals truth. But she is naïve, she believes truth will strengthen her. She believes because that old man whom she calls teacher and friend teaches her to believe truth, though painful, is better than constant distraction.

Ha! Those who crave distraction in work or pleasure are calling out to be servants or prey. I accommodate their cravings. I seek truth and find it daily. Does God exist? Yes, of course He does, and He dogs us, He demands and He commands and He thwarts freedom. So I thwart Him.

And yes, I’ve thwarted Him for some time.

Someday soon she will understand the old man lied to her, her father lied to her and Quincey lied to her. They are like the men who stand at altars and pray. They are like the men who stand behind their crosses rather than face me. They are subtle, but their desire is the same as mine – power.

The difference? I want her on equal standing with me. I want to ride the airwaves with her, eddy the currents like the great eagle who sores above mountain tops. I want her to see the night as it really is; endless, vast, and free. She has too strong a mind to feel gratitude. She will join with me in watching from above those who breathe, suffer and die. We will watch for eternity the continual wave and break of humanity against the rocks of destruction and the slime of rebirth.

Yes, she will watch with me and understand that humanity needs no religion or God but our own.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Insidious

Not much longer now. The fight comes when the sun is setting, of this I’m certain. I’ve longed for this fight and if I die trying, well, that’s good enough for me.

I know people think I’m mad. I was actually afraid that I’d see myself committed to the county home before I faced him. Face him.

I consider him a scourge, a self-deceived creature of man’s manipulation, of his own manipulation. If that sounds almost charitable, I hope so; he is my father.  I’ve learned there is no stronger force for evil than self-will. No stronger force for good than… self-will. God help me, please God help me.

I’m leaving this journal where someone may find it. My only prayer is that if I fail tonight, I die. What does a condemn man do but reflect on his life? The word insidious comes to mind. Don’t think me a mad scientist or a bum who stumbled upon a nest of vipers. Thank God I never married, but Charlotte comes to mind during times of fear. Thank God she thinks me crazy and well shed of me.

I have no resentments toward my father. He was a man of reason, a reader who shunned fiction as man’s weakness; plays, poetry, novels, all folly. To raise the crucifix against evil was laughable to him, superstition. I can still hear my mother weeping during his funeral. It was his funeral that gave me a clue to his scheme.

“Michael, I’ve seen him. Your father. He was right, dear, he has returned. I’ve seen him, and I know tomorrow he will come and speak to me.” She was right. He came, and I was waiting. My father was always a hard man, pushing me toward greater things, pushing me to leave my mark on the world.

“Son, you’ve a great mind. Evolution has culminated in you. You have a great capacity for understanding, use it, damn you!”

It’s laughable that he could curse me as a second thought. I doubt he thought of the hypocrisy of it. The night my mother invited him into our home, he walked in dead.  I could see it in his eyes. Triumph, power, superiority and death all reflected in the green-red glow of his eyes. She saw it right away and fainted dead away. He came for me, but unlike him, I read fiction. Trembling, I raised my rosary toward him.

He became a whirlwind of destruction, raising my mother’s lifeless body before me and snapping her neck.

I’ve dogged his every step. Yes, my life has been an insidious chess match. The sun has almost set, I’m sure he will be here. Twenty-three years is a long time to hunt a man that should have meant the world to me.

The latch on the door to the sarcophagus is moving outward toward the night. Surprise is on my side. God help me.

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Waiting for 3:15

Described as a level-headed girl by her parents, she prided herself to be just that – levelheaded. She whispered the words, more to herself than to the listening universe, “I’m a level head woman.” She shuddered and re griped the doorknob and turned it.

Where did this all start? She fell in love. Yes, possibly, but she walked away and was content to do so. She found men her own age distasteful. So, when he took notice of her, she took notice of him. Tall, large brown eyes, powerful hands, and a gentleness she had only read about in 19th century novels.

She needed the vacation. She worked 60 hours a week for several weeks in a row and her temper wore thin.

“Go on, get out of here, you’ve done enough. We have the client, and you need a break. We have you booked at the Old Inn; on the lakeside.” So, there she sat, looking at the stars come out over Lake Huron and sipping wine; the weeks of stress and overwork ebbing away. The Old Inn on Lake Huron was an exclusive place that her company bought into. Employers work their employees to near distraction and then send them to the Old Inn for a week or two.

“Good Evening.” His voice mellow and his manners nonintrusive, she nodded only in good manners to his greeting, feeling he wanted no more interruption than she.

On the third night, a Tuesday, they found themselves alone in the old restaurant. The walls filled with pictures of Great Lakes shipwrecks, old and recent. They nodded to each other in greeting, took their seats at separate tables and became engrossed in the menu. A young waiter came bounding out from the kitchen, looked at them both and laughed, “at least sit closer, can’t you see I’m run off my feet?”

She laughed and so did he, and his lined face framed by his graying hair looked beautiful; like a captain of a ship laughing at the breeze. They did not eat together, but after their meal he stood and asked if he could recommend a wine and send it to her. “I notice that you sit out upon the veranda after your dinner.”

“Only if you join me.” She surprised herself by her reply.

“I’m honored and look forward to furthering our acquaintance.”

And that was it. They spent seven days together. Glorious days. He spoke of poetry and poets, shipwrecks, and the history of the great lakes. She felt an attraction that went beyond love making or hesitation. She touched his hand when silence was nothing more than what they both wanted. He never assumed, and she felt freedom with him because there was rest in their relationship. She could not call it friendship; the attraction was too apparent.

They mutually parted at 3:15 on a Tuesday afternoon. He did not ask her for anything she did not volunteer. No telephone numbers, emails, or social media connections. She wanted to return to her job, to her life. Driving back to Lancing she wondered where he went, what he did and if he thought of her but was content with wondering.

Then the clock on her office wall stopped at 3:15 PM every day. She replaced it and that clock stopped every day at 3:15… every day. She took the clock down and didn’t put up another. Every day she noticed the clock at 3:15 PM. No matter where she was or what she was doing. There were days when she didn’t think of him at all until 3:15 PM.

Three months and fifteen days later, she thought she spotted him across the street from her office building. His back was to her, straight and tall, with silver hair. He was talking to a woman; he turned slightly toward her and appeared to be laughing.

“Hey, did you get a call from Joe, he’s waiting for your report. You okay?”

“Yes, I heard from Joe, I just sent it to him.” Annoyed with the interruption, she turned back to her window and looked down he disappeared.

Her boss called her into his office a few days later. “Listen, I’m just saying you’ve been a little preoccupied. I’m not complaining, your work has been exceptional,”

“Then why the lecture?”

“Because everyone is coming into my office complaining that you’ve been sharp, impatient and downright rude. That’s just not you. You’ve never been nice like a teddy bear, but I had no complaints. Go back to the Old Inn, get some rest and see if you don’t come back in a better mood. I don’t want to lose you; you are important to this company.”

She rose without a word. Threatening her job was not the best way to get through to her. She walked into her office, grabbed her purse, shut out the lights and walked out. That night she sent out her resume to a headhunter, told him she was out of town for a few weeks and to get back to her if anyone was interested. His reply made her relax:  “You’ve got an excellent reputation, I’m sure we can find what you are looking for. Do you want to stay local?

Did she? Maybe if she left the area, the haunting would stop. The word haunting stopped her. Was she being haunted? She grabbed her smart phone to make a phone call: 3:15. Something had changed in the setting to Fiji time.

“Yes, same room, your boss called ahead. Room 315, do you have any luggage?”

“I didn’t have room 315.”

“Let me double check. Yes, a little over three months ago. Yes, room 315, but if you’d like another room, we can see if we can accommodate. I’m afraid it will not be on the lakeside.”

“No. I’ll take it and I can handle my luggage.” The man behind the counter frowned slightly but handed her the old fashion key to her room. She walked the old staircase, broad and ornate on the ground level, but by the third floor the old risers narrowed and creaked. Room 315 was at the end of the hall. She unlocked the door and turned the nob.

Walking in, she breathed a sigh of relief. The room looked the same, deep blue curtains, a large comfortable bed. The room looked underwater and relaxing. She pushed the door shut and felt at home, waiting for 3:15.