New Beginnings...
The fog was heavy, swirling and vaporous, allowing only faint outlines of shapes to be seen. It was like it always had been – the same dream, over and over. In the dark fog, he could see movement of something, quick and threatening, but never quite coming at him directly. Even in his sleep, he was uneasy. This dream was too real, too ominous.
The shapes were low and mysterious. Occasionally, two faint and narrow differences in the coloration could be seen, as if a pair of eyes that were almost as dark as the murky fog were looking at him. Or coming at him.
In his sleep, he wasn’t aware that his perspiration was making the sheets wet; that his fears were so real, so foreboding, that while his awake mind would dismiss the night visions as mere concoctions of fantasy borne of too much stress or pepperoni, in his dream it was real. And the result was always the same…
He stood as if unable to move. The form crept slowly around him, circling him as if stalking him. His nose could detect a faint but pungent odor; an odor that perhaps anger would have if it had a scent. That smell would make the hair on the back of his neck raise because he knew that anger was meant for him. He knew that this ‘thing’ stalking him was something real and present… and he knew it was getting closer. Closer. Closer… so close that if he dared move his frozen hand from his side, he could touch this ‘anger’ that was circling him.
Then, as if from a distance, he could hear another sound. Almost like when you ‘think’ you hear a siren far away but you’re just not quite sure. But yes – there it is. And the sound was frightening; he never could really tell exactly what the sound was but it slowly came to the forefront of his audible senses. It was a high pitched sound, but terrifying. Or, as if the being making the sound was terrified itself.
So all he could do was stand still, not moving, only listening and smelling and sweating and growing more fearful with each thought. He even thought he felt the shape near his side, circling him and breathing upon his leg at times, was touching him; its low, sinister movement meant to only toy with his fear even more before the moment was right, weaving in and out of his senses but always there. When it would be time to do what it had come into his dreams to do… And the sound - it grew and grew and grew – it became so loud that it would eventually awaken him suddenly…. Cause him to sit upright in his sweat-soaked sheets, his hair matted on his forehead, his fists clenching the damp fabric, his mouth moving… Only to find that the sound was the sound of his own terrified and lonely voice, screaming the same thing over and over and over… one word; one simple word that meant nothing to anyone else… except for him.
”Run!!!”
The city always seemed to come to life earlier than its inhabitants. But there was also a group of its dwellers that never seemed to sleep. They moved in and about the city as if they were part of the city’s circulatory system – but not necessarily a good part. These people were secretive and hidden to most. They had a lifestyle that no one could understand – unless that person was also part of ‘them’. These people had only one ultimate purpose in their being – to conquer another in a battle of sorts. To win. To defeat. To humiliate. This group of people lived for the smell of molten rubber and spent high-octane fuel. For the sounds of turbochargers and superchargers; of the click of trans-brakes being set; of the noise of wagers being placed in the darkness; of the cries of victory; or, of the rage of defeat. One person stood at the top of this heap of performance driven humanity. One person and only one person could say the taste of defeat was foreign. And only one person was feared as this one was – but for all the wrong reasons.
As a chile, growing up in the poorer west side of the sprawling metropolis was not easy. Days at school were only endless wastelands of an even more wasted youth. Living in a home where violence was more common than the television that portrayed it only created a seething and underlying loathing for respect. Seeing the father brutally beat the mother night after night in a drunken rage while standing helpless to stop it deadened the senses. One night, enough was enough… the sound of the father’s .357 magnum going off in a hallway, it’s jacketed hollow-point entering the father’s back just to the right side of the spine and tearing a huge hole in his dark heart, killing him instantly but saving the woman’s life, was the night this person changed.
The sound of the gun being dropped to the floor, the sight of the mother sobbing over the body of the man who would have killed her had he not been stopped, the sight of the dark, crimson blood flowing onto the dirty hardwood floor beneath a naked bulb hanging in that hallway… all these were forever etched in this person’s mind. But life continued on; the shooting was found justified, the case dropped, and yet it never went away. Because what died that cold and rainy November night, never really died at all – it only morphed into something even more threatening and ominous…
‘What’ll it be, hon?’ the waitress quipped to the customer sitting in booth C-5. The smell of fresh bacon and eggs was heavy in the diner’s air, almost as heavy as the cheap perfume the waitress was wearing that morning. He looked up after folding the thin menu in his calloused hands and just smiled at first, seeing her smile back at him with her yellow smoker’s teeth, still chewing the gum that was probably hours old by now.
“Just give me the special – eggs over hard, ok? Oh – make that TWO specials but on the second one, scramble the eggs.” The waitress nodded, scrawled the order down on the green pad, turned on her heel and walked it over to the opening behind the counter where a stainless steel wheel with clips hung. She inserted the piece of paper in one of the clips, spun it toward the kitchen side of the opening and yelled in her best cheap-waitress-in-a-greasy-spoon voice ‘ORDER!’. Now, it was all over except for the eating…
Checking his watch again, he wondered where she could be? It was already nearly nine and she said she would meet him here at eight thirty. But, true to her style, she was late again.
He laughed to himself, realizing that he had no reason to doubt if she would come – she always had before, hadn’t she? And of course, just as he was wondering those same thoughts he had wondered so many times before, he heard the bells jangle as the door behind him swept open. He turned to look and sure enough, it was her, searching the crowd for him. Ironically, their eyes met at the same time and her brilliant smile broke through the smoky, bacon-scented air, and he waved her on over to his booth.
As she swept by him, she bent over and kissed him lightly on the cheek, apologizing for her being late (as always) and he could only do what he had always done before – just smile and nod ‘ok’, because it WAS ok.
This is just how Sally has always been and she probably wasn’t going to change now. Besides, where else in this city could a man hope to find a woman who: was as gorgeous and sexy; was as devoted as a wife; was a knowledgeable about cars; and who could tell the difference between a GN and a WE4 as well as a Firebird and Camaro? Dan knew a good thing when he saw it.
And Sally was definitely a good thing.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
Jokingly, he toyed with her. “Get what?”
She poked his arm with her finger. “You KNOW what! Did you get the promotion? Come on, Dan! I’m dying to know!”
She smiled again at him, knowing from the look on Dan’s face that he had gotten the promotion after all. All he could do is just smile and nod, still awe-struck by her beauty in the midst of the diner that was short on refinement but heavy on great food. That was Sally all right – she could make any place seem like the best place to be.
“Yeah” he finally said, “I got it. I start the new position next Monday. And, since that’s only 5 days away, how about we go out and celebrate this Friday?”
Sally jumped back up out of her seat and gave Dan a huge hug over the table, nearly knocking over the salt and pepper shakers and the shiny chrome napkin dispenser with her efforts.
“Of course, Honey! Let’s go out!” Sally giggled as she sat back down. “Did you already order?”
Dan smiled again and nodded. And so their day began.
Outside, no one noticed the Black Car go by slowly, almost as a shark glides through the water. Behind the deeply tinted glass sat the driver whose eyes had spotted Dan’s white Regal sitting in the parking lot alongside Bernie’s Diner. The driver knew Dan – knew him well in fact, most recently having heard too much to stomach about Dan and his god-awful-fast white car; a car that most of the performance addicts only referred to as Ghost.
But, the driver also knew Sally – in ways that Sally had long forgotten. Time had passed but the Driver of the Black Car had never forgotten Sally or what she had done. Something that, in that wickedly tormented mind, required a reckoning. Word had spread quickly on the street that someone the driver used to know was back in town. And word had also been passed around like whispers in the night, that Sally was this person because everyone knew what that meant to the Driver in the Black Car.
So now, the black car nearly stopped in the light mid-morning traffic, allowing the Driver to stare at the white Regal and the Impala SS parked right next to it, knowing that soon - not today, not tomorrow, but soon – their paths would cross once more.
And when that time occurred – it would be different.
The Black Car pulled away slowly, its shape catching Dan’s eye. For reasons yet unknown to Dan, just the view of that car gave him a chill but he couldn’t quite explain it…
“Whacha looking at Danny?” asked Sally, noticing Dan’s stare over her shoulder behind her.
He didn’t hear her. He didn’t answer… all he could do was keep his eyes upon the Black Car.
She turned to look and only saw the rear deck of a black car with odd taillights disappear from view around the corner of the intersection.
“Something wrong, Dan?”
“You know… I just don’t know Sally. That car I was watching go by slowly seemed to be looking for something. And for the strangest reason, I got this weird feeling that it was connected to me or to us.” He shook it off almost as quickly as it came upon him, seeing the odd and worried look in Sally’s gorgeous eyes.
“Nah, it’s nothing. Let’s eat… cause here comes our food.”
Neither one noticed that the Black Car was going by once more, both of them enjoying the breakfast before them.
But maybe they should have...
The fog was heavy, swirling and vaporous, allowing only faint outlines of shapes to be seen. It was like it always had been – the same dream, over and over. In the dark fog, he could see movement of something, quick and threatening, but never quite coming at him directly. Even in his sleep, he was uneasy. This dream was too real, too ominous.
The shapes were low and mysterious. Occasionally, two faint and narrow differences in the coloration could be seen, as if a pair of eyes that were almost as dark as the murky fog were looking at him. Or coming at him.
In his sleep, he wasn’t aware that his perspiration was making the sheets wet; that his fears were so real, so foreboding, that while his awake mind would dismiss the night visions as mere concoctions of fantasy borne of too much stress or pepperoni, in his dream it was real. And the result was always the same…
He stood as if unable to move. The form crept slowly around him, circling him as if stalking him. His nose could detect a faint but pungent odor; an odor that perhaps anger would have if it had a scent. That smell would make the hair on the back of his neck raise because he knew that anger was meant for him. He knew that this ‘thing’ stalking him was something real and present… and he knew it was getting closer. Closer. Closer… so close that if he dared move his frozen hand from his side, he could touch this ‘anger’ that was circling him.
Then, as if from a distance, he could hear another sound. Almost like when you ‘think’ you hear a siren far away but you’re just not quite sure. But yes – there it is. And the sound was frightening; he never could really tell exactly what the sound was but it slowly came to the forefront of his audible senses. It was a high pitched sound, but terrifying. Or, as if the being making the sound was terrified itself.
So all he could do was stand still, not moving, only listening and smelling and sweating and growing more fearful with each thought. He even thought he felt the shape near his side, circling him and breathing upon his leg at times, was touching him; its low, sinister movement meant to only toy with his fear even more before the moment was right, weaving in and out of his senses but always there. When it would be time to do what it had come into his dreams to do… And the sound - it grew and grew and grew – it became so loud that it would eventually awaken him suddenly…. Cause him to sit upright in his sweat-soaked sheets, his hair matted on his forehead, his fists clenching the damp fabric, his mouth moving… Only to find that the sound was the sound of his own terrified and lonely voice, screaming the same thing over and over and over… one word; one simple word that meant nothing to anyone else… except for him.
”Run!!!”
The city always seemed to come to life earlier than its inhabitants. But there was also a group of its dwellers that never seemed to sleep. They moved in and about the city as if they were part of the city’s circulatory system – but not necessarily a good part. These people were secretive and hidden to most. They had a lifestyle that no one could understand – unless that person was also part of ‘them’. These people had only one ultimate purpose in their being – to conquer another in a battle of sorts. To win. To defeat. To humiliate. This group of people lived for the smell of molten rubber and spent high-octane fuel. For the sounds of turbochargers and superchargers; of the click of trans-brakes being set; of the noise of wagers being placed in the darkness; of the cries of victory; or, of the rage of defeat. One person stood at the top of this heap of performance driven humanity. One person and only one person could say the taste of defeat was foreign. And only one person was feared as this one was – but for all the wrong reasons.
As a chile, growing up in the poorer west side of the sprawling metropolis was not easy. Days at school were only endless wastelands of an even more wasted youth. Living in a home where violence was more common than the television that portrayed it only created a seething and underlying loathing for respect. Seeing the father brutally beat the mother night after night in a drunken rage while standing helpless to stop it deadened the senses. One night, enough was enough… the sound of the father’s .357 magnum going off in a hallway, it’s jacketed hollow-point entering the father’s back just to the right side of the spine and tearing a huge hole in his dark heart, killing him instantly but saving the woman’s life, was the night this person changed.
The sound of the gun being dropped to the floor, the sight of the mother sobbing over the body of the man who would have killed her had he not been stopped, the sight of the dark, crimson blood flowing onto the dirty hardwood floor beneath a naked bulb hanging in that hallway… all these were forever etched in this person’s mind. But life continued on; the shooting was found justified, the case dropped, and yet it never went away. Because what died that cold and rainy November night, never really died at all – it only morphed into something even more threatening and ominous…
‘What’ll it be, hon?’ the waitress quipped to the customer sitting in booth C-5. The smell of fresh bacon and eggs was heavy in the diner’s air, almost as heavy as the cheap perfume the waitress was wearing that morning. He looked up after folding the thin menu in his calloused hands and just smiled at first, seeing her smile back at him with her yellow smoker’s teeth, still chewing the gum that was probably hours old by now.
“Just give me the special – eggs over hard, ok? Oh – make that TWO specials but on the second one, scramble the eggs.” The waitress nodded, scrawled the order down on the green pad, turned on her heel and walked it over to the opening behind the counter where a stainless steel wheel with clips hung. She inserted the piece of paper in one of the clips, spun it toward the kitchen side of the opening and yelled in her best cheap-waitress-in-a-greasy-spoon voice ‘ORDER!’. Now, it was all over except for the eating…
Checking his watch again, he wondered where she could be? It was already nearly nine and she said she would meet him here at eight thirty. But, true to her style, she was late again.
He laughed to himself, realizing that he had no reason to doubt if she would come – she always had before, hadn’t she? And of course, just as he was wondering those same thoughts he had wondered so many times before, he heard the bells jangle as the door behind him swept open. He turned to look and sure enough, it was her, searching the crowd for him. Ironically, their eyes met at the same time and her brilliant smile broke through the smoky, bacon-scented air, and he waved her on over to his booth.
As she swept by him, she bent over and kissed him lightly on the cheek, apologizing for her being late (as always) and he could only do what he had always done before – just smile and nod ‘ok’, because it WAS ok.
This is just how Sally has always been and she probably wasn’t going to change now. Besides, where else in this city could a man hope to find a woman who: was as gorgeous and sexy; was as devoted as a wife; was a knowledgeable about cars; and who could tell the difference between a GN and a WE4 as well as a Firebird and Camaro? Dan knew a good thing when he saw it.
And Sally was definitely a good thing.
“Did you get it?” she asked.
Jokingly, he toyed with her. “Get what?”
She poked his arm with her finger. “You KNOW what! Did you get the promotion? Come on, Dan! I’m dying to know!”
She smiled again at him, knowing from the look on Dan’s face that he had gotten the promotion after all. All he could do is just smile and nod, still awe-struck by her beauty in the midst of the diner that was short on refinement but heavy on great food. That was Sally all right – she could make any place seem like the best place to be.
“Yeah” he finally said, “I got it. I start the new position next Monday. And, since that’s only 5 days away, how about we go out and celebrate this Friday?”
Sally jumped back up out of her seat and gave Dan a huge hug over the table, nearly knocking over the salt and pepper shakers and the shiny chrome napkin dispenser with her efforts.
“Of course, Honey! Let’s go out!” Sally giggled as she sat back down. “Did you already order?”
Dan smiled again and nodded. And so their day began.
Outside, no one noticed the Black Car go by slowly, almost as a shark glides through the water. Behind the deeply tinted glass sat the driver whose eyes had spotted Dan’s white Regal sitting in the parking lot alongside Bernie’s Diner. The driver knew Dan – knew him well in fact, most recently having heard too much to stomach about Dan and his god-awful-fast white car; a car that most of the performance addicts only referred to as Ghost.
But, the driver also knew Sally – in ways that Sally had long forgotten. Time had passed but the Driver of the Black Car had never forgotten Sally or what she had done. Something that, in that wickedly tormented mind, required a reckoning. Word had spread quickly on the street that someone the driver used to know was back in town. And word had also been passed around like whispers in the night, that Sally was this person because everyone knew what that meant to the Driver in the Black Car.
So now, the black car nearly stopped in the light mid-morning traffic, allowing the Driver to stare at the white Regal and the Impala SS parked right next to it, knowing that soon - not today, not tomorrow, but soon – their paths would cross once more.
And when that time occurred – it would be different.
The Black Car pulled away slowly, its shape catching Dan’s eye. For reasons yet unknown to Dan, just the view of that car gave him a chill but he couldn’t quite explain it…
“Whacha looking at Danny?” asked Sally, noticing Dan’s stare over her shoulder behind her.
He didn’t hear her. He didn’t answer… all he could do was keep his eyes upon the Black Car.
She turned to look and only saw the rear deck of a black car with odd taillights disappear from view around the corner of the intersection.
“Something wrong, Dan?”
“You know… I just don’t know Sally. That car I was watching go by slowly seemed to be looking for something. And for the strangest reason, I got this weird feeling that it was connected to me or to us.” He shook it off almost as quickly as it came upon him, seeing the odd and worried look in Sally’s gorgeous eyes.
“Nah, it’s nothing. Let’s eat… cause here comes our food.”
Neither one noticed that the Black Car was going by once more, both of them enjoying the breakfast before them.
But maybe they should have...
