abstract:"The Tumbled Sapphire"

Straight mattered little anymore.  As a child, much time spent in keeping the horizon horizontal.  Now, lines blurred, shifted in weight, were smooth, hyperbolic.  I found, after decades of dealing with it, that allowing real life to spin, at its own course was more desirable.  Nausea melted away over time and I got used to spinning in my own grey-lighted space.

The only thing that would soothe me from this was when the fall carnival would come.  The sheen of rides, reflecting the lights.  The lights.  The steady cacophony of light would stir me and calm me.  I waited until sundown and sat and was allowed to.  No one came to look after me then, they knew where I was like they knew where the same steady statue of Barnaby Closet stood each day in the middle of the town square.

It was in my fifteenth year, at the festival, that I would meet Charlie.  She came to talk to me.  I don't remember even having a 'hey' at festivals before.  She sat right down and I felt at ease where I normally would have had the urge to sweat and run.  And run until I could no longer and the sweat would cool.  I would lay on wet long grass, near the highway.  Creepies loved the salt from the sweat and come from all over.  Especially the small black slugs.  They were faster than you could imagine, I bet.

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Charlie has sandy blond hair and dark green eyes.  She if very friendly with me, but she says little when others are around.

We talked for the week and her, and the festival, disappeared through Thanksgiving.

I would do well for a spell.  Then it would all return.  The black, the grey.  Like giant orbs, they would sneak like the sun over the forest and find me.  And it would take me a time of laying down in my room for a few days to allow it fulfill itself.

No more pills I told myself, but I kept the phial within eyesight.  If the man would return.  The shadow man.  He had stayed away, but I don't know how long now.  He felt the furthest away when Charlie was around.  I longed for her.  I imagined her sitting next to me and I would feel better.  She had dark green eyes.

I stayed out late one night.  A night where I had lost myself in a horror comic book at Jacie's.  It had skulls and blood.  I put the comic page so close to my eye I could see the little red and pink dots that made up the spill of death.

Kelsey was getting tired of me, I know.  He just shot me dark looks when I made eye contact with him.  "You're not right, Park.  Go home."

The night felt like a netting coming down upon me.  The streetlights gave me comfort, but of course, only for a little while.  There was as stretch of two miles that had no lights.  Only the sky, of the darkest blue, had light.  The darkness choked me.

Then, in the shadow ahead, I saw him blocking me.  The shadow man.  He melted in and out, but his shape was there.  I know that if I were to fight him, he would win.  So I sat.  I sat on the highway and coldness came, along with the overnight dew.

I braved another glance ahead.  The shadow man was there, but, in the mash of dark, a light figure appeared.  She had grey jeans and white tennies.  A white, thickly woven sweater.  Charlie.  She came and pulled me from the asphalt.  She walked with me and didn't say a word.  She only looked straight ahead.  I had left the light on from this morning.  It was still on when I came home.