“No, no, no, not just sex. I'm damned tired and need to rest for at least one night,”
Vicky seemed disappointed and was almost sulky like a young child. She'd gone from bright and bubbly to a morose and surly five-year-old literally in a second. It was like somebody flicking a switch. Like a child being told halfway through a game, “It's time for bed”.
Quite frankly I wasn't in the mood for a bipolar black-and-white girlfriend. By this time in the evening, of what had been a long day, I'd had enough of the endless shit and was quite glad to challenge myself by attempting to drive the car. I suppose it was rude. I literally slammed the door in her face without even the words, “I'm off” or “see you tomorrow”.
I was in deep concentration. Operating the car was a challenge and could become a challenge that other motorists didn't need. I was taking to the highway with no idea apart from what I learnt on the farm driving the Land Rover, but it was obvious I had a licence and insurance. Or did I? I had no idea!
I started the car and selected a gear. It moved, forwards. Another gear and it moved forwards. I was trying to go backwards. Concentrating, I looked at the little logo at the bottom of the gear stick. Towards me and back, that should do it. Slowly and not too jerkily for a first timer I made my way out of the drive backwards, narrowly avoiding two parked cars on the other side of the road. Vicky looked on with a surly glare. The thunderous expression on her face suggested that she wouldn't care if I died in a terrible collision. Perhaps it's the impression I got. Somehow I think not. The other me must have looked at her in quite a different way, or handled her differently to keep her sweet while keeping her mother sweating.
As I pulled off forwards I glanced towards the house. Quite a large modern built mini mansion on the best housing estate, such a grand style without any real grand style. How did I know these people? I'll be honest, today had been tragic losing my father. Traumatic, strange, disturbing and, on a sexual level, I was like a cat with the cream.
I drove like a septuagenarian for the mile and a quarter through the estate to my apartment. To my great joy working at the car's controls was a trouble-free run with very light traffic. What amazed me was my ability to drive somewhat better than I remembered from the farm. What other tricks had I learnt, what else could I do?
In a short distance I transformed from novice driver to not bad. Arriving at my apartment I parked in one of the bays. It would be the wrong bay of course. I would learn this in a matter of seconds without any interference from the usual helpful neighbour. Walking past the other bays I noticed they had small number plates which reflected the registrations of the appropriate cars. Mine, of course, had to be moved, but I was too damned tired to be bothered.
Blue was my colour, so I wasn't surprised when I reach the door a flat 35. The experience was very strange, almost like burglary. I pushed a strange key, the fifth one I'd tried, into the lock on the blue door. As I turned it the key met no resistance. The door opened.
So this was my apartment. I didn't rent this I owned this! Going inside I found the switch and turned on the light. It was all beautifully designed with a large kitchen diner, a large lounge for an apartment and two double bedrooms one of which had an en suite bathroom. A very nice apartment, I thought. The furnishings were all the full early 70s style, everything was nearly new, nothing was cheap, and all from the top end of the market. This classy place was mine. This raised the question of how did I pay for it?
I found the bedroom and threw myself onto the bed. I would start to sort everything out in the morning, but first I had to have a good night's sleep. The light went out and in an instant so did I.
It would be ten glorious hours of sleep, and I would awaken refreshed.
Who knows, all my memories may return in the night.
The days of therapy were becoming shorter and shorter. The days themselves were not getting shorter, but the time I spent awake was only for eating and drinking. Apart from that I was in and out of sleep for up to eighteen hours each day. Even when awake I was crippled by an all-enveloping tiredness which demanded every action was an act of will, a monumental effort. I was so tired inside it was very difficult to even think. Each day became a blur almost beyond the point where I could remember specific incidents with any clarity.
The nights, however, when I was fortunate enough to visit the other reality, had a clarity that remained in the mind with the force of memory only experienced when you are truly moved by a great work of art, or have witnessed some major event in history. These experiences transcended the tiredness of the fatigued daytimes, and I could relive all the vivid sensations etched permanently in my otherwise addled mind.
As the weeks passed I always seem to be waiting for a doctor or a nurse. I've spent a lot of time this year sitting in corridors interminably waiting for doors to open and not, I hoped, to close forever. You always seemed to be waiting patiently for one consultant or another.
This drudgery of day-to-day exhausted existence became the dream state, the state of semi-alive. My head was losing more hair every time it touched the pillow. I wasn't waiting for the earthly dawn to come. The deep yearning inside me was for a bright dawn, not in the here and now, but in the iridescent other world that had for me replaced what people insist on calling reality.
I now can't remember how many days had passed since my last visit to the other universe. I could do nothing because I was at the other universes beck and call. Thankfully as sleep folded around me I was taken there and discovered a little more. I became more curious⦠more enveloped.
So it was the same thing once again. The timeless railway station appeared with the cross little stationmaster holding his fantastical flag. My clothes were from the same period, my senses alive and on fire. Once again I could feel the approaching train slowing towards the station. The stationmaster, I noticed, never seemed to wave his flag in any other manner than frantic. How the train driver (though I'd never seen one) knew what his intentions were was a mystery. Despite this vagueness of flag etiquette the train screeched and groaned to a steamy halt. A final hiss of strangely aromatic steam and all was quiet, and to my delight she was there. Then she wasn't there!
A large number of beautiful butterflies of amazing variety and colour were flying straight past my face, some even brushing my nose, others weaving between my arms and legs like a cloud of coloured light passing by. This just added to my joy. I'd been distracted by the butterflies intentionally I think. Where was Jennifer?
She stood up. She had been down behind the door bending to pick up something, and then for the first time she turned the handle, opened the door and stepped elegantly from the train. She was very light on her feet and walked straight towards me stopping only three or four feet away. She was very close. She was a vision. Jennifer was quite
petite
, not tiny, but very girlish. Not a woman or I didn't think so at the time, her age being hard to guess. It was hard to drag my eyes away from her lustrous shiny hair glistening with rainbow colours highlighted in the sunlight. Her eyes with their magnetic quality and dark beauty begged me to stare into them. And those lips, oh those lips with that most wondrous smile! I was totally captivated.
Her clothes were the most curious thing about her appearance. They appeared to be some form of school uniform in a style I'd never seen before. It was as if she was wearing a business suit that also conveyed the feeling of school uniform. In one hand she held a very large, slightly battered brown briefcase. I wanted to ask,
“What are we going to do today?”
hoping the answer would be something exciting, something like exploring more of this wondrous parallel universe, anything that would allow me to spend time with her, though I didn't know what I was expecting. Instead I dug deep into the strangest corner of my mind asking a question that even now seems a little bit odd.
“Why are you carrying a briefcase?” That's all I could come up with. Idiot!
Her reply was odder than my question. “Because I'm a schoolgirl,” she said. I thought she looked a little bit too old to be a schoolgirl.
“Aren't you too old for school?” And it just came out of my mouth like an idiot stream of words. I was embarrassed by my stupid reaction. This wasn't my world, and I knew nothing of its ways.
Jennifer looked herself up and down and smiled back at me.
“I didn't mean to be insulting,” I blurted out. She just laughed.
Jennifer told me she was indeed a schoolgirl, and twenty- five-years old! I exclaimed some shock at this quite extraordinary age to be at school. She told me that you stayed at school until you understood the truths you were seeking, and then you passed the knowledge on to somebody else. The people receiving your insights would attempt to pass their final insights back to you. If all the parties understood the knowledge they'd received they were no longer at school and free to move in a world of tolerance.
“You're a student as well. Those clothes are your uniform,” she said.
“I'm a student?” I said, echoing her words.
“Yes, you're a student and your subject is to know yourself. My subject is to teach you. Once you know yourself and I know you understand, I do not have to continue with my studies and neither do you. Then I will be a woman. My world will change a little bit, or a lot,” she said.
The next moments were a joyful surprise. She stepped forwards and placed both of her hands in mine. She then pointed her exquisite face up at mine and indicated almost by telepathy that I must kiss her. I had to bend my neck down a little to do this. The first touch of our lips could only be described one way: as soft electric. They were blissfully wonderful with a power that shocked me, delighted me and captured me. She was kissing me with an earnest soft passion for what seemed an age. At the end our lips drifted slowly apart, pulling away from each other very, very slowly.
“I'm going now. I will see you tomorrow, then I will open this case and you will see your first lesson,” she said.
“Can I take a peek at it now?” I asked. I was becoming curious. I was captured.
“Paul (I couldn't get used to this name. I was expecting the stress on the P to become Peter), tomorrow is the day we start to exchange knowledge and experiences, not today,” she said with a little hint in the upturned corner of her mouth of more than just a smile.
I was looking at that little hint of more than a smile when, with a sudden move, she turned and walked away, climbed onto the train, closed the door and blew me a kiss. This kiss wasn't the power of the real thing but it managed to caress my lips, a captivating experience. Jennifer indicated to the stationmaster it was time for the train to leave.
I was full of blissful joy and already looking forward to my education, whatever form that may take. It was just as the previous visits. I was full of joy which diminished only a slight amount as the train pulled away from the station, disappearing in a cloud of its own steam swirling in the light fragrant breeze. It then rumbled off around the curve and she disappeared, but not the sense of her.
Will I be taken someplace beyond this station?
I didn't mind being on the station. It would, be nice in the future, to explore some of this new experience and be somewhere else in this amazing somewhere else.
I remained on the station for quite a time, not leaving the scene for several minutes. I took it all in, every single part of that beauty. I was at the centre of a little universe standing in clouds of butterflies and birds, tiny colourful birds, with their vibrating wings tickling my face as they whirled around me in a tornado of colour⦠I awoke to bright sunshine beaming in through the windows of my bedroom. The transition from the other dimension to the now, the so-called real world, was almost seamless as the bright sunshine appeared to coalesce out of that cloud of bright birds.
The real set in, I was nauseous. Also the other demon was visiting me. I held that dread of something wrong in the past I should pay the price for. This depressing something was hard to put a finger on, the whole sensation was never more than a tiny hint of the terrible, seeping through to break the joy in my soul. Was this dreaded guilt and feeling of malpractice some traumatic after-effect of the cancer treatments with all the poisonous chemicals perverting my brain cells?
Jennifer was going to teach me things hidden in her old briefcase. Thinking about what mysteries and profound truths might lie inside distracted me for a while. This state only lasted a few minutes before dark anxieties returned.
My friend was arriving in a short while so we could both be burdened with a visit to the hospital. I was returning once again for my dose of black fluid pumped into my veins. The chemotherapy isn't really black, it's the impression I have of it as it mingles with my blood attempting to burn the cancer away, burning my immunity away at the same time, and worst of all trying to destroy my resolve to survive. Beyond all this I had something to look forward to â school lessons!
I spent several days pondering something. Am I going to die, and if I die where will I go? Could it be to the other dimension? Was all this a preamble to dying? Was I witnessing first-hand what some people might term as Heaven?
Perhaps all this treatment was just slowing me up and deluding my already fuddled mind into believing surviving was the thing to do, but then all the chemicals could be making me suffer this illusion of going to Heaven and I would be killing myself! The decision was made. I had to get a better hold on the daytime in my physical world or I could become addicted to the other world allowing that universe to drag me down and consume me.
If I was going to stay alive to experience as much vivid beauty as possible, I couldn't allow myself to overdose on overwhelming addictive sensations. I knew that if my body died in the daytime and if the other universe wasn't Heaven, it would disappear.
I wanted to be there all the time, but I couldn't allow myself this indulgence. Perhaps my choices were some other kind of hell.
I already craved another fix only moments after deciding it was doing me harm.