I don't know where to begin this. By getting some tea and chocolate chip cookies, I think. I've lost my mind again, and I'm going to write about it. Because it's only when I'm in moods like this that I really feel like baring my soul anymore. I hardly ever even do it in my real journal, or to myself, much less here. But. This is a story that needs to be shared.
So. Let me get my cookies. Then I'll start. Oh. And fitting music.
4:15 AM
So I, unfortunately, have to recount (recant?) this story by memory. Well, by memory without the aid of the previous entries I've written about it in my journal. Tommy has them stashed or hidden somewhere like the bastard he is and since he's not giving them back to me anytime soon, I'll just have to hope I can remember every detail. It's funny. You'd think with all the times I've replayed this experience in my mind's eye, I'd have it memorized. But like a dream, it just seems to fade in clarity the more times I think about it.
I am going back to the Kent-era, specifically the month that I spent with him in Vancouver when my life changed completely. I'd been there about two weeks when this happened. It was after he'd broken up with me. Things between him and I had reached some sortof silent anger. At least, I was the angry one. And I was quiet about it. But he knew.
We'd gone out to watch a movie. Legally Blonde, I think. Either that or the first Tomb Raider. But I don't think it was that movie. Anyway, in Vancouver, they have an above-ground subway-esque line called the Skytrain, which he and I had taken a few times in order to get to a certain part of British Columbia called MetroTown, which to my understanding was nothing more than two massive malls connected to one another by walkways and transport tubes, where a settlement of houses and such had cropped up around the area. There was a massive movie theatre in one of the malls, and (though I laugh now after experiencing New York movie prices) I remember it being really expensive and big. Intimidatingly so. He wanted to watch the big blockbuster movies there, which now strikes me as funny. That he'd go to something so obviously commerical to watch an over-commercialised movie. It was quite Anti-Kent.
Anyway, we'd gone to MetroTown and I think we got there really early before the next movie began, so we had to wait around for an hour or so at least. And since my "vacation" to Canada had turned quite sour in its infantile stages, when we were alone waiting for something generally wasn't the time when he and I talked at length. I don't even remember if we'd actually fought, but I do remember that for however long it took before the movie started, he and I just sat in silence, and on my end it was an angry, sullen, resentful type of silence. I don't know. For as much as I loved him, I think I also hated him that much while I was there. It was supposed to be so much more than it ended up being.
So we watched the movie, and I think it was Legally Blonde, because I remember my spirits being slightly lifted afterward. Then we started walking back to the station to wait for the Skytrain to arrive. I think he didn't buy a ticket, because there was a panhandler around. Or at least that's the justification I gave myself when we got onto the train without a ticket. You see, it was a bit like the Long Island Railroad in the sense that they let you board the train and didn't check for a ticket until you were already travelling. Except on the Skytrain it was only ever a rairity that someone came to check your ticket at all. That's why he decided to skip buying one, because it was quite unlikely that somebody would stop us.
I think it was only around eight or nine PM, and since we'd rode on the train at similar times on similar days, I was expecting the train to be fairly packed. But it wasn't. I think there were only three or four other people there, which was unusual. And I remember the people being odd as well, but I can't really remember the details of them. Anyway, ever since leaving the theatre, a feeling of unease had started to descend on me. Like the semi-intuitive feeling you get right before you walk into a "bad situation." I realised I'd begun expecting something to happen. And for one of the few times in my life, I wasn't disappointed.
At some point after he and I'd boarded, she got on the train. I call her the Skytrain Girl, because I've never had an actual or accurate name to use. She changed my life. I don't use that phrase lightly.
Rather, I think she shattered it and will haunt the pieces that still remain forever. Also not said gingerly. She fucked my world, and I can't begin to make sense of how or why it happened that way. It was the biggest demonstration that Fate is not only existant, but it's a bitter fucking gay Chelsea queen.
She got on the train. And I think she was beautiful. Perhaps not. But I know she was striking. Not just because she looked so sad with her makeup and mascara running down her face. Like blackish blue rivers. Her eyes were dark. So was her hair. So was she.
She sat down near me. Almost across, but not quite. The seats on the Skytrain were aligned for the most part with the backs against the sides of the train, thus the chairs all faced each other. Ah, and here's a detail I forgot. When Kent got on the train, he didn't sit next to me. He proceeded directly to the very back of the train, quite some distance from where I'd decided to sit. And I think I was mad at him for doing so, so I didn't follow. Out of spite, probably. He looked out of the window, and for the rest of our trip on that hurling mass of metal, he didn't look at me once, even during what happened after.
So she sat near me. And I stared at her. Because by just existing she'd touched some part of my emotional spectrum that made my insides curl into a fetal position and cry. She pained me. I can think of no other way to describe it. It was like watching a mother go into a burning building and try to save both her children, but only being able to get out with one. Watching her was watching the pain of that decision. Which child to choose? How is that something you could do? I don't know. Right now, typing this up and thinking of her, is making me tear. I don't tear. I don't cry. But I'm close now, just by the memory.
I can think of no accurate ways to describe her without sounding cliched. I don't even remember what she looked like. Only who she looked like. Sortof like the lead singer of Joydrop. Sortof like the singer in Evanescence. Sortof (more) like my old manager at Quizno's. Actually she looked a lot like her, and I even have my own wonders and suspicions about that, given how she'd become extremely distant anytime I mentioned Vancouver. And she said a few things off-handed and dismissedly that really make my heart jump. But I don't think they're the same person, because then the Universe would totally fuck with my head. However she looked, she looked unique.
But like I said, I was staring at her. Because she struck me so powerfully. And she, at some point after, caught my gaze and held it. And instead of my usual reaction when someone looks into my eyes directly (which would be turning away and most likely blushing) I held it as well. And we stayed like that. I hesitate using the word telepathy, but I don't know. Some sortof communication passed between us. I just knew instinctually that she was running from someone. She had something that someone wanted, and she was trying to escape. I don't think I mean "something" in the physical sense, but maybe she had knowledge or an ability or something. But she was running. She was scared.
And I hope everyone's taking this as literally as I'm typing this. Cos I mean exactly what I'm saying. I'm delving into the regions of supernatural Buffy/Charmed-esque conspiracy Overworld theories. And I'm doing it intentionally. When I say someone was after her, I don't mean a crazy ex-boyfriend who was going to beat her up. I mean the MIB, the dark mafia, what-the-fuck-ever. It was something evil that was black as hell, something that most likely would have chewed me up as it ran through me and didn't even notice.
So naturally I had to get involved.
I don't know how anyone is going to read this, but I don't care. Just listen; believe it or not, that's not the point of this. The experience happened, either way.
I "told" her, in this same unspoken communication, that whatever she was running from, for whatever reason, I would absolve her of the responsibility. I tell myself it was because she looked so sad and beaten down but really it's because it would've given me some psychotic sense of adventure to know I was up against the devil or some shit. No, I wasn't high in the least this evening. I hadn't even had Pepsi that day.
I don't remember for certain, but I believe from MetroTown to Kent's stop was approximately fourty-five minutes or so. For most of the duration of the ride, I was trying to convince her to give whatever they were after to me, and I would take it so she could stop running. At some point the conductor got on the intercom and said, "Attention all passengers, if blank is on board the train, please notify the operator immediately. Once again, if blank is on board, please notify the operator immediately." I didn't catch the name because at the time I didn't connect the announcement with the girl, even though she registered some level of surprise, and it was the first time since she noticed me that we'd broken eye contact. It's the thing I regret more than any other experience in my life, if you can believe that. I wonder how much less she'd haunt me now if I at least knew her name.
I think my arguements finally won out, because I attempted to impress upon her the urgency of the situation, that in a few stops I'd have to get off, and then there'd be nothing I could do. Three stops before mine, she stood up. She looked at me. The train pulled out of the station and we were on our way to the next one, leaving only one more stop before the one that Kent and I generally got out at. She walked over, and time slowed itself down to one point of utter clarity and brilliance, in which I think the world could've been recreated and I would've been able to experience ever second of it, but there were no seconds, only her, walking towards me and then Kent out of the corner of my eye coming this way, moving for the first time since we'd gotten on board and I'd forgotten about him completely that's how powerful her influence was over me and she held out her hand as she walked to me and he started to go faster but neither of them were moving at all, it was just me orbiting them both torn between the two children and the fire that would consume them both was in her hand and I could only choose one but who to choose which child to save, why is that a decision I should be forced to make even when I understood the gravity of both situations, even though I understood that going down one road would lock me out of the other one and either way I was about to make a Life Changing Choice.
Kent walked, practically ran, brushing past the girl as he scuttered between us, just as she was holding her hand out to me and I was holding mine to her, mere inches of universe seperating us and that decision, but then there was Comet Kent, coming along and blowing everything out of where it needed to be, and his orbit took him right past us, right through the door to the Skytrain, and out onto the station.
A split second of time was all I had left, I knew. Take the object from the Skytrain girl and have the doors close, with it Kent and everything else, because I didn't know how to get back to his house without him, especially not with how far away he lived and how dark the night had suddenly become, or leave with him and lose her. I knew I could only pick one, because I wasn't strong enough to carry both babies out of the house. I picked Kent. I still can't really say why.
He was hurrying along as I caught up to him, shaking the confusion I felt from the train off of my mind. We walked in silence. As I heard the Skytrain start again and leave us, I don't even think I looked back. Because I was already attributing it to an odd set of circumstances and I was trying to figure out why Kent had gotten off on the stop right before ours, thus putting us even further away from his house. I was already mentally whining about the distance I'd have to walk. By the time the next odd thing happened, I had already forgotten about her affect on me. I just wanted to sleep.
The route he'd taken took us by a very large stadium, which if I were more ambitious I guess I could look up now to find the name of. I'd done it once, later the next day when I wanted to prove to myself that the night was NOT just strange to me, that indeed these strange events had happened outside of myself. It wasn't all just in my head.
The stadium was boarded up. As if it had been abandoned, but that most certainly was not the case because it was a very large stadium and a very popular one, and just days before we'd walked by it and it had been open to the public. Two large bouncer/bodyguard-type men were standing outside. Something about them frightened me. The way I get frightened now when I walk down the street alone and someone starts following me. They felt dangerous. They felt evil. I started to remember the fear I'd touched when I asked the Skytrain Girl why she was trying to escape. It was because of this same evil. Some sort of unearthly sound was coming from the stadium even though the lights were completely out and it looked locked up. It sounded something like a screaming crowd at a concert, but as if the crowd were in a parallel universe and I was hearing the screaming through some rip between ours and theirs. It didn't sound right. It sounded horrifying.
We hurried past it. The guards grimaced at me as I passed them. I turned to Kent and for the first time since we'd left spoke. "There's something strange going on tonight, isn't there?"
I think it was a full moon.
His response was not what I was prepared for. And it shook me almost as deeply as meeting her. He nodded slightly. "We'll send our prayers to her."
In those six words, those seven syllables, he'd confirmed that the girl not only existed, but she was exactly as I thought she was. In need of assistance, whether from me or some non corporeal guardian. But how the fuck did he know that, or know I meant her.
"How did you know I was talking about her?"
I maintain still that his response was a blatent cop-out. He stammered. "Well, who else would you have been talking about?"
We proceeded to fight. Because his answer was bullshit and I knew it and in one heartbreaking second I knew that he'd known what was going on between she and I, though I can't tell you how, and that his choice for which stop we left on was not coincidental but completely to stop me from receiving whatever she was about to bestow upon me. I felt betrayed. For the first time since I'd gone there, I was not going to just accept what he said without question. I wanted to know. I wanted to know why the fuck he'd interferred.
But he wouldn't tell me. Instead he stopped talking. I stormed away from him, practically running down the street in the direction I thought the house was. He was blocks behind me. I couldn't even hear him walking. At some point I stopped and refused to move until he talked, but he just stood there too, not speaking. I cannot express how angry I was and that only furthers my opinion that something weird was going on that was not just in my head. Somehow I know he got in front of me, and though I was deliberately lagging behind he was leading me. But we weren't going the way we'd normally walk. He was going down different streets, back-tracking, taking alternate routes. As if he knew someone was following us. As if he was trying to lose them. I asked him at one point why he'd gotten off at that stop. His response was this. "You're not ready yet." If whatever happened with the train was just in my head, it was in his too. And I refuse to believe my willpower is strong enough to exert that type of force. Especially on Kent.
Eventually we got home. And I collapsed, exhausted. For the first time since I was there, he and I fell asleep cuddling. I told him, right after I said a prayer stating the exact same thing, that he could tell whatever higher power that had commanded he stop me from meeting the girl that it could fuck off. I wasn't going to be a pawn. I'd do things my way.
I still think about her a lot. And that also makes me think it was real. Otherwise I don't think it would still bring tears to my eyes. I just hope that she's safe, and she got away from whatever was after her.
That night I did send her my wishes and prayers.
Part of:
Confessional (the Skytrain Girl)
Confessional (Addendum)
Remnant
24 September 2003 at 3:58 am | No Comments »
in a category all its own
