Dream Weaver
A Novel by
Lisa Beth Darling
Moon Mistress Publishing USA
Smashwords Edition
Moon Mistress Publishing
56 Huntington Street
New London, CT 06320
Dream Weaver—
Copyright 2008—Lisa Beth Darling
All Right Reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address the publisher directly at the address shown below.
Designed by Lisa Beth Darling
Text set in Times New Roman 10
Library of Congress Number: TXu-1-571-952
ISBN: 978-0-6152-3560-8
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This
Novel Is Dedicated To:
My Family-Roy, Nicole & Rebecca
And
to CC…always to CC
Chapter One
"Yes, I know, I'm very sorry about that. Yes, I understand. I will. Yes, I will." Lizzie rolled her deep brown eyes and tried not to sigh as she sat at her desk with the phone pressed to her ear listening to just one in a long line of crazy clients prattle on about their problems. In this case Mr. Patel, an elderly man and stroke victim, wanted to know how the lawyers were doing getting a visa for his fiancé Rena, a woman no one had ever seen, talked to or corresponded with and who lived in his homeland of India. One day Mr. Patel wanted to know when he was going to be able to leave for India to go and be with Rena and the next he wanted to know when Rena was coming to him. On the phone he was a polite enough man always saying things like ‘yes, please’ and ‘no, thank you’ but in person he very openly undressed any and every woman with his eyes when he wasn’t trying to grope them. "I'm sure Emily will take care of it as soon as she can. I will let her know right away. Yes, oh, that's no problem, Mr. Patel. Ok, you take care now." Hanging up the phone she let out a long sigh and shook her head as she wrote down the message for her boss, Attorney Emily Dickerson.
Lizzie was going into her fourth year as the secretary at the small two lawyer law office known as Kidder & Kidder. However there was really only one practicing lawyer in the office, Emily Dickerson. William Kidder was semi-retired and taking cases simply on whim while turning others away in the same manner. His father, Sam Kidder, passed away the year before at the grand old age of 101. William Kidder was no spring chicken being in his mid-seventies and Lizzie was ever so thankful that he was semi-retired. While she liked him very much he was getting on in years and he was very forgetful. There were many times over the last few months when Lizzie felt more as though she were babysitting her own grandfather rather than working for a lawyer when it came to the Big Boss of the firm. He constantly played with the phone system unplugging and then plugging in the cords for no known reason which caused the whole office to system to go down. Lizzie would have to crawl under his desk to unplug the phone, straighten out the phone cords and then plug them in again. He didn’t understand the computer at all and when it came to the fax if he did it himself he often put the paper in the wrong way even though “Face Down” was written in bold black marker on the fax machine. Mainly these days Mr. Kidder came in on Wednesdays to have lunch with his cronies. Sometimes he’d come in on a Monday or a Friday to see what was going on but those days he only stayed for an hour or two.
Emily was another story, she was a very busy woman with a very heavy case load mostly for the Probate Courts dealing with those who could not care for themselves and/or manage their own financial affairs. These cases were paid mainly by the State of Connecticut at the grand sum of $50.00/hour as opposed to the standard $250.00/hour Emily charged what little private clientele they had. Sometimes Lizzie wished she worked at a big law firm that dealt in criminal law and other times she rethought that and was happier working in a small firm. Lizzie liked the clients, for all of the insanity they brought a smile to her face and let her know that things could be worse for her. Kidder & Kidder once dealt with things such as criminal law and bankruptcy and all sorts of things but now the majority of the clientele had been deemed incapable by the Court system. As such, Emily served as their Court appointed attorney or Conservator. Most of them were well over fifty and all of them were crazy as loons.
Emily came in early and left late every day she even worked on Saturdays which put Lizzie off since it left her with double work on Monday mornings. However, Emily was a down to Earth woman whom Lizzie liked and admired. She had a bubbly personality and almost nothing got her down. Over the years Emily was a great inspiration to Lizzie who, at the ripe old age of 40, often felt as though she'd taken a wrong turn in life and ended up somewhere she was not meant to be.
Just as Lizzie finished jotting down the message and began turning her attention back to the Motion For Permission To Sell she was working on the phone rang again. Her slender shoulders slumped as she looked at the callerid; another crazy one, she thought and took a breath before answering. "Good afternoon, Kidder and Kidder." She said cheerfully.
"Hi, Lizzie, its Leela, is Emily there?"
"Hi, Leela, no I'm sorry she's in court today. Do you want to leave a message for her?" Lizzie picked up the pen and put it to the yellow legal pad that she took notes on while she listened to Leela, a nice elderly lady, tell her that she needed Emily to make out a bigger check this week as she wanted to go to the movies. Everyone knew the woman was gambling but no one could prove it. Every week she called and asked for more and more money than she could afford to spend. Emily had been trying to rein her in but so far she wasn't having much luck. "Sure, I'll let her know." Lizzie wrote; Leela √ 250.00 on the legal pad as she hung up the phone and once more returned to the Motion in front of her. Yes, for all the good it did, Lizzie and Emily did their best to be a For The People Law Firm and to help those who were less fortunate.
Lizzie wasn't very fortunate, at least not as fortunate as Emily and Mr. Kidder in the financial department; she often had to ask to be paid early so that the electricity wouldn't get shut off or so the family could buy oil in the winter. Those times were so hard on Lizzie, as much and as hard as she tried to keep up with the bills there just never seemed to be enough money for them to quite make it. When things got really bad she’d lie awake in bed at night listening to Scott, her husband, snore at the top of his lungs, while she stared at the darkness shaking in her bed next to him. Sooner or later the panic attack would grow so bad she would throw the covers off, get up and promptly vomit into the bathroom sink while her slender body broke out in a cold sweat. Depending on how long these ‘humps’ as Lizzie liked to call them lasted she could find herself losing anywhere from 3-10 pounds before it was all over. Always she managed to find some way to pull the family’s ass out of the fire and keep it all together. However, twenty-plus years of that were beginning to take a heavy toll on her.
Still, she wasn't as bad off as most of the clients here at Kidder & Kidder.
For a short time the phone was quiet, Lizzie finished typing up the Motion and printed it out for Emily’s inspection. Tucking a silky tuft of long chestnut hair behind her ear she popped online to check her web site statistics and her email while she had a few moments of peace. Several years ago Lizzie Love started writing a series of stories based on a television show called Through the Mirror and these stories centered on that series' character of Dennis Johnson, a dashing young explorer who went to other worlds through a wormhole with a military team known as Galaxy-1. Over the years she'd written and posted near 30 stories, including six novels, to her website under the pen name Johnson's Mistress. They were very popular, much more so than she ever would have thought when she first started this little experiment and had no idea that there was something called 'Fan Fiction' or that there would ever be something like rules that went with it. She simply had an idea for a story and then wrote it. Writing came as naturally to her as breathing and the idea that there was a right and wrong way to do it was an alien concept to her at one time.
Being of a creative mind, and having more than a modicum of talent, Lizzie’s stories incorporated not just the Through the Mirror ethos but a great deal of Greek Mythology. She wrote a whole host of interesting original characters and what was considered 'dark material', which in the world of FanFiction, basically consisted of anything not light and fluffy in content but rather dealt with some of the more difficult aspects of this thing called Life.
The television show was very PG and her stories were very NC/17. Hence she began to incur the ire of the Through the Mirror Fandom. She’d fucked with their favorite show, gone way outside it’s normal bounds—though in Lizzie’s eyes not outside the realm of possibility when it came to this show—and brought in a breath of fresh air to boot. To further piss off the fandom, Lizzie’s stories were very popular outside of the Through the Mirror fandom. This was practically unheard of as the quirky little genre known as FanFiction almost always stayed within its own little Fandom (for whatever television show or movie it was based on) and never ventured outside of it. Lizzie had faith in her stories and knew she could draw a larger audience than what the Fandom could offer her so she marketed her site accordingly. She was a cross-over sensation and people who never watched or maybe didn’t even like Through the Mirror often read her series from beginning to end. The In Crowd of Through the Mirror Fandom loathed her for it.
Their hatred of each other was mutual. Lizzie soon came to call these people, this small group of Through the Mirror Fandom Elite ‘Wankers’, as they often huddled together in their own little dark dingy Internet hovel posting what they called ‘wanks’ to several journal sites which they thought were oh so clever but really weren’t anything other than pure bitter spite. Lizzie figured if what they posted were self-described ‘wanks’ then they must be termed ‘wankers’. Given its meaning in the Queen’s English of a limp useless Dick Lizzie thought this very appropriate.
Since her series, Ares' Daughter, began its life on the Internet Lizzie had been nominated for, and actually won, several web awards for her stories. These didn't come with a check or a certificate or anything like that but they did give out very nice banners that she proudly displayed on her site with her stories. She would have won many more First Place awards if she hadn't rocked the Through the Mirror Fandom Boat so many times and not taken any shit from the Wankers. Because of that, whenever she was nominated for any of these Through the Mirror online awards programs the Wankers came in and voted against her in droves often voting for some of the stupidest crap ever written and pushing it to a very undeserved First Place win. Lizzie always tried to remind herself that none of that was the Fandom’s fault; it was just a small militant vocal minority within the hierarchy of the Fandom that loathed her. Other than that, she got along with most Through the Mirror fans just fine.
Now, three years later they still yanked her chain from time to time. Lizzie tried to pity them more than be angry with them but it wasn’t always easy and, every now and then, she did bitch about them in her blog. Lizzie was certain that it pleased them no end to see themselves chatted about in public. Since having uploaded her first novel on her very own website, Lizzie had over 125,000 people come in to have a peek at her musings. In the Real World that would have qualified her as Best Selling Author. This was a fact that tickled her to no end as she was aware of just how much it must piss off those damn Wankers. Today her website statistics looked good. Often Lizzie looked at all of those hits and wished she had just one dollar for every one she'd be a rich woman then! She wouldn't have to worry about her bills and suffer with waking in the middle of the night wondering if when morning came the electricity was going to be shut off or the sheriff was going to knock on her door wanting tax money for the city of Terryville.
Through the Mirror and her stories offered Lizzie a great escape from the Real World with all its bills and drudgery. That made all of the Wankers and their Chain Yanking worth it. Here in the office she was just Lizzie the Secretary. At home she was plain old Lizzie Travers; wife of Scott for the past 22 years and mother to Nancy 22, (you do the math), and to Ann 16. On the Internet, she was a Star. Lizzie had a very popular blog and MyPlace page, which she checked often and used to keep in touch with those who read her works. She'd made many Cyber Friends over the years—at least as many as she had Wanking Enemies-- and she considered them more friends than those she had in her everyday life.
Two weeks ago, Lizzie got what she considered bad news; her favorite television show was canceled after 10 years on the air. This was the last season for her beloved Through the Mirror. She was losing her favorite character, she wouldn't have Dennis Johnson to turn to any longer on Friday nights and, it seemed, he was rapidly leaving her mind as well. What would she do without her Constant Companion? He'd kept her company inside her mind for all of these years and she was finding that her head was a scary empty place without him. She tried to remind herself that she had written three original novels before she ever heard of the character of Dennis Johnson and once the show was off the air she could either keep writing stories about him or she could return to her roots and write original material once more. At least, if she did that she'd have a chance at selling something and bringing in a little extra cash from time to time. She bolstered herself by saying that she'd had several articles in the local newspapers and poems and prose in local magazines. There was no reason she couldn't go back to writing original material and stop relying on this bastard form of writing. This was something she believed was true, yet, she was hesitant to let go of the character that had captured her fascination for so long.
Dennis Johnson or Constant Companion, as she often referred to him in her blog for the last several years kept her company both when awake tapping away on the keyboard and while she slept. At those times, deep in the night, he would offer the most delightful and vivid dreams which Lizzie also blogged. All of that was changing now and perhaps she should say that Dennis Johnson had been her Constant Companion. Several months ago the man in her mind seemed to change somehow and he was much less like the character she’d come to know and love and more like…someone else. Slowly she'd been coming to the realization that perhaps it wasn't the character who'd fascinated her for so long or who was her Constant Companion but rather that it was the actor, Michael Gray, or her crazy brain’s interpretation of him anyway. Lizzie had begun seeking out other works by him. She'd long avoided doing that as she didn't want to spoil Dennis Johnson in her head or confuse character and actor. She’d long hoped that the Powers That Be at Through the Mirror would see her work and maybe even offer to buy it from her but in her heart she knew it was too far outside the realm of what they did on the show to be of any value to them or for her to make any money doing. It was a pipe dream but it was better than no dream at all and Lizzie kept a good eye on her website statistics looking for hits from Vancouver, British Columbia that was where Through the Mirror was filmed. Every time a reader from there came in she held her breath and hoped against hope that it might possibly be Michael Gray reading. A few times she felt almost certain that it was. Then she’d tell herself that would be a horrible thing! Surely, he would hate what she’d written about his character thinking it too erotic and too dark. He would think her crazy if he read her work! She could die of embarrassment just thinking about it.
Last night while watching a Through the Mirror re-run she had the crazy idea that she could write that new original novel and she could keep her Constant Companion while doing so. She would simply write a new part for the actor rather than the character. With that in mind, she sat down late last night and started to write a new novel. It would be completely different from her Ares' Daughter series and Through the Mirror. It would be an outright horror story a la Edwin Prince or Dan Kintzy. If it was good enough she would try to have it published when it was finished. While she had a moment to herself here in this crazy law office Lizzie popped open her MyPlace blog and entered the following:
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
I'm in that one level house again, you know the one. I've been in several times before in my dreams but never have I actually been there. I don’t know why I dream of this house but I think, maybe, if I blog about it in detail that it will go away. Sounds crazy, huh?
It’s a modern-style house white house that’s basically one level. It’s on a corner lot; in the front yard is gigantic fir tree. On the corner is a STOP sign. At the STOP sign, if you go to the right you go toward an area that is more wooded than this one but if you go to the left you go toward a city that’s not very far away. Across the street from the ‘Y’ shaped driveway is a mailbox. One branch of the ‘Y’ stops at the backdoor and the other goes to the two or three car garage. The house has hard wood floors and is sparsely decorated. The living room is sort of 'L' shaped, the floor plan is open, there’s an open kitchen beyond the living room and if you go through the kitchen and to the left you go to the dining room. If you stay in the living room looking down the hall and away from the big bank of windows there’s a long hallway with bedrooms, a bathroom and an office off of it. Those windows…that bank of windows go from the living room to the kitchen and into the dining room. There are no curtains and it seems like the windows have cranks that open slats rather than just opening a window. There’s a white couch in the living room, a very large entertainment center complete w/ fancy-dancy plasma TV on the wall by the front door. In this dream it’s night and it’s dark, I’m in the living room looking out on to a snowy and fairly deserted street. Just standing there, nothing special.
"Well, there you are." Says a voice.
I turn around expecting to see exactly who I saw. Constant Companion. "What do you want?"
"I came to ta--" his voice cuts off and he clears his throat and smiles, "talk to you about something." He stumbles.
"What?"
"Oh, I don't know." He sits down on the couch still with this huge grin on his face. "I'm distracted at the moment."
"By?"
"Oh, the view I guess."
I turn to the windows and while it's ok out there I wouldn't exactly call it a 'view'.
"Yep," he says from behind me, "that view is mighty distracting."
"I don't see anything special." I grouse.
"You're not looking where I am." He returns still smiling. "It's a great view."
What is wrong with this guy tonight? Just tell me what you want and get it over with. I realize I'm a little chilly and I pull on my top to scooch it down a bit over my stomach. It's a black cammie-type top and as I go to smooth it over my jeans I realize...not wearing any. Nope, no jeans, no undies, nothing. Just the top. I tell myself I'm not going to go nuts and stuff. So I don't. My bod ain't the best but it ain't half-bad either, I'm not really a modest person, everyone has a body. I sit down on the couch next to him completely ignoring the fact that I'm almost naked and ask him again; "What do you want?"
He just smiles, shakes his head and says; "I can't remember anymore."
It faded off there into something I don’t really remember.
Lizzie snickered to herself as she read the entry and realized that she didn’t mind being naked in front of her Constant Companion but the idea that he would find that particular ‘view’ distracting was wildly funny to her. She realized something else too, for as many times as she’d dreamed about that house this was the first time she’d actually described it. In her mind’s eye, she could see every detail of it and she wondered if it was a real house somewhere or just a representation her sleeping mind came up with night after night. Beside her, the phone rang again knocking her out of her daze. Clicking ‘post blog’ she grabbed the handset. "Good afternoon, Kidder and Kidder." Lizzie said in a cheerful voice without looking at the callerid. Just another crazy client on another crazy day, not much new about that, Lizzie took a message promising that Emily would return the phone call as soon as possible.
Chapter Two
Two Months Later
When the Muse talks Lizzie always listened and her new story was no exception. Since making the decision to write an all-original story she’d been blazing away at the keyboards with a dark tale she called The Shaw Street Strangler. It was about a serial killer named Eddie who roamed the streets of Terryville, Connecticut strangling young beautiful women who lived on Shaw Street, which was a very rundown neighborhood that Lizzie had once lived in. So far, Lizzie was having a grand time with her story and following the Muse and the voice of her Constant Companion (which was always echoing in her head) wherever they led. She kept Michael Gray in mind as she wrote but the part of Eddie, a cold calculating killer, a character far removed from that of Dennis Johnson mild-manner member of Galaxy-1. Still, Lizzie thought, if a miracle struck and she sold the story and another bigger miracle struck and the book was made into a movie then Michael Gray would be the one she would want to play the part of Eddie.
In the quiet of the afternoon Lizzie sat back and looked at what she’d written and thought it was pretty good, she even gave herself a pat on the back for it. Just as she was about to begin Chapter Ten her oldest daughter, Nancy a 21 year-old young woman whom Lizzie was certain was never going to grow up never mind move out of the house, plopped herself down on the living room couch and turned on the TV. Lizzie’s shoulders slumped and she let out a long sigh and gazed at the clock on her computer; 4:32. By her schedule, she still had 28 minutes to write, why couldn’t Nancy have just waited until her father came home? As though the day hadn’t been bad enough. Today she and Emily received a phone call from the Post Master of the Terryville Post Office informing them that one of their elderly and Looney-tunes clients had been paying the nice folks at the post office a visit….for the last four hours. They’d like to get rid of her now.
Emily and Lizzie left the office, walked the half mile to the post office, which was down the street from their office on State Street and calmly walked in to collect a very confused Mrs. Herman and escort her home. This seemed like an easy task until the crazy old bat started shouting that Lizzie and Emily were trying to kidnap her. Several people in line tried to stop them before the post office personnel could inform them that they were not doing any harm to the old woman she was just crazy. Still, things got rough for a moment and she and Emily had been sure the concerned citizens would turn into an angry mob at any second. They walked her back up the street to her home in elderly housing, got her settled in her apartment and told her not to leave again. Not that it would do any good, Mrs. Herman always wandered and if it wasn’t the post office or the bank calling to say ‘come get her’ it was the Terryville Police Department.
Looking at her computer now Lizzie let out a long sigh thinking that just when things were cooking along just fine and something in her day was going right she had to stop. It just seemed so unfair as Lizzie clicked ‘save’. No matter how many times she told her family not to just waltz into the living room and turn on the TV while she was writing it just didn’t do any good, they all felt entitled to everything including barging in on her creative time. They never failed to just plop themselves down beside her for no reason whatsoever while she was writing and just stare at her. This drove Lizzie to distraction especially when any other time her girls and her husband could hardly be bothered with her. If they didn’t pick moments like that to just ‘hang out’ then they just had to have money or a ride somewhere. Lizzie hated it. She wanted to know why they couldn’t just sit down, shut up and give her some quiet time. It wasn’t like she never did anything for them and all she asked for was a few hours every evening to herself in between doing the dishes, the laundry and making dinner that was. Many times she’d begged her husband, Scott, for a set of French doors for her office. With those she could at least shut them and shut out the noise and the Real World behind her so she could get lost in her stories and listen to the voice of her Constant Companion as he gently guided her down the path through the Zone. The Zone was a magickal place where the whole world faded away and if the telephone rang Lizzie was apt not to hear it. When she was in the Zone there was nothing but her own little world and there the telephone, bills, cranky annoying entitled children and horny husbands did not intrude.
Scott was always jealous of the time she spent writing and, more importantly, of Dennis Johnson. Each time Through the Mirror came on he never let her forget that he thought she was acting like a stupid schoolgirl with her stories and he never failed to make fun of Dennis Johnson every chance he got. This had become a matter of friction between them over the years. Lizzie didn’t think her writing time took anything away from her family or her husband, in fact she thought Scott should get down on his chubby little knees and thank Dennis Johnson along with Michael Gray for all the great sex Scott still had with her after 21 years of marriage. Unfortunately, Lizzie couldn’t always say the sex was ‘great’ but it was abundant. Long had she wished for a lover like the one that lived in her mind but if wishes were horses then beggars would ride and Lizzie would be one highly satisfied woman. She was well aware that she’d never have a lover like Dennis Johnson (or her facsimile thereof) nor a romance like Dennis had with his Goddess wife, Kitty in Lizzie’s stories.
Unlike the story of Lizzie and Scott, the story of Dennis and Kitty was one for all time. Theirs was a love for the ages. For all of the trials and tribulations they’d been through and for as many times as they’d saved the world from certain destruction they always came out on top and stronger for having gone through whatever drama they’d been presented with.
The truth was it wasn’t just the noise from the TV that distracted Lizzie, just having some else in the room behind her was enough to blow the groove more often than not. The feeling always left her a little miffed. One day she would have her own private writing room but for now the hour and a half she got during the school year before her youngest daughter came home would have to do. When Ann was not in school during the summer Lizzie usually retreated to her bedroom to write on a laptop that she didn’t like very much but saw the need for.
Now, with MTV’s TRL blaring in the background, Lizzie reached out to shut off the computer for the night but before doing so she thought she’d pop her MyPlace page to see if anyone had left her a message. Someone had, Daniel in Michigan left a comment on her page wishing her a good weekend it had a picture of a kitten who was upside down in a basket proclaiming that the week was over. She snickered and sent him a quick thank you note inquiring how he was and what he was up to. Daniel was one her ‘friends’ she didn’t hear from often but when they did get in touch she always enjoyed his company online. Lizzie shut off the computer and turned her attention to dinner trying to keep a smile on her face as she remembered it was indeed Friday and she was stuck with her family for two whole days….husband included. Why couldn’t Nancy wait another half hour to plop herself down in front of the TV? Then Scott would be home and Lizzie wouldn’t care but she’d really been going along well with her storyline and today she could have used that half hour. Over the next two days she wouldn’t write very much as Scott would want her constant attention for something or other. Most days it was more like having three children than two.
Scott Travers met Elizabeth Love on July 17, 1986 at Ocean Beach Park when she was just three months shy of her 18th birthday and only one week into the very vulnerable stage that comes with the recent break up of a long term relationship. Lizzie had dated Philip Black, five years her senior, for two years when he suddenly dumped her for another, older, woman. Lizzie was heartbroken and cried for days. She’d given everything to Philip including her virginity and quite a bit of dignity. He was much older and so she grew up quickly in the two years she was with him. One night more than a week after the big break-up Lizzie’s friend Kris came by to haul her out of the house for the night with her parents’ blessings.
They went to the local hot spot, Ocean Beach and it was at the arcade where she’d met Scott. Lizzie had been in the middle of a hot game of Asteroids when Kris just had to go up to him to say ‘hello’ in order to tick off a girl Scott was chatting up. Kris dragged Lizzie away from her game—still in progress—and over to where he stood in a pair of ripped and faded blue jeans with a black leather vest covering his young chest. Scott was hard on the outside and ruggedly handsome. To look at him now you’d wonder where that young man had gone. The one with the broad chest and the svelte 34 inch waist, just who was the guy with the 42 incher sitting in the Easy-Boy? That was then and back then on that fateful night Scott took one look at Lizzie, offered her a ride on his motorcycle and a few months later they moved in together. He introduced a rather timid and sheltered girl to all sorts of hard drugs and interesting chemicals as well as rough and kinky sex. Philip liked to drink and smoke pot and therefore so did Lizzie by the time their relationship was over. He also liked to let his friend Andrea watch him have sex with Lizzie so she was used to that as well. Scott was into things like acid and cocaine. He liked pipe bombs and other explosives along with punk music and group sex. Lizzie quickly fell into a world she never wanted to be part of but suddenly couldn’t find a way out.
Within six months of moving in together, Scott knocked her up. They were married when Nancy was three months old. Lizzie could still remember standing there in front of the Justice of the Peace as she said her wedding vows and in her mind swearing to herself it was only for 18 years and that no matter what it took she could and would do it for Nancy’s sake. Somehow, magickally, she thought on Nancy’s 18th birthday that Nancy would move out, have a life of her own and she’d leave Scott but Nancy was now 21 and still at home and there was still Ann to consider. Her 18 year hitch turned out to be a little longer than she’d planned.
After Nancy’s 18th birthday, Lizzie walked around in a funk that could have easily turned into a deep depression for several months. She loved her daughters and they had a wonderful relationship. Nancy and Ann talked to her about anything and everything even though sometimes it made Lizzie very uncomfortable to have extremely intimate conversations with them as she’d never had with her own mother. She didn’t hesitate to listen and offer advice and tell of her life experiences before their father came along. Granted it wasn’t a long stretch of time but still she had had a life before Scott.
Life with Scott was far from peaches and cream, he was very difficult to live with and to please. He came from a troubled background, a bad and abusive home life and needed a lot of work as Lizzie might put it. Scott lived a hard life back then and he had a hot temper that often flared up controllably especially when he was younger and it led him to abuse his new young wife verbally as well as physically. Many were the times Lizzie had to jump between him and one of the girls over something they’d done to piss him off. Scott might strike her from time to time, he might use her as his own personal sexual toy but he wasn’t going to abuse her children. Lizzie learned early on how to be a good Pleaser and an Anticipator. If she could give Scott whatever it was he wanted at any given moment before he asked for it then she could keep the peace and no one, not the girls and not her, got hurt or yelled at or belittled. 21 years of dancing that rather merciless dance lead to panic disorder and Lizzie had the habit of jumping at the slightest sound and not liking things which were unfamiliar to her where as once she’d been rather free and outgoing. Now, at 42, Scott was too old and fat to do more than yell any longer but that didn’t really matter as he’d done so much of it over the years that Lizzie had become very well conditioned to living with him and capitulating to his every whim. That was on the inside.
On the outside looking in, to their friends their life was as near perfect as it could get, being married for 22 years was a hell of an accomplishment in their eyes. Not one of their friends could say they’d been married 15 years, in fact, you’d be hard pressed any of their friends parents who’d been married 21 years. In their own circle of friends, they Lizzie and Scott were held in high regard for this most unusual accomplishment. Among the inner circle most were aware that it was all Lizzie’s doing, she was the bedrock, the glue that held everything together and made sure it all ran as smoothly as it possibly could. She was the one who was always pulling money out of her ass at the 12th hour. Lizzie was the one who took vacation pay without taking vacation time twice a year so they could make the bills or have a little extra for something. These were the same people who noticed that Lizzie never actually sat back and relaxed when she sat down but rather she was always in a position where she was ready to spring to her feet at any second that she might be called to do so. Almost all of them were too polite to really say anything or get involved.
Against all odds, Lizzie and Scott pulled off the impossible; they married at 19 and stayed that way. They raised their family, eventually raised themselves up from dirt poor to working class poor and now lived in a working class neighborhood in the same house Lizzie grew up in as she’d inherited it after her mother died. Yes, Scott couldn’t even provide them with a home of their own. Most of the time he barely kept the roof over their heads but it wasn’t for a lack of trying just for a lack of wanting to work for anything. Like his children, Scott had an ‘I’m Entitled’ air about him at all times. He was loud, rude, down right obnoxious sometimes and never hesitated to make his opinion known. At 42 his Angry Young Man attitude was wearing a little thin. Really it was no wonder she clung to Dennis Johnson and drew a mental image of him when she and Scott had sex which was either completely dull, too quick or too rough.
Worse than that he never gave her an inch of space and nothing, not one infinitesimal thing in the world was actually hers other than her stories which Scott called stupid and childish and refused to read. Since she’d opened her MyPlace page Scott read her blog religiously no matter how many times she asked him to stop. They’d had several loud and intense arguments over it where they would scream at each other and Lizzie would beg him to just stop reading it! Why couldn’t give her some space? Why did he always have to his nose in every single aspect of her life? Most of all he loathed Dennis Johnson and a few weeks ago as she argued with herself in the blog using Dennis’ voice she sorted out the particulars of writing an original story. The entries were long and crazy and ranting and rambling and made no sense to anyone but her…she was almost sure of that. They were FOR her. To HELP her with her decision yet Scott took them as some sort of personal affront. He teased her to no end about her dreams which she blogged also for herself, so that she could sort things out. The idea that anyone else should want to read it didn’t really come into play, Lizzie never understood why people READ blogs though she did understand why they kept them. One thing Scott never came to understand was that he married a WRITER and therefore, if he wanted to be fair and merciful, he had to LET HER WRITE! It was how she communicated not just with the world and the people around her but with HERSELF as well.
After 22 years together and at the age of 40, Lizzie was resigned to her fate in this lifetime. She was destined to live a life that was romantically and passionately unfulfilling not to mention sorely lacking on just about all other levels. Yet, she constantly reminded herself of those Crazy Clients at work and of how her life could be much worse than it was. Her husband was a hard worker—who strictly adhered to the 40 hour work week—and when he wasn’t flying off the handle he could be very thoughtful some times, especially in the summer when he had the habit of picking bunches of wildflowers on his way back from work and bringing them home to her.
Wildflowers now and then weren’t enough, were they? She could and did subsist on it and small gestures like it but they weren’t enough to fill her empty spaces. So for now and the last two decades she’d contented herself with the idea that when she was reincarnated she would make better choices in the next lifetime. For now she had her stories and her Constant Companion. She had her work which was crazy but made her feel as though she had some purpose as she wandered around her small part of Planet Earth and she had her family such as it was. Lizzie would have to be content with those things and wait until the brass ring came around again.
Halfway through making the evening meal Lizzie heard a familiar sound and looked up from the carrots she was chopping. Scott was almost home that sound was his motorcycle and it sounded as though he were coming through the parking lot of Lawrence & Memorial hospital, which was across Ocean Avenue at the top of their street. Tossing the carrots into the freshly made garden salad she checked on dinner, a chicken roasting away in the oven and then cleaned off the counters before she heard the bike pull into their driveway. Drawing a deep breath and pasting on her familiar happy smile she turned around as the back door opened and Scott stepped inside. “Hey, sexy.” She cooed and held her slender arms out to the rather stout man who always lit up when she called him that. “How was your day?” Lizzie hugged him and stood on her tiptoes to peck his cheek. “Not too many morons today, I hope.” Yes, she certainly did hope. The better day Scott had the better night they all had.
“Hey, baby!” Scott said in his loud boisterous voice. “Good, how was yours?”
The smile on his face appeared genuine and Lizzie let out a small breath of relief as the smile on her face widened. “That’s good.” She hugged him a little tighter and got her arms around him as best she could. “Mine was ok.” She said pecking him on the cheek one more time and then showing him dinner without telling him about chasing Mrs. Herman out of the Post Office earlier today. No doubt he’d already read about it in her blog anyway. Why bother to repeat herself? “It’s Friday,” she said in a cheery voice knowing this too would make him happy. “Dinner in about a half hour or so, ok?”
“Sure.” Scott said dropping his leather jacket and back pack onto the floor before he walked into the living room which Nancy had promptly vacated when she heard the motorcycle pull into the driveway.
Lizzie looked at them and picked them up. She hung up the jacket and put the pack in the hall closet for the weekend before following him into the living room. “Something to drink? I have fresh coffee or a Coke?”
“Yeah, something cold, that sounds good.” Scott said as he plopped himself down on the gold patterned couch and picked up the remote control to flick on the TV. “Smoke a bowl?”
“Sure.” Lizzie agreed gratefully. She’d been smoking on and off most of the afternoon as well as taking nips from the small bottle of Southern Comfort she kept hidden in her bottom right hand desk drawer. Another bowl sounded good after all it was Friday and the weekend was ahead. She went back in the kitchen to fetch a glass filled with ice and half filled with Coke, just the way Scott liked it; more ice than soda. Putting the last of the dishes in the sink into the dishwasher and wiping the counter off one more time she tossed the clean rag to the top of the refrigerator and went to sit on the couch with her husband where she handed him the glass.
Scott took a long and loud gulp followed by an even louder ‘ahhhh’ and handed the glass back to her so she could put it on the table for him. “Thanks, babe that hits the spot.” He said to her and held up the bowl. “Ready?”
“Yep.” Lizzie said glancing at the glass and wondering how many times over the last two decades he’d done that. To say that he did it upwards of 20 times a day on average probably wasn’t an exaggeration. Scott did that with a glass and a lighter, he would absently hand them to her without even looking at her so she could put them on the table for him. When he wanted them, he would point at them, again with out looking at her unless she took too long, Lizzie would reach out and pick up the glass or the lighter or whatever was on the table to hand it to him, wait, and then put it back for him. Sometimes like she felt like one of Pavlov’s Dogs. He lit the small metal pipe and then handed it to her. Together they smoked the pipe of marijuana while Scott flipped through the channels finally deciding on some World War II thing on the History Channel. Lizzie hated shows on war or documentaries or movies. Anything to do with war was pretty much ‘bad’ as far as she was concerned. He knew that but he loved it and often made her watch stupid old war movies or documentaries even though there were four other televisions in the house.
After dinner, Scott took off to his studio which was filled with music equipment they’d struggled to buy when they were much younger than they were today. Back then Scott was convinced he was going to be a Rock n Roll Star (if it wasn’t for his lousy wife and children that was!) and even though they could far from afford it he would take their money and buy music equipment instead of paying the rent or the electric bill. Lizzie used to fight with him over it but gave up long ago it was better to let the baby have his way it just made it easier on everyone. Well, everyone but her that was. But who cared about such a small detail? Now that same equipment sat collecting dust and went largely unused even the collection of guitars went unplayed unless Bob and Gary, two members of the old band, popped by to jam for a bit which they did a few times a month. These days Scott was found behind his computer playing an online game and no one better be online in the evenings when he was trying to conquer the virtual battlefield! If they did he was known to trounce through the house yelling at everyone to get off line as they were eating up his bandwidth! He worked hard all day and when he came home he wanted the bandwidth!
In the evenings rather than being online checking her MyPlace page or her statistics Lizzie sometimes took the opportunity to work on her stories while Scott was busy blowing up the insurgents. Tonight was different, Lizzie took a shower, got into a clean t-shirt and her robe while he played and then returned to the living room to sack out on the couch watching Law & Order before Through the Mirror came on. Tonight was the very last episode in the history of the series and so far Lizzie hadn’t missed any of them any this season. She was looking forward to her favorite show coming on in an hour or so even if it was for the last time.
Five minutes before the very last episode of Through the Mirror came on Scott walked into the living room grumbling about his peng. “I’m not online, my computer isn’t even on.” Lizzie offered calmly and pointed over the couch to her office beyond and the idle computer with no glowing lights. “Ann’s out and I think Nancy’s in the shower.” She had no idea what was going on with his peng.
“Goddamnit!” Scott grumbled harshly. “I’m sick of this. Ya know, I work hard and all I want is a little time in the evenings to play my game!” His face curled up into a snarl before he could bitch further his eyes fell on the clock over the TV. “Let’s forget this and go upstairs.” He said as he sauntered over to the couch, plucked the remote from Lizzie’s delicate fingers, clicked off the television and grabbed Lizzie by the upper arms. “Come on, I got plans for you.”
“But,” Lizzie stuttered as he hauled her off the couch and to her feet. “Ok,” she mumbled, “wanna watch upstairs?” He knew what tonight was and that she wanted to watch her show, couldn’t he wait another hour to get his rocks off?
“Screw that stupid show,” he said with a smile that was too cold to be friendly though his voice said otherwise, “there’s a reason it’s going off the air and that wimpy jackass Johnson with it. I got something better than what he’s got.”
Oh no you don’t. Lizzie thought but certainly didn’t say.
“You can watch the re-run later.”
That came on near mid-night and she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be awake to watch TV at that hour and even if she were he wouldn’t be and he’d bitch if she tried to get out of the bed to come down here and watch it.
Scott’s large hands dropped from her arms to her waist as he invited. “Come on, baby, I wanna fuck you.”
Charming. Just oh so friggin’ charming. Lizzie knew she wouldn’t be watching Through the Mirror tonight and she wouldn’t be seeing Dennis Johnson either. “How did I ever get so lucky?” Neither the tone of her voice nor the sparkle in her eye belied the real meaning in her words as she followed him upstairs.
Once in the bedroom Scott stripped off his clothes and threw himself onto the bed to spread out as though he were some sex god. Looking at him repulsed her she didn’t want to touch him and knew that the sex wouldn’t be good. It was a useless endeavor for her but hopefully one that wouldn’t last long. Scott had become quite the Five Second Eddie in his old age. Unfortunately he’d also become less than capable of acting on his own as well and Lizzie had to give him a blowjob to get him up. While she did that Scott flicked on the TV and Lizzie soon heard Through the Mirror behind her. Little bastard was going to lay there and watch Dennis Johnson while she blew him to a full fledge hard-on. He really did have a sadistic streak but this time it backfired on him. Lizzie closed her eyes and forgot all about who Scott really was—who she really was for that matter— while her favorite character talked in the background. Dennis Johnson’s soft voice washed over her enveloping her in a forbidden embrace. In her mind it was Dennis Johnson she was performing this pleasurable act for and between the pot and the booze her mind became convinced of that and to Scott’s delight her mouth followed suit as Scott received the blow job she wanted to give Dennis. Lizzie explored every inch of Scott’s adequate shaft right down to his balls with her mouth and tongue.
“Yeah, that’s it, baby.” Scott moaned above her and totally blew her groove. The sound of his voice brought her back to the reality of what she was doing and who she was doing it to but that was all right. She’d get it back. Lizzie slithered up her husband and then straddled him. Closing her eyes and lowering her head so that her long hair covered her face from his view she took him inside keeping her mind on two things: the voice of Dennis Johnson behind her and the cock inside of her. Scott blew his wad in less than five minutes. Lizzie opened her eyes to see his face turn bright red and then scrunch down almost as though he were in pain just before he came with a loud growl. If he’d held out another few minutes, she might have cum too but he didn’t and neither did she.
Disappointed and unsatisfied Lizzie dismounted him, slid off the bed to retrieve a towel, cleaned herself up and tossed it to him. “That was great, babe.” Scott said happily and then changed the channel.
Lizzie climbed back into the bed, packed another bowl and lay there the rest of the night watching R. Lee Ermey on Mail Call wishing she were anywhere else.
Chapter Three
Vancouver, British Columbia
Michael Gray sat in his office in his spacious home in Vancouver looking over new offers that his agent, Jill Anderson, sent him. With Through the Mirror nearly wrapped up and the last episode to be shot scheduled for next week he had to look for work. After ten years of being type cast as the dashing yet fairly geeky and wimpy Dr. Dennis Johnson on the long running science fiction show the offers weren't exactly pouring in. He got lucky last week and was asked to do a guest stint on a popular television show on another network and he'd start filming that as soon as Through the Mirror wrapped up but after that, Michael had no prospects. At the tender age of 36 things weren't looking so good. In this business, he knew most people considered him to be passing his prime for romantic leads and it appeared he might be stuck doing bit parts on shows like Law & Order for the rest of his career. What he really wanted was something meaty something he could really sink his teeth into and that would be a total change from Dennis Johnson and Through the Mirror. Michael, at 6 foot even, wasn't a large muscular man but he was well built and possessed of a pair of blue eyes that received more than their share of compliments over the years along with a thick mop of sandy hair. While his looks weren’t enough to get him the lead part of an ‘action hero’, his face opened many doors for him over the years including the one which lead to him staring on a television show this past decade.