Caretaker (Part 2)

link to part 1
Caretaker (Part 2)

Noisy street sounds clamoring to be heard swirled around Polly. As she strolled this darkening stretch of 42nd Street, however, it was only Everett’s words that she heard.

“That’s ridiculous,” Polly said. “No, it’s worse than ridiculous. It’s pathetic. If the street people are all aliens, then — look around you, Everett — they’ve already infiltrated our world.”

"Well, sort of,” Everett replied. “But they’re different. They’re street people, don’t you see? They can’t take good care of themselves like you and me because they’re not really human, but parasites with a human shape. Grandma used to say that they really look like an earthworm or a slug. It is ridiculous, I agree, but you know how grandmothers are.”

“I’ve never met your grandmother, Everett. Although I’d like to.”

Polly, still holding her box of leftovers, descended into the depths of the subway with Everett trotting at her side.

“Where does your Grandmother live?”

“Oh she’s in a rest home now. In Albany. I’ll take you with me the next time I visit. I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”

Polly’s booted heels clacked against the littered tunnel. Everett’s voice echoed hollowly against graffiti-covered walls reeking of urine and cigarettes.

“How much further are we going? It’s really spooky down here.”

“Just a little more,” Polly said. “There’s someone special I want to check on. Tell me more about your grandmother’s theory. It’s an interesting story. Even if it is a bit far-fetched. What’s her name? I feel like I know her already.”

“Ellen. Her name is Ellen Dodge. People say that I look a lot like Grandma Dodge. We have the same slate-blue eyes and, before she got gray, her hair was sandy-blond like mine. There really isn’t much more to tell. Apparently the Sluggards have a way of wrapping around a victim and absorbing them to take over their human shape. Gross, huh? According to Grandma, this leaves them so weak, physically, that they must live the remainder of their new lives as bums and street people. She used to speculate, however, that the Sluggards were breeding new life forms down here in the subway tunnels. Funny, huh? Caretakers, she called them.”

Continued in my next post

Caretaker (Part 2)

The Essence (3 -- conclusion)

I worry that she’ll hurt herself wandering aimlessly through the dark shadowy house. I fear she may walk out into the night and never come back, lost forever in her gloomy trance. She could wander the dark streets for eternity, like a lost vampire.
I’m afraid to speak to her. I’m afraid that she’ll mistake me for the “man”; the one who wants to steal her children. The one she seems destined to evade.
Would the beautiful essence ever harm me?
Her voice is an echo from a deep cave. Her eyes are jade marbles in a pale face. Her words -- a meaningless jumble in the night.
Sometimes I’m so afraid.
I wish the woman didn’t look so much like me.
Maybe tomorrow I will speak to her.
Tomorrow, or the next warm summer night, I’ll dredge up the courage to walk quickly over to the essence of the woman, take hold of her smooth white pointing arm, look deeply into those rich green glazed eyes and speak to her.
If I speak quickly and calmly . . . it should work.
I’ll simply say, “please wake up, Mom, you’re sleepwalking again and it scares me.”
No, I shouldn’t. Dad says it’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker.
Do you think he knows?
Do you think he’s seen her?

End

Note from the author: Although The Essence is a work of fiction it is based on an actual summer night experience of mine. Probably around my eleventh or twelfth year – once again the outcast sister because of my over active imagination, and my love for all things horrible and horrifying – the only one of us willing to stay up late and watch the newest movie on “Chiller Theater.” You remember it, don’t you? Its logo sported a hand with 6 fingers waving up out of a cemetery plot -- usually aired black and white horror features after the late night news on Saturdays during the early sixties.

At this point in my life, I’d already become an avid reader and enjoyed first name casualness with our small town librarians. I also dwelled in my “Nancy Drew” phase, which meant that everything happening in my life became somehow mysterious . . .

Through out my childhood our mother walked and talked in her sleep. She is an avid somnambulist (sleepwalker). A sleepwalker meant new mystery for me and my mother became the subject.
Any stranger stumbling into her in this state would not know she was (gasp) the walking sleeper – a live zombie – if there is such a thing. It amazed me how she had such an active nightlife and never remembered any of it the next day. I’d quizzed her many times. To try and wake her during a sleeping episode meant far worse as we‘d suffer her sharp tongued (if somewhat garbled and senseless) wrath right then and there. Either way all would be forgotten the next morning and this simply became a spooky way of life for my family.

I hope you enjoyed The Essence.
--Weezel

The Essence is © 1994

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The Essence (3 -- conclusion)