Chasing Lightning

The white of her eyes was visible, chasing away the blue as she shivered and trembled with the claim of addiction. Tequila and peyote ran through her veins. Chasing lightning.

Her soul maybe was chasing lightning bugs in open fields. Racing after them as in a dream's thick hallucination her wheat dark hair seemed molten gold and her eyes brilliant jewels. A shining vessel of sun and sky.

The highs and lows. St Croix had come from the bed of death and found it had taken a bit of her soul and made her different.

They might as well have said her name was a summon. An incantation of invite for power to something surreal and serene.

This wasn't magic but something more. Something she couldn't escape.

Life and Death she'd seen both sides. Parted the veil till the prairie dove seemed more meant for omens on the black wings of a bird.

They had taken so much from her. Her body, even her mind at times. She had given it over so willingly.

They had gone to far. And the panic had set in. Leaving her discarded like a toy no longer desired on the side of the road. Broken. Dead.

So they would think. That day she had died she did not see the white light or a long blazing tunnel. Instead she the vision of a man. Unnatural.

He took every waking moment of her thoughts.Captivated by hallucination she lost herself to the self depreciation of addiction.

It would silence that cry in her spirit.

Obsession. Addiction. Claiming her ever and always. Sprawled out on the floor she felt like she was in a field of wheat, the wheat blond of her hair spilling all around her to intermingle. Naked in the wheat but not alone.

He was there.

Even on the ground she felt she was falling.

"St Croix, damn it St. Croix wake up. Damn it. I think she overdosed this time!"

Her shoulders were shaking. Was she in tremble from the hallucinogenic drugs or was someone physically shaking her back to sobriety.

She groaned as the vision, the hallucination faded at the edges. She felt him all around her. His mouth on her lips. Taking the fever sugar from her. Cleaning out her soul. Breaking that addiction. His hair was all around her. A dark veil and she gripped on to it... gasping out a sound between desire and fear, pleasure and pain

Those blue eyes as jaded as sapphires snapped open. The needle tugged out of her arm as she sat up, staring wide eyed and dream drunk at the motley bunch of drifters she kept company with.

"Jesus, St. Croix. We thought we lost you."

Her smile was somber, eyes haunted.

"No. Not yet...I live to see another day."

Dancing the music was lightning through her veins. She felt manic and electric. St Croix felt alive.

The pills were chased with a thick swallow of tequila and her world was spinning around. Bright vibrant colors washed her flesh in a rainbow's afterglow.

Bottle dismissed as the high took over. Eyes closed, head fell back and her hands were in the air.

Spinning circles till she was dizzy and wild with the sensation. Vivid intensity as her eyes opened again and those sapphires saw so much more.

Squinting in the shadows of the club. Where the light didn't touch it's pulsing radiance there was the outline.

Soul drifted towards it as if summoned, called and beckoned. Perhaps it was just the drugs making her see shadows and apparitions of that which was not there.

She rushed towards it, that vision.

St Croix was there. Close enough to touch him. But she was alone in the shadows, playing shadow dance with nothing more then a ghost.

A scream of frustration was swallowed whole by the club music. Her fists pounding savagely into the wall until they came away broken and bloody. Until she was torn away, nails like claws scratching at the faces of those that took her as the drugs went wrong with her. Like they had before, like they always would.

Tossed out on the street like a rag doll, she stared up at the sky with the realization that it was beginning to rain. Washing the blood away, but never the pain. Never the pain.

Huddled and starving in those moments, St. Croix tried to avoid that cold drip of rain as those blue eyes lifted to the sky. Her friends had left her behind lost in their own self induced reveries that came with whatever addiction they could find to fill the gaping holes in their lives.

She needed a fix. The shine long had left her and the sobering sensation left her melancholy. The vision that tormented of the man in her dreams seemed so much closer to her. Especially tonight, she near felt like she could have touched him if he hadn’t disappeared.

Everyone had their reason that they became addicted to some vice or another. St. Croix could have blamed it on the fact that she had died and been brought back to life but it wouldn’t be realistic. The addiction came because the shine of those drugs in her system brought back the visions of him. The man that had haunted her dreams and her drug induced visions since she had been brought back to life. She had to wonder if it was perhaps him that had pulled her from her crossroads and left her in between without him.

Wearily she rubbed at her arms as withdraw from the drugs left her skin crawling. She needed a fix, and soon. Still those sapphires could not help but notice that this itching at her arms felt different, felt like a burn. St. Croix could only stare in horror as her arms developed little pink blisters as if her flesh… had been set on fire. Almost like she had buried her hands in the hottest part of a flame in test to see if she was truly alive…

A faint whimper escaped her lips, closing her eyes as she searched her pockets in a frenzy for something to take the pain away. She would do anything to have that shine back.

St. Croix would do anything, all means necessary to have him back. No matter the cost. No matter the risk. Even if it meant her very soul

Somebody has to shine for me, It's difficult not to shine for me ~Depeche Mode

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

St Croix would do what she had to in order to get by. The itch festered along her skin. The blistering burns bonding so well with her descent. The drop from the Shine.

She did what she had to do. Tears in her eyes that would never fall left her blue eyes blazing, pleading even as she struggled so hard to hide the pain.

No money to offer you could only go by what you had left. Flesh.

None of it mattered anymore.

Her fingers curled around the small handful of pills that her body had bartered for her.

Like a dancer finding the edge of the stage she would sway. Spin and swallow down those pills. The streets would know her flesh, her sins better then any.

When her eyes found her reflection and the haze that overtook them when the Shine came along she had no choice but to look away.

Until euphoric bliss came through and she was safe, and high, and free. No one could touch her now.

Gold blazing at the wheat-gold of hair, blue eyes summer jewels. She savored this moment as she closed her eyes and the place she knew... the in between. Was hers again to know.

Drifting in a down spiral. A twisted banner of colors where the Shine would burn like tiny clusters of stars.

Sprawled out in the park she stretchecd out her limbs and sighed in the moonlight. Watched as her breath became blue sparks as they were exhaled.

Under the Shine.

Blue Moon born.

Everything was color to her.

"Where'd you go? I miss you so. Seems like it's been forever since you've been gone... please come back home."

A sing song whim of voice as she smiled dreamily up at the sky. Fingers outstretched. Reaching, playing in the night sky.

Perhaps it would be a palette. She wondered if she could paint the stars.

If she could would she paint the vision of that man in the sky and stick the image of him like a note that says "Missing."

A lost soul.

Like herself.

She closed her eyes, drawn by the shine. Breathed out another breath that tasted of sorrow and tears if her breath would have a taste.

If color could have a flavor.

Hers would be blueberries and cream.

The delirium poured through her. The highest rush. The strongest pull.

A writhing shudder in the grass. Fingers curled in the thin emerald blades of grass,cutting into her palms as she knew the shine was fading.

Breath in exhale. Taste of blueberries in her mouth. She licked her lips and dreamed. Held that vision in hallucination as something wild and delicious.

It was a time was it not. She was the crossroads drifter why could she not part this veil that separated?

Frustrated and reckless she stumbled to her knees, rose to her feet. Hands out to the sky in vain attempt for those tiny hands to press through the fabric of time and space itself.

Grasping those strands, wild eyes when she saw him there. Close enough to touch. Perhaps she did.

He felt so real. So solid.

Then the shine faded, tore that vision from her and left her collapsing to the grass. Screaming out her dispute of being torn away as her hands pounded as fists to the earth.

Blood born offerings yet tonight she did not know which god to worship...

Hands claimed her wrists and she fought them till words cut through her senses and she found those sapphires snapping up violently to the face before her.

"Lemme go."

A ragged corn silk protest falling dead on her lips as St. Croix found herself face to face with the Law. Monsters in her mind.

"You're not real. You're not real. I'm just coming down. It's all it is. You can't be real."

Tears spilled over, choking back a sob as she moved to struggle and pull back even as she yearned for an embrace. Some sort of comfort.

Desolate. It was so cold and grey here. Dreary and damp all around her and she was shining like a beacon even without the shine.

Those Sapphires snapped up, quivering with energy and light and so many emotions.

Swallowing thickly.

"This is a dream."

Wrong. A Nightmare.

It had to be.

A hand pushed through the wild wheat-gold curls as those drug-fevered sapphires came to rest upon the Law.

So much was seen in those eyes leaving her brows in a thoughtful furrow.

Roads. Paths. Lines.

Crossing and turning. Intersections and Divides.

There was much seen that would remain unspoken for the knowledge of what it was that was seen.

None of it was ever to be hers... all that she saw... never to belong or be claimed as her own.

Yet she knew that where those roads were they would cross. Four roads in intersection.

Crossing.

A vision seen.

St Croix almost pitied the one in this path found. Did the Law understand... that some roads... even when they crossed... eventually ended at a point where only one road could continue on?

Hallucinations had seemed reality but with the haze fading she had lost the vision that had seemed so real of the Law.

The rage of withdrawal snaked through her to smother the loneliness of her spirit that was growing so consuming with every passing day. The drugs were not becoming enough to sustain her through the night to keep her distracted and parted from those suffocating and stifling emotions she constantly felt she was drowning in.

She tore through the streets, doc martens pounding a violent cadence on the sidewalk as she ran near blind with that spark of craving, the drug withdrawal searing through her mind like acid. She shuddered and itched at her arms when she finally managed to stop to catch her breath, eyes wildly crazed and frantic.

St Croix needed to get out of here. Needed to get some place else but this. Running across the railroad tracks and into the shadows she frowned at where she found herself. The Cross Roads.

It had been so long since she had come here. The drugs had stopped the pull towards the place for so long she had almost forgotten about the mind numbing madness of the call and soul tug she felt towards that place. Here she existed and yet did not exist. Here she was everywhere and nowhere. Here she was alive and here she was dead.

Behind her all the illusions and hallucinations, all the truth and reality was knocked away and pulled apart. Walking counterclockwise and then clockwise as a restless, wary creature as she looked upon the intersecting paths. One dark, one light, one gray, and one nothing more then the common dust and pavement she was used to.

The last road was watched as she frowned as that voice crawled through her mind again which she knew was the voiceless greeting of none other then the Cross Roads themselves.

Guardian of the Cross Roads this place called her once. The first time she had heard such spoken of her she had avoided it, had run from that damnable fate, giving her life over to sin and addiction if only to avoid it all.

Yet here she was back again.

Sighing she shoved her hand in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out that antique coin. It wasn't heads or tails that could be called on that coin, it made up its own mind.

The coin was neither silver nor gold, not black with age or white with pallor mark... like the cross roads the coin stayed changing and indifferent. Its will made as it was thrown into the air.

St Croix waited restlessly for whatever path it would send her on now.

She had no choice.

No matter where it led, she was meant to follow. It was her duty, her obligation, her birthright to Guard those Roads, no matter where they would take her.

The City of Sin. The name it had been trademarked with was fitting. Every single inch of the city beckoned to every imaginable sin and St Croix had submerged herself in its diseased womb. Her nose wrinkled at the putrid odors around her until she began to realize the stench about her was herself. She so needed a bath. Pocket change and panhandling would only get the girl so far...

Where had that all gone? No where else but down the drain in a momentary respite back to bliss. Back to the Shine. That had been 48 hours ago when smiley faced pills were handed to her on loan. A loan that was swiftly building towards the zeros that were stacking up against her. A loan she couldn't pay back.

All the same she was starving and dirty and feeling the raw edge of need once more.

Darting down the street corner to the alleyway she knew so well she took the back door to enter the casino. She didn't fit in here.

The realization was heartbreaking and the withdrawal left her emotions tender. She choked back a sob as she darted as nimble as a doe through the forest as she moved around the crowd and the chiming sing-song of slot machines.

The shouts followed her but she managed to make it to the elevator to hit the button to the penthouse. Only in gasping relief would she allow her shoulders to slump as she sank back against the wall and lifted her gaze to the hidden camera. She knew they were watching...

They always were.

And they were waiting.

The chime signaled the elevator had reached the penthouse level and even before the doors had fully opened she was grabbed. A soft yelp of pain escaped her as she struggled helpless against the strong hands of Omar's lackeys.

"Please...let me...go" Her last words were silenced with a scream that fell into a rush out of breath as a fist connected with her solar plexus. Doubling over she only had a moment to catch her breath as she collapsed to her knees.

Like a slave, like a prisoner she was transported between the two men battered and broken to Omar's desk. So unceremoniously was she dumped in front of him.

"Omar...I swear...I will get you your money."
"Oh I have no doubt you will girl... You're far too gone. The point of no return... you will repay your debts. I'll make sure of that. You'll be on the streets by tonight, under my watch but first... there is a lesson to be learned about not keeping promises."

Omar made a subtle gesture towards his lackeys and the first crushing blow of a fist was coming towards her head. She ducked in time but not fast enough as the blow glanced off her brow and connected with her ear.

The pain made her see stars. Omar was right. She was past the point of no return.

The next blow didn't miss as both fists and boots connected with her body. Weaponless and Defenseless she curled up into fetal position, whispering the words over and over again with the rhythmic pattern of betrayal.

"Why didn't you come for me. Why didn't you come...for..."

"For God's sake shut her up already!"
"Yes sir."

The final blow did what it was told and the lights in St Croix's life went temporarily... out.

“We all have secrets. The secrets we keep, and the secrets kept from us.”



“What we perceive about the world is really seen through our conceptual framework and senses, which according to the theory of representative realism or indirect realism, all that we know of the world is mediated through sense datum. We don’t necessarily see things as they are but what our humanity enables or limits us to see, mediated by sense datum. Remember what we see as a moth, a Fruit Bat might see as a radar blip.

Dr. William Tyler released the button on the mini recorder in his right hand and rubbed the bridge of his nose with the left. The day had gone entirely too long, and while no one waited there, he was ready to go home.
“Doctor Tyler?” Stephanie’s voice came over the intercom.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Your last appointment is here, Tommy Webb.”
Tommy Webb, former addict, six months clean and friend of Bill W. He had been a tough case, and Doctor Tyler had made many visits to Forest Ridge the nights that he was picked up.
“Send him in, please.”

He glanced at the small clock on his desk, before he adjusted the lilac tie at his throat. He stood and started toward the door, just as it opened and offered his hand to the man that entered. He noticed that Tommy was finally starting to put on a little weight. The mixtures of heroin and whatever else he could shove into his body to dull the ‘Screaming Pain’ as he called it, had left him a frail looking man, for his height of Six-four.

“Tommy, it’s nice to see you again.” He grasped the man’s hand and noted that even his grip had more strength to it.
“Hey, Doc.” His voice was still too mousy for his size. A man of that stature, used to trying to shrink to disappearing from view.

William turned slightly, and held a hand out indicating for the other man to have a seat, and once Tommy passed, he moved toward the desk as well.

“What brings you out to see me again? You are looking well.”
“I am doing good, Doc. I--even asked Mary out.”
“Mary? The check-out girl?”

Tommy smiled and nodded. He even showed that he was slowly taking advantage of the grocery chain’s dental plan.

“Way to go!”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“So, you are here just on a visit, or is something wrong?”
Tommy looked at him, a moment in the eye, then he stared at the floor and started to pick at his nails. Old habits from their time before.
“You know you can talk about anything with me.”
“I know, Doc...”
“Then what is it?”
“I’m past six months clean.”
“I heard, and that is terrific.”
“Remember what you said?”

William thought over their many sessions, in the office, in hospitals and even in jail buildings.

“Which time, Tommy?”
“When I was six months clean, you’d tell me.”
“Oh. That.”

Tommy looked at the Doc, no dropped eyes, no picked hands. He was wanting the man he trusted to put that same trust into him. Put something into his hands to know that life indeed, isn’t always beautiful.

William swallowed hard, suddenly wishing he had a glass of scotch to wash back the memories, and drown out the words.

“She was my patient, Tommy. I treated her the same way that I’ve helped you and countless others. The drugs I prescribed, combined with the drugs she chose and a bottle of expensive drink clouded her reasoning. She stole a car, ran from the police that only wanted to see her safely home. While running, she lost control of the car--”
“What kind of car was it?”

William blinked from his story with the interruption. No one ever asked him that question before, especially while he spoke.

“1962 Porsche Speedster.”

“Convertible?”

Tommy loved cars as much as he loved music at one time. The time before drugs and screams pushed him over the edge. William nodded.

“Beautifully restored to flawless perfection.”
“Damn shame, about the woman and the car.”
“She claimed that her husband loved the car more than he loved her, Tommy.”
“What kind of man would love a car more than a movie star, with a smile and body like she had? I mean a car’s a car... and that one would be damn nice to own, but it’s not got the touch, the smile, the smell of a woman.”

At times, his patients could stun him with their words.

“Me, Tommy... me.” William sighed, and checked his watch. “I’m going to call this session to an end, feel free to drop by any time.” He stood and forced a smile to his stunned patient.
“Holy shit, Doc. You? It was your wife? God, I’m stupid, if I would have known, I never would have asked. You were workin’ with me the night you got the call. Then back the next day?”
“That’s how I coped, Tommy. I’ll see you around.”

William turned and walked from his office after pulling the door open, and left it standing that way. He passed Stephanie without saying a word, on the way to the parking lot. He pulled open the door to the Cadillac then slammed it shut so hard it rocked the entire car.

She was relieved that she had been unconscious. Glad that they had beat her into oblivion but to the point they knew she would survive. It was a small relief. Other times she had remained conscious through all that they did. Every little touch on her flesh.

The morning light brought her only to remember bruises, a few cracked ribs. No touches. Her flesh didn't sing with the scars of rough claims and false love. Groaning and whimpering she staggered to the bathroom. A look around brought her the realization of the life she would never have.

"I could play pretend... dream I was someone famous. A model. A rockstar...a movie star."

Whispered words came sing song as she stared at her reflection before recoiling from the mirror as if in horror. A flash glimmer change and even without the Shine she was there. Intersecting roads.

These roads that crossed though were different. Flashing lights of traffic signals. The interchanging red and blue of the Law behind.

In her head the tires screamed and squealed. St Croix clapped her hands over her ears and sank to the floor.

"Not now. Not now. Not now..."

Dreams and Nightmares was there a difference. The sound of a door slamming brought her from her thoughts and destroyed the vision of the intersecting roads. Quick as a scared rabbit she tugged off the old clothes they had left her in and jumped in the shower. Shuddering from the first pounding stream of cold water she watched the door with wide, wild eyes. Hoping it was enough to be left alone.

"Croix, I left clothes for you at the door. Get dressed and get your ass downstairs. It's time for you to start paying off your sins."

St Croix. My name is St Croix. She wanted to reprimand Omar's lackey but instead she just stammered out a choppy murmur of thanks.

As she sank down against the tiles of the shower and lost herself in the final bliss of hot water her eyes snapped open with alert clarity as she heard Omar's lackey leave the hotel room.

The door that had slammed before was not that of a hotel door.

It was impossible to be in the casino room and hear that sound but St Croix knew what she heard. A car door slam.

"Maybe I am crazy..."