Jefferson has embarked on a short new story collection entitled, The Altered Squad. The submission “A Couple of Us” is one of the stories from this collection that has never been published. This story contains 805 words and is classified as a cross between absurdity and speculative fiction. This piece is about a young man’s journey through the vestibules of reality versus non-reality.
Currently, Jefferson is working on other short stories which will be included in this collection. Furthermore, he is working on an art film based on this story, “A Couple of Us.”
A COUPLE OF US
by
Jefferson
And the nightmare always begins and ends the same way. Sometimes I feel it’s pure magic that lives inside of us, inside and out. Pure magic! This dream follows me everywhere even as I sit here. Sitting here, Hereeeeeee! There’s a lady following me, staring. I can smell her. Sniff…I can’t survive without her scent. I can even hear her even though she is silent. Did I tell you that she appears and then disappears and then appears again? How, What is she? Who is she? Where is she? Tell me!
It’s all in my journal. I’m looking at the first page. Here’s my first entry, my name is Duncan Krill and I have the ache of trouble following me. I held my cigarette nervously. Will I die tonight? I don’t know, but she knows, doesn’t she? I mean she loves me, right? So, she will be the one to kill me. Isn’t that what love is? To kill what we love.
We love?
We kill?
If I die before I complete this story, my ideas will be murdered. My pages will be dead. She will possess my journal, using my blood, using my verses. Is that why she follows me? Maybe I’m just paranoid. I can see her from beyond my sunglasses. She’s on the second floor staring down at me. She’s holding my future. And then, she’s gone like death’s wave. I can see her through the eyes of my memory. Her ascot hat rested comfortably on her light brown hair. Her beige skirt, her purple suspenders.
Everything she wears seems to fit.
There’s no other fashion that would dare intervene.
Her name is Meghan Cloveleaf.
Did I mention that?
She has a gun with each bullet holding my signature. I didn’t sign them. She did. How nice! How convenient! Looking around here, seeing nobody around, this place is dead as a skeleton’s wet dream. That’s why she is here: Watching! Waiting! Picking her moment! She looks like a terrestrial girl. Perhaps, she was born in the Earth’s crust. Yes, maybe--- She looks worldly as if she has seen and experienced the entire world. Her expression curved to impossible perfection.
Her flesh was crisp and warm like the morning sun.
Legs, a river of tawny columns on a quest to reach her honeycomb,
Ohhhh, how insane it all was. To fuck something into such pure perfection, oh how I wish I were God!
Her bosoms, two complicated mounds---waiting to explode or waiting to become.
To become?
If she doesn’t kill me, her beauty will.
Still sitting here, waiting to see her again, or waiting for the rain. Seeing only the invisible. I turn around. My cigarette fumbled in my fingers to protest. I looked up. She was staring down at me from the second floor. Her hand reached toward me---one giant reach: Her reach had breath. Her reach had a verse.
“Come to me. Come!” said Meghan.
Didn’t you hear her? I want to go. I have to meet her. To smell her. To touch her. To be with her, even if I die.
“I’m coming for you and I want you. Now!”
She was still on the second floor. She changed positions again. Now, she was near the escalators, reaching.
This is my last entry: My name is Duncan Krill and I’m in love with a woman who may kill me. We love. We Kill.
I got up and ran to the escalator; she wasn’t there. I ran up to the second floor. She was several feet away. Her hand was still stretched out,
“Come, come to me!” she requested amicably.
I don’t trust her gregarious nature, it’s untrustworthy as friendly as it might appear. But that didn’t matter. I still had to go to her.
“I’m coming.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thereeeee.”
I reached out to her. No response. Why? Why? After all this time, why?
Does my reach have breath?
Does my reach have verse?
Nothing I do resonates with this bitch.
Her constitution is composed of stone.
Is this love? Walking towards her, Meghan Cloveleaf. I’m divorcing loneliness by walking closer to her. Meghan stares at me. She doesn’t move. She has found her position. I wish I could say the same for me. The phrase, “turn back” wasn’t within my lexicon. I pressed forward. She was getting closer.
Until… I was in front of her. I touched her face. I smelled her hand. I realized she was a mannequin.
But she held my hand; I could feel it, isn’t that real? She stared at me and smiled. She was real. How could that be?
I stared at her and asked, “Do I love or do I die?”
I looked at her. She looked at me. She never answered.