Cosmic Confluence

Chapter 11: girl in my dreams

I was walking home at midnight after Kenzie basically kicked me out for nearly setting her house on fire. Which is totally fair, I didn't argue. A good fraction of her carpet is black now as well as a fucking painting that was for her neighbor. I kind of felt like absolute garbage. My eyes watered as I looked to the stars, my mind on the girl in my dreams. I let myself cry.

Headphones in, I listened to this song:

  "Late to the flight

 Take your seat next to the woman in white 

By candle light 

Don't wear your smiley face t-shirt tonight 

 Just like a car 

You'll take off running with all of your might

 Sleep like a teen 

Paint dots on your wrist to see me in your dream " 

I barely slept that night, and not because I thought The Man with Long Teeth would come back, but because I couldn't stop thinking about things. Things that made me overwhelmingly angry, things that made me overwhelmingly sad, and even things that made me overwhelmingly happy. What was the difference anyways? All of it made me cry. Anyways, I only got like, three hours of sleep. You better believe me when I say it was very tempting to skip school. However, I needed to see Kenzie again, as well as Jaymie for that matter-- there was no telling if she had an encounter as well. 

Another thing that I had been thinking about was: how come Kenzie had a completely different experience with The Man with Long Teeth than any I had ever seen? My theories were a mess, but there was an aspect that I could easily put together. She was seeing her dead boyfriend. You remember the one who I said died in a plane crash? That dude. Unless Kenzie had more than one dead boyfriend, I was positive it was him. Which was pretty sad actually, considering the things she thought she was telling him. Oh and another thing that makes sense to me, is that maybe the reason why she saw her dead boyfriend, is because The Man with Long Teeth was using this as a way to draw her in. I mean, when you look at it like that, it's fucking obvious. But the thing is, (in my knowledge) he's never drawn anyone in without causing them to fear for their life. 

I was a little relived to find Jaymie alive and well, sitting on a bench in an arbour outside school. The willow tree above her almost seemed to be dancing to the soft strums of her ukulele. 

"Hey lady," I said as I passed her by.

In a gentle voice she replied, "Hi Mary. Sit next to me." 

I had somewhere to be, but that easily switched to this moment being where I had to be. If that makes any sense. I sat down next to her, a little too close by accident. Naturally I moved away to give her space but stopped when she told me:

"No it's fine." 

I kind of got butterflies when she said that, I won't lie. I know I said this before, but I actually still really really liked Jaymie. Don't get me wrong though, I wasn't considering getting back together with her like that but just... I don't know. I just knew that I loved affection from good people. I scooted back to her side. 

"Hey so, I was looking into strange and interpretive dreams last night, and I came across this podcast you might like. It's called Mercurian Mysteries and these two guys-- who actually live here in British Columbia-- talk about weird stuff that goes on around here," she explained, setting her ukulele aside and taking out her phone. Supposedly to show me. 

"Oh woah, I'm actually like, genuinely interested in that." I seriously was. To me this podcast didn't sound like a spooky, entertaining pastime. I sensed that these people may have seen something I have. You know what I mean. It certainly went under that category of "weird stuff that goes on around here". Jaymie gave me a headphone and I accidentally clambered for it. 

The voices of two men who sounded like they had beards (you know what I mean), faded in after a ditty in bellpads. One man was named Zach and the other Brent. They quickly explained that they're called Mercurian Mysteries because their star signs (Virgo and Gemini) were both under Mercury, and Mercury represents communication, intellect, and awareness. I thought that was pretty clever considering what their podcast was about. For about a minute and a half they rambled before getting into their first report.

"Okay, okay, shut up, so four-- Zach! Shut up! So four days ago, possibly the strangest thing we'll discuss on here was discovered. North of Vancouver in the small town of Pennrith, there was a missing person."

"I know what you're thinking, we talk about missing people all the time," Zach chimed in. 

"Mmhm, but this one gets like... Well we won't spoil our theories yet, but its pretty bizzare."

"H'oh yeah."

"So yesterday the band of policemen who were searching for this person ended up coming across, this, uh, this just huge mess of human remains. Like we're talking guts, brains, flesh, blood fucking everywhere!"

"Open buffet baby!"

"Shut up, Zach! But seriously, an absolute massacre. So obviously the police started an investigation, and the DNA matched to nobody else but... that missing person. It's fucking insanity! Because it's like they fucking exploded!"

"But it gets even more complicated. This same person who went missing is said to have attempted to murder someone the night they disappeared! It was a home invasion, before they could hurt anyone 911 was called, and they were last seen running to the woods." 

I was snapped out of my hundred-yard stare by the audio pausing. Jaymie looked to me and said,

"Are you okay? You're shaking like crazy." It's true, I was. Most of the time my body went into a hypothermic-like shiver before I could even process what was freaking me out. That is to say I was absolutely freaking out over this. And it's not because I was afraid of what might have happened to that person. 

"No yeah I'm just... its wack, what they're talking about. I don't think I should keep listening, it's gonna fuel my intrusive thoughts."

"Pussy. No I'm kidding, that's fine Mary. It's an older episode anyways, I wouldn't worry about it and I literally have OCD." 

Jaymie didn't have to tell me that it was in the past. I knew exactly when it happened.