Day 327 - The World Falls Away - Chapter 1.1 - (1,305 words)

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THE WORLD FALLS AWAY

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 1.1

So now I have a choice to make, to continue on the path tonight and put all this hard work to good use, find my way ‘in’. Alternately I could take this girl to my hotel, which I don’t yet have and cultivate a relationship that could get me back at any time.

Decisions, decisions.

“If we’re are going to go, we should go now.” She whispers in my ear and in the moment I am not sure what she means, the club or to whatever bed she had in mind.

If I made the choice to go to the club and it turns out to be real? Am I ready for that and what it means? Am I? Or should I take one last night on earth, before the world changes.

I turn and look at her and there is a fire in her that was not there before, the dull ache of life seemed to be replaced by an excitement and anticipation. Maybe I was reading too much into it because this was my desire transferred to hers, but something was different now.

“The club?” I ask with an upward inflection, a contras to the flat and dominating bare interest in taking her home, wherever that may be.

“They only take new people on at certain times of the morning, we have to go now or wait until this time next week.” She bit her lip and the twinkle in her eyes danced, she was vibrating at a very high frequency now, the clothes she was barely wearing shimmered and sparkled now. Before they looked tacky and cheap, now spectacular and glistening with promise.

“Are you?” I ask thinking that she can’t possibly be a member.

“I am an associate member.” She smiled proudly and stood a little taller, in her stature and in her confidence.

I must have looked skeptical because she pulled back the jewelry hanging about her neck, thick with stones and crystals, not even semi precious ones, to reveal a mark. It could have been the mark of entry, it could have been a membership mark, I would not know. I am operating on rumor and innuendo, it cannot be possibly like the ‘legends’ would have us believe, it had to be somewhere in between that and the realms of common sense.

Common sense would tell you it was nonsense and completely made up, but it wasn’t made up at all. It had grounding in reality, how much of it was real and how much of it was legend? That was the question.

“Well then, there’s no time like now then is there?” I looked around the room and wondered who was coming with us, but the group had started to dissipate, and Dottie was leading me away from the group that was surrounding the loud young man who said he had an in.

The group was paying him attention and he looked to be enjoying every moment of it and soaking up the center of existence. Dottie pulled on my arm and laughed, a viciously dismissive snort as she saw what I was looking at, though my feet were happily lead in the direction.

This was a different person, it was a switch that I had somehow thrown without knowing it and the drunken woman with little to no self-esteem was gone, and an energetic guide was moving around inside her skin.

“Where are we going?” I ask as the cold air outside slaps me in the face once the Open Late door swings out of the way and the night, the morning really, is embracing us again.

“Not far.” Dottie said, but then looked deep into me and again I got the sensation that this was not the same woman, even though she had never left my side. “Maybe all the way too.” She added with a mischievous grin that had an evil leer baked into it.

“Should I …” I was not really sure what to ask, I mean how could you prepare for something like this, was it even possible?

“You only need you.” Dottie said and then kissed me.

I did not see it coming and the power of it was buckling my knees. She tasted of stale alcohol and smoke, but that was the surface of her only. Underneath was something else that pulsed and roared, making my legs into jelly and making the world disappear, like I was standing in the air, the earth no longer beneath my feet.

When she let go there was more light, like we had been clinched for longer than I could have realized, and the sky had brightened, dawn was knocking on the door and waiting for it’s turn.

“Here we are.”

“How did …” we get here? I did not ask the rest of the question, just mouthed in my mind. We were in an alleyway, walking in the dark spaces between two buildings on the road, a place I did not recognize or had not seen in the dark before.

“It’s a taste. That’s what you can expect.” She was much more forceful than before, she was now in charge and directing me. This was not the way I planned or expected it at all. I also felt like this was the way it was meant to be, the way it had to be. A guide was a guide for good reason, if you could find your own way easily and needed no outsider information then why would you want or need a a guide?

“It was like…” I started to explain, but words failed me.

“The world falling away?” She asked, knowing the answer was yes.

The alleyway narrows down and leads to a dead end, is that prophetic? There was a line there and the door was impressively broad and impassively unaffected by the impatience coursing through the waiters and queuers.

The group we had been with had gotten here ahead of us. The sky had lightened, the people we had left behind were somehow ahead of us and it really felt like that walk and kiss lasted less than a minute, but the evidence suggested otherwise.

“Dottie?” A voice reached out to her and she ignored it like she was deaf.

The door loomed up and Dottie walked directly at it, not slowing down at all. The broad black face of the doorway split in the middle, where there had been no indication of a line before. We breezed through without stopping, the pace at which she shot us through was so quick the group who had waited outside for long before we arrived were left in the cold behind us both.

Except the man who had claimed he had access. He was in step behind me and I could feel his breath on me, on the back of my neck as he hovered back there and shadowed us inside.

“Leave.” A voice echoes in the dark red-lit hallway we are walking through and it stops me in my tracks, pulling on Dottie’s arm as she tries to move forward again.

“It’s not for us.” She said, turning to me and I felt the tension in the man following me relax and he breathed heavily and easier than her had been up until this point. She pointed at the man and then leaned into it, her finger jabbing him in the chest. “It’s for you.” She said as the jab made him stagger backwards, ten maybe twenty feet like he was slowly falling down a mine shaft, while staying on his feet the whole time.

The red door, the other side of the imposing black door from the alley, parted like it had done for the two of us and then snapped after he, whoever he was, had gone from sight.