For the Love of Fire

I. The Search - 4 Hours Ago

Kitten wrinkled her nose. The smell of gasoline was strong. She felt dizzy and nauseous. These city streets were beginning to wear on her and it was time to get out of town. She passed squatters to the left and from them, arose a putrefied stink.

The night was long and she was beginning to fade but tonight was the night and the night wasn’t over until it was over.

Four hours ago, she had been performing her signature dance at the Midnight Cowgirl. All the men hooted and hollered when she stepped onto the stage in her shiny, pink get up decorated with embroidered multi-colored butterflies as the sound of deep house, solid booming bass line accompanied by a melodic, melancholic voice, saturated the room.

Kitten’s heart repaired itself of Broken Heart disease when she was 21. She didn’t know it at the time and didn’t know it then, but her life had been a melancholic melody since then. People were drawn to her romance and beauty, the sadness that enveloped her, while she often wondered why.

Amidst the lurid din, she looked through the crowd at the familiar faces and the strange ones. Some eyes bounced right off her gaze, unable to see or be seen; and the eyes that pulled her in pulled deep, swallowing her soul whole.

She scanned the room - the bartender, Tommy, caught her eye and gave her a wink through the streaming disco lights that lit up blue, purple, and magenta, and soaked her in a technicolor dream.

Maintaining integrity to her performance is easy. She’s a pro and nothing deters the consummate professional, not even a situation like this.

Her eyes rove through the crowds, searching for Her, the woman who showed up in her dream a week ago.

II. The Sighting - 1 Day Ago

It was Tuesday and she was waiting for an Uber at the corner of Highland Avenue and MLK Drive when she saw the woman sitting in the window of the 24/7 diner, looking askance at Kitten who returned the look with a question.

There was no missing the bright purple, velour top and matching flares or the unmistakable wild, fiery red hair that met the eye like a smoke signal, stopping Kitten in her tracks.

When she stared, the woman averted her gaze and sipped her coffee, demure and composed. After a few moments, she coyly looked up and over her coffee mug that was raised delicately to her lips and in her green eyes was a cool distance. Setting her cup down slowly, she lifted something from the table and held it for Kitten who had been as if in a trance.

Through the greasy diner window, one could see it was a Post-It with a single word scrawled in red Sharpie and beautiful cursive:

And suddenly, a wave rushed over Kitten, flashes of the woman in a dream, a kaleidoscope of emotions, the longing, the pull, the intensity, the mystery, a note …

The note! She looked back at the woman; she was already gone.

The same cryptic message. She had jotted the unsettling dream down in her journal.

It was one in a string of strange dreams she had since newfound sobriety. Attached to these was a vague sense of déjà vu. These were dreams of dreams, of places she had been in childhood, or another lifetime perhaps, that seemed to shimmer under the surface of the sea of memory. Kitten had was learning that time is not linear.

III. The Dream - 7 Days Ago

Tattle-Tale? Kitten furrowed her brow as she read the one word in her journal that stared back at her. She flipped to the next page.

“Tattle-Tale”.

The next, “Tattle-Tale”.

Each successive page was identical. Closing the book fervently, she stood up in a wispy way, the back of her hand held to her forehead, offering a sense of solid comfort. The walls of the room were melting. She could see the corners dripping like candle wax.

It was beginning to smell like fire too, which strangely comforted her. And now with the walls of the room halfway liquefied, she could see the flames just beyond them, licking high and lapping breaths of oxygen and growing in cascading plumes.

She was shin-deep in a liquid, presumably from the melting room. It behaved just like water but was opaque and a color she didn’t have a word for. It felt cool against her legs and her shoes remained dry.

There was one particular spot in the fire that looked ecstatically bright, more lively and dancing and real than the flames around it. Squinting her eyes to discern what brought it especially alive, the spot seemed to grow further away the more she strained to see it. And with that, there came a sudden light touch at her right elbow.

Kitten turned towards it and came face to face with a beautiful woman in a scarlet dress. She had an open, steady gaze and flaming red hair, not unlike the flames that had surrounded Kitten just a second ago, but at this moment were nowhere to be found. Her dress looked to be made of silk and of Far East origin, embroidered in flowers and birds and scenes from nature of the most detailed stitching in vivid yellow, pink, green, and blue hues.

The periphery fell away, revealing a moon soaked coastline. And they were sitting at the bar in an ambient cliff-side lounge that was mostly empty. The sounds of light chatter and the clinking of glass and cutlery flirted beneath the surface, riding the audio waves as the ocean breathed its waves ashore.There was talk of a Flood. The big one.

“Don’t forget. One week. Come find me. I’ll be looking for you too.”

Kitten’s heart swelled and set in fullness. Outside, the colors were a gradient of blues and grays. The ocean waves pulsed and crashed along the rocks as a passing car wound its way through the scene, a duo of headlights weaving a path through the night.

“I’ll remember.”

She received a warm, hard kiss on the lips, her lover’s passion and essence pressed deeply into the space of the softness between them.

IV. Tonight

Her kitten heels click-clack with a soft and pretty echo on the sidewalk pavement, scattered with fossils of gum and other anthropological signs of industry. Ahead of her, buzzing brightly, was a neon sign.

Crossing the threshold of the diner marked by a robust rubber mat well suited for New England storms, she wondered at the force that compelled her forward. A magnetism pulling at her breast as she hoped to find someone at the 24/7 diner where she saw her yesterday.

There is an older man seated towards one end of the bar, his back to the door, and a mother with her daughter in a booth, the two nonchalantly glance over. Kitten nods hello and takes the barstool in the middle. A nondescript waitress is brewing another pot of coffee, she glances over at Kitten and asks, “What can I get you?”

“An espresso.”

“We don’t have that, but I can get you a coffee.”

Kitten nods and settles into her seat. She glances around at the mundane scene. The older man dabs his toast in the creamy dark yellow disks of yolks, The daughter acts out a story animatedly to her mother.

Somewhere in the city, a church bell strikes its midnight toll.

And somewhere else, a door opens as a head of fiery hair steps through.