Imagine Meeting You Here

Imagine Meeting You Here

by: Samuel Earl Di Gangi

1 THE BACKDROP

Mr. Keyfer Earlston wasn't a perfect man.

No.

Not by any stretch of the imagination.

As a matter of fact, to suggest that Keyfer was anything even remotely associated with the word “perfect” was as silly as to imply that the Sun itself was related to fairies dancing on an iceberg in the deepest recesses of space as polka music was played by a myriad of jesters under a purple sky full of dancing penguins.

However, one thing that could and should be said about Keyfer: beyond all reasonable debate for the rational mind, he was a man who loved his wife more than he loved the birds in the morning or the full moon at deepest midnight. Falling stars could not have offered him more hope for his fulfilled wishes in life than a mere glace from his precious Lynn. No, not even if it landed in his backyard at the foot of a rainbow amidst a field full of leprechauns offering him a pot of the purest gold. The very existence of God was, to some degree at least, proven to Keyfer by the conveyable fact that anyone as wonderful as his precious Lynn could not have happened by Darwinian chance.

Sadly for Keyfer, the last that he had heard from his dearest – he called her “Dearie” - was via a rather mean-spirited note left in haste as she packed her bags to leave him. It read, “I don't care what happens to you, it doesn't matter. I am done!”

These very words became what Keyfer would say to himself every time that something disfavorble happened to him. After all, if his Dearie had said it, perhaps it was true.

Then again, there was more to the story than “Dearie” tended to offer up...

After months of not coming home, just what it was that Lynn was doing at the earliest hours of each day began to wear on Keyfer's mind, and one day (and he would be the first to admit it), he snapped.

Yes, tables flew.

Most assuredly, vulgar words were said and vile things too crass for good company were uttered...but at what point does a person not break under such duress?

The fair-minded answer to that question didn't matter to Dearie one bit.

Lynn was leaving and she displayed every intention of making it as hurtful as possible as she did so. There was to be no talking it out, no marriage counseling, and no second chances.

None of this is important, by the way. It is of no consequence.

It only matters if one is to understand the backdrop by which Mrs. Lynn “Dearie” Earlston was to encounter the single most terrifying experience of her life.

2) Coming Home

After having left her husband sobbing at the door and driving away with some strange person, Lynn Earlston arrived a few months later to gather the last of her things. She was more than prepared for Kefyer to beg her to “just listen,” she was quite ready for him to tell her how “much he loved her,” (not that she cared) and she was even ready for him to throw another table or two.

She wasn't, however, ready for “her.”

Lynn and Keyfer, for whatever reason, never really bothered to change locks very often, even though they lived in an area with somewhat of a high crime rate. In the city, particularly in the city where they dwelt, such habits could be like playing Russian Roulette, but just the same, it was fact. Therefore, even though Lynn had begun to associate with people who would be better suited for a role as a type cast villain in a B-grade horror move than an actual functioning member of society (hence the reason why the tables had flown), she knew that Keyfer would not have changed the locks even after she left with those very same people.

He hadn't. Just as she has suspected.

However, Lynn simply never expected to see... her.

As Lynn had walked from the back entrance, though the kitchen and dining room, and into the living room, she saw her. “Her,” whoever in seven hell's she was, was fucking gorgeous! Lynn was no piece of chopped liver, herself. She had been a cheerleader whilst in school, she was an accomplished performer (with a plethora of awards to prove it), and she was more flexible than speaker wire thread through a drug lord's car stereo, but just the same...Lynn gasped upon seeing her.

Worse still, as she gracefully sauntered down the stairs from the second floor to the living room where Lynn had entered, she was wearing the single sexiest piece of black lingerie that may have ever been made. This seemingly flawless goddess had black hair with brown chesnut highlights textured through it and she had the most piercing pair of green eyes that God had ever painted inside of a skull. Her eyes were the color of the waters at Paradise Island during the summer, either right at sunrise or just as twilight was to descend (Lynn couldn't decide which), and Lynn at first could do nothing but stammer and search for words as she looked at her. She had simply never seen a more delicate featured face in her life.

At last she managed to blurt out, “Who the fuck are you?”

“Ah, you must be Lynn,” the lady in black had replied with a polite, knowing smile.

Now, anyone who is familiar with the cattiness that can sometimes exist between two women in such a context can easily understand how that statement was most likely delivered to Lynn.

Only it wasn't.

Oddly enough, what this lady in black seemed to convey was not a sense of meanness, but rather, a sense of fondness. Her voice seemed to say, “Oh, Lynn, I have heard about you. Keyfer talks about you all of the time.” Her words were friendly and inviting, not callous or vindictive.

However, she was, of course, clad in black lingerie, barefoot, and sauntering down the stairs like a strumpet who had just fucked her husband dry.

There was that.

“Yes, I would be Lynn,” she answered. “As in, 'HIS WIFE, LYNN,'” she added.

“Ah, as I suspected,” the lady answered coyly.

Again, those piercing green eyes. Leaves in the sunniest of days of July seemed to radiate from them as she spoke. Were they even real?

“Now, again, let me ask, 'Who the fuck are you?'” demanded Lynn. While she may have wished to have sounded grisly and ready to fight, her words carried no more malice than a feather upon utterance.

The mysterious lady in black rounded the small one-step walkway that completed the full staircase, turned right, and that left her only a pair of stairs to the living room area where Lynn stood.

She walked down those two stairs and stood calmly, smiling sincerely at Lynn.

“This is very awkward, I can't say that very many people see me coming and going,” admitted her husband's apparent new(?) lover.

“You used to getting the money off of the nightstand before the lady of the house gets home or something like that?,” stabbed Lynn.

The lady only smiled and said, “...something like that.”

Keyfer's wife stood still, as if unable to move and rooted like a marble statue. She was motionless in the area between the dining room and the living room. The white partition beam was over her head and on the other side of the room, where the lady descended, there was a sun room which had once been a simple porch. The sun was bursting in and as a result, the floor was warm upon the feet of the lady in black, something that was obvious in how she shifted as she stood.

“Oh how he talked about you, Lynn. Night after night. I mean, I really think the world of your husband, and I felt for him as he called for me, I really did,” said the lady in black. “I wish to tell you, Dearie, that even with all of my experience, I really, really felt for him.”

Lynn, who had not moved since being somehow terrifyingly captivated by... what was her fucking name???... was now utterly frozen in some untitled state between pure white rage and utter terror.

“Did she just call you, 'Dearie?'”, Lynn's mind asked.

3) The Story Of Dearie

Should a meteor like that which killed off the dinosaurs ever strike the Earth again, most likely, all of the digital nuance of modern man will be turned to void at the hand of God's grand eraser. (Perhaps, dare we suggest, even this very tale.) Things happen in the “digital world,” as it is called, that would be quite hard to explain to any person of any other time period.

For example, it was during a texting exchange with Lynn when she and Keyfer were first dating that resulted in her being given the nickname, “Dearie.” The two had been on a weekend outing and what Keyfer had meant to type to Lynn was, “I will meet you at the gate by Lake Erie.” However, what he typed (having long-known never to trust his phone's “auto-correct”) was “I will meet you by Lake, Dearie.”

Lynn had typed back in jest, “Oh, so I am 'Dearie,' now?” and the nickname stuck. It was one of those silly little moments that couples share and that often color relationships with memories that only the pair involved ever know about.

Who, then, was this strumpet to know such a thing, much less to say it?

“What did you just call me,” Lynn managed to mutter.

“I am being flooded with questions now. Who am I? What is my name? What did I call you? It is all a bit much to keep up with, I much confess,” said the black clad lady.

Yes, that time, her words were said with the cattiness expected (but not delivered) in her first statement. The words were not reeking of arrogance, but rather, just a slight sniff of the nuance was to be observed. There was certainly a bit of purposeful play in her words, yet at the same time, there was a hint that somehow – and this made no sense whatsoever – Lynn felt that somehow this mysterious woman was not a threat with Keyfer. At least not in the way that one would expect.

This, and the fact that her nemesis was barefoot while Lynn wore hiking shoes should a throw-down happen, led Lynn to blurt out, “Get smart with me again and the next time that you suck my husband's dick you will be doing it through a straw, you filthy slut.”

However, no fight erupted.

The lady in black only smiled.

“That was most clever... Lynn,” said the lady. Upon saying her real name, her smile faded, ever so slightly, and eye contact was both made and held.

It was if, in some way, she knew Lynn, at least in passing.

The two just stood looking at each other for what seemed like many strange moments piled atop one another before, at last, the lady said, “I have watched him for quite some time, you know?”

Looking incredulous, Lynn replied, “You do mean my husband?”

“Yes. It is 'Kaye' that I admit to knowing him, right?” asked the lady in the most innocent of tones. It is important to note that the sentence was meant to be “It is OK that I admit to knowing him, right?” The lady in black put her fingers up to make the “quote” hand-sign when she said “”Kaye,” which meant that she was in on yet another one of Keyfer and her's little inside jokes!

As a matter of fact, the way that she asked the question was not rude, but rather, it was as if she was asking space itself the question, a question meant for a whole room full of people, and not merely for Lynn. This was very strange since there was no one in the room save the two of them.

The real horror here was the fact that, like the earlier story regarding this oddly beautiful lady knowing Lynn's “Dearie” nickname, the sentence “Is everything 'Kaye'” was another joke that Keyfer had about Lynn's maiden name. It was a play on words...or a play on names, perhaps. Lynn's maiden name had been Lynn Angel Kaye and Keyfer would often text, as a joke, “Is everything 'Kaye?'” as simply a silly way of saying. “Hello.” It was his playful way of asking, “Is everything OK?” and was just a way that he would often check in on her during the day sometimes.

Therefore, of course, Lynn's own green eyes began to tear up a bit. She hadn't thought about it but, now when confronted with the memory, she missed getting those texts asking, “Is everything 'Kaye?” so very much.

Just how well did this bimbo know Keyfer? The idea that in mere months after she left, the fact that he would sleep with someone else so quickly was bad enough. However, too imagine that this girl (who Lynn had never heard so much as mentioned nor alluded to in her seven years with Keyfer) knew so many intimate details about the workings of her husband's mind, why that was both too heartbreaking and too intense for her to put a name to.

Had she been replaced that quickly?

“Who in the hell are you? How, how did you know that? How long have you known him?”, Lynn asked in a flurry, unsure herself of just what to say.

“There you go again, Dearie, such a stream of questions,” replied the lady in black.

Her words were deliberate and spoken with perfection and poise. At some points, her syllables were clipped like those of Bette Davis, whilst at other times, they were almost playfully rushed and flirtatious, though still quite purposeful.

“I will say this, perhaps to try and address all of your questions at once, mind you, that after you left he called for me quite often. This he had done before you, oh many times I assure you, but he had not called on me in the years that he knew you, Dearie,” she added. “He never called for me during all of the time that he had spent with you.”

“Stop calling me, 'Dearie,'” demanded Lynn. She then added, “He never once mentioned you. If you were so close before me, why was that?”

After another surreal moment of silence, one that passed with the lady simply staring out the window of the sun room as if she was not just wearing erotic bedroom attire in full view of anyone who could have passed by on the sidewalk (no one did), the lady furthered, “I watched over him as he wept so many times. I don't think that he even knew that, to be quite honest.”

The blood within Lynn boiled.

There is was. Stated in full view as if on display for the shame of Lynn's life. There was the truth. Keyfer had been calling this (and others?) prostitute either shorty after or, God forbid, during their time together!

“Fine. Just say it. He and I are done anyhow,” said Lynn with utter coldness. She gestured upstairs to where their bedroom lay on the second floor was and to where she was sure that her husband still slept. “How long was he calling you? You a hooker?”

The most authentic and non-spiteful laughter filled the room and it erupted from the lady in black. The fit struck her so rapidly that there was no chance of her being able having been able to contain even a note of it it of she had been forced to.

After squinting with laughter, her googly green eyes seemed to somehow light up the moment without being malicious towards Lynn as it took place.

Oddly enough, Lynn picked up on the sincerity of the outburst and, in spite of herself, though she had been ready to lunge at the lady just moments ago, she too, laughed. As a matter of fact, the most uncomfortable moment of epic laughter of Lynn's whole life – and dare we say, the life of almost anyone – took place for more than a few moments right there in that sun-drenched living room.

“May mercy find me,” said the lady as she laughed. “I have been called far worse, I can assure you.” She then added, drying her eyes which, like Lynn's, displayed authentic tears from the howling, “For what it's worth, I am not a prostitute, Dearie. That wasn't his style.”

“Listen, bitch, I told you to stop calling me that! How do you know what kind of man he is, anyhow?” demanded Lynn.

While threatened a second time, this time with much more intent, the lady in black still just gazed placidly out the window. None of Dearie's threats seemed to worry her in the least.

She still shifted from the heat of the sun on the faux tiles that defined the living room floor, and she still seemed unmoved in the least by Lynn's ever-growing fury and rage.

As if she had all day to answer and owed no one any explanation whatsoever (even Lynn), the lady broke the silence by saying. “Before he met you, he often looked for me. He would call for me almost every night. Then,” she added,”he met you and I didn't hear from him at all. I, to be quite honest, never expected him to seek the comforts that I afford again. I, more than anyone, was shocked when he did.”

“He talked about me while with you?”, begged Lynn.

“In depth, with great detail,” answered the strange lady in black.

At last the lady looked away from the sidewalk outside the window and, still without a care that her scant attire was in view of anyone who may have strolled by, she began to speak with more conviction. Still, her words varied when delivered between a clipped and formal nature and the voice that one may use to coax a squirrel from a tree or – perhaps, a drunken lover into the bedroom. No one that Lynn had ever met spoke quite in the style and manner that this girl did as she said, “Do you have an idea how many times he really spoke about you, Lynn?”

The lady spoke perfect English, no hint of it being even her second language, yet at the same time, there was just the whisper of another accent, but not one that Lynn had ever before heard. The more that she spoke, the more defined this strange juxtaposition was to be noticed by Lynn. It was almost as if someone were trying to sound like they were not from America when they were, yet that clearly wasn't the case, either.

“There were times when the room which your husband languished in was as barren as a widow's womb and the only person who he would speak to was me. Did you know that? Do you know what he spoke of during those times? He spoke of you and only of you, Lynn. Did you know that?”

“So Keyfer was calling you?,” demanded Lynn.

“Calling out for me?,” asked the lady. “He would talk endlessly about every aspect of your life to me. 'This time that you went on this roller coaster, this time that you caught an angry softback turtle that chased you and you screamed, the snowboarding mishaps and crashes or wins, the retelling of how you snuggled as you watched movies....' Usually, that kind of drivel gets quite bothersome, it usually gets on my nerves, to be quite honest. Ah, but his sincerity struck me. He thought the world of you, to say the very least. Your husband loved you more than anything in the world”

Lynn just stood, cemented to her spot. She was now damned to endure this dark moment regardless of if she wanted to or not.

“He called out to me,” continued the lady in black. “Each time that he did, he spoke of you and each time that he called I arrived. Oh, mind you, I did not always answer, Dearie, but I did always arrive to listen, even if he didn't notice. All things have a time and a place, 'Kaye?” asked the coy lady. Again, she used the “quote” finger sign to imply that her last name, Kaye, meant, “OK?”

“You bitch, I will fucking kill you if you do that again. Do you understand that?,” roared Lynn.

“Oh, why not, by all means, you could rightfully call it 'breaking and entering' should the law arrive to find me dead at your hands. Go and get the gun from under the fake throw pillow by the closet, Dearie,” suggested the lady in black. “Do make sure that you check on Keyfer while doing so, 'Kaye?”

At that point, Lynn, whose own green eyes had begun to fill with tears, was overcome by the most mortifying sensation that she would ever know. An unconveyable horror washed over her as she started to understand the unthinkable... the impossible.

Then... as it all started to make horrible sense, she was overcome again by the stunning gaze of the lady in black and she was transfixed by the beauty of her black eyes...wait...

Black eyes?

As black as death, actually.

“He had called for her...,” Lynn's mind said. “When you were not here, he called for...her...”

3) 4) Weapons Drawn

Lynn, sure now that either Keyfer had shot himself or that this tempestuous lady has shot him (since her mind still refused to really accept what it knew to be true), she ran past the strange lady who was still just staring at her with her now black eyes, and up the stairs. Her mind was rethinking what the lady had said - “the kind of man that Keyfer had been” and, didn't she say that Keyfer had “thought the world of you?” Not, “the kind of man Kefer is” and not “he thinks the world of you,” present tense.

No, the lady, come to think of it, had been referring to Keyfer in the past tense from the moment that they had begun to speak with one another, hadn't she? That was one of the strange speaking patterns that she had heard, was it not?

As she reached the top of the stairs and as her mind struggled to grasp just what terrors may be waiting for her in the bedroom, Lynn heard the lady in black promise, “I will be seeing you around soon, Dearie,” from downstairs.

Upon entering their bedroom, before even checking on Keyfer's condition, she looked for the gun (in case the lady were to have followed her up the stairs). She found it, just as only (?) her and and Keyfer had known, under the fake pillow near the closet.

This lady seemed to know every detail and every secret of her and Keyfer's life, right down to where they kept their gun, yet she never bothered to move it.

Once Lynn made absolutely sure that the gun was loaded and that the safety off, she rushed over to the waterbed where Keyfer lay sleeping.

Only upon further observation, her husband was not asleep.

He was, of course, dead.

His body was only just cooling and, while certainly not a doctor, she could easily gather that her husband had not been dead for more than twenty minutes, if that. There were no gunshot wounds, the gun was fully loaded and untouched, and Keyfer seemed to have sustained no stab wounds or injuries of any kind.

He seemed at peace.

Just the same, her husband was dead.

She noted that the pillow was moist, yet already Keyfer's mouth had begun to lose color and his mouth had rapidly dried up. Then Lynn understood that her husband had not drooled upon his pillow, but rather, he had wept on it and it was still damp from his tears.

Suddenly, far too late to matter, Lynn herself began to recall the roller coasters, the fishing trips, and all of the “movie nights.” She began to think about things like the Christmas that she had forgotten to purchase the ham, and the time that...

At that point, Lynn's eyes (quite green and magnificent in their own right) became filled with tears. Sure that this monstrous woman must have poisoned her husband, she whirled around screaming, running down the stairs with her gun drawn and held firmly in both hands.

Then again, deep within “Dearie,” she knew that her Keyfer had not really been poisoned by the lady in black. Lynn Earlston knew, without a doubt (though her mind would not allow the thought to fully reside there yet), that her husband had died of “natural causes.” Closer inspection of the body may even show a lipstick stain on his lips in a shade which matched that which the lady in black had worn.

As for lady Death, the lady with the captivating green...hauntingly fearsome black eyes, well, she was of course, gone. Lynn knew, somehow, that she would be.

The scariest part?

Keyfer and Lynn had long ago placed bells on the doorknobs of every door in the house long ago when they first moved into the home as a security measure, but they never rang. That meant that the lady, though gone, had not used any of the doors to exit the abode. If she had, Lynn would have heard it, even from upstairs. That was, after all, the point of the bells.

Just the same, along with the reality of the lifeless corpse of her formally beloved, one thing hung in the air still. It was not the perfume that seemed to radiate from the lady, that vanished as rapidly as she had. It was not, either, the sorrow and regret that filled Lynn's soul like fly larvae, though that did certainly exist and would never go away.

Rather, it was the last thing that the lady had said:

“I will be seeing you around soon, Dearie...”