The Kelly Effect

Everything looked so lush and green with flowers I had never even seen before growing with such life and vibrancy that I got lost looking at them. Lost in the space in which they existed.

It was dreadfully hot out that August day and I was standing right out in the middle of it.

I don't know why I thought that I had to stand there in it but something inside of me just pooled at me to do it.

I was wearing extremely short shorts that were fraying badly at their seams and a junky tank top just so that I did not swelter and die.

The tar was even starting to stick to the bottom of my feet as I hardly ever wore shoes when I went out.

Even though I knew how stupid I was for thinking the gravel was going to be fun to walk on in bare feet.

But that was the least of my worries.

I was on a mission despite the fact there was no easy reason for this mission.

I hadn't seen this man in years because if I had, I would have known I was looking at him.

I had heard from several sources that he was not even worth looking for but I had to.

I had a premonition that I was supposed to go to him.

The only person I could think to tell about this weirdness was my best friend Kelly.

I knew that she would understand the severity of the strange.

So there I was standing in her driveway looking directly into the rainforest of growth in front of her house.

She doesn't live alone she lives with her boyfriend Adam and together they make a unique couple.

I wasn't really sure what they were arguing about this time but we needed to move soon.

Where we were going was not a place to go after dark.

Not that it was really the place to go in the scorching heat either but that was something I would just have to deal with.

About an hour later we were finally in the car.

I rode shotgun next to Kelly and Adam sat in the back.

I swear we didn't get more than a hundred feet down her long driveway before Adam screamed "Did you lock the screen door?"

I turned my head around and looked at him and said "No, why would I? It's the middle of the day and we have to come back here anyway. I would of if we were home alone in the middle of the night."

With that Kelly stomped on her brakes and let him out.

Grumbling and mumbling under his breath he ran back to the house to lock the screen door.

Kelly looked at me and we shook our heads and left.

We weren't going to stick around and wait for his cranky ass.

Especially when we knew he would just bellyache the whole time about how stupid we are for allowing predators easy access to their stuff.

Adam was just an anal asshole like that.

Now I've known Adam about as long as I've known Mike, the man we were going in search of.

We used to all be inseparable until Mike lost his way and wound up in Eugene OR where he met up with a rough crowd.

Now he was back.

Forever this time so we were on our way to find him.

We cranked up the stereo and the air conditioning and headed for the yellow brick road.

The greatest thing about where Kelly lives now is the way it is so alive with trees, bushes, and flowers everywhere.

They weren't all trimmed and landscaped instead most were wild and tall from the summer sun and rain.

They were the perfect metaphor for how we all were, wild, untamed, and beautiful.

However, much like in life all that gorgeous lush greenery fell by the wayside at this one four-way intersection we always had to pass to get anywhere.

On the south side, where we were coming from, there was the garden of Eden.

On the north side, there was nothing but desolate gray and white rock.

There was absolutely no grass, no trees, nothing growing at all.

Just hill after hill of straight desert land with maybe a house here and there.

People were really non-existent outside of the south side possibly due to the oppressive heat.

It's like rain is forbidden here except in Kelly's little world.

As we kept on driving we ran into the sacred land where people live that haven't a hope in the world for any kind of life anymore.

They simply lay on the steps of their stone homes with blood running down their limp bodies staining the stone forevermore.

They drank dust from the wells that had bottomless buckets and sang the songs of the man who worked the 24-hour job.

All-day long they push and push for what amounts to pennies to buy their babies overpriced bread and overprocessed milk.

They drop their mouths as we passed trying to say something we couldn't understand.

They outstretched their boney fingers to us trying to grasp something they thought we had that they couldn't attain.

Then they pointed and urged us to look at the graves that they had in their backyards.

Littering their land everywhere we'd look were stones.

Little girls were playing Miss Susie on the tops of them as they stared at us driving through.

There was no way around this desolate place, no overpass or underpass, just a straight-through no holds bar look at their lives out on display.

And what's more disconcerting is that we were the diseases that sought out one of them.

They had every right to scorn us for trespassing on their land.

They spat at us, glared at us, and wanted us to get out of our car so they could peruse us with their blood-stained hands and bloodshot eyes.

As I got out they noticed my bare feet, my worn, torn, and weathered feet that held me upright.

They noticed my fraying shorts and beater tank and made to move aside.

I was not their enemy.

Dust and dirt were starting to plaster themselves to the cracks in my soles as I walked without flinch across the gravel road to the General Store doors.

I walked in.

I glanced above the rim of my glasses to see him in the corner playing a game of pool on a table of green chalking up a piece of splintered wood.

"Let's go!"

Kelly stands stalk still in the frame of the doorway.

He stands with his back against bricks and looks at me through his stone gray eyes.

"For what? I know why you're here and you know you don't need me to do what you do."

I move closer... knowing I tread on an unstable cloud that could give way at any second with the wrong words.

But I don't show my fear to him or to myself.

"No fear as always, I see my absence hasn't changed you one bit."

I glare at him.

"Since you know why I'm here then tell me why I'm here."

He rebuts my statement with cynicism.

"No, tell yourself."

He changed.

I pulled my glasses off my eyes and looked at him eye to eye.

"Don't play games, Mike."

"I play no games but this pool game."

"You know far greater than you say you know. Obviously, I didn't travel here for no reason. Do you think I would travel here if I had no reason to? I need what you have for me. Give it to me and I may leave."

He pushed me out of his way to make his shot.

"You're here to take me back. To put me by your side to soak up your leaking thoughts. But you don't need a sponge. Look out that door."

I stared at him questioning his words because he made no sense to me.

He told me again to look out beyond Kelly and I walked slowly to her and the door and looked outside and across the road to the graves that stood grand as rotten stalks.

He walked up behind me and pushed me out.

He walked behind us slow and in our dust.

"They need me here. You don't need me in your bubble."

I turned around slowly as Kelly stared ahead.

I took in his jeans, his black and white tee, and his solemn silent stare.

No one was standing around anymore.

They had all gone in and like the turning over of a sand clock their time was up.

"So I want you to come back with me?"

I don't dare look away from him for I did have this fear that he would leave me again.

"You came as two."

"Would have been three but Adam complains."

The sun was down now and the street lights barely on with the sound of coyotes drifting in and out randomly.

The moon was a sliver while we walked for a long time in the otherwise deafening silence.

We walked through the graves over the stones and in the sand.

Why did I bring two of us when I knew I would leave as one without the other and not three?

I asked this more to myself than to them directly and they knew that.

Neither answered either.

Not because they had no answer but because they knew I wasn't ready to accept the answer.

Could I have forced the outcome to go my way?

Could I have manipulated the situation to end up in my favor?

As if he could read my mind he said, "Stop, you're fine without me."

"But I'm alone."

"Do you want me in your bubble of lush green because you're in love with me still or so that you're not alone?"

"I chased you, isn't that in love?"

"You can chase noise just the same if you're determined enough. Was I ever really "the one"?"

"I came after you, you didn't come back to me, you left me, so it's more like am I "the one"? It would appear not since you can't come back. It's not that I don't need a sponge but more so that you don't want to be my sponge."

"Living among the dead is my security. Living among life is yours. We're just too different."

"Ok. Ok, I give up. You win. I was told this mission was futile but I needed to see you just once more."

The kiss was otherworldly. It was warm and sweet as if nothing about him was dusty at all. He brushed my hair out of my face and kissed my forehead as he turned and vanished into the pitch black.

"Kelly?"

"I put them on his grave."

"I'm ready now."

"Ok. Let's go home."

"Thank you."

"I always got your back girl."