Love With A Stranger

Ever since her mother’s sudden passing from a massive heart attack nearly thirty years ago life had never really been the same. Sure she had food shelter and the basics of survival and even managed to get herself some pretty decent jobs. She was bright, successful and on task with some aspects but then others were just mere dark areas. It was as if she were traveling down elongated darkened corridors with no vision of where she was going or what lie ahead. Till now she was able to keep it together but this recent event with her job and the concept of being unemployed something that till this very second she hadn’t had to deal with it brought things to full circle.

Drowning her sorrows in the bitter taste of beverage she had laying in her refrigerator for months she really didn’t’ care if the shit was flat or no longer any good. All she wanted at this point was to escape the familiar scenery she called home with her fancy furniture and electronics none of it mattered to her at this point. If she couldn’t have happiness what was the point in the material things.

Looking around her two-bedroom apartment that she shared with many lovers over the past twenty plus years she lived here there was not one thing here that provided any sense of happiness. From the impressive oil paintings, she purchased from the downtown gallery to the long sixty foot sports television that clung to her front wall its grey surface cold to the touch just like the men she had come across providing her no source of compassion was nothing more than just another piece of electronics. What worth was it if it couldn’t bring her anything? Outside of the make believe world of made up happy endings filled with women who had hour glass bodies and the muscular men that worshipped them like Gods something she would never have all it did was add more sadness to her already melancholic life.

Drinking more of her beverage she was so tempted to go out into the bitter weather outside and hang out at the local pub down the street. Lou’s Pub was only a hop and jump from her apartment building and offered a welcome reprieve from the doom and gloom she was currently feeling. Gabby rarely went there especially on Tuesday nights when the dart teams were there. It brought a certain clientele that was something she really didn’t want to contend with. Men with unkempt bears that looked more like wild animal hairs with muscle shirts and tattoos frequented the business on these nights. Unfortunately, they were the only types that would give Gabby the time of day. One time she dated someone from the bar there she still could recall his name Eddy Sprout. Eddy was a fifty-year-old man with rickety old teeth many of which were missing or loose and breath smelling like that of a brewery. Not being a gal to say no she dated him for a total of three weeks which abruptly ended when he was killed in a motorcycle accident. The turbulent relationship would still be going on today if it weren’t for that fatal accident along the I95 highway one rainy night. Many days she felt guilty thinking that maybe her own subtle wishes might have caused the terrible mishap. In fact, she had even gone as far as researching online that sometimes are subconscious thoughts can cause the worst things to happen. Dismissing the entire idea as foolishness Gabby knew that such things were not true.

She was determined that if she continued to sip on her drinks this late afternoon as the weather roared its arctic presence outside that soon she would believe that aliens from other planets were really true. Directing her attention back to the interesting world of Zen and his many travels across the universe deep down she wished she had known someone so intelligent yet compassionate for mankind. Certainly that wasn’t a trait she had seen today. In the scene she was reading he talked about his conquest of North America during the Civil War era and how it was he that freed the slaves from their terrible slavery. There it showed a picture of Zen a short older man with an array of crooked teeth that looked like a rundown building that had just survived an earthquake. In fact, his entire left cheek seemed to sag southward as if it were running off his bones. Those eyes seemed to be the only thing that were even and not affected by the drooping motions. An eerie chill ran up her spine wondering what had occurred to this man who supposedly toured the world and was from another planet called Zuma where everyone believed in worshipping and talking to animals as if they were humans. There was an uneasy appearance coming from those shimmering beady red eyes as if they could peer through her own very spirit.