Giddeon (Silver Strand Series) (14 page)

I slept with Giddeon many times before he ever met me.
 
Slept as in sleep, that is.
 
His favorite hangout was at The Hotel Del, and what he said to Greg is right… he doesn’t need a lot of slumber time.
 
Quite often he would go two or three days without batting an eye.
 
Finally, when he would wind down, he would stretch out in the big, king-sized bed of the Presidential Suite and fall into a deep, catatonic state.
 

Sometimes I would lay there beside him and curl up like a contented cat.

I would look at him lying there with his eyes closed, the deep blue of them hidden away from the multi-verse for a few short hours, and imagine that we were a couple.
 
I wondered what it would be like to have his arms around me and just lounge there in the satin sheets as if there was nothing better to do.

Of course, I could think of quite a few things better to do, but I’m gonna keep this clean… : )

Anyway, like I said, I would drift off beside him, hoping maybe that we would share a dream like you and Greg.
 
It never did work.
 
But, every time we woke up, I could tell that we were both refreshed beyond the amount that normally comes from a little rest.
 
And, off he would go.
 
I would follow, if I was quick enough to get into the golden vortex with him.
 
Let me tell you… it was always entertaining.
 
Maybe I’ll write it all down for you one day… not now, though.
 
I don’t want you to get writer’s cramp.
 
I don’t think your left hand would be up to it.

Where was I?
 
Oh, yes, how he and I were often bed-mates.
 
I spent so much time over on
Coronado
that I began to worry about you.
 
Was it normal for a subconscious to not come home for days on end?
 
I thought maybe I was leaving too much of an opening in your soul, and that possibly one of the undesirables would come by and try to take up residence.
 
Never happened, though.
 
I think they’re afraid of you.
 
Or maybe it’s me they’re frightened of.
 
I kind of became a
Zena
Warrior Princess over the years, so maybe they knew better.

What’s that?
 
I guess I should explain.

When you were a little girl, a monster lived in your closet…

*****

I guess lived in your closet wouldn’t be quite correct.
 
That’s where he came through from wherever it was he came from.
 
He was dark green and bulky… kind of a cross between a Komodo Dragon and a deformed baboon.

He would crawl out silently through the door, opening it without a sound.
 
I could see that the door was actually still closed, but the one he exited through wasn’t… sort of like an alternate gate.
 
You would be asleep and I would run and jump into your body.
 
He didn’t pay much attention to me, but every now and then he would come over and sniff your face and hair, as if trying to figure out where I had gone.
 
Then, he would climb out of your bedroom window, even though it doesn’t open at all.

The monster would usually be gone for hours, and then just before dawn would clamber back through the window and through the closet door.
 
Later on, I noticed that the creature tended to arrive prior to or during calamitous events in our neighborhood or town.

If someone close to your family was sick or hurt, I could count of old Greenback showing up… that’s what I called him, at first.
 
He also emerged anytime there was strife, turmoil, divorces, altercations or tragedy within the vicinity.
 
Anything unpleasant.
 
Maybe 10 or 12 times a year.
 
He especially liked funerals.
 
I would even see him during the daytime during those… although I don’t think he was fond of sunlight.
 
I still don’t know if he instigated the problems or simply fed off of them.
 
But, I was pretty much terrified of him for the first couple of years.

I finally worked up the courage to speak to him one night, and told him to go away and leave us alone.

The menace in his eyes was formidable, and he took a swipe at me.
 
I’m quick, so his claws missed me, but then he came around with his tail in kind of a Komodo Dragon/Baboon karate move.
 
Thank goodness it just went right through me.
 
He
bared
his yellow teeth and climbed on out of the window.

*****

I found out the next day that your neighbor, Mr.
Farland
, had died.
 
I felt guilty, thinking that maybe it was my fault for upsetting the monster.
 
I didn’t confront him again for over a year, but, finally, I got fed up with him coming through the door and I
sicked
the Lucky Charms Leprechaun on him.

That wasn’t a good idea, because the monster tore the little guy limb from limb and devoured him right there in front of me.
 

Magically delicious.

It was quite disturbing, but I knew the leprechaun wasn’t real.
 
I just conjured up another one the next night.
 

So, you see, I got toughened up early on.
 
That which doesn’t kill you shall make you stronger.
 
I heard that on Conan the Barbarian… found out later that it was a famous quote from Nietzsche.
 
I’m not much of a philosopher like you… sorry.
 

After watching the movie on Showtime, that’s when I got myself a sword.
 
It was smaller and lighter than Conan’s, but it felt good in my hands.
 
If that green, scaly monkey was going to swing at me with his tail, I would do my best to cut it off.

*****

Oh, my… he did not like seeing me with that weapon.
 
He charged right at me and I stuck it in his eye.
 
It went right through his ethereal body, but he did flinch.
 
I think maybe it hurt him a little bit.
 
He took a swipe at me and reared up on his hind legs.
 
The blow of his had gone right through me and all I really
 
felt was a slight chill as it passed, but the position he had put himself in to intimidate me left me a nice, soft target.
 
I plunged the sword into his heart… or, where I imagined his heart to be… and he let out a hiss and a roar.
 
He took another swipe in my direction, missed, narrowed his muddy eyes, and then lumbered over to the window and went about his business.

I knew that the monster wasn’t wounded… well, maybe his pride was… but I felt like I had taken a stand, and that was somehow important.
 
I went and got back inside of your body and fell fast asleep.
 
When old Greenback showed up a few hours later, he went to his door without so much as a grunt.
 

I think he was trying not to wake me.

*****

Melody’s Writing

I used to believe in magic when I was little.
 
Fairies and pixie dust and household items that could come to life and dance around like in the Disney movie, ‘Fantasia’.
 
I think all small children have a natural imagination and flights of fancy.
 
Only when I had Giddy did I realize what real magic was.

That two cells could come together and produce such a wondrous, living, breathing miracle will forever boggle my mind.
 
For 9 months I carried him inside of me while he went about the business of growing fingers, toes, organs and systems.
 
How did he accomplish all of that in such a short while?
 
I’m sure every mother wonders the same thing and feels the same boggling, but, when I also think about how his father was unconscious for four years and then awoke at the last possible moment… well, that just adds even more magic to the mix.

I still don’t know how Greg got to the church.
 
I suppose quantum physics provides as good an explanation as any.
 
Sometimes, I think about it, but I don’t question it, anymore.
 
I’m just so glad it happened.

Things that make no sense to us, now, will probably be common place in the future… assuming there is a future.
 
I worry daily about Ray’s progress in
Texas
.
 

*****

If you had told an Englishman in the Middle Ages that you could capture an image of him and press a few buttons on a tablet, and that the image would then be sent through the air to another tablet in the next village, he would have thought you mad.
 
If you told him that he could sing and dance and that it would all be repeated in exact detail almost instantaneously for his friends in a pub, he would have accused you of witchcraft.
 
Yet, we do it
everyday
without a second thought.

Sometimes, I look at the circuitry of an old phone or a computer, and I can hardly believe the technology crammed into such small spaces.
 
All of the things that had to have been invented down through the years to make all of it possible.
 
Plastics and wiring and transistors and capacitors… I have no idea of how they even begin to work.
 
Probably very few people do.
 
We’re as ignorant as the Englishman of yesteryear… we’ve just all accommodated to the magic.
 

The same goes for medicine.
 
During the Bubonic Plague, if you would have produced a bottle of pills and said that they could cure the Black Death, you would have been in the league of angels... or, at the very least, compassionate devils.
 
The cure would have been miraculous.

When I think of MRI’s and x-rays and sonograms… all of the sophisticated machinery that we have today… I can’t help but wonder what is on the horizon.
 
That’s why I want to make sure that our planet survives.
 
We’re on the cusp of something magnificent… I can feel it.

And, it’s not just the rock out there in space that could undo us.
 
It’s something much closer to home.

To quote a comic strip, ‘We have met the enemy and he is us’.
 

We fight over dwindling resources.
 
We fight over religion.
 
We fight over pride… and, sometimes, we fight simply because ancestors from generations gone past fought over something long forgotten.
 
Our technology has outpaced our humanity, and the ability to kill and maim has exceeded our ability to heal and replace.

I know Mia thinks I gloss over these things, but, I don’t.
 
I just don’t dwell on them.
 
I’d rather concentrate on solutions than causes.
 
On blessings rather than curses.
 
I think the magic of science may be the thing that saves us all, in the end.
 
I just want to do my part.
 
There is enough misery in the world without me adding to it.
 
Someone has to balance it all out.

Giddy’s
certainly doing his part, as far as balance goes.
 
I’ve never seen a happier baby.
 
That’s what gives me hope.
 
Sometimes I feel like he has a window into our future and he likes what he sees.
 
And, I think there are others like him.
 
I want them all to grow up together and see the magnificence that stretches out as far as the eye can see.
 
I saw some of it on Eden.
 
I know it might have been only a dream, but, what a dream!
 
That’s where we’re headed, and beyond… if we can just get past a few bumps in the road.

Okay, maybe bumps in the road is a little Pollyanna-
ish
… but, in the long run, that’s the way they’ll seem.
 
There’s so much out there… and, right here, too.
 
I feel like we’re fighting over crusts of bread in a field of wheat.
 
I just don’t know what it will take to make us all realize that.

Maybe an asteroid?

I pray for Ray and his team every night.

*****