Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (4 page)

S
andy was
glad she had a fireplace in her apartment.  Otherwise she couldn’t have done
her part in the game.  It didn’t really matter, it wasn’t as if S.A. knew
whether she did the thing or not.  But it was fun.

She put on a CD.  Opera.  Nice,
quiet, peaceful.  She liked these types of nights to herself.  No one hung
around to hassle her or tell her what to do or where to go.  That was one of
the things she had enjoyed these past nine months without Darryl.  Men always
seemed to need company, even when their girlfriends would rather be alone.

There was just enough wood left
in the house to start a medium sized fire.  It would be enough to burn the
rose. 

While the new flames crackled in
the fireplace, she filled a wine glass with something leftover from the weekend
party.  Then Sandy sat down on her couch facing the two dozen red roses.  She
took a sip of Merlot and sniffed at a bud.  Slowly, she pulled it from the
vase, and set the wine glass on the table.  As instructed, she walked to the
fireplace, and delicately tossed the rose into the flames.

Sitting back on her soft couch,
opened the chocolates.  Four beautiful truffles.  As she savored the candy, she
watched the fire until the rose until it was nothing but flower-shaped ashes.

One more piece left.  She
chuckled at the label on the lid, which hailed them as “decadent”.  Luxurious,
maybe, but not decadent.  That word meant something else entirely, but for some
reason fancy food marketers insisted on using it to describe overpriced gourmet
delicacies.  If the chocolates were decadent, they would be decaying, stale,
rotten husks.

Definitely not decadent. 
Exquisite.

With chocolates gone, she set the
box on the table.

The lid moved.  Of its own
accord.

She jumped back and found herself
sitting on the back of her couch. 

A small green lizard slowly
crawled out from under the box.

Sandy breathed a sigh of relief. 
Reptiles aren’t nearly so scary as a box that moves by itself.  And yet, there
was the question of how a lizard got onto her coffee table in the first place.

What a strange event.  But she
certainly wasn’t about to let it spoil her evening.  She picked up the lizard
with her bare hands and took it out to the balcony.  Her apartment was only two
stories up, and didn’t think the critter would have any trouble crawling down
on its own.  After putting the tiny reptile on the rail, she spoke to it,
coaxing it onto the building wall. 

While thus occupied, she didn’t
see the much larger black lizard slide out from under her dining room table. 
It crawled through the balcony doorway and into the night air, hiding in the
shadows of her balcony before she turned to go inside.

Even though it was a school
night, Jina and Sandy decided to spend Wednesday evening at The Neverland where
they could enjoy the dark atmosphere, loud music, bright lights, and possibly a
little dancing.

They camped out at the end of the
bar and ordered drinks. 

“My band is
much
better
than this lousy DJ,” Jina complained.

“So audition.  I think they play
rock and that sort of thing on Mondays.”

“They won’t give us a gig.  We
don’t have a big enough name yet.  It’s all we can do to get onto open mic
stages.”

Sandy sipped slowly at her Mai
Tai while Jina enthusiastically ordered her third drink.  The Mai Tai had only
begun to make her face tingle when she saw the Gregorelli boy pushing his way
through the crowd with another vase full of red roses.

“Whoa.”  Jina turned to see where
she pointed.

“Ms. Windham?  Another delivery.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said, as she
accepted the flowers and accompanying packages with excitement.  One contained
a jar of caviar, imported.  The other held a gold bracelet and another note
which she eagerly read to herself.

Dearest Sandy:

Go out to the alley,

Go out with some chalk.

Try not to run.

To play you must walk.

On the wall by your car

Draw with chalk and with ease

A vase with some roses

Can you do this please?

S.A.

“What does it say?” Jina slurred.

“I’m not going to tell.  Hmm... 
Caviar.  I’ve never tried this stuff.”

“I have.  It’s too salty.  But it’s
ok on crackers.”

“I’ll have to get some crackers,
then.”

“There’s pretzels there.  That’d
be yummy.”

Sandy smiled and put on the
bracelet.  Jina was cute when she was drunk, even if she did have a tendency to
get into trouble.  It was then that she spotted Stan across the room.  He saw
her too, and she tried to hide Jina from him, but it was too late.  He came
towards them.

“Uh, Jina,” she began to warn.

“
Stan!
” Jina shouted and
ran to embrace him.  “Stan!  Where have you been?”

Sandy watched disgustedly as Stan
made some sort of flowery apology for being a jerk.  Jina melted all over him
like goo, and allowed herself to be taken out to the dance floor. 

“Bleh, I can’t bear to watch.” 
She turned to the bartender.  “Uhm, hey.  Would you happen to have any chalk?”

“Sure.  What color?”  He held out
a wide variety of chalks that were used to write the drink specials on the
blackboard.

“Can I borrow them all?  In
exchange, I’ll let you keep this stuff hostage until I get back.”  She motioned
to the roses and the caviar.

“Ah, sure.  Why not.  But you
have to buy another drink.”

“I’ll buy two more.”

With the deal settled, Sandy left
the club.  Her car was parked half a block down the street.  She felt a little
nervous out in the night all alone, but it wasn’t so bad, considering she had
parked under a street lamp.

She chose a color and dragged the
dusty chalk over the bumpy brick wall.  Fortunately, she had taken a drawing
class with Jina once, and managed to compose a fairly decent four-foot color
rendition of three rosebuds in a slender vase.

Deciding that she had better get
back to Jina, she went back into the bar and returned the chalk.  Her roses and
caviar were untouched, but Jina didn’t seem to have been so lucky.  She and Stan
were making out on Sandy’s barstool.

“Uh, excuse me Stan, but I’d like
to sit back down here.”

“Fuck off.”

“Stan!” Jina chided.  “Be nice.”

“Fine, take it.”  He spun the
stool around as if that would be cool, and sat down on the other side of Jina. 
They resumed sucking face.

Sandy reached down the bar and
pulled a bowl of pretzels closer.  The jar of caviar popped as the seal broke. 
She dipped a pretzel into the red, lumpy gel and took a bite.

“I think I’m going to be sick,”
she said between mouthfuls.

Jina muttered, “That stuff takes
a while to get used to,” from under Stan’s lips.

“I wasn’t talking about the
caviar.  I was talking about you, Jina.”

“Huh?  Oh, sorry, Sandy.  I didn’t
mean to ignore you.”  She giggled.

Sandy sighed in resignation, and
decided it was pointless to try to talk to Jina when she was in this state.

“You know what this place needs,”
Jina said in a slurred voice.  “It needs some good, live music.  Not this
electronic, high speed, dizzy trash.”

“Jina, let me back into the band
and I’ll get us a gig here, I promise.”  Stan reached around Jina, grabbed a
pretzel and dipped it into the caviar.  Sandy glared at him, and he let go of
the pretzel with his hands in an, “Ok, ok, back off,” posture.

Jina didn’t notice a thing and
smiled at him.  “Of
course
you’re back in the band.  We’ve missed you.” 
She nuzzled her face into his neck.

“Great, Jina.  I’m glad.  Hey,
how about you come over to my place tonight.  I’ll show you around my new
apartment, and...”

“I’d love to, Stan.”

Sandy gave her an, “Are you
crazy,” look.  Jina appeared apologetic for a moment, and then she giggled.

“Good,” Stan replied.  “Let me go
tell my friends where I’m off too, and I’ll be right back.”

“You don’t mind driving home
alone, do you, Sandy?” Jina asked.

“No, I don’t.  What I do mind is
how much you are going to regret this tomorrow morning.  You are too drunk to
make a decision like this.”

“You can’t stop me.”  Jina shook
her head defiantly and chugged down the last of her drink.

“Is he sober enough to drive?”

“He says he hasn’t had anything
to drink tonight at all.”

“That worries me, too.  Jina, he’s
sober and you’re drunk.  He just wants to take advantage of you.”

“I don’t care.  It’s been a while
since I had some, Sandy, and it’s been driving me crazy this whole week. 
Especially with all of your roses, and all that…”

“Jina, I have half a mind to hold
you down and not let you—”

“Hi, I’m back.  Are you ready to
go, my sweet?”

“Yes, my love.  I’ve been ready
all my life.”  Jina bust out into a fit of laughter, and Stan half-carried her
as she staggered out the door.

Sandy shook her head and ate
another caviar-coated pretzel.  One of these days, Jina was going to wake up. 
But until then...

She put the lid back on the jar,
paid for the two drinks she promised to buy plus the one she drank, plus Jina’s
drinks, gathered up her roses, and left.

The streetlight over her car had
gone out in the short time she had been in the bar.  A little nervous at the
lack of illumination, she hastily unlocked her door and placed the roses in the
back seat.  Before getting in, she glanced at the brick wall to see if she
could still see her drawing. 

The wall was completely black. 
Even without the overhead lamp, light still shone from down the street.  There
should have been enough to see the chalk roses.  But she couldn’t.  She couldn’t
even tell that the wall was made of brick.

And there was something else that
wasn’t quite right.  She squinted her eyes.

The wall was moving.

Her instinctive reaction was to
dive into the car and squeal away.  But logic told her that walls don’t move
without a reason, and if she didn’t find out why, right now, it would haunt her
for weeks to come.

So slowly, she stepped around her
car door and towards the wall. 

Inches away, the image came into
focus.  Light glimmered off millions of tiny black bodies.

Ants.

The entire surface was covered
with shiny, black army ants.  Several moved away at once to reveal part of an
unharmed chalk rose.  They converged again.

The jar of caviar fell from her
hand to the pavement and shattered.

She stood in a petrified stare. 
Never had she seen anything like it before.  They were only on the wall,
nowhere else.  Not the sidewalk, not the pavement.  The mass stopped where the
wall met concrete.

As she stared, an eerie feeling
crept over her.

Something hit her head, and she
screamed, flinging a clump of self-entangled ants out of her hair.

She didn’t feel safe until she
got home.