The Guard's Daydream

Originally Written : Feb 5, 2009 8:57 PM

Work that day was slow. There wasn’t much going on around the Guard shack, so I ended up just watching the video monitors. Things were always slow when it rained. I liked it that way.

My mind drifted to the way the sky looked the night before, with a big ring of clouds around the moon. Someone special told me that it was a Fairy Ring, the moon and the Fairies were battling for the sky. The moon would surely spill its rain if it won, but might be delayed a few days if it didn’t. It looked as though the Moon won.

Quiet days were the best for calm meditation. Normally I could think just a little clearer on the days when it would rain, like the water would wash my thoughts. For some reason, the same feelings kept permeating my thoughts. Thinking clearer was a bit harder on this unusual day.

I sighed, stood up and paced across the floor in the Guard shack. I walked out into the rain for a moment, not caring if my uniform got completely soaked. I loved the rain; it was beautiful. The fog was rolling in, making things seem even more mystical and mysterious. I couldn’t see the million dollar mansions on the hill before me anymore. The top of the trees protruded, creating a cloudy, wooden paradise with everything from palm tree to pine.

The heater blasted inside the guard shack, humming its merry little tune, warming the retreat from the elements. I didn’t want to be warm, though. I wanted to let the rain wash away my worries and concerns. I faced the sky, feeling the drops splash onto my cheeks. Slowly the drips started to pool on my face and run down my neck. It was cold outside, so the rain sliding down the outside of my throat was like ice water. I rubbed my neck and closed my eyes. What a glorious, beautiful day!

His face stuck in my mind. I couldn’t shake it. I looked at my cell phone only about fifty times a day, as I had his photograph on the wallpaper. It was a close enough image to see my most favorite feature, his long, curly hair. He had beautiful chestnut hair that wound into soft coffee colored waves that extended just below the base of his skull. His masculine jaw line was outlined by perfectly sculpted facial hair that would tickle anyone who got close enough to it. It was a good tickle. His piercing blue eyes held worlds of wonder and amazement and were themselves magical in the most sincere of ways. He saw the world as I saw it, finally proving I was not alone in my mysticism and fantasies. Magic did exist, and he was the living, breathing proof. He was born of the Fairy kingdom and raised by Pirates and Rogues. It showed in everything he ever touched.

Suddenly I was inspired to write. I didn’t know what I was going to write, just that I was going to spend a few minutes telling a story about this wonderful person. I stepped back into the guard shack and started tapping away at my laptop computer. The rain continued to pour outside, the wind picking up a little with each passing minute. My eyes grew heavy as I sat in the white plastic seat in front of the warm heater.

Sheets of rain started to sweep across the parking lot, showing how uneven the water fell from the sky. The sheets would zigzag across the black pavement, leaving odd snakelike patterns that would disappear in seconds. Pools started to form and rivers began cascading through this blacktop jungle. Bubbles formed where the large drops merged and fell into the puddles from the pine needles of the tree near by.

The water grew deeper all around me, forcing its way into the elevated guard shack. I knew I would have to get out of the guard shack if I was going to make it to shelter. I couldn’t believe it was starting to fill with water. I would have to swim to safety.

I swam to the nearest tree and looked back. The guard shack wasn’t a guard shack at all! I had been hiding under a huge mushroom! I turned to climb higher in the tree and that’s when I realized it hadn’t been a tree I swam to at all. It was a gigantic reed, like the kind at the edge of a river, but multiplied in size ten fold. Where had the tree gone that I knew was by the guard shack? I looked around and didn’t see it anywhere. I climbed higher to get a better view.

Dry land wasn’t far away. I would have to swim a while to get there, but it looked close enough for me to make it. A proud, twisted old tree stood on the banks of the dry land, also of an unnatural size. I jumped from the reed and dove into the surging water below. The mushroom was completely under water now. I swam hard towards the land I had seen. It seemed like the rain was starting to let up.

A huge piece of driftwood was partially buried on the shore when I reached land. I looked around bud couldn’t see the other end. Then I saw it. This wasn’t some piece of driftwood I was climbing over, it was the root to a colossal tree! The bark on the tree was thick and coarse, but not stable enough to climb. I needed to get a better view of my surroundings. Just moments ago, all of this had been a big parking lot!

The clouds finally parted and the sky cleared enough for me to look around. I climbed as high as I could on the tree roots and held my hand over my eyes to shade myself from the glaring sun.

A whole new world lay before me. A river off in the distance coursed its way through a wide valley. Everything was ten times bigger than it should be. Mushrooms provided shelter for potato bugs and silverfish; birds were beginning to take fight from the trees again since the rain had stopped. A couple of earthworms surfaced and worked to dry themselves on a slab of granite. From under flowers came the most beautiful creatures I had ever seen. They looked almost human, but their fingers were longer and very thin, their faces drawn taught and almost squinting. The hair on their heads was trimmed short and was in an unkempt, unruly manner. The strangest part of these creatures was the odd pair of sticks that sprouted from their backs. At first they looked like sticks, but upon closer inspection I began to realize that those sticks were just the frameworks for their beautiful iridescent wings. They bent their knees slightly, jumped into the air, and flew with the speed of hummingbirds.

One came rather close and looked at me. She was as big as I was! Or, it started to sink in, I was as small as she was. Her hair was a light blondish pink, and her eyes, what I could see of them through her narrow almond slits were an unnatural brilliant green. She had seen something on me and reached out her spindling fingers to grab it. As I watched her, I realized what it was she wanted. She was reaching for a bright golden key around my neck. Just about the time I thought it might be wise to stop her, she wrapped her fingers around it and was taking off. I grabbed her arm and held on. Her wings were so powerful they lifted me right off of the ground, high into the air, and never once did she let go of the key. If I had let go of her, she likely would have choked me to death with the string holding the key on my neckline!

Finally she landed in the center of a large pink rose. It appeared she was bored with the game and let go of my key. I had no idea what the key went to, but I knew it was important for some reason. She flew off, buzzing happily like a humming bird. Seeing that I wasn’t entirely sure what to do from here, she circled back. Her long finger pointed back towards the tree where I had been when she flew up to me moments before. She wanted me to go back to the tree?

My gaze followed to where she was pointing, and near the base of the tree was a small wooden door with a handle in the middle. Just below the handle was a lock. It looked as though this key would fit into that lock perfectly. I guessed there was only one way to figure that out. I jumped out of the rose, slid down a tall blade of grass and made my way back to the tree. It was the opposite side from where I had been, so when I reached the door into the tree I couldn’t see the river anymore. The girth of the tree completely blocked it from sight. Several more flying creatures flitted up on speedy wings, all of them urging me to go through the door. One of them opened her mouth as if to say something, but instead emitted a horrible squeal, steady and shrieking. The only thing I wanted in the entire world was to get away from that sound.

I put the key into the door and turned it with a clanking sound. It slowly opened to reveal…

I was back in the guard shack. My eyes were heavy. The horrible squealing shriek continued! I jumped to my feet and looked around just as the noise subsided. A car sat outside the guard booth, the driver occasionally honking the horn to get my attention. Her strawberry blonde hair and nearly unrealistic green contacts were a stark contrast to the blue gray world of the subsided magical rain.

“Hi there, I was just wondering if you know how to get to the Three Martini’s restaurant.” She paused, shaking the water out of her hair through the open window with her long, spindly fingers. “Damn this blasted rain – I hate this stuff!”

Stalkers, Killers and Scars

Occasionally as I sit at my desk at work, I'll hear a quiet, almost hushed tapping on the door at the end of the hall. I close my eyes and dread each tap, not knowing who it is or what they want. It could easily be James or Ricky, my two most current stalkers. I call them stalkers, but they aren't really. They're just overly obsessed grown up little boys with egos bigger than their IQ's. To develop into true 'stalker status' they would have to watch me continuously, threaten harm, try to cause harm and follow me home. Well, by my own definition, at least James isn't a true stalker. Ricky most certainly is. Ricky actually has gone out of his way to cause harm.

James (48 and married) one day last October decided it was a good

idea to corner me in an elevator and confess that he was in love with me. It wasn't love - I knew the signs. It was infatuation and the beginnings of obsession. I tried to put James in his place and failed miserably. I tried again and again I failed. Finally, I gave it one more go and wasn't very nice about it. He still comes around and tries, but he's never going to find me anywhere without back up if he's around, and if I'm ever alone I'll be packing some punch with me, and I don't mean of the fruit flavor variety.

Ricky (42 and married) turned out to be a real piece of work. I befriended him and he fell in love with me. I tried to help him and he took it to be returned love. He grew more and more

obsessed each day, each time he saw me. He developed scenarios in his mind, played out fantasies in his head that nobody else could see. When I turned him away in fear and anger, he tried to sabotage my career with my company. He told his wild fantasies as

though they were fact. He grew spiteful and vengeful. He continued calling me and sending me text messages daily. He would show up where I worked and wanted to 'talk' to me. I avoided him at all cost, for fear of my own safety. He told me that he wanted to move in with me and marry me. Enough was enough... once more I had to put someone in their place and things only got worse.

Things with Ricky are far from being completely over I fear. I know there is more yet to come, but just like James, he'll never find me unprepared for his worst.

When I was only 18 years old, I had a boyfriend who hit me. Instantly I grew scared, but knew that I couldn't leave because there was nowhere for me to go. As soon as I obtained an escape, I took it. I did what I had to in order to escape things from getting worse, and that meant walking away one day without a penny to my name or a thing I owned except the clothes on my back. It wasn't the first time I'd lost everything, and for those who know me well know that it wasn't the last, either.

Months later, having given up my entire life and started over without any bills in my name, somehow he found me. He called the phone belonging to the girl I was staying with at the time. He left a very detailed message stating where I was, whom I was with, what I was wearing, how long I was in the pool, whom I sat in the jacuzzi with and what time I returned to the apartment. The police were called and a full report was made. That was the last I ever heard of or from him. In that case, the law worked.

Why do people develop such obsessions? What turns a normal man or woman into a stalker? In most cases, unless the person is a serial murder or rapist, most stalkers don't have a previous case history.

While on a call setting a schedule to pick up my things from an ex after a break up once, I asked him what it was that made him snap. He had followed me to work and then waited for me to go on lunch. Then he walked into my office with a single long stem rose and a very

morose expression on his face. In a flat monotone voice, he asked the office secretary where I was. From the tone of his voice alone, she was frightened. She told him I was at lunch and secretly planned to call me the second he walked back out of the office and started to head for the elevator.

But he didn't leave.

"Is this her chair," he asked, spotting a picture on my desk identifying it as mine.

"Yes, it is. I'm sorry but you'll have to go. She isn't here."

"So this is her desk," he continued, running his fingertips over my

keyboard, the edge of the desk, the lip of my coffee cup, down the length of an ink pen laying flat...

"Y-y-yeah," she stammered, "but you'll have to..."

"You said that already" he said, cutting her off in that same, flat, monotone voice. "Don't worry. I'll leave. But I'll ask you to do something for me before I go."

"W-what's that," she asked.

"Tell her," he paused, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. He stood up, placed the rose across the desk in front of the keyboard, and looked back at the secretary with a steely cold stare, "tell her I was here."

As if that whole scenario wasn't scary enough, he then went downstairs and decided to wait for me to return from lunch. All of the elevators in my building were in the same place, so it wasn't hard to figure out how to find me. At some point I would HAVE to walk through the lobby on my way to the elevators.

He spotted me before I even reached the front doors and came running outside. As soon as I saw him, my heart jumped up into my throat and began to pound in my brain. My ears rang with the power of the reverberation of my beating, pulsing heart. I turned away from him and began to walk back in the direction I had come from. I could find salvation in the restaurant with my coworkers. I remembered that I had a friend on their way to see me to drop off my revamped resume, maybe they could help. My ex ran in front of me and I had to veer off to the left, away from the restaurant. He stepped in front of me. I turned around and headed for my office. My high heels prevented me from running, and had I taken the time to remove them I could have easily been thrown off balance and hurt. He jumped in front of me again and I turned around once more. Over and over he paced me, darted in front of me, yelled, screamed, cried, threatened and grabbed at me. People were everywhere - it may have been the only thing that saved me. They started to look, to stare. Who was this madman trying so hard to stop the girl on her way to work? And yet not a soul called the police.

I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the first number in my phones

memory, the person coming with my resume. He grabbed the phone out of my hand - but not before the person on the other end picked up. I yelled at the phone as he thrust it at me, yelling, asking who it was I was calling.

"Help!" I screamed at the phone. Then, as easy as sitting on the porch sipping a glass of iced tea in an Arkansas summer, I relaxed and continued the exhausting pace of walking back and forth along the sidewalk, waiting for someone to help me. I showed no panic, and in fact smiled, despite my abundant fear. That only angered him more. I didn't respond. I wouldn't look at him. I just kept walking.

Suddenly a large green SUV pulled up to the curb not far away from me. I turned my ex before he jumped in front of me again. I walked about three paces before I suddenly spun around. In spite of the high heels I took off at a dead run, grabbed the passenger side door handle and yanked the door open. I jumped in, slammed it shut behind me and locked it securely as I did. The green SUV tore off around the corner, squealing tires as we went. My friend had shown up, just in time.

I got a restraining order against this guy the following day. It wasn't even by choice, but was decided at work that if I didn't get one, I wouldn't have a job.

"I don't know why I did that," he replied. "I've never been like that with anyone else. I've loved people before, but not like I loved you. Like I LOVE you. Something about you disarmed me and threw me off balance. I felt the need to always be near you, to be with you, and that if I couldn't have you I didn't want anyone else to have you either. You belonged to me and to no one else. You were mine. You ARE mine."

I believe that people are made of an electric energy, hence the subtitle for my blog. We have this magnetic attraction to certain people, just as magnets have attractions and repulsions to

other magnets. Sometimes the attractions are stronger than others, sometimes the object of the attraction isn't attracted in return. Take the case of the magnet and the safety pin. The safety pin doesn't have any magnetic properties, but the magnet will still attach firmly to the safety pin, taking it wherever it goes. If you leave the safety pin attached to the magnet long enough, it starts to draw on some of its powers. Later, the safety pin will be attracted to other metal objects, whereas before it was not. Something inside the safety pin changed. It 'snapped' if you'll pardon the expression.

I think with the electric energy we possess, sometimes we can change something in the others around us, forming them into someone or something they aren't familiar with. In the case of my ex, he had never been a scary stalker type of person before. He had loved before, but he had never 'snapped' on someone before. Something inside of him had changed. Something inside of him, long dormant or previously non-existent, came raging to the surface, causing him to become someone else entirely. He transformed into an innert safety pin into a magnetic force, sharp, cold, precise and frighteneing.

People with no previous case histories, like Joe McArthur of

Duncanville Texas, can suddenly snap like he did in 1999. His wife left him for another man, and in a few months time he crawled on his stomach through an empty field toward her house. He carried a rifle and a Bowie knife. He shot and killed her mother through a window, shot her father, leaving him in critical condition, shot her new husband and left him in a coma, and shot her brother, leaving him paralyzed for life. Finally, after chasing her around the house in circles, he pinned his ex-wife in the bathroom. He took the Bowie knife off of his belt and cut her from stem to stern, gutting her like a deer. He left her there, bleeding in the bathroom floor.

With no previous case history, why would a man snap like that? There's really no way to predict who will do something like that. Sometimes it's the abusive man like the one I knew when I was only

18 years old. Other times it's the gentleman with the child-like temper, like the workplace incident I had. Often it's a woman, mad with jealousy, out of her mind with 'love', or her version of it, anyway.

In each case, the stalkers and killers leave scars. They may not always be visible. I've never been given a physical scar by an ex, thank goodness. I've been hit, smacked around, thrown by my hair and jostled, but I've fought back, refusing to succumb to the temperament and violent tendencies of someone else. No, all of my scars from previous relationships are internal. They're scars though, none the less.

Some of the scars will heal with time. Others remain just below the surface, and yet others never develop that protective layer. They are always on the surface, always raw to the touch.

The scars are marks of character for each of us. They are the reminders of life's many lessons. They keep us in touch with who we are and where we came from. Without them, I wouldn't be the same person. Sometimes I may wish that one scar in particular didn't exist, but if that were the case I wouldn't be as cautious. If I hadn't been burned by the Tupperware Fire of 1989 and lost the feeling in the tip of my thumb, I may have lost my entire arm in the Potholder Pyrotechnics Fire of 1991... the Tupperware made me more cautious.

Because of my past run-ins, I can handle James and Ricky much better now than if I'd never had that sort of a past. The scars made me just that much more cautious.

"Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars."
Kahlil Gibran (1883 - 1931)