 Emotional I.D.
Saturday afternoons often begin so perfectly...The kind of afternoons that were subject to destiny.
The University mail-room was not her problem on weekends. Lisa worked Monday through Friday after classes all week long…The only problem now was deciding if to get a cheep replacement cell phone or spend more money on the type that took pictures.
Her old phone did not have a photo option.
In fact, it had no features since she accidentally dropped it in the toilet last Thursday.
Lisa checked the mirror to see her sandy-blonde hair and brown eyes. She was entirely sexy but tried not to let herself know she knew.
The land-line phone rang and she answered. It was Vicki, her best friend who lived in an apartment across campus. She usually called on her way over.
“Lisa! Oh my god, I need to tell you about something but I’ll be there in ten minutes…” Vicki informed her over the background noise of her car stereo.
“Vicki- Hey! Are we going downtown or Eastland?” Lisa asked quickly.
“…Um, let’s go to Eastland. We always go downtown,” Vicki seemed distracted by something, exclaimed shit! before returning to the conversation, “…I’ll be there in a few minutes, I gotta hang up.”
Lisa and Vicki were somewhat opposites in terms of organization. Lisa had to clear the passenger’s seat of junk before getting into the Toyota.
“Jeeze, Vic…What’s with all this crap all the time?” It was what she asked her on a regular basis while clearing off papers and empty water bottles and whatever else Vicki would think she needed all over the place.
“Oh…poo. Listen! I was on a message board last night, one that deals with the supernatural, anyway there was this weird chain of messages that involved me…I mean, it really couldn’t have been because I never post anything – I just read- but these messages kept coming up that described my life…” Vicki was excited and a little bit more manic than usual.
“You know I don’t get into all that,“ Lisa was ready to explain again how the internet was a bunch of perverts and liars.
“No! I know. But No. The messages or whatever were describing things in my dreams! How is that possible?”
Lisa looked at her skeptically, slightly grinning.
“Well?!” Vicki wanted to know.
Lisa just wanted to go.
“I don’t know…You’re silly.” Lisa watched as her friend began to come down to Earth. Vicki would sometimes go on about things like fortune telling or psychic phenomena or even U.F.O.s. Lisa would always figure out the trick and make it into logic again.
“…Yeah. I don’t know. It was weird because even up to this very minute seems like it happened exactly like my dream…And my dream was described by whoever was-“
“Vic, would you please take us to the mall? Downtown, Eastland…I don’t care.”
Vicki shut up and drove.
The mall was scented with cookies and capitalism. Eastland mall was a little run down but it was more quaint then downtown.
“Do you want to get food before or after I take my sweet time shopping?” Lisa asked.
“Um…I dunno,” she was distant and seemed like she could barely keep up walking.
They stopped.
“What’s the matter?” Lisa was annoyed.
“Nothing. It’s just that…”
“What is the mal-function?”
“I keep thinking that we already did this…”
“Deja vu…So what?” Lisa demanded to know.
Vicki just slowly shook her head and mumbled, “It won’t stop.”
Lisa suddenly felt overwhelming sympathy for her friend. She got closer to her with a big grin and whispered to her, “You’re going crazy.”
Vicki smiled.
“Okay, bitch. You can buy me lunch, then.” Vicki was back to herself.
“Good, I’ll get my replacement phone after. Plus I want a new jacket from the leather shop and they’ll be at a discount because it’s still warm outside,” Lisa began walking toward the food court.
Only a scarce number of people in the mall today, the two walked along and talked free of anyone overhearing.
They began to discuss how guys could be so insincere. How they just want a piece of ass and the guys who did understand love and female intuition were rare if not gay.
“…So he says to me, ‘You know you want to get in my pants,’ and I said ‘fuck you’ and he says, ‘Yeah.’” Vicki complained.
“I bet he lives at home with his mommy,” Lisa remarked.
“Ha-ha, yeah. He was obviously some…” Vicki trailed off while she watched her friend reach down and pick up an object from the floor.
“Hey, check this out…Exactly like the one I was thinking to buy,” Lisa stared at the cell phone she found. It was silver and black with an insignia she didn’t recognize. It felt heavier than any phone she had held before. She flipped it open; there was the usual layout of buttons, even a camera option. The power was off.
“I wonder who lost it,” Lisa was wondering.
“Jesus…” Vicki spoke softly.
Lisa snickered. “Jesus lost a cell phone?!”
“…Tell me we’re not dreaming…Tell me were not. I’m getting the fuck out of here…SHIT! That’s exactly what I did do in the dream…I left and…Fuck, we went downtown…No. That changed, in the dream we were downtown so I decided to go here to avoid…And you said ‘I wonder who lost it’ and the voice says ‘I know exactly who found it’ and I thought it was for me,” Vicki was obviously afraid and rambling while she took steps backward.
“Vicki! What are you talking about?” Lisa was concerned but amused.
“He’ll love you more than anyone else, it’s his reality…I don’t care. I need a cigarette,” Vicki spoke with a mix of fear and apathy as she quickly walked away, feeling betrayed.
“Come back you silly bitch!” Lisa called after her but she was already gone.
She smirked. Vicki would never leave her stranded but this behavior made her feel downright abandon. Then again, her friend was a little kooky.
Lisa studied the phone until she found how to turn on the power. It lit up with a dazzling violet. It was completely odd the name ‘Lisa’ was titled on the phone just above a picture of the sun. She could almost feel warm light it produced.
Something made her feel an overlapping in her head. Was something about this familiar?
Lisa looked around and was unnoticed by anyone. She expected to see another girl named Lisa looking around for her phone. The idea to check its electronic phone book or previous calls produced nothing. The phone was blank of any numbers of pictures except for the one of the sun.
She decided to leave the phone powered ‘on’ in case the owner might call.
Lisa decided to put the phone in her purse for now and went to catch up with Vicki who was acting strange and ruined her shopping mood.
Outside her best friend was smoking and sitting on a bench all alone.
“Okay, so what’s the big idea?” Lisa asked her.
Vicki looked up with tears in her pretty brown eyes.
“It’s so beautiful. It will. It’s just not real, I’m not sure. I’ve never felt something so real that was the opposite of reality…Maybe it’s the REAL reality…I don’t know,” Vicki explained.
“Are you high?” Lisa asked.
“You know…This should be really interesting. He did some mind fuck to me but I’m easy…I can’t wait to see how you’ll accept it,” Vicki sounded a little cold in her reply as her eyes glared.
“Damn it, what are you talking about?!” Lisa sighed.
There was a strange sound from Lisa’s purse just then, a tone that could only be described almost too low to be heard yet obviously loud enough for a phone ringing of some kind.
Lisa rummaged through the purse and found the device. It was lit with a soft aura as seen through rainwater.
“Hello,” Lisa answered.
“Tell Vicki I love her too.” The voice on the other end was pleasant. So relaxed.
The words passed through her head slowly at first, then quickly…Then about 60 times at once.
“Hello?” Lisa asked but her own voice was distant. It suddenly seemed like all this happened in a dream.
Lisa struggled to get control of her own thoughts in this moment.
“Hello, is this your phone?” She composed her voice to speak clearly but the sounds came out like someone who was intoxicated.
“I love you!” Vicki exclaimed as if talking to the world.
Lisa looked at her like she really was crazy.
“Lisa is my angel that lives on the sun. You are so smart. Proving any of this to you would never be easy...But I need you to invent something for me.” The voice spoke in a dreamy admiration.
All around her the reality she knew changed, even under the clarity of a logical mind. In fact, whatever the change in perception, was happening in unisen with logic. The abstract sense of the universe (only imagined before) now was visible. Lisa was a great student of how everything worked. Her studies of science had sometimes left her cynical about love or imagination.
Now that she could actually see.
All the connections around her and feel how beautiful they could be.
She felt protected from death by knowing the constant nature of energy.  |
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