Dark Call
You couldn’t sleep. It was the first Wednesday night of your insomnia. You sat
unmoving in front of the computer. The house was silent like the midnight darkness
that shrouded it.The call penetrated your reverie like shattering glass. You almost
jumped out of your skin. The keyboard clattered to the floor. This was only the
beginning.“
Come on! you dreamt all this,” Maya exclaimed when you called her. “Maya am telling you something called me last night.” You could just picture her beautiful scornful face. “Damn you Maya.”
You avoided Maya. For two straight days you tripped on Internet detritus. Luckily
mother was happily languishing in soap suds. Spaghetti meals for the cyber zombies.
And you slept deeper.
Saturday brought naughty Maya. She was wired.“Hope the voice didn’t castrate you,”
she mocked. You trembled. In the fruit and vegetable market with Maya, revealed the
usual weakness. She was a voluptuous tease-riding shotgun. Time leered hard. Her
lascivious sway greatly reduced the prices we desired. Maya licked and purred.
Someone touched you. A little old lady who looked like sea sand.
“Buy my carrots sir.” “Thank you.” “You are so handsome, don’t listen tonight.” “Patience sir.” You shivered. Maya spat in a man’s face.
Another Saturday night for the herd instinct. Maya shrieked and swayed while you
drank to oblivion. The ghostly voice lingered at the bottom. Suddenly you wanted to
merge with its essence. Sink into its sepulchral persistence. Maya kissed you to life.
Dawn had chased away the herd. She craved climax at your house.You decided to quit
Maya. She had become an aberration. A Pompeii in your Zen vigil. She suggested you
buy headphones for Wednesday nights.
Midnight Wednesday the machine slept while you shivered. The voice crept out of the
darkness with vampiric seductiveness. Your name on the wind, steering darkness and
mystery. You leaned into it just as mother disturbed you for cigarettes.“Damn Maya
took my cancer.”“She will give you AIDS for it,” sluggish mother barely managed.
The voice. The voice. The voice. A restless week vigil. Growing thin. Condemning
everyone to hell for that voice. You decided to chase your name. Like paranoid
explorers secreting ego millennia. Soaked in black, faded into midnight Wednesday
insomnia, you followed the voice to its soul. No hounds of hell snarling. No brooms in
skinless flight. Nor wayward coffins stranded in purgatory. Only Maya in mischievous
starlight.
“Where’s my name?”“The computer ate it.” “Which computer?”You saw a boat
filled entirely with computers on the beach. Every brand to suit every high tech desire.
Maya stood guard grinning with a gun. Her bath suit clad body, the perfect commercial.
You shivering. Suddenly your name again. A crack of a match near the boathouse.
Your name with urgency. Maya whispered when you passed close to her.“You are the
best man for the job.” And you knew she had won again.
copyright©2003 Billy Jno Hope
