Slippage

Slippage

By - Robert Aaron Goldsborough

         I have never seen her face so emotionless before.  The absence of animation leads me to accept the truth of her final statement: death.  How much more like a thing she has become, so quiet, so still.  Even with all the practice she allowed herself through the years of becoming believably alive, she would just never let herself accept that she was just like everyone else.  Now her corpse lies at my feet and I find myself struggling to find the humanity that I loved in this empty shell.  I wish I could cry, but there is nothing of her here.  Let me try then to explain to you my love while she still lived. 

      Amelia and I first met five years ago at a local bar that I used to frequent.  I felt at home in the dim downtown lounge sipping my favorite designer antioxidants, hoping for the high that I could achieve through physical purity, when in she walked.  Her hair, a tangle of fluorescent ribbons and neon braids, cascaded down her back as if woven by digital elves trying their hardest to marry the newest technologies with yesterdays' false religions.  Her dress could not have been changed for as many days as her skin's own scent.  The dark eyes that darted back and forth under the colorful tresses twinkled with the very spark of hidden knowledge.  You knew after catching those eyes that she had a purpose.  I knew when I saw those eyes that I was doomed to fall in love.  Her small hands clutched an old black leather case, holding it more like a child than just an animal hide.  The fingers, with eager determination, pawed at the case as she crossed the floor to hide in a back alcove.  My curiosity was piqued; I could not help myself.  I had to know what her story was.  I staggered to my feet, my brain reeling from the effects of too many tissue-clearing liquids, and followed her to her table.

         " Why, hello there stranger.  I'm Jeremy Jacobian," I said.

         "What?  Hey?  Ger-my, what?"

         "No, no, no.  Jer-a-mee." 

I enunciated with more care, catching the wonder of those dark eyes.

         "Yeah, okay.  What do you want Ger-mee Jaco-whatever?  I don't feel like dealing with some toxin-shocked anti-O head right at the moment."

         "Your hair..."

         "What about it?"

         "...it's glorious!  Straight out of fairy tales and ancient video games.  I'm captured by its..."

I paused for a moment trying to make sure that I would not trip over my tongue.  My brain would not congeal and I fell into the seat, almost on top of her.  My mouth was still open, looking for words to fill its annoying presence.  She pulled something from her bag that shut my gaping maw. 

         "What's that?" I asked.

         "Fairy tales?  You think I look like a fairy tale?" 

A color drawn from sunrises in distant countries traced its way across her cheeks.

         "Yes!  Elves and princess' kingdoms and the whole lot." 

I half smiled, only able to feel half of my face.

         "Want to see?" 

She smiled with white teeth stretching her full lips.  I took the object without lowering my eyes from her transmuting features.  It was heavy and cold to the touch, smooth metal, topped with a spherical mesh ball.  She raised it to my lips and told my to say my name.

         "Jeremy Jacobian." 

My voice sounded from inside the leather bag on her lap.  A microphone, my mind was not only tumbling over itself, but also chiding its own dullness.  She reached inside and revealed the tiny speaker that had amplified my voice.

         "What's that for?"

         "A new game.  Well, not really a game.  More like an event that I've created.  Or rather a...oh bother.  I don't know what to call it yet, but I want to try it out.  And I figured after days of looking for an out-of-the-way place, that this would be the perfect ground zero for my experiment-thing."

         "Experiment-thing?"

         "Yeah, Mr. Fairy tales.  Oh you're just laughing at me.  Maybe I should go."

She attempted to stand, but my arm went around her waist.  I drew her in close to my face and gave her a conspirator's wink.

         "I must know how this works." 

I gave her a gentle squeeze and another wink.

         "Oh, hells bells!  Why not?  I've used up this much courage I might as well use up the rest."

         " Atta girl.  Well?  What's the experiment?"

         "I think that I have discovered what everyone needs.  A break from being all too fake.  A chance to release some of their emotions in a way that can be socially acceptable.  Poetry." 

She stretched her lips apart again in a glorious smile cutting fissures to either side of her mouth.

         "But...there already is poetry." 

My eyes traced the high arch of cheekbones before settling back on her eyes.

         "Yes.  There are Haikus and such and so forth.  But I have a new way of presenting oneself in poetry without having to be gifted in the art of metaphor.  A way of releasing your emotions without the concern of being understood." 

A distant spark in the depth of her dark eyes was burning itself into a raging inferno of passion for her own words.

         "How?" 

I honestly had to have the answer.  She grinned wide sending more crimson color up her face.

         "People relieve themselves through single word expressions of how they've felt all day or how they feel immediately.  Of course the choice of words may be open to interpretation, but that won't matter.  The word will be said and meant, not by all the rest of the words surrounding it, but by the way the person expresses it.  Gestures and facial expressions, undeniably more memorable than stiff-lipped prose, will be the only poetry the person need feel.  That and the cathartic release of pent up emotion.  Think about it.  Dates with unromantic suitors, beautiful days wasted behind drab desks, screaming children that just won't take 'no' for an answer.  Now there will be a way to release those emotions from your body in an accepted way."  I was beginning to feel the warmth of her inferno.

         "Bad traffic, not enough sleep, not enough vacation, not enough money..."  She continued.

         "Bad job, bad politicians..." I said.

         "Nothing at the restaurant that you can eat..."

         "No one to understand you..." 

She paused in mid inspiration and burned me even more with her eyes.

         "So that is why the microphone, yeah?"

         "Yeah.  Now all I need is someone brave enough to stand up and try it with me." 

I was full of her and could no longer help myself.  I wanted to be near her shock of hair and the shock of her ideas even more.  I was in. 

I stood with the microphone and stepped, head raised, to the center of the bar.  The other ten patrons glowered at my brazen stride.  I could feel their questioning gaze fall upon me, but I knew that if I was to be allowed in further to her world I could not falter.  I met every single pair of eyes, hers twice, and raised the microphone to my lips.  A voice from deep inside my chest dug its way up into my face pulling a grin into a grimace, my brow into a knotted configuration of creases.  I threw my rictus against the microphone through strained vocal cords.

"Understand!" 

The word echoed from the tiny speaker resting on the back table.  My voice begged and mixed it into a hybrid of confident acceptance that made eyes twitch with curiosity.  I had them.  They wanted more, eager to hear my speech.  I wanted to give them more.  They were mine, but I knew that that was all I could give them.  The pure determination I had conjured helped convince them that there was to be no more.  They applauded, not knowing why. 

         I stepped forward to the closest barfly and handed over the microphone.  A woman in her late twenties looked at the microphone as if she would never figure out how she could make it function as I was able to.  I nudged her to stand and led her to the floor.  She was not glamorous, but you could tell by her clothing that she had invested a lot of her time and money into her appearance.  She was probably an office girl by day, trying to fit in enough school to better her life.  She stared at the mesh ball looking for either inspiration or a savior.  She knew that all eyes were on her and her meager confidence started to wane.  A whimper escaped her tightening throat, tears welled up, and she looked my way and mouthed a silent cry for help.

         "It's forced, ya see.  Like how life always forces things on you that you can't control.  Well, this you really can control, but you still have to do it.  It's poetry, ya see.  Forced poetry."

I gave her a stern and unrelenting stare.  Her lips trembled.  She closed her moist eyes and thought.  To her it must have felt like a lifetime, but something started to grow behind those closed eyes.  Whether it was what I said or if somehow she knew that this would be one of the only chances she would have for a sense of control in her life, her face moved.  Her eyes tightened to a painful degree, the corners of her painted mouth turned to point at the floor.  Her skin bleached itself white and she swooned with certain faintness.  Her eyes were thrown wide like windows after a hurricane and the lines forcing down her face streaked backwards giving her a look of sudden motion.  Her lips pulled back showing immaculate whites and she spoke.

         "Mine!"

She cut the air with part of the determination I had left.  She let a single tear slide down her cheek to forever mark this moment in her memory.  She sniffed back her head with pride and thrust the microphone into the hand of another patron. 

I returned to my seat.  The fairy-haired wonder sat there beaming with pride all her own.  She was right.  This was the first time she had ever felt this right before. 

         The microphone worked its way through the hands of all ten people.  Some became so overwhelmed that they fled after forcing the weight of the microphone into another's hands (it seemed to gain more weight with each confession of realistic expression).  In the end it made its way into the hands of its owner.  She stood.  Taking long strides to the center of the room, she turned and smiled one of her smiles that I knew I would be seeing a lot more of.  Crimson was riding its glorious path up her cheeks to her forehead.  Her skin seemed to be smiling as much as her face.  Then the cloud that I would never forget descended, taking with it the joy that had once supported her face.  Those dark eyes closed before the cloud.  She was washed out of joy and into an abode that racked her diminishing frame with an unfelt cold.  Her lips thinned and the depressions on her forehead smoothed.  She showed her stress, carried like a weight that would cripple any strong man.  I became afraid for her.  I became afraid of her.  Then she released.

         "Normal." 

It was almost a sigh and would have been inaudible if it was not for the amplification of the tiny speaker.  Her head dropped after releasing her burden and I waited with as much patience as I could.  After a lifetime she raised her head and bore into my soul with those burning eyes.  She was back, renewed after her descent into her own private Hell.

         I found myself walking her home later that night.  I could not have left her side even if I had wanted to.  The passion that I been drawn by was now excavating some primal recess of my own psyche.  I was becoming addicted.  No one could have blamed me for this.  Everyone knows that irrefutable sensation you receive, like so many forgotten Christmas gifts, when love starts digging in its hooks.  So I became her "catch of the day".  I wanted to take her hand and try to absorb some of her energy, maybe have it pull some brilliance out of me, but she would not give it.  I burned all the brighter from the denial.

         "That was unbelievable," I said.

         "Thanks." 

She turned away and I could not resist the urge.  I grabbed her arm tight just above the wrist and tried in desperation to enact an old movie bravado.

         "Are you going to kiss me, or what?"  She asked. 

She stunned me with every syllable.  My grip slackened.

         "I'm not sure if I deserve to kiss you."  I said.

She grabbed the back of my head and drew me to her lips.  The touch of her mouth warmed me beyond any summer I had yet experienced.  I was hopeless with nothing to do but offer her my arms in a cheap sentiment.  She responded with the same passion that had trapped my eyes.  With every tussle of our bodies I knew that she was capturing all of me.  When our lips parted I ached for more.  I needed to have more.  I wanted her in a way that I never thought possible.  I wanted my ears to be filled by her voice.  I wanted my eyes to see only visions of her.  I was not thinking about how I had just met this woman, nor was I considering the fact that I did not even know her name she grabbed my hand and led me up the steps to her loft.

         The heavy wooden door creaked without ceremony on its hinges.  The emptiness of the loft hurt my eyes, denying them objects to focus on.  The open-aired space communicated a sense of loneliness.  My head swam with the lack of stimulation so I looked at her to catch those satisfying eyes.  They stared through me, finding a reserve that I was not even aware of.  I embraced her to assure her that this was where I wanted to be.  She returned the embrace with hesitation and dragged me into a dark corner.  A mattress lay there, immaculate.  The blankets were painted with flowers that matched her hair.  The corners of the sheets were turned down like a hotel's in anticipation of a long expected guest.  I left all uncertainty outside of those sheets with my clothes.  The physical play we performed was even more stimulating than the poetry that she had showed me could exist within a single word.  I felt the inferior for not being able to bring any more to this sharing than myself, but she reassured me that was more than she needed.  I breathed in a freshness that I thought only a child could have imagined.  She begged me to talk, to give her confidence.  I followed her as best as I could, but building sensation and heightened awareness of words blotted out more of our understanding.  Was she trying to find out if this made her real?  I was not sure, but I would be whatever she needed that night (even if one night was all she wanted).  Tomorrow I would do whatever it took to stay as close as she would let me.  I gave her this in hushed promises.  She reciprocated with words and motions, beckoning more from me.  I scaled the words she teased in front of my ears as I sacrificed my soul for her pleasure.  Soft whispers of shared knowledge were seared away by racking vocal cords on both of our behalves.  Then we slept.  I was mad, unaware, and delirious in my dreaming.  I was lost in my dreams with thoughts of waking with her around me.

         "Amelia."

         "Huh? Wha?" 

I rubbed at my eyes. 

         " Amelia.  That's my name.  You kept asking me what my name was in your sleep."

         "Oh? Oh.  I was talking in my..."

         "Don't worry.  You didn't give away any family secrets." 

She was wrapped naked around my torso.

         "Breakfast?"  She asked.

         "No, I really don't do breakfast."

         "Good, neither do I.  I thought I would just ask."

         "How very kind." 

My eyes squinted against the muted daylight that fought the heavy shades covering the large windows.  In the soft light I started to see shapes of indistinct proportions and inconclusive colors.  Amelia grabbed my face in the middle of my delirious musing and kissed me.  Those lips reminded me of the previous night's events.  I blushed as she tightened her hold to send waves of warm oceans up my spine.

         "I really appreciated what you did for me last night."  She said.

         "No problem. It was my pleasure..."

         "No, I mean at the bar. If you hadn't started it I think I would have lost all courage to keep this up. I mean...thanks for forcing it to continue." 

She squeezed again with her thighs.

         "I like that," I said.

         "Like what?" 

Those eyes pierced me making me feel hollow.

         "Forced. Forced poetry."

         "Yeah! That's it! Poetry that actually forces you to analyze yourself, forces you to not interpret, just speak, the way it should be.  Poetry that forces you into it.  Poetry that forces everything into..."

      I did not let her finish this thought.  I was filled up by her passion and let my lips communicate that to her.  We kissed and rolled around in embraces.  I was where I needed to be and she was there as well.  We stayed in bed all day, talking and reenacting the first physical contact of the night before.  Amelia told me more of her ideas for "Forced" poetry.  I told her I would do what ever she needed, how brilliant I found her, and how I knew that I had to be part of this success.  She would stop every once in a while to have me confirm that this was normal and that she had every right to feel as she did.  I did not know it then, and I wish that I had, that this was a sign that I should have heeded from the start.  How was I to know?  I was too enraptured by her to think that there could have been a problem. 

         For many weeks she would find me at my local dive.  It became a whirlwind of emotional outpouring, all revolving around single words.  I started to lose track of consecutive participants who were beginning to beg for their turn at the microphone.  Many of those original poets had returned after realizing the catharsis that they had been given.  We joked about changing the name of the experiment; we even decided to quit referring to it as an experiment.  We were becoming small bar celebrities with our constant minions following us each night.  The owners of the bar were delighted by the influx of business until the lines of tense people started to become unruly.  We had to expand our efforts with several other establishments and a more varied clientele.  We sought out all kinds to influence, from the urban fringes with their grimaces and tri-colored hair to the over-privileged children of disgraced suburban professionals.  We let no one out unspoken. 

One night we stole past kitchen help into a lounge of "jacket-only" crowd.  Amelia pounced at the first barfly with the microphone at ready.  He peered over his sim-tini and olive with a calm eyebrow raised.  Acting as if he had already heard of the sport he put down his glass and retrieved the mic from Amelia's hand.  He pressed the mic to his lips and rose to survey the crowd of 'sim' drinkers with their tight, uncurious features.  A moment of seconds passed, his head dropped to rest his chin against his breastbone.  You could hear his lips warming up in the silence.  His head snapped up and displayed a face in transition.  A mouth snarled past a sneer twisting the cords of thin muscles in the cheeks into a maniacal concourse of hidden lines.  The lines started upward raising the brow and its hairy companions high into the scalp.  Eyes burned with an intensity that was covered by contracting pupils.  The mouth parted with a sentiment resembling hate.

         "Waste." 

Not quite a yell, but enough momentum to raise further eyebrows and curiosities to a peak that would start a movement there like in all the other bars we visited.

         Forced poetry was gaining popularity in the inner-city hangouts as the new trend that everyone had been waiting for.  Underground groups were being formed to discuss future variations and strategies for future "Forces".  Amelia had to remove her phone number from the citizens' list to avoid the callers.  Cathartic groups, hungry for more fixes, taunted us.  When we continued to decline hosting meetings of our own, others were showing up with mics and tiny amplifiers.  Amelia was becoming overwrought and despondent about the theft of her invention. 

That was when she discovered Mercurial Slippage.  I did not know that she was on that silvery liquid until it was too late; by then, so was I.  She displayed the first little silver vial of the slippage one night when I was too tired to sleep.  We had been knocking around some of our original points of success, finding that some bars had already built tiny stages for the poets to relieve their stifled emotions.  Amelia was dragging herself and there was nothing I could say to raise her spirits.  So, we returned home with no catharsis of our own.  My nervous energy was teetering me further away from sleep when those dark eyes burned through me with one question.

         "Ever slipped?"  She asked.

She held out a sealed glass vial.  I shook my head "no" and looked for signs of drug decay in her eyes.

         "It's not an anodyne substance if that's what you're worried about.  Yet it's not a stimulant either."

         "What is it then?"  I asked.

I studied the silvery liquid sliding back and forth in its clear prison.

         "It's...It's different see? No, it's not different. It's the same only comfortable."

She was moving the slippage closer to my hand.  How could I say no to her?  My fingers parted catching the cool tube.  I stared at it wondering what to do.

         "Like this." She said.

Her other hand appeared from her pocket with another small tube.  She closed her hand tight and I heard a tiny sound of breaking glass.

         "There. You see? Nothing to it. The small shards of glass give the slippage easy access under the top layer of skin. Then you just wait."

She smiled dropping the empty remains of the vial onto the floor.  I thought for microseconds about not breaking the tube, but her eyes won me over.  My fingers closed and I felt the tiny break.  I opened my hand to watch the silver slide with mercurial speed and grace into the minuscule scrapes on my epidermis.  For five seconds I felt nothing and then a rush like warm water flooded up my spine, pushing my body down onto the bed next to Amelia.  My nervousness over the drug dissipated as I felt my body and mind slip into unfamiliar waters.  I swam with her beside me through heightened thoughts and emotions that felt more like fresh cookies on cold winter days than the oppression we had staggered through that evening.  We embraced and committed ourselves physically to the newfound peace.  I had found a high that did not remove me from my world.  The drug reminded me, body and mind, of all the positives that lay around me.  She received no more comfort from me that night; she was being completed and soothed by the tiny mercury that slipped her onto shores of her own relaxations. 

         I do not remember too much from that first night of slippage, but I do recall the following morning.  My eyes did not want to focus and I had an overwhelming urge to hide.  Not just from Amelia in embarrassment, but from the whole world.  Nothing seemed as safe as when I was slipping.  She was still asleep when these disturbing revelations hit me, and all I could think about was whether or not she had more.  I counted the dust motes for several hours before Amelia yawned awake.  She wrapped her thin arms around my waist, reassuring me that we could always return to the comfort of the silver liquid.  She nuzzled close to my ear to whisper.

         "This is the way to feel, right?"

         "Ah, they were your drugs."  I said.

         "No, no. I mean I feel, I mean, I'm right, right? I feel like the rest of the human race?"

         "I don't follow."

I did not understand her line of questioning.  We had been living together for months, yet this was the first time I had met her personal demons.

         "You know me?  Right?  I feel like others. I mean, I have emotions like other people right?  You can tell that about me, right?"  She asked.

         "You mean with the Forced poetry?  Yes, you express the same way others do."

         "No, I mean more than that.  I'm sometimes afraid that I can't feel the way others do.  They seem too real when they express, but then they become transparent or mannequin-like.  Oh, I don't know.  I don't think I understand enough.  That's why I came up with the experiment to begin with.  I had to know how others felt.  I never expected this, what they did to the poetry.  I never wanted it trivialized into just a game.  I just wanted to know if I could join them in their feelings."

I did not know what to say.  Her mouth continued to move, but my eyes were the only things listening to her anymore.  What could I say?  Here was this genius of a woman that I had taken for granted as almost a savior, losing touch with a reality that I had taken even more for granted.  My thoughts wandered around the dilemma for what felt like days when she once again brought me back.

         "I've got two more, if you want one.  I think I'm going to try the slippage for our outing tonight."

I took the other vial and we dressed to traverse the bowels of the city.  We were aimless and I felt hopeless. This was the third club we had entered that already had an organized Force.  Amelia grabbed my hand with the frail glass cylinder in it and squeezed.  A few seconds later my mind cleared of its misunderstandings and I settled into a nearby seat.  I slipped into my sense of comfort and watched Amelia mount a tiny stage in the center of the room.  I noticed that the young athletic man who left the stage was in tears.  She grabbed the mic from him and raised it to her mouth.  This being my second slip I was feeling more familiar with the alien ground which the substance built.  I was seeing its manifestations in the world around me.  I could see it working in the thin lines on Amelia's face.  My stomach knotted for a moment, but was waylaid by the drug.  I was easing into a situation that should have frightened me.  Then reality focused like a dream and I saw the woman that I loved haloed in a prismatic hue of rich violets that traced something unpredictable.  Her face tightened into a wide grin.  The colors darkened into her skin making her also look somewhat purple.  Was this a premonition?  She was fading into a dreamlike vision when her features focused sharp in front of me.  Her lined face softened with compassion, smoothing anything that once looked like worry.  Into my dream she spoke.  Not a single word, but sentences.

         "Thank you. Thank you all."

Her lips traced and retraced themselves like tiny folding mirrors leaving afterimages of themselves behind each motion she made to the small crowd.

         "Thank you all for making this real. For proving normalcy is no constant and that even I can understand you. It was not even two months ago when I started this Forced poetry down the street..."

She was not allowed to finish.  These people that she thanked rose from their seats with hisses and boos.  They approached and she slowed her voice.  An older man wrenched the mic out of her hand and escorted her out the door.  I viewed this in awe, not comprehending the full extent of what was happening.  Even when I was carried out and dumped on the sidewalk all I could do was laugh.  Amelia started to kick me with her heavy black boots; all I could do was giggle through the clouds of thinning violet as they turned crimson.  She looked so lovely in her rage.  I saw the slippage tracing its way back across her forehead and smooth her worry away once again.  We did not go to another bar that night; instead we spent the night cavorting in a local park until the sun came up.  With the sun came sleep and we did.  The park guards were not amused that we chose to sleep so near to the little pond, especially when they were forced to fish us out after we had both come near to drowning in our sleep by rolling into it.  We retreated home, our comfort dissipated. 

         She cried herself to sleep in my arms that night, denied to feel as human as she had every right to feel.  In the months that followed, under the influence of larger quantities of mercurial slippage, she contacted a lawyer that would allow her to claim rights to Forced poetry.  The lawyer helped market and sell her cathartic prose as an idea to a gaming company.  They converted the idea into a marketable home game for all those dinner parties where conversation could always be counted on to turn dreary.  Money was no longer a problem and neither was obtaining even larger amounts of slippage.  After the first year we were slipping more than dealing with the life around us.  We purchased a large warehouse near the area where it all began and moved in.  Amelia was going to make as human a statement as possible.  Setting up accommodations in defiance and contempt for those who would have mocked her seemed human enough of a thing to her.  Still, she would cry herself to sleep in my arms when the slippage had run its course.  Every night I would hold and rock her to sleep telling her how wonderful, emotional, and full of life she was.  Most of the time she would only hear so much before she was cracking three or four glass tubes in her hand.  I, most of the time, would likewise join her.  We slipped away together into the personal world of emotion that she manifested for us.  I had always felt like just the interloper in her brilliance, but she needed me, even though I could not follow her into the emptiness that she believed she was made of.  I tried as hard as I could in my own deliriums to help her find a grasp on her humanity, but I never seemed to be quite as adequate as the silver substance. 

         I remember "coming to" one night in a heavy mist of roiling slippage to see a shape forming in front of the large warehouse windows.  The mists parted showing a silhouette in the orange streetlights that appeared vague, yet familiar.  It was female in shape, but something about the countenance disturbed me.  Amelia was naked and crying.  Her trembling made the walls seem to shake.  I was not positive if this was really her or just the slippage causing even more damage to my brain.  She must have heard my mind wandering because she turned to face me.  Those dark eyes, glazed in tears, found me.  A chill, like thousands of tiny frozen spiders, crawled up my back and rested behind my eyes.  The mist lifted and I saw her mouth moving.  I could not hear her, but I could tell what she was trying to say.  She could no longer tell the difference between the real world and the world that slippage brought.  This was a developing problem we were both starting to face.  It felt reassuring that she was beginning to admit it; I was afraid to admit it.  Her words never flowed, but the tears continued.  I rose from the bed with a sheet and wrapped her in it.  Pulling her to the bed I kissed her between her sobs.  I was still just trying to comfort her.  I hushed her worries away with a finger across her lips.  I whispered that we could deal with it in the morning. 

         "The morning doesn't matter anymore."  She said.

I stroked her hair until she slept and I too drifted back into my slippage dreams.

         It would be many months later when we would deal with the life that slippage was giving us.  We went out looking for the bar that we had met in.  We found it had closed.  She dolefully found my eyes and let her tears fall.  My lips fell flat and I dragged her against my body.

         "Hush, hush, its okay.  We don't need that place to hold onto each other."

         "No!  No!  Don't you see?  I thought that I could feel there.  That was where I felt normal, like a real living person.  But, now!  It's just like me!  Boarded up and unable to see if it truly was anything at all!"

She began to sob until she choked on her own words.  I patted her on the back and she screamed.  Her voice pierced my ears pinning my eyes closed.  My hand grabbed at her flailing arms and held her fast.  She started to kick and I felt the urge to slap her.  I did.  She stared through me as if I was not there, holding her reddening cheek.

         "We need to stop this Amelia. The slippage is too much.  I don't even remember what real life feels like anymore."  I said.

         "Feels like this."

She pointed at the swelling on her cheek.  Guilt filtered into my whirling brain.

         "You know? You do know don't you. What it feels like not to be able to feel like everyone else."  She said.

         "No, that's not it.  I just don't know how to, or if I am, actually feeling the world the way it should be.  I'm just so confused lately.  Maybe we need to stop this pretending and do something normal, really normal."

She looked at me, stupefied.  Her head bobbed up and down tracing my height with her eyes.

         "Normal?  Normal?!  NORMAL?!!?  How could you possibly know what normal is?  You're as screwed up as I am!"

She spat out a laugh and I stood shock still.

         "Normal.  Like babies and picket fences.  It's not like we don't have the money.  Or, we could travel?"

My mouth moved without my full knowledge, but my body followed suit bending and swaying as if I was trying to sell her the idea.

         "Babies?  I don't know anything about babies.  Picket fences?  You mean little, whitewashed picket fences?  Like the ones in old movies?  I don't think I could do that.  I don't think I could be that normal...I don't think normal wants me to be that way."

      Her sobs took her over again and she collapsed into my arms.  Her eyes closed and her trembling began to build.  As gently as I could, I laid her on the pavement and opened her eyes.  They were both all whites and her trembling was turning into seizures.  I started to panic and screamed for a cab.  I held her in my lap all the way to the emergency room.  While she convulsed I swore on everything I found holy that I would help her get clean and together we would find, and beat normalcy into submission.  We would have our lives.  I do not know if she heard me, but I needed to say it; more as a confession of my building desires than anything else.

         The doctors slapped our hands for our indulgences and sent us home in the morning.  Amelia seemed better after the calmative shots and the wheelchair ride out, but you could still see that she was shaken inside.  She had never had something so profound as her mortality shown to her before.  Instead of this proving to her the humanity she possessed, she skirted the subject with a smile.  I knew better now.  I knew that I would have to watch her or she would slip again and I would be sure to follow, as I always did. 

Once home I cleaned the warehouse and purchased expensive paintings and bright furnishings.  I wanted her to have as much real stimulus as I could give her.  We went back to making love two or three times a day (something we started to falter in after the slippage began to take its toll).  I bathed her often in scented water and oils.  I tried so hard, but the urge to slip kept coming to me in waves.  I took up a habit from my youth and began smoking marijuana, Amelia joined me.  It was not a cure, but it made it easier to not think about slipping.  We were getting better.  So I thought.  She seemed to be smiling more often and that also made it easier to forget slippage.  I was going to make good on my promise.  I was showing her ads for property in the country where we would no longer feel the weight of the city, or slippage, leaning on us.  I begged her to look them over and she agreed.  Recovery seemed to be within our reach. 

      The last night that she was alive was marvelous.  She took me to the most expensive restaurant in town and we indulged in all of our favorite foods and a few bottles of wine as well.  We staggered back home and made love for hours as we used to.  She smiled and laughed and talked about how silly she would look behind picket fences.  Her smile, and the alcohol, finally relaxed me to sleep in her arms.  In the night I thought I heard someone crying, but decided it was just a dream and drifted back to unconsciousness.  When the sun rose I could not find her in bed.  I was nursing my hangover when I saw her hand.  It was lying on the floor leading to the bathroom.  I stumbled towards her and almost fainted at the sight of her purple smile.  I thought I was having a slippage flashback, but I knew that this was too real.  She looked content.  She looked beautiful.  In her open hand were several dozen tiny broken glass vials.  I collapsed on top of her looking for more vials so that I could follow her.  She had made sure not to leave me any.  She knew that I would try to follow, like always.  I knew that she could never feel right in the country.  It was like she said, that normalcy probably would not want her.  At least that is what she thought.  I had wanted to tell her different.  I wanted her to know that she was normal and that she deserved the right to be and feel as others did.  Now it is too late.  I removed the vials from her hand and disposed of them before I called the authorities.  No one would see her like that.  The rest of the day felt almost like a slippage stupor, unreal and dreamlike.  I knew the shock would hit me later, but I had to make sure she was taken care of first.  The funeral was rushed and in two days I had her buried in the heart of the city.  Finally, I had her stone cut with only one word:  NORMAL.  The night, I knew, would bring the regret and guilt, but I was not going to let it.  I had also acquired my own heavy supply of slippage during the day. 

      As night steals away the light in the warehouse that was once our home I stare at my handful of vials.  I also stare into myself not recognizing my right to feel this way.  Amelia had taught me a lot about passion, but not what to do without it.  So I figure that if I just follow her one last time it will not matter.  That was all she really needed after all, someone who could recognize, as she recognized, the way she felt.  It is alien to feel like you do not belong to the rest of the human race.  Now I can even feel that myself.  I have to say that it hurts to feel so alone on a planet as big as this.  That may sound human, but it does no use knowing that now since she is gone.  When the slippage I have just crushed takes hold I will not be worrying about it anyway.  I will go as she did.  For with all the listening I did I never quite got it, I do now.  I know that this final choice is made for her, to know that I got it.  I hope she does.  As for my corpse: Please inter it next to Amelia in the plot I have marked with the adjoining map.  Oh, yeah.  I only want one word on my stone as well.  UNDERSTAND.