Sand Man

I came up to the door of the coffee shop and looked in. Or rather the doorway appeared in front of me and sitting at the bar was the shape of someone I once knew. Shrugging, I went on inside to the far side of the counter and made my order. Getting my coffee, then walking over to stand behind her, seeing what she was doing there. She was sitting there hunched over her cup in a familair way she had when she was upset or hurt, toying with a small clear glass vial. I could feel the emotions within her like the waves of the sea washing over me with the same feelings. Her thoughts were known to me as clearly as my own, for such was the nature of this place we were in. As she rolled the vial in her fingers, I took another step closer to her and gently placed my fingertips over her's....

She sat there, cup of coffee before her, not really seeing it, not really realizing or caring why or how she had come here. The stool under her was hard, as hard and smooth and unyielding as the bar upon which her arms rested. The wood was beautiful, lovely grained and patterned, but barren of anything else, just like her life. All appearances without comfort, sterile, empty and lonely. Like her cup, once full and warm, but the more she partook of it, the less there seemed to be. A growing emptiness and coldness. Life looked good, but felt hollow, colder the longer she lived. With the vial, all she had to do was open it, add the contents to her cup, and all of the cold loneliness would soon be replaced with a spreading warmth that would ease away all of her pains and unhappiness. She rolled the smooth glass between her fingers, stroked it, savoring the perfectness of the hard clear glass. Watched the clear liquid within it move within it's own prison to her manipulations. So much like her life, but who was the manipulator there? Soon, soon the trapped liquid would be freed and shortly thereafter would she...

Suddenly from nowhere, fingers, a man's fingers touched the back of her hand holding the vial. They were chill, cold enough to make her shiver involuntarily, then slowly they warmed. She looked up at the owner of the fingers. It seemed to take a moment for the features to clearly define themselves for her eyes. They seemed to shift as if memory and the present fought for control of the face she saw. They settled finally into a form as she had last seen the face, and she knew him then. There was little or no emotion with the recognition though, for she was too caught up in her present mood for past feelings to matter very much now.

"Please don't, not yet at least." the man said, his fingers still resting lightly over her's and the vial.

"What would you care?" she replied with a sharpness and heat that suprised her, then felt the flash of even annoyance fading away into lethergy....

I asked myself the same question as I slipped my fingers around hers alittle more, stilling the motion of the vial between them. I saw her see the question and the answer I first found in my mind. She seemed to nod slightly as she read them, her fingers tightening on the glass. Pulling the stool next to her out with my foot, I sat down without breaking eye contact nor contact with her hand and mine.

"Somehow it is important. Don't ask me how or why." I said, trying to keep our eye contact without making it a challange to her. "I should want you dead or hurt badly more than just about anyone else, as you well know. But somehow, I'm here, now. Why?"

"Ask yourself. Why should I care where you are?" she replied.

"Why indeed. Strange though that it should be me sent here to hinder your way to the river Lethe. I hear that you know some martial arts now, why not use force to stop me from holding you up?"

"Why bother? You'll just go away ... like everything else."

"Perhaps. Then again maybe not. No one knows for sure what the future holds in store for them."

We sat that there silent for a timeless time, just looking at each other. Not in a stare down, but because it seemed pointless to do anything else. I looked at the way time had treated her since I had last seen her and studied the subtle changes before speaking again.

"I really loved you once. Truely with all that I was and more. Did you know that?"

"Yes, but not at the time. Later it wasn't important enough to matter one way or another."

"Not important enough to matter?" I said aghast and suprised. "I know how things went between us later, but not to matter?"

"You sound so shocked," she said in her snide voice, "well it did matter, after you raped me, but only in ways that it could be used to hurt you."

"I was sorry for what happened then, for that, more than you could ever understand or know. But then you had all ready raped me once, then again later."

"Not as badly the second time as you deserved, if you're referring to the trial. I wanted them to do more to you."

"They came close enough for you, though you probably don't appreciate it." I said, thinking back over all that had been lost to me that night in a cold February.

"Why should I care about you or anything to do with you? Especially now?"

I chuckled deep in my belly. "That's a lesson you taught me so well. The power of the Dark Side and the opposite of love. It's not hate..."

"I know" she said in a more normal voice. "What do you think it is?"

"Indiffrence, you taught so many of us so well that hard lesson. In time, with good help, one can overcome even that. How goes it with you now in the life you have chosen so carefully?" I asked her in return, malice lurking not far behind my eyes for many reasons.

"Fucking look you idiot. What do you think?! This is how it's going for me!" she said in a heated passion as she pulled the vial toward her, pulling my hand with hers. "I'm sitting here at a bar fixing to drink poison! Are you blinder than you were even back then or just stupider with age?"

"A moment in time doesn't define a lifetime. It may influence the rest of a life, but..." I trailed off. "See? You can't even answer that, nor can you stop me drinking this. You'll have to sleep or go away sometime."

"No, I can't stop you. Will you rape me again after drinking it before you die like the last time? Or will you just quitely pick up your toys and go?" I said with an irony for the last part.

She turned away then with a quick jerk of her head and wrenched her hand free of mine. A line she had told me came back to my mind then and I said it again for her.

"What you said then was true, 'A spoiled little rich bitch.' One would have hoped that you had matured some since then."

"What would you know of it? What life has been like for me since I left school there."

A quick retort rose to my lips, but was bitten back, I having grown some myself since those long past days. "You can always drink that anytime you want. No one can really stop you but you." I held out my hand to her as I slid off the stool and stood. "Lets step outside for a minute."

"Oh go on and just leave me alone." she said in a tired voice, her head bending back down over her cup and her hands.

"What? and let you give this place a bad reputation? Have some sort of decency and common courtesy; do your dieing in a more suitable spot. Unless of course the coffee was that bad. In which case you won't need that vial, nor I come to think of it since I drank here too. Are you still so self centered that you'd die here infront of everyone else and spoil their day too? Come on then and I'll leave you alone."

"Promises, promises, is that a promise?" she asked sulkily, looking up at him, then stared. His face had changed and for a moment was much younger than it had been as he smiled briefly.

"Maybe. I used to enjoy it sometimes when you said that, especially when you pouted."

For a second her face softened and she too remembered back years past when she had said that to him. Sighing, she stood and took his hand, thinking of all the akkido moves she could use to break his arm or body. Yet she didn't strike him, but walked out the door with him. On to a dirt and gravel road in the country. The change was so abrupt that she walked several paces before she stopped, startled. What? How? She was not sure what time it had been back in the coffee shop, but was certain it was not an early summer morning. The sun shone in a near cloudless sky achingly blue, with only scattered puffs of pure white clouds shining almost incandescently. The air was fresh, aromatic with the smells of the surrounding brillant green forest. The sounds of birds and insects filled the air along with a gentle breeze in the branches. They could be anywhere on a country road she realised as they continued to walk toward an opening in the trees ahead.

"Where..?" she started to ask him.

"Anywhere, no where. Just alittle further and then watch." he said, gently squeezing her hand.

She walked on into the clearing with him and saw an old clapboard church in the center of the clearing, shinging brightly white in the sunlight as the clouds in the sky. They could be at any old country church in america, from the Carolina's to east Texas or anyplace in between. But somehow she knew that they were in Georgia or maybe Alabama. The place just had that sort of a feel to it.

Beside the church was a small cemetary surrounded by a low combination fence made of wrought iron and field stones. Through a wrought iron section she could see headstones gleaming in grass the color of which she never thought she would see outside of an ad for Ireland. Something was glinting in the sunlight somewhere inside, but she could not see what. Yet.

He led her on toward the church and she imagined a gleaming satin filled coffin inside before the pews, where she could lie down and end it all. So perfect, there would even be a freshly dug grave somewhere in the cemetary out back for her after the wake. It all fit now she saw, him coming for her like an avenging angel, yet merciful to lead her to the final resting place. But he did not lead her to the chapel inside, rather to the side of the church to a small gate set in the stone fence leading in to the cemetary. They passed through the gate then went to the far corner from it and stopped, facing back the way they had come. She looked about, there was no fresh dug grave for her and she was puzzled. And growing impatient.

"What...?"

"Sshh, watch now."

She was about to yank her hand free of his and ask him to watch what, then leave when his grip tightened on her's and he pointed.

"There!" he breathed.

Following his pointing finger, she saw a man enter the churchyard. With a start, she stared at the intruder then at her companion. They were almost the same man! The new comer walking among the headstones was obviously older, heavier or was he? When she looked back at her companion it was the same man except for the clothes.

Turning back to look at her, her companion nodded as he smiled. Looking back at the double, she saw him walk over to a tombstone and stop to read the engraving there. The stone to the left of it had something metallic mounted on top of it, though at this distance, she still could not tell for sure what it was. The man there turned from the grave, cupping his hands, he brought them to his mouth like a megaphone and called out. Her name! She jumped and gripped her companion's hand tightly. Looked up at him, but his face was turned away from her toward the rear of the cemetary and a small gate set in the fencing there where the forest was closest to the graveyard.

Suddenly there was movement amongst the trees, then a figure approached the gate, half hidden by the green tunic and tan skirt she wore. Female, a petite young woman, she opened the gate and let it swing shut behind her as she approached the man by the tombstone. She had long slender legs and wide hips in proportion to the rest of her body. The wind caught in her long glossy black hair as she raised her arms to the man, smiling, striding to meet him, rippling it slightly and drawing her attention to the face. Were those lips naturally that red or were they painted? They met and held hands, looking into each other's eyes as the birds sang in the trees. Then they slowly kissed tenderly, as lovers who have spent much time together and know each other well, yet remain deeply in love. A moment more in an embrace, then they walked out of the cementary hand in hand, brushing lightly one against the other as they went.

Her companion had watched them in total silence as they had met, then his gaze followed them until they had passed from view. Then she felt more than heard him give a sigh.

"That was me, in my old D+D outfit wasn't it? You and me there just then?"

"Yes, a version of us. The best of what might have been with us together, or still friends." I said looking at her, into her eyes for what might lie there.

"Tell me now, what is this place, where are we, where I am?" she demanded. "Two questions and I'll answer them truely or to the best of my ability. At the moment, we are inside a poem, luckily one of my happier ones. This place you see is the setting for it. Look at the tombstones and read the inscriptions." I said pointing to them at random. She did, walking about the cemetary, pulling me behind her as she went.

"They're all events! Times and places, memories of your's?"

"Yes. The better the inscription, the better the recall of the event." I replied.

"That one?" she asked pointing to the one with the golden heart mounted atop the stone.

"Read it yourself", I said turning away to look at another with a photograph set in it. "Some stones I care not to read, even here and now." I stared at the photograph and read the inscription below it. Beside me I heard her reading from the stone I would not read. The poem of this place.

"Here lies the heart and love of..." she started, looking at that which was set atop the stone in gold, then went into the poem itself. "No one else has ever touched me as deeply or in the same way..." She stopped and looked up at me though I kept my attention focused on the headstone before me. "Is that true?" she asked, stepping infront of me and looking into my eyes.

Looking back into her's, I replied, "In this place all you have to do is look deeply enough and you will see your answer."

She stared into my eyes deeply, then past them on into my mind and perhaps my soul and saw for herself what was there. Her eyes held mine a moment longer, then she reached up and gently touched my cheek. "I'm sorry, I didn't know... about that and so many other things." she said softly.

The sorrow and compassion in her eyes struck me with an almost physical blow and hurt even more. A soundless grunt of pain passed my lips as I turned my head away from her. The moment was just too intense, too laden with emotions that needed alot of time to sort out and understand. She looked back at the headstone I had been looking at and gasped slightly. The picture in the stone was a much younger version of her and the inscription held her maiden name, not even the nickname she had chosen to become her current name.

"That's me."

"Yes," I replied, "the you I first met and loved so much inspite of myself. When we broke up, here is where that part of you I remembered with love and fondness was laid."

"Am I really buried beneath that stone?" she asked, interest finally sparked.

"No, I doubt it, maybe a body there, but mostly those things that I loved you for the most. You saw the one beside it?" I ask, knowing that she had to have.

"Yes, you I take it. The you that loved me then or your heart, the you before the time of pain. I am sorry for what happened I guess, for both of our sakes."

"We were young and naive, and easily hurt. Not knowledgeable as we are now. You and I would never have let things go that far, nor been blinded by emotions or hormones now. If we had acted, it would have been worse." I said, knowing that age also brings with it it's own share of spite and resentment.

"You're right. I guess that I'm glad we came here and that despite all that happened, there are still some good memories of me in the world besides my own. I even have one or two good ones of you. If nothing else, we understand each other better now. What happens next?" she asked as she gently squeezed my hand, forcing me to regard her once more. Her face had softened and lost some of the hardness that it had had when she looked at me. It looked now more like the face I remembered, the one in the poem we were in. I reached up, almost touching her cheek before letting my hand fall back to my side.

"We walk alittle further, then the rest is up to you after you've heard all that I know."

Taking her hand again, though I wasn't sure that I needed to, we turned and retraced our route back to the road, closing the gate behind us. A few steps along it and suddenly the world transistioned and we were in a parking lot outside of a familair restraunt.

"Franklin's?" she asked, doubt in her voice.

"Why not? It's got a good dessert and we can finish our conversation here as easily as we can anywhere else. What do you think?"

"It's o.k., as long as you are buying!" she said with an impishness like she used to have when they had dated and she was happy with him and the world.

She could tell that he was still prickly with this situation, so much had happened and changed so quickly between them. She had hated him for so long for what he had done to her, the pain and fear he had caused. Even more, the disruption to her life. But without him she might not have done the things that she later did. Until recently she had been happy with that choice, so now she had to think of him in a diffrent way. It was hard, the more so because she had cared for him, let him into her life and the things she had believed in then. Even more difficult, they had been lovers and all that that had entailed. The violation that happened later, how much of it had she really blown up and how much had been real? He had given her a loaded gun and asked her to end it all for him. Had said that he could not live with her hate and without her friendship. Did he do what he had done to her out of pain that they had both caused each other? It was too difficult to sort out now and she would deal with it all later. Now she had other questions that had to have answers sooner.

All of her thoughts had taken place in the time it had taken them to walk in and be led to a booth and to be seated. They finally unclasped hands and slid into their seats on opposite sides of the table from each other. Then he ordered for them.

"Two coffees, two cheese cakes and two hot fudge brownies, right?" he siad looking over at her. This was what they had often come here for and it was what Franklin's was most famous for. She nodded, it was o.k. with her. The waitress nodded and departed to fill their order. Now she would find out just what all of this was about and what was going on. The other diners were not too close and they could speak without being over heard. Why was all of this weird stuff was happening to her?

"Just remember the best food you ever had here and watch what happens." he siad as the hostess returned with their order. "Sure smells good and I bet it tastes even better!" he said as he fixed his coffee then took a bite of the cheese cake. She watched him close his eyes and ooo at the flavour and a moment later echoed him as she did the same. It was as good as she remembered it to be. A moment later he began to answer her questions between bites and sips.

"Where we are, I call it the Place of Dreams. To the best of my knowledge, both of us are asleep at this time in our own beds. For some reason, we both came together this night. The mechanics of it, who knows? I'm not sure of all of the hows and whys of what is happening. Only that it may have something to do with the two of us. I will warn you now though, since this has started happening to me, every dream that I have had in this manner has had some sort of analogue in the waking world. If we had fought, we might have bruises or other signs of the fight in the morning. If we had made love, we might have faint passion marks and or ahem, be alittle sore. If one of us had died, ... then within the week, one would be dead in a similair fashion." I finished. Then looked down into my plate remembering when these dreams first started several weeks ago.

"How do you know that this is true?" she asked, doubt heavy in her voice.

"Because I Wasn't Careful Enough Earlier!" I shouted at her, as the anger and shame of what had gone on before started overwhelming me.

It drew looks from the other diners there, but it didn't matter, the pain was too much. I shoved out of the booth and headed for the door, pausing only to throw a bill on the counter. There I waited with my head on the cold glass until I felt her come up behind me and take my hand.

She was startled by his response to her question, what else did he think she could ask? She stared at him for a moment as he pushed angrily out of the booth and stalked to the front of the restraunt. He stopped at the door and rested his head against it as she slid out and came up to him. She could see that something bothered him very much, so she took his hand. As soon as she did, he raised his head and stepped out the door.

On to a beach she found herself. The fine white sand was beautiful, even on this darkly overcast day. The surf coughed angrily grey on the sand where it met the shore, the water was dark and the waves white capped and choppy, empty of everything but the wind. The wind blew in chilly gusts, randomly from everywhere, thankfully her hair was still cut short and it did not get in her eyes much. As soon as they were through to this place, he had dropped her hand and walked to the edge of the water. He just stared out at the horizon, stiffly. She moved up behind him slowly, noting how tense his whole body was. Gently she touched his arm, then when he didn't move, stood beside him and looked at him. Tears slowly rolled down his face to join the salt water at their feet. A minute later he spoke,

"What would you do if your dreams seemed real and you could guide them somewhat? Find a fantasy lover, or make love to someone you know that you always wanted to? Find something that you lost that was dear to you? A piece of jewelery or a book? Do something risky that you always wanted to do but never did have the guts or resources to? Be a hero? Be careful of what you ask for, for you shall surely get it." he said looking on out to sea, then turning to her.

"It's a terriable thing to find out that a fantasy you thought only a dream turns out to be real later on. It's hard to think of all of the things that could go wrong in a situation or come of it later. I found that out the hard way. Two friends I always wanted to make love to, I did and regreted it when the time arose the following weeks and I actually did. Be a hero? There aint a single thing good about that, you're so damned scared while it's all going on then when it's over, your sick that it ever happened. I was a hero, and they can keep the damn business themselves!" I said remembering when I didn't want to.

She stood there silent, what did this mean, could it be real? She trembled when she realised that one of his early dreams could have been about her and what it might have been like before he knew it would be reflected in the real world. But now that he was here what did it mean for her? She had to know. Taking his hand, she led him back away from the water's edge up onto a dune and sat them down facing each other.

"Tell me about it." she said looking directly at him.

"I don't know where to start, I was sick then got better and the next thing I know is that I'm able to have these dreams. Sort of like Tir na Nog'th from Amber, but with better fine tuning. Tell me right now, what do you want most?"

"To find out what's happening to me."

"No, before tonight."

"I, getting my next belt, riding the perfect horse, great sex?" she listed hesitantly.

"Revenge?" I asked softly.

"No, I guess not at first."

"Good thing, for both of us. No, I was lonely and was thinking of people I knew and what it would be like to make love to them. How they would actually look and be. Next, of finding where I had misplaced or lost something, glasses, a ring things like that. Doing this drains you though, I've been doing what I call 'Active' dreaming for about six months and this is my first one in over a month. I've had a total of five dreams, though one was in two parts. The more you do in them the tireder you get. This is the first dream that I had where I just let myself roam."

"What happened to the women you made love to and the rest of it?" she asked intently.

"One had gone gay and I wanted to have dated her, made love to her once or twice. I dreamed of a situation where she would be willing to make love to me and we did. It was wonderful but later turned out to be horriable. You met her once I think the time we went to Atlanta to drop off one of my brother's friends at the airport there."

"No, but I may later, what happened?"

"Well, we did, almost all night and later that week I ran into her and we did make love. It was good, but not as good as it had been in the dream. Later I learned the reason why she had done so and felt so bad for it. She had been forced to do things like that because of... anyway I'd rather not have loved her than have her in the situation she's in."

"The other one?"

"I got pissed off at somebody who had a great looking wife. I dreamed that she got pissed off at him and took me to bed out of anger and did things with me that she had thought about but never done before. It was wild, it was exciting and it was empty of all meaning. I liked her, and guess I couldn't make love to someone I didn't care for in some way, but there was nothing there after it was over. Sheer animal pleasure and passion then ashes. They are in the middle of a messy divorce now and there will be no winners. I wasn't the only one, but I was the first and now I've lost several friends because of it. The price for that is too high."

"At least you found some things you had lost." she said, trying to sound hopeful.

"Yes, I got back a couple of lost items and realised that the rest were gone for good. It gave me closure for them, knowing that they were finally gone."

"I'm glad that you weren't angry enough at me to come and dream up something terriable. Or did you? The glass vial?" she suddenly asked me.

"No, I had thought about you when I first realised what I could do, but decided that there were better things to dream for. My 'revenge' would have been to go somewhere that you would be with a beautiful woman on my arm a couple of years younger than you and let her tell you how much you had missed. Delibrately causing people physical pain doesn't do it for me, I grew out of that Marqis de Sade thing a long time ago. The vial and your feelings were your own. I had not looked for you on purpose, when I did see you, it was to see what and how you were doing, not to interfere. Perhaps ask your forgiveness and why things had to go like they did. "

"Had I drunk the vial, what would have happened to me?"

"I don't know what was in it, so I couldn't say for sure, but I do know that if you hadn't died that night, in the next two weeks you would have by some means, if it was poison."

She shuddered, then checked to see if she could find the vial on her to throw it into the sea, but she couldn't find it. She looked up at him then.

"It's gone!"

"Maybe you lost it on the way here or else your feelings have changed, it could be anything or several. Why were you there feeling like that?"

"I don't know for sure, life just got boring and I started to hate things so much. There just didn't seem to be much reason for going on, I got lonely I guess."

"I felt that way often before, now though it's seldom that bad. I've found other things to keep me going and now this."

"How long will we be here? How much time do we have left like this?"

"I don't know, not much, why?"

"I was wondering how much of this I'll remember in the morning when I wake up and if this is really real."

"You can remember all of it, if you want to. Come, sit beside me and I'll see that you do."

"Will it hurt?"

"Very much."

She looked at him and saw him smiling, slightly sadly, so she took the last part of his remark as a joke and went over and sat down next to him.

I watched her get up and come over to me and sit down. She was almost as beautiful as I had remembered her to be from the time we were engaged. Gently I reached out and took her face in my hands and turned it to me. Leaning forward, I whispered, "Remember" and kissed her forehead then said it again, "Remember". She had closed her eyes as I kissed her and as I took my hands from her face I caressed it lightly with my finger tips, bringing a smile to her lips.

"Thank you." she said then leaned forward and kissed me lightly. She let the kiss go on, so I did too.

She felt him take her face in his hand and as he bent toward her, she shut her eyes. "Remember" barely heard, then his lips softly again her forehead and again the whispered word "Remember." She felt his fingers trace her cheeks then leave her face. She smiled, it was so like him, the him she first knew, to be like that. Old fashioned and gallant when he wanted to be. Opening her eyes she saw the look on his face and decided in an instant. Her life had been lonely and empty maybe they could share alittle warmth in the time they had left.

She raised her hands to his face and held him lightly as she closed her eyes again and kissed him. Lightly, letting it last as long as it would. It went on and she felt his arms come around her then felt him lean back drawing her up on top of him, never breaking their kiss. It felt good to be close to someone and being held. At last he broke their kiss and looked deeply into her eyes.

"I don't want this to end, but it must and I'm afraid to ask for more." he said.

"Me too. I want it though, I need it."

"I know, both of us, but not here, like this. Write me when you wake up and leave me a way to contact you, privately. Don't think of the vial again, at least talk to me first, o.k.?"

"I will. Now lets make this next one something to remember, like that first night at my father's house when I showed you my D+D outfit." she said with a smile.

I couldn't do anything else but agree, so I wrapped my arms back around her firmly and we kissed again. This time though it went deeper, our mouths opening and sharing one another in a mounting frenzy. I felt her lips, her tongue move against mine and I drank of her as deeply as she drank of me. I was suddenly hot all over and hard, fee