Chapter 9

Rita, the receptionist, really the marionette, danced her arms and face to shoot me a message when I arrived at work that morning. Poor girl, young girl, college girl, wholly manipulated. I felt bad for her, but that empathy escapes me every time I remember her age. She's got time to heal. I squinted hard to see who was pulling her strings, and the trail of breadcrumbs led me back to a familiar place.

As I waited in Helen's office, expecting to hear the snakes slither, Ankh walked in first, handing me a cup of coffee.How did he get hereHe had switched his attire from yesterday's brief encounter into a black single-breasted suit. I admired his style, square-framed glasses this time.

"Morning, Helen will be in shortly. My name is Ankh, nice to meet you," he said, bowing to me in an Asian fashion.

Out of sheer morning exhaustion, I mimicked him.

"Do you work here" I questioned.

"Work…that's a subjective word. Instead, I would say, I am sharing this space with you right now. Brother to brother."

Brother to brother No offense, but I assumed an offering of bean pie to follow his philosophical chatter. The sun hasn't been up long enough for me to be friendly, and I had enough venomous remarks to poison a country, all organized like an excel spreadsheet. Typically by noon, I even out. I never put much stake into humans who wanted to be stars. Why, if a real star looked down on us, we'd look like nothing more than a grain of sand. Humility, we all lack it.

Suddenly, Helen busted into the room like a bat out of hell, maybe we chose the wrong reptile for her. Excuse me, bats are mammals. Her attire looked like she spent the summer with Rita, trying to get her groove back. I saw more of her inner thigh than I cared to. She plunked right next to Ankh in the nearby seat. Eyes full of wonder, stars, nebulas, looking at the side of Ankh's face. She saw the universe in him.

"We just wanted to tell you in person that the meeting is tomorrow. 10 p.m. You are aware of the place, Dimitri"

"Dimitri is your name It has Greek history, it means 'Earth-Lover.' Did you know that"

"I do now. And yes, I'm fully aware. I'll be there."

"Great, you and your guest will have a wonderful time," Helen responded.

Wait till she finds out my guest is Aries. Then the silence entered again, and the smiles attacked me from two faces this time. Ankh and Helen, looking through me, it seemed. That's a difficult task, to say the least, I've never been transparent in my entire life. Sometimes I can't see myself at all. My hall of mirrors would be a glass parade.

"Well…let me get back to work. Plenty coming through the pipeline since Aries is gone," I mentioned.

Ankh grabbed my arm as I tried to flee the room. He clutched it like I was dangling from a cliff's edge.

"We are scattered. Our people are roaming in a field of cages. All we can see is dreams through the diamonds of a chain-link fence. But I will arrange it for us. Walk with me," he commanded.

"Who do you think you are, Fred Hampton"

"Hmm, I like you already, Dimitri. No, think of me more like Icarus, with impervious wings."

I thought about googling his name when I left Helen's office, thinking maybe something from social media would appear, but I was fooling myself. I did find a motherlode about Helen, though, an even bigger waste of time. Within the last twelve months, she'd shed about half her wardrobe, and in the last few years, she'd taken over thirty trips to Mexico. Her amount of PTO's was absurd. She never brought back souvenirs, not even an 'Ole' shot glass.

Helen was neverthisperson though, I could only place blame on Ankh, the charlatan. Helen was like me, like Aries. An off the grid person. She dressed her entire life modestly, what happened Every status was an amalgam of hashtags that only a teenager would know. She's never been social. This job usurped her from the cold north to the city. To Satan's playground. It must be him. If Ankh merely sneezed near her, the Nile River would flow from between her legs, baby Moses, and all.

So that makes three, three people invited all ghosts in real life. Aside from Helen's feeble attempt to gain color in her apparition's hue. This meeting is for the wallflowers, background blenders, and isolated folk. Perhaps I'm stepping into a self-help seminar. A tribute to the downtrodden about how to rise up. If that's the case, it couldn't hurt, but Ankh didn't strike me as that type of person. His voice felt like a gentle command, not a 'pick-me-up.' I'm thinking too hard, ok, I take it back. I could use some weed now.

A gust of Boreas' wind nearly took my only marijuana replacement, my cigarette, while I was outside smoking. No one else from my office smokes, I'm the outsider with blackened lungs. I did more thinking about the symbol of Ankh, where I'd seen it before. Within the shell on the snail in the 'A snail's pace' logo. Was he involved with the magazine Nah, that's almost too simple of a clue.

I found my hand subconsciously reaching for my phone, and I made the conscious decision to text my brother. This sobriety was going to kill me, I won't last, even though my watch read '10 a.m.'. That time to most drug dealers is when the roosters' crow, and the contraband slumbers. So I shot him a message, I would need a gram, maybe two, one for Aries. His response was classic him. 'Who is this' My sibling's attempt at a joke or to keep himself out of jail. I'll admit, I didn't have to be so frank about it.

I fired off one more text that read, 'Do you know anyone else in my building' no response. I let the cancer stick descend to the floor, about-faced, and drug my feet into the doomsday machine, also known as corporate America.

Twelve hours later…

"Do you know who Hieronymus Bosch is His depiction of hell" Bruce inquired.

"What" I sluggishly responded this new beer forced me into a slow-motion state.

"Famous painter from the Netherlands How about Dante Alighieri The Divine Comedy"

Bruce was full of surprises, and 'The Red Wagon' lights at the front of the dive bar were badly malfunctioning.They could use some of Clara's donut money.Only five letters lit up, spelling out 'Thee W". They probably can't afford to fix the sign, every time I come here, it's just Aries, Bruce and I.

My soul's windows looked to Aries, signaling her to save me from her one-eyed friend, but her square face was buried in that copy of 'A snail's pace' that the man in the black suit handed me. Not paying me, or Bruce any mind.

"Wait, wait, Bruce. Stay on topic. Weren't we talking about if blind people could see objects and color in their dreams"

"Yea, that's what I'm talking about."

"No, you're clearly not."

"Yes, I am. Watch, let me land this plane for you. So I had this dream last night right."

"You're not blind, Bruce." I rubbed my head in frustration.

"Close enough, now listen. It was…more of a nightmare really. I was trapped in this closet."

"Like the R. Kelly song"

"Hear me out, it was just big enough for me to stand in, but I couldn't walk or sit. Total darkness. Almost like a square upright coffin. There's a small slot, about eye level, in front of the door. It opens, and this beam of light, like being too close to the sun, would break in, eclipsing the darkness, but now blinding me. A different type of darkness. Suddenly an ominous garbled voice appears, but I can't make out a single word. I screamed, kicked, scratched to be heard, to understand. But the small slot just closed, wrapping me back in the shadows, and I stayed there and cried…waiting for the light to come back."

I couldn't tell if it was poetic or retarded, but during the monologue, I never blinked.

"See what I'm saying" Bruce said.

I blinked then. I blinked hard too. The thin line between coherent and drunk blurred beneath my cranium. All topics drowning in the sea of I-forgot. My body's only reaction was to drink more.What kind of beer is this

"I'm confused, Bruce."

"Hell, that would be my depiction of hell. Trapped in the closet. Not this over the top macabre circus, like Bosch or Dante. But pure, restrained, isolation."

I focused as hard as I could, and a confident "bwahhh' noise emitted from my mouth.

I was ashamed that I didn't know those artists. Aries raised her head from the small magazine for the first time in ten minutes. I'd almost forgotten what her face looked like.

"Those paintings are masterpieces, first off. Mister Bruce, connoisseur of fine art. Second off, that's not hell, that's frustration," Aries replied.

She caught all that

"Dimitri, have you read this whole magazine It's pretty good. Sneakily good. Especially the 'Agenda' part, written by Ken Williams."

"Bwahh"

"Cut it out."

"You caught all that" I asked Aries, barely pronouncing the words.

She shot me a deadpan face, that old 'Are-you-stupid' face, and parted her luscious crimson lips.

"I can walk and chew gum. You should try it one day."

"Only those who've returned from hell can depict it."