Blue morning, blue day
The sky a big open blue eye staring at nothing, the clouds cataracts creeping across its vacant stare. The air is fresh and crisp like the smell of a champagne cork popping at a wake. It’s cool early and the birds chirp monotonously.
The sound of leaves crunching underfoot, the smell of sweat, tart and bitter.
A sharp intake of breath.
I’m in the woods, jogging or something, I’m running. I feel my heart beating faster. I look down and wearing a banana yellow track suit with white running shoes. I can hear classical music playing in my ears, the threads of two headphones running down my chest into my pocket.
There’s a path through the trees, I can’t hear any cars, just the birds and my footsteps on the grass. The warm beams of sunlight through the trees.
I’m alone, I think, I’m meant to be alone, but then out of the corner of my eye, as if out of nowhere she appears.
Right in front of me, I can’t tell how long she’s been there, jogging in front of me. I can’t tell if I match her pace or she matched mine. All I see is her hair, it’s blonde, long flowing loose over her back and shoulders. She’s wearing a black t-shirt and jogging bottoms, with blue running shoes.
She shouldn’t be here. Something tells me she’s not meant to be here. I call out to her but she doesn’t hear me. I can’t hear my own voice.
There’s a break in the path, she turns and disappears like she was never there, like she was some kind of wood nymph darting back into the brush.
I don’t know why, but I feel like I’m chasing her, maybe she dropped something, or she reminded me of someone.
I’m running after to her now, my heart beating out of my chest, my breath feels hoarse making a sound like two planks rubbing together.
I turn the same corner and she’s just standing there in like a clearing, her back facing me. The sun hitting her just right to light up that gold hair and make it look platinum.
I don’t know why, but I approach her. I reach out, I must’ve said something to her because she turns, fast like she was ready, waiting. And that’s when I see it, the gun in her hand.
…And that’s when I wake up”
Porter said sighing into his empty pint of Guinness.
“Jogging?! Since when do you go Jogging?” Patrick said with an incredulous crooked smile. “The only exercise you get is getting the crap beaten out of you by angry husband’s with their weiners still hanging out.” Patrick laughed and scratched his greasy ginger stubble. He was a strawberry blonde of average height, a little stocky and a little soft around the middle but relatively young and handsome despite.
Sitting across from him on the other side of the bar was his double “You asked” Porter said still trying to climb into his pint glass. His twin brother, cursed to be older by a few seconds, a little less soft around the middle, a little less soft in the face. If any of their family were still alive he’d have been the black sheep but they were all dead. Patrick and Porter were the only ones left and the bar made three. Patrick owned it, left to him by their father, Porter just rented the room upstairs. It was one of Austin’s more popular Irish pubs called the Gingerman.
“I didn’t expect it to be some goofy dream about jogging in the woods, I liked all the clever analogies though, really set the mood. I really felt like I was a jogger.” He smirked. “How many times you had this dream?”
“Few times” Porter sighed wishing he could have a cigarette but he’d quit, as long as he was in the bar anyway.
“What about the woman?”
“What about her?”
“Is she hot?”
“I didn’t really get a good look at her.”
“Would you two girls stop jabbering, I’m trying to watch the TV!” Some drunk glob of flesh from a stool behind piped up over his bowl of authentic Irish stew Patrick buys canned by the pallette. Slurping into his sloppy mouth.
Patrick cocked his head to the side and porter turned to look at the fellow with a weary look on his face. The man was entirely engrossed in whatever was on the old TV set above the bar, so much so he was regularly missing his mouth with his spoon.
The twins both scrunched up their faces and turned to look at what had captivated the man’s attention so.
It was some kind of talk show, Porter never really watched TV. Mostly just listened to it and stared off into space, usually sports, he didn’t care which one, they all kind of sounded the same after awhile.
The talk show was some long running show no one ever watched a man with grey hair and colourfully rimmed glasses sat behind a silly looking prop desk. On the other side of the desk sat a woman in a blue dress, long blond hair framed a face… a peculiar face. Every other part of her was fairly normal. The blue cocktail dress wasn’t too revealing. She sat comfortably with hands in her lap and her legs crossed, her pale white skin shining under the light. There was a sea of tinsel hanging behind her from the ceiling and she was framed by a couple of weird cheap looking sparkly lava lamps. It looked like some kind of cable public access set. But it was her face that drew Porters attention.
It was blue.
Painted masklike, her lips as she spoke were cold blue rose petals every part of her face was this blue painted skin. He couldn’t see her eyes, the camera was pulled too far back but those too he imagined were icey blue.
Porter found himself gripped by this cold tingling sensation in his gut like he’d swallowed a snake egg and it had just started to hatch. There was something about her face. Something otherworldly, like it was the window to some strange world. Full of people that spoke only in riddles that foretold nameless doom. A pool of cool bottomless water waiting to drag him down into its crushing depths.
He found himself so transfixed he couldn’t listen to a word she said. Or else her words entered his ears at funny angles and got jumbled together and made no sense or were meant for someone else.
Porter got that cold feeling again like he was being watched, or the lighting had changed and he turned, scanning the bar, everyone was fixed to the TV.
As he watched their vacant faces stare blindly at the screen he could almost see it in their faces, hear their gasps before they even thought to make them. The fear and the wonder, the exhilaration. Time slowing down as history was made in that brief second as he heard the pop of an automatic through the tinny speakers of the old TV.
He turned to the Tv to the see the talk show host slumped dead over his desk a bullet hole the size of a silver dollar in his face. His blood and brains shimmering on the tinsel wall as it danced in the stale air of the studio an anathema to the stillness of the room.
Porter and the audience frozen in stunned silence as they just watched the blue faced woman walk off the stage. Waiting for there to be a punchline or a cut to commercial break but all that came was the inevitable screaming as a full stop to the scene that went on too long.
