Familiar - Part IV
Serialized Fiction
This is part four of a series. If you have not read the first three parts, please start here:
Part IV
Stephanie Zajac was already belly up at the bar with a pint when Dani arrived. The two women hugged each other, and Dani took the bar stool to Stephanie’s right, hooking her bag in front of herself, below the bar.
“What’s going on?” Stephanie opened up the conversation.
“I’ve caught feelings for someone.”
“Jason.” Stephanie nodded.
“Wow.” Dani stared at her friend with some disbelief.
Stephanie began chugging her draft, tipping her head back to finish the glass before burping and setting it loudly on the bar. The bartender looked over at her, and she signaled him for two more with her fingers. “Who else would it be? You guys are practically inseparable. Spend that much time with anyone, and it’s not really a surprise, is it?”
The bartender set a pint in front of each woman. “Thanks,” Dani said, pulling her glass towards her. “I think it may be reciprocated.”
Stephanie tilted her head while staring at Dani, “Duh.”
“That reaction tells me everything I needed to know.” Dani took a sip of beer, “I have to back away from him. I don’t want this to become a thing that people talk about. I don’t want it to become a thing at all.”
“It’s already kind of a thing people talk about,” Stephanie told her, and Dani groaned. “But you’re moving departments. That will help.” Stephanie and Dani both worked at Hydra, but rarely lunched together. Stephanie was in accounting, and people at Hydra tended to take lunch with others in their own department. If Dani continued to go to lunch with Jason after moving departments, it would be a sure way to get people talking.
“That’s true.” Dani agreed, “He texted me last night at about eleven. After his customer left him here.”
“At this bar?” Stephanie raised her eyebrows, “He lives in the complete opposite direction.”
Dani nodded, “I know. Maybe his customer lives on this side of town?”
“I guess.” Stephanie chuckled, “Did you answer his text?”
“I was asleep.”
“Good.”
“Yes.”
Stephanie smiled deviously at Dani over her glass, and Dani admired her friend’s features. The striking blue eyes that turned up at the corners. Dani called them Tinkerbell eyes, in contrast to her own, which turned down at the corners, lending to a melancholy appearance. Stephanie’s nose and cheeks were dusted with light freckles on a fair canvas in comparison to Dani’s slightly darker ones on her light, olive complexion.
Stephanie was a true blonde, and if she did not wear mascara, you could barely register her eyelashes. Her hair was nearly white, fine, and long, and she kept it up in a twist. Her flyaways were a constant source of frustration, so she carried product with her at all times to tame them. Dani’s hair was also long, but it was dark, thick, and wavy.
Stephanie’s mouth was full and sensuous, with perfectly straight teeth thanks to the roughly six thousand dollars she spent on Invisalign a few years ago. Dani imagined men fantasized about that mouth, and she could hardly blame them if they did. It reminded her of Fairuza Balk’s mouth, but better.
Dani’s own lips were full, but her mouth was smaller, and she had a small gap between her two front teeth. Her mouth and smile were attractive, but they didn’t suggest sex the way that Stephanie’s did without even trying. Dani wasn’t sure she would want everyone lusting after her mouth, but she did envy Stephanie’s nose, which was a button of a thing. Dani’s own nose was a little long and slightly turned up at the end.
The differences between them did not make Dani feel less attractive. Rather, she enjoyed and appreciated her friend’s beauty and thought their contrast was complementary. There was attraction without sexuality. A true friendship and admiration were shared between the two.
“I have so much to tell you.” Stephanie began, and Dani was downloaded with the latest tryst between Stephanie and a coworker who did not work in the office. The man was a plumbing foreman, and they hooked up after work events, even once in an office restroom. The fact that they worked in the industry they did lent itself to plenty of double entendres. Words like ballcock, nipple, and trap primer were native to their language, and the women giggled like schoolboys when they used them in code with each other. It was almost always in relation to Stephanie’s hook-ups with the plumber.
“Anyway,” Stephanie added, “He wants to take me out this weekend. With his friends. Like, on an actual date.”
“Well,” Dani drew the word out with surprise, “This is a new development. I thought your relationship was just physical.”
“It was. It is. I don’t know. I think he likes me.”
Dani cocked her head to the side and said teasingly, “Duh.”
***
The massive house sat out in an overgrown, partially wooded field. There was no clear road to it. Dani followed the owner’s agent into the great room, which was almost completely enclosed by windows that reached the two-story ceilings. The house had been abandoned for years and was littered with furniture and the detritus of decades past.
A pool table sat at the center of the room, protected by a vinyl cover. Dani pulled the cover back at the corner and saw that the felt was pristine and the woodwork was lovely. She told the agent she thought the pool table should remain and talked through her vision for the house to get it ready for the client’s arrival. The client was Stephen King.
Stephanie pulled up in an old Ford pickup that looked just like Dani’s grandfather’s. They needed to pick up materials to get started on the renovations, so Dani climbed into the passenger side of the truck, and off they went.
With no paved road and the dirt road overgrown, the women were having a hard time navigating their way back to town. Stephanie turned on the radio. “AM has navigation assistance.”
Dani turned the dial, searching for the station that could help them find their way. “Incoming… shuttle… messy,” the radio stuttered. What? Dani wondered. Stephanie didn’t know either. “Off course… landing… emergency.”
Stephanie pointed her hand out the window, signaling toward the sky. Dani looked in the direction of Stephanie’s arm and saw a distant glow that was growing larger. Suddenly, she knew what it was.
“It’s returning from the space station,” she told Stephanie, but it didn’t make sense for it to land there. They were too far from the ocean. Dani felt uneasy, wondering where the craft would land and how close. Would it hit them? The radio offered only static, so they continued on their course, accelerating.
Dani kept her eyes on the incoming object until it was close enough to make out its shape and some details. It was landing nearby but would not hit them. She told Stephanie to drive toward it. She was elated to be witnessing something of this magnitude up close.
The craft’s parachute deployed, and it floated down to the ground a hundred yards in front of them with a thud. At that point, Dani got out of the truck and began running toward the craft. The ground below was sandy, making it hard to move quickly. She looked for an identifying mark on the craft. It should be Russian, she thought. There was something on the side, but she was still too far to see it clearly.
But wait, now she could make it out. No way, she thought. On the side of the round vessel was a wolf’s head. The door swung open, surprising Dani even more, and her friend stepped out. First on all fours as a canine, then upright as a man.
“I found you, Magpie.” He announced, happily.
“What do you know about spaceships?” Dani asked, incredulously, and they both laughed. It was the funniest and most wonderful thing that had ever happened.
“I figured it out.” He told her, and they laughed even harder. “Get your rabbit, and let’s go.”
Wolf rode in the back of the truck, and Stephanie drove them to a bar that was the old house they had fixed up for Stephen King. The party the house had been intended for was now in full swing, and the owner thanked Dani for a job well done. The pool table was converted into a central island bar, and there were loads of activities set up in booths around the perimeter of the great room, like a midway at a carnival.
Dani wanted to go to the fortune teller, but the line was long. Stephanie pulled her to another booth, where a tattoo artist invited her to his chair. There was no memory of what happened while she was there, but later, when Wolf pulled away the bandage, she was mesmerized by the artwork that covered her entire left arm. A band of unfinished runes encircled her shoulder over a night sky that bled onto her upper arm. Beneath the sky, the tops of pine trees and a wolf. On the underside of her forearm, a rabbit and a fox. Covering nearly the entire topside of her forearm, a magpie. The images were blended with clouds and starry sky, and everything was black and white except for the magpie’s blue and yellow. The white ink created a striking contrast against the deep black, like the stars dotting the darkest part of the sky or the white at the end of the fox’s tail.
Wolf slipped her hand into his, “Time to go.”
Come with me.
Dani woke to her alarm.
I truly cannot thank you enough for reading this. I can’t wait to share more with you. I promise, there is a planned ending. I hope you will stick around for it.
See you in dreams. <3
It’s as if a dream is realizing itself. Keep it coming!
Ohhhh the crush grows complicated and the dreams even more strange! I love it. Keep them coming!