The Jabberwock

Silence. That’s all that she could hear despite the boisterous cars beeping and corporeal shoves by the pedestrians. Perhaps this is what she would always hear, the stationary reality of her hopes and dreams while others busily carried on with theirs. Suddenly, the woman’s coffee spilled all over her shirt, as one of the shoves became too apparent to ignore. She glanced up and saw the individual who was responsible for such disarray.

“I’m very sorry,” the man said with a hint of a familiar accent as he picked up the empty cup and offered her a napkin he had pulled out of his backpack. The woman looked at him and couldn’t help but notice the peculiar hue of the stranger’s eyes.

“It’s alright,” she said as she took the napkin, “Thanks.”

He nodded in acknowledgement and continued down the street, glancing back at her with his piercing blue eyes. She stared at his figure until it became an abated outline, but shook the encounter out of her head, and proceeded down the lifeless streets.

As the woman reached the end of such urban drudgery, she came to the front steps of the place she called home. The sun was now setting, and her shoulders finally relaxed as she fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door.

She gently placed her bag by the sofa— even though she wanted to throw it across the room— and shut the door behind her. Except the door didn’t close, even when she continued to slam it shut with more and more force. Slowly opening the door, the woman regained her patience and saw a small package separating the door from its justified residence.

She reached down and picked up the package, wondering who it was from. To McKinley, love Ricky. The woman stared in horror at the messy handwriting that she vaguely recalled from high school. Her intruding thoughts began to occupy her conscience as she reconsidered the events of 2004. It’s not your fault. It was an accident. In search of clear instincts, she decided to rest in an attempt to escape such horripilation.

What was considered a good night’s sleep for the woman contained several interruptions by a troublesome nightmare. His cold stare out of the attic’s window as the rest of the house went up in flames. The red and orange reflection in his light eyes as he met the darkness everyone was told to fear.

The woman sat upright in bed as she was awoken from thoughts that you could almost consider psychedelic. Drenched in sweat, she made her way over to the curtain where red and blue flashing lights illuminated her face. She peered out the window and saw a fire truck outside her neighbor’s house. Try deep breathing, her therapist had told her; it would help with your anxiety, but now her breath was caught in her throat.

The woman curiously put on her slippers and walked downstairs. She approached a firefighter as she closed the door tightly behind her, this time making sure that it was shut.

“What’s going on?” She asked one of the broad-shouldered men.

“Just a small house fire,” the firefighter said, “nothing to worry about.”

The woman studied how the firefighters put out the fire, making sure that it was really dead this time. As she stared at the somewhat scorched window frame, near where the fire had started, she noticed two icy blue dots reflecting on its surface. The woman walked slowly back to her house with her head down and arms crossed, trying to ignore what she had just seen.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” A man said as the woman bumped into him on her way back.

She looked up at the stranger, recognizing him from the street, and couldn’t tell if the sudden hint of red in his eyes was a reflection of the flashing lights, fire, or pure rage.

“I believe we know each other,” the man said as the tone in his voice suddenly got two octaves deeper. “I’m Michael Dunne.”