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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/campfires/item_id/885826-The-Befuddlement
Rated: 13+ · Campfire Creative · Novella · Comedy · #885826
Two neighbors find that one of them is threatened by unspeakable evil...
[Introduction]

Dove Fireborn and Steve Spader are next door neighbors -- have been for years. But into their quiet neighborhood will come a menace so unspeakably evil that I hesitate to mention it. However, I must, because this is the introduction and you deserve to know what you are being introduced to.

Appearing first as only a gentle teasing of the threads, the evil slowly grows into a horror so overwhelmingly destructive that it threatens to rip apart the very fabric of their everyday existence.

Enough said. In the beginning, things were quite normal....
Steve noticed that Dove was out in her backyard watering her petunias, so he stepped outside to chat a bit. "Hello, Dove. Did you see the TV images of hurricane Frances?"
Pleasantly distracted from her gardening chores, Dove turned to face her longtime neighbor and friend. Yet even as her lips parted to utter a reply, an infinitesimal, indefineable measure of discomfort seeped into her being...

She'd long felt a powerful attraction to this man, fueled by so much more than just his rugged good looks. In obligatory deference to 'Old School' mandates, however, she'd opted for discretion where such matters were concerned. And even though her response to his voice today heralded its customary intoxicating rush, it swiftly withered as she met both his inquiry and his gaze. Tenuous though it was, somewhere from the fiber of her being came a call for caution... a warning that something was not right.

Something about him.

Something that, though intangible to conscious scrutiny, was nevertheless very real ~ and somehow forboding.

Muting for now the soft warning bells inside her mind, she responded, "Yes, I did, Steve - it must be terrible for the people living there, don't you think?"
Steve hesitated to reply because he was wondering why Dove had taken so long to formulate what turned out to be a rather mundane reply to his question. What was she thinking about? Why had she not answered quickly? Had some new fact come to her attention to make her wary of him?

Steve realized that he himself was taking too many seconds to respond to Dove and that maybe, just maybe, this lag in response resulted from the same mental process in both of them. Perhaps he and Dove were more alike than he realized.

He knew that if he didn't say something soon, then she would find it exceptionally strange, for now his delay time was certainly exceeding her delay time and he had thought her delay time was unusually long. "Say something, you fool!" he told himself. No! Not to yourself! To Dove!

"Uhhh... Yes, yes... It must be terrible."
The strained nature of their encounter hung almost palpably between them. Anxious to ward off suspicion - his as well as her own - she offered up a new topic meant both to distract and divert.

"You've certainly made yourself scarce of late, Steve... how are things going for you since your stay in the hospital?"

The hospital.

Again, that sensation - that sense of a chill fingering her spine. But why should the reference affect her thus? Steve had been hospitalized, yes... but he certainly appeared hale and hearty now. She dismissed the troubling thoughts as menopausal fallout and again met his gaze with her own. His eyes were captivating, and she summoned the full breadth of restraint as she awaited his response...
The hospital! Why did she mention that? But he resolved that this time he would not lose himself in the byways of thought. He would allay her suspicions, if she had any, and he suspected that she did, with a bold, quick reply.

"Hospital? What hospital?"

No! No! Wrong! Wrong! She knows you were in the hospital!

"Oh, you mean the hospital! Yes, I was in the hospital. Not very long. Just long enough to get fixed up, you know? Hahahahahahahahaha!"

That should do it! Casual reply with a little friendly laughter. Why is she looking at me like that?
Fighting the parasympathetic physiological responses threatening to slacken her jaw and narrow her pupils, thus signalling the incredulity and suspiciousness now washing over her, she averted her eyes from his, busying herself with plucking blades of grass from her bodice.

"Not very long"?

"Fixed UP"?

After the ambulance screamed away from his home and into the balmy night, Steve had lingered in a coma for WEEKS. Expectations for his recovery were non-existent; only hope against hope remained. And yet, hope and prayers had seemingly wrought the miracle no one expected or could foresee - he'd awakened an arduous 39 days later, seemingly, save for moderate muscle atrophy, none the worse for the wear. A week of physical therapy then became the singular remaining obstacle to overcome before his discharge home.

Why this transparent attempt to minimize...to laugh it all off? Why was his body language betraying his spoken words? It was so unlike him to be deceitful...
Steve felt a growing sense of panic. She distrusts me! But why? He needed to do or say something to ease her mind about him. The dog! What was her little dog's name? Pedro?

"How is Pedro, today? You know how I like the little rascal! When is he going to visit me again? He's such a nice little dog. I wish I had a dog like that. You're very lucky to have a dog like Pedro. A fine dog, indeed!"
Her breath caught short, wedging painfully between her breastbone and throat. Stiffening, she knew the last vestiges of denial were falling away - there was nowhere to hide; not even from herself. Something was very, very wrong. It wasn't just his harried color or ill-timed, hollow laughter, nor his poorly disguised frenzied demeanor. It was an unsettling, steeping brew of all of these and still something more... another unseen, un-named ingredient; potent, viscous, and menacing.

Summoning every ounce of inner strength, she slowly raised her head, allowing her gaze to meet his. Searching there, she found no hint of emotion in his eyes; as if his soul had been purloined and only a physical imposter left in its stead.

"You know that Peanut disappeared, Steve. The day you went to the hospital..."
His vision blurred. Reality flickered and wavered, faded in and out, began a slow spin which increased to a roaring whirlwind that threatened to lift him off his foundations, raise him high into the sky, and then hurl him into the earth, smashing him into fragments of mewling semiconscious protoplasmic slime.

He tried to increase his grip on the real reality, the one that he had always thought was solid as rock, the reality of gardens and lunches and blue skies and flowers and afternoon chats and little barking dogs...

The dog! The dog! The dog was at the center of the whirlwind. He was sure of it now, but there was no way to say it, no way to hold on to it, no way to let Dove know that...

Steve was visibly trembling. His eyes rolled to show white and then he just collapsed like a released balloon, except without that nasty sound they sometimes make. Steve's collapse was as graceful as a Southern Belle with the vapors, yet also heavy and thudding like a sack of potatoes tossed out of the back of a United Nations aid truck distributing food supplies to a mob of starving refugees in some God-forsaken Third World country.
She saw his color ebb from his face as subtley but surely as a midsummer tide. His countenance took on a quality defying logic; features shifting, sliding, tumultuously battling for a foothold in some - any - emotional form; failing because none would step forward. His eyes faded in hue, veiling themselves from the scrutiny of anyone seeking a glimpse of his soul. Behind the veils, something raged far removed from the gates of sanity...

He momentarily stiffened, but there swiftly followed a chaotic deterioration of customarily athletic motor skills to a caricatured state of dysfunction. It was as if some unseen, evil puppeteer had carelessly taken up the delicate strings that were his body and soul, pulling them taut and releasing them at will. Steve's body and mind were no longer his own; control wholly surrendered to - and at the utter mercy of - another entity's whims.

Frozen, struggling as a deer caught in headlights to assimulate what she beheld, Dove had no time to react as the tortured spirit before her wavered, then wobbled - and then, muscles vanquished and mind in absentia, pitched forward face first at her feet...

The sun was shining bright and cheerful through the window. Steve closed the blinds, feeling the tension flow out of him as the room became dark and cool. It was his first day home from the hospital and Doctor Mediculus had warned him to avoid intense sunlight for the first few days.

He could hear Dove out in her backyard, watering her petunias. The sound of the water drops hitting the petunias was like someone blasting sand grains at a tin roof. He marveled at the surreal clarity of the sound. He could almost feel the drops of water slamming into the delicate petals of the petunias. He imagined their graceful heads jerking backwards every time a high-pressure waterdrop hit them, as if they had been shot by an assassin with an automatic weapon who just kept on shooting and shooting...

He ran out on his back porch and yelled, "Dove! Do you think you should be watering those petunias so much?" His voice sounded harsh to him, rusty, unused, but then he had been lying in a coma for 7 days, shorter than his previous coma, but still, 7 days was a long time to go without speaking.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean to yell! How are you today?" He smiled at Dove.
How she'd dreaded this moment, as his forced voice and pretense at pleasantness invaded her summer's day musings and replaced them with clanging cacophony. What exactly was WITH this man... leading her to believe for years now that they shared something special between them?

...Panic-stricken, she'd lept into her trusty Tempo following his latest hissy fit and accompanying swan dive into her petunia patch, pursuing the ambulance bearing his prostrate prostate at break neck speeds. After her ensuing, decidedly less than pleasant encounter with a burly State Trooper and paying the fines associated with same, she'd let no obstacle stand in her way in racing to be at his side at the I.C.U. of the Faith & Be Gory Memorial Trauma Center and Institute for the Morally Challenged.

Arriving breathless at his cubicle, she was devastated to find that a sizeable gathering of semi-hysterical "visitors" of the female persuasion had preceded her in joining Steve at his bedside. Everywhere she looked, dainty feminine hands dabbed lace hankies to tearful swollen eyes. More often than not, the dominant of each pair of said hands was ministering in a veritable plethora of ways to the ailing Steve. He lay motionless amongst the attentive, industriously occupied hands, his color decidedly higher than comatose patients normally sport.

It was then, in that razor-sharded, earth-shattering Moment of Truth, that reality delivered its cruelest blow....

Hers was not the only "campfire" Steve had been attending....oh, nooooo. He'd delivered Kielbasa to many other campsites and warmed his hands over far more than one flame, undoubtedly never once offering apologies for forgetting the condiments...
Steve watched Dove think about how to answer his question. Her eyes seemed to look right through him, with just an occasional twitch or jerk of her eyeballs. Did the woman never blink?

In the past, he might have conjured up mean-spirited images of a mind that processsed ordinary data only with extreme difficulty, but he was so at peace within since the coma. for the first time he realized that Dove was quite a beautiful woman.

Her petite figure was high-breasted and round-rumped. Her eyes sparkled like diamonds. He hoped that didn't reflect some inner desire for an actual diamond in all its full matrimonial symbolism.

Why had he never copulated with Dove? It did seem convenient and easily done. They were both single and lived next door to each other. Yet, before his two stays in the hospital, copulation had not been in the front of his mind. Now it was and he wondered at that. Copulation. The word sounded strange to him, as though it were not his ordinary manner of speaking. Yet, there the word was, lying in his brain. And not really lying -- it seemed to be standing up and looking around.

His eyes wandered around the garden as he waited for Dove to answer his question. What was it? Oh yes. How are you today? Yes, in the past he would have flown off into flights of paranoid fantasy, wondering what schemes she was thinking up in her long pauses. But not now. Now he could wait forever if he had to. Her petunias looked great. All that watering, he guessed.

He let his eyes return to the curves of her female body. It was fun to trace along the lines of her figure with his gaze, letting his eyes travel smoothly around the curve of each breast and buttock. It was almost like riding a mental roller coaster. Copulation...
She whirled on him, errant drops of water cascading from her watering can and kissing his tanned, sandalled feet. My, what long toes he had...

Forcing herself back to the matters at hand, she offered a curt reply of, "I'm quite well, thank you, Steven. And yourself?"

Odd, how looking at him (looking into him, really, as had become her custom for quite some time now) in each instance revealed a new and unique facet or hue to the myriad of puzzle pieces that together reflected who he truly was. Each time she felt she'd pieced enough of the puzzle together to allow his true visage to be envisioned, the consummate effort at assimilation seemed to melt away before her very eyes; naught but a kaleidoscopic maze of fragments once more left strewn in its wake. Indeed, the waters of his soul seemed never at peace; perpetually undulating in ebbs and tides that defied predelection or even rudimentary comprehension by any and all to whom he denied entrance. She suspected that the number of those denied entrance far exceeded those granted the privilege ~ if, in fact, anyone ever had...
She whirled around to answer him, almost spitting the words at him. No, that was the spray from her watering can. Why had she called him 'Steven'? So formal. And her face was flushed so red that even her very words seemed colored in that hue. Well, two could play the game of formality.

"I am doing quite well today, Miss Fireborn. And may I say that your petunias are looking lovely?"

Zheesh! Did that sound suggestive? Would she interpret 'petunias' as code for 'pitty pats'? Too late now to retract his words, but he prepared himself to take defensive action and 'spin' them if she took offence.

Hmmm... Perhaps a fence would be a good idea. Nothing obtrusive like a 7 foot wall of concrete, but something subtle like a small picket fence, only knee high, but it would be a symbolic line that she would hesitate to cross. But would he? And what was this little smidgen of self-doubt doing in his mind? Sometimes he felt like a kaleidoscope -- always a new design. But under it all -- the design that must not be revealed.

For a brief moment, she stood before him decidedly nonplussed. Ahhh, this merry-go-round of emotions... when ~ WHEN ~ would her heart once more be entirely her own? Gazing into his eyes, she glimpsed there the spirit her own so longed to meet, but saw, as well, the seven foot wall of concrete guarding well its perimeters. Constructed one brick at a time, airless mortar rendering it imepenetrable to any seeking to invade, it cast a forboding shadow, indeed ~ a shadow dark and abiding for a lifetime ~ whenever the sun shone too bright. And though the shadow bore testament to the mighty barrier sustaining it, she knew that it fell on HIS side of the wall, immersing not those who ventured near him ~ but he, himself ~ in its gloom.

A wave of tiredness swept over her, and for a moment she allowed it to carry her away on its ebbing tide. She'd journeyed too long and too far down her own path in life to take up sledghammers now to wield against walls others had built. She resolved from this point on only to knock at the gate and patiently await permission to enter. In Steve's case, she'd knocked, rung the bell, and left enough post-a-notes to wallpaper the Smithsonian, all to no avail. It was time to cut bait.

Had the time also come to invest in a white picket fence of her own? Something diminutive and presenting no threat, yet all the while according her desired protection by virtue of its sharpend tips?

Borne aloft and carried away on the wings of these thoughts and new-found resolve, Dove's anger dissipated as vestiges of smoke in a gentle breeze. In this brilliantly illuminated moment of reckoning, anger was replaced with peace; frustration with wit...

"Why, thank you Steve ~ your garden's sporting some pretty impressive stamen as well! How's your Old English Ivy hanging? Still sorely afflicted with powdery mildew wilt? C'mon, Steve, why are you staring at me with your mouth hanging open? Gimme some skin, man! Lay some chatter on me, Dude! Spill it, Hoomey! WHASSSSSSUP !!!???"{/b}
Was she black? He didn't think so. Yet, who could be sure in this day and age when the whole world had become a gigantic melting pot of tumultuous writhing humanity.

Black or not, there seemed to be no alternative to matching her chatter.

"Word! You looking good, girl! My mouth's hanging open because I am so shocked at how dam GOOD you look! I must have been sick for a LONG time not to see THAT!"

And it was true. She did look good.

Copulation.


That word again, standing up in his mind as though his subconscious were the chest of a crew member in the first Alien movie and the little alien baby had just burst bloodily from within to scamper about the room gnashing its teeth. Yes, the metaphor was apt. This word had burst through layers of repression and guilt that were thick enough to be used as the foundation of an entire civilization, one of those ancient ones that built with stone and favored huge temples, thick walls, and gargantuan statues. Yes, that was him - bursting out, hard as rock and thinking of 'copulation'...

"Say, Dove, why don't you come inside with me and we'll have a little drink? I have some fine intoxicating beverages in my food storage appliance, I mean, my... refrigerator. Come on and let's allow our bodies to be influenced by the metabolism of alcohol. It will be pleasant. Hmmmmm? Come on..."
"Stunned, Dove gaped momentarily but swiftly recovered, her mouth snapping shut with what she imagined must have been an audible clang. Just what kind of woman did he think she WAS? Did he really believe that her body, alabaster, petite and well proportioned as it was for a woman of her years, was so easily relegated to the auction block ~ and with it, her soul and mind? For all three were tightly interwoven and the gift of one meant the gift of all three ~ she'd always believed he knew that to be true, at least in her case. Little did he know of her background in law enforcement and marksmanship skills...

She envisioned the paper silhouette targets of long ago, their chests rent with the gaping holes left by her shotgun blasts from hip stance. Once, she'd dreamed of baby aliens bursting forth from those bloodless, gaping wounds....

"I think not, Steve..." She let the words taper off and hang there in the air between them, invisibly memorialized in ballooned, comic-trip style, to allow him a plentiful amount of time to read and digest them. "I mean, REALLY!", she thought, "What kind of man would keep a fine Kaluha in the refrigerator!!!??? Granted, the icebox is the perfect place to keep the heavy cream for White Russians, but certainly not a delicate liqueur! How gauche!"

Her indignation growing, she glanced down for a moment, and what she glimpsed prompted her next inquiry, even as her incredulous gaze remained stubbornly fixed...

"Steve, have you stolen a cucumber from my garden?"


Steve glanced down at the cucumber in his hand. Now what was that doing there? He held his cucumber up for Dove to see. "You mean this?"

It was surprising how big Dove's eyes could get. Why was she registering such extreme surprise? Wasn't she the one who pointed at the cucumber? As she made no move to grab it, he let it fall back to its previous position.

"I didn't steal it. It grew there." Did she think he dressed in black and stealthily creeped into her garden at night to steal her vegetables? Dove had become so suspicious of everyone of late. Ever since she lost her... her... her... What was that image? What WAS it? A small animal of some kind? Why could he not remember? Aaargh!

"Did you lose something, Dove?... Something alive?"
Her hand flashed forward and delivered a stinging slap to his cheek, leaving there a seared, crimson signature of her own pain. She felt no remorse, praying instead that he possessed sufficient empathy and shame to conceal the mark with fervored blush...

It appeared, however, that he did not ~ his face held naught but its customary expression of non-intuitiveness laced with vacancy; imbued not with revelation, but only her imprinted, fiery seal. His cucumber abandoned to gravity, the hand that had just been caressing it so vigorously now flew to his wounded cheek... as if its touch could do for his face what it so aptly accomplished with his cucumber!

"You know VERY WELL that my beloved Peanut is still missing, and you come to me with your CUCUMBER in hand? You CAD!" Feinting left to divert his attention and thwart any attempt at self-defense, she slapped his other cheek for good measure. He had two more cheeks equally as vulnerable now... she summoned forth monumental self-control in opting to leave them intact for the time being.

"So many men think that even women of refinement, elegance, and style are as likely as any old streetlamp-tanned slut-kitten to abandon a diminuative Peanut for a sizeable Cucumber without so much as a glance over their shoulder at what has been so blithely surrendered! Well I have news for you, Steven RICHARD Spader, Raider of the Perfumed Gardens,... THIS lady was not thus whelped! I do not manage my life with hairball remedies and penicillin shots, nor did I fall off the cucumber truck immediately following a strenuous harvest! Therefore, I strongly suggest that you cease trying to water my garden with cucumber juice and return my dear Peanut forthwith! Granted, Peanut's twin and best friend, Pipsqueak, remains safe and accounted for ~ but once you've had Peanut, you can never go back. My adored, furry little Peanut could NEVER be replaced in my heart by your shiney, bald cucumber, so read my lips, oh Hairless One...

NO... MORE... WAXES! "


His head jerked sideways from the impact of her meaty fist, then immeditely was slapped the other way as she hit him again. My God in heaven, has the woman gone insane?

Then she said the word he had been searching for but couldn't remember -- peanut! And suddenly he remembered everything that happened that terrible afternoon -- the dog, the unspeakable mind-searing evil...

He struggled to speak, to tell Dove what he had discovered, to warn her about the other one -- Pipsqueak! Poor Dove, alone with that creature! But even as he tried to say the words, to warn her, he felt the spin begin. Oh no! Not again!

The intense dark blue of the sky developed a pattern of white cracks -- like an old vase, he thought -- and shattered into fragments that fluttered down around them like autumn leaves, leaving behind a view into nothingness, black and empty.

He struggled against the dizziness. He was like a little kid hanging on to a merry-go-round for dear life, crying in panic as the big kids spun it faster and faster and laughed at him, taunted him.

He wanted to say "Dove! The dog! Be careful!" but it was too late. His mind was spinning like a beserk kaleidoscope being twirled by a hyperactive idiot in a Nigerian prison. His eyes rolled over like a couple of eggs in a greasy spoon diner ordered sunnyside up and now being competently flipped by an old Navy cook with tattoos of a heart and an anchor on his biceps.

He swayed like a 1000-year-old redwood that cannot believe it has just been sawed through by two little men with a big chainsaw, then he toppled, slowly at first, but picking up speed, until he slammed into the soft dirt of the backyard, his nose impaled in the earth just in front of Dove's crisp white sandals.
He lay there, spewing forth his lunch and a quart or two of Red Dog, and she fought off revulsion as well as the now familiar fatigue insinuating itself into her every fiber. This was the second time he'd executed a dramatic, albeit suspiciously accurate, swan dive into her lap, dousing her nether regions with gastric content ~ (Oh, sure ~ the story HE'D tell was that he buried his schnoz in the SOIL....) and frankly, the scenario was growing moldy and stale. Whipping out her faithful Cellular One (hoping somewhere within her depths she'd be unable to get a signal) she dialed the now well-worn keypads for 9-1-1.

"Yes, hello there, Captain Blazer, it's me again, Dove.... what's that? Oh, ayup, same old same old ~ garden's in bloom and so am I... How's your deaf old dalmation doing? Really! ELEVEN puppies? Far Flucking OUT! Well, keep a careful tick watch on 'em... It is that time of year, ya know? How's your mother-in-laws herniated cervix? Wonderful! Amazing, the miracles catgut hath wrought. I'm sorry...what was that? My signal funkifies whenever the phone gets wet... OH! The reason I called? <exasperated sigh> I'm afraid yer gonna have to send the boys over again with the Jaws of Life...yeah, it's Spader ~ his lips are stuck to me like super-glue and he's barfin' his brains out (no risk for dehydration there} and I fear he'll aspirate again. Another coma? I dunno ...we can only hope....
He gasped for breath. Wrapped in endless strands of spider silk, he was trussed up like a helpless fly waiting to have its body fluids sucked out by a big hairy spider.

After an epic struggle to open his eyes, he was able to focus on the hairy arms of Nurse Gwendolyn adjusting his IV needle. So that was his spider! He would have laughed if there was even a tiny spark of light-hearted humor left in him, but alas, the embers of hope and happiness had been extinguished by the cold waters of impending doom.

Lying there in his straitjacket, he could only hope that somehow, despite the overwhelming odds of certain disaster, that somehow his moderately friendly neighbor, Dove Fireborn, was still alive and safe and taking reasonable caution to avoid an encounter with the unspeakable menace that menaced her.

It was too late for him, of course, although he felt surprisingly warm and comfortable in these tight restraints. Yet, he knew it was only an illusion of comfort and that in reality, the real reality, not this phoney smoke dream that surrounded him so completely that it almost seemed real but didn't fool him one bit... No, in the real reality he was not comfortable at all. He was uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, and he was sure of that, even as he drifted back into coma and dreams of spiders and petunias and little dogs who did more than just bark and weewee on your foot... What was Dove doing?... Be careful, Dove... Be caaaa... zzzzzzz...
She gathered up her beloved Pipsqueak; amused as always by the little dog's description of "4 pounds and 13 ounces of furry feminine Yorkapom in a 2-pound sack". Though gazing into her dancing brown, eternally puppy-dog eyes brought customary comfort, warmth, and assuagement to her battered heart ~ so, too, did an overwhelming measure of sadness and worry return, unbidden and wholly overpowering. Even as Peanut's name flitted through Dove's mind, Pipsqueak's tiny ears perked; erect, hollowed pyramids snapped to a swivelling posture of attention atop a diminutive Yorkified head. Dove had long believed that both Peanut and Pipsqueak heard her thoughts just as surely as if they'd been delivered aloud... just as Dove heard theirs, though seemingly far less adept at decoding their musings than they at deciphering hers.

Pipsqueak, though a great source of joy to Dove's guarded heart, seemed as fragmented and bereft by Peanut's disappearance as Dove herself. 'Pips' and 'Pean' had been sisters in a litter of only two; identical twins but for subtle differences in coloring. They'd been abidingly symbiotic in their adventures in-uteri, their nursery den, and in all worlds beyond, their ethereal attunement to one another an enigma from the start. Dove, still grieving the loss of her dear little Lhasa-Apso-mix, Itty-Bit when her path randomely crossed that of the P & P Twins, had fallen immediately and irretractibly in love with them, rendered forever helpless in the palliative spell they'd cast upon her wounded soul. They had, with their heady embrace of life and unwavering devotion to each other and to her, vanguished a heavy mantle of grief and replaced it with the warm cloak of love and hope.

Though Pip's angst over Peanut's disappearance had taken its toll upon her robust appetite and signature impetuous zeal for life, Dove knew the little creature well enough to be certain that the symptoms Pips manifested were those of concern and longing for Peanut's return ~ and decidedly not of grief and bereavement. This, together with the inexplicable, infallible otherworldy connection between the two pups, assured Dove that Peanut, though missing, was indeed still alive...

And Steve held the key to all ~ of that Dove was equally certain. Each time the vanished Peanut's spectre threatened to materialize, Steve conveniently surrendered up his entire array of sensibilities, predictably necessitating emergent and swift removal to a health care facility where he lay comatose but comfortably ensconsed in a cocoon of besheets and catheters. Yes, he indeed knew more than he was saying, and she found herself responding with renewed and solidly reinforced resolve to get to the bottom of this and much more...

Gathering an afghan she'd crochetted of softest coral, lamb's wool yarn around her petite shoulders and settling her adored remaining little pup-twin into the lap befouled only hours ago by the barf-beset Steve, Dove snuggled in for the night on a sofa before a cheery little fire. She let go the troubles and worry for now, mentally banishing the chill that coursed through her veins to the realms of the cool, late-summer's night. Like the lovely, fragile, but unerringly tenacious Scarlet O'Hara, she'd think about these things ~

tomorrow...
He awoke in a panic. Where was he?... It all rushed back into his mind like the waters closing over his 12-year-old head many summers before when he did cannonballs off the diving board of the community swimming pool.

The hospital at night. Soft lighting. Grey-green walls. The distant beeping of life monitoring machines. The soft murmurs of nurses. A brief shuffling of feet when one of the life monitors stops beeping. Then the smooth roll (except for that one squeaky wheel) of the gurney across linoleum floors as it bears away the lifeless body of someone from the room next door, another testament to the vagaries of fate and the inadequacies of modern medical treatment.

Tuned to the night sounds as he was, he became aware of the tip-tap of doggy feet on the waxed floor of the hallway. The tip-tap stopped at the door of his room. He lifted his head to see. There in the doorway was a tiny dog, dark against the hallway light, its little face in shadow except for the white points of its snarling teeth which caught the light and the white circumference of its enraged eyeballs.

Wanting to scream, but paralyzed with fear, he could only watch as the dog (Peanut!?) grabbed the wire from the nurse call button in its jaws and tore it apart with a viscious shake of its little head. Then it bit the plug to his IV pump and yanked it from the wall. The life monitor was next.

Peanut looked at him for a long moment, then tippy-tapped out of the room and down the hall.

Hearing the dog's pawsteps fade into the depths of the hospital, Steve found his ability to move slowly returning. Suddenly he set up in the bed. Was he dreaming?

He stood up and walked to the window. Outside was the sleeping city of shadows and streetlights, but he was awake! Energized, but cautious, he crept out into the hallway, down the stairs, through corridors, hiding when necessary, until finally he found an exit and ran off into the shadows of the city.

Don't worry, Dove Fireborn! I'm coming to save you! His eyes gleamed, full of exhaltation and glory and life!...
Oddly enough, dozing fitfully on the divan before the dwindling fire, Dove experienced a nocturnal event foreign to her until this night... she dreamed of Steve.

Though he'd occupied her waking thoughts for far longer than she cared to calculate, this was his first, though not entirely unpleasant, intrusion into her somnambulistic musings. In her dream, he'd taken physical form as a large boned, amptly-bellied, sleeveless-ribbed t-shirted, three days unshaven, round-faced and partially balding man, chronologically accomplished to the tune of 55 or so hard-beset years.

He'd simply materialized within the confines of her home ~ the dream bore no mark of his knock at the door, nor her invitation of his entry therein. And yet, in the way of dreams, she'd not questioned the manner of his arrival, nor the fact that he'd gained wholly unbidden, unanticipated, and most certainly uninvited entry to then proceed to embark, inexplicably and with great vigor, upon cleaning her house from cottaged top to cluttered bottom. With the utter disregard for logic that is also a hallmark of such dreams, Dove had offered no protest of his pursuits, despite the innappropriate ~ and somehow consumately intimate ~ characterstics defining them (and despite the fact that he cleaned much in the manner that men do everything ~ with superb self-confidence, counterbalancing decidedly disproportionate practicable skill). But even this failed to perturb Dove, as it was overcome and deftly robbed of any measure of significance by the oppositional forces of the "It's the Thought That Counts" mantra.

Upon finishing his 'Merry Albeit Decidely Masculine Maid' performance, Steve concluded Act One and signalled there'd be no Intermission by planting his jovial, ample-and-then-some kiester beside her afghan-shrouded, shock-numbed body, still clutching wee Pipsqueak in a her protective embrace, on the sofa in front of a long-deceased but once cheerful little fire.

His countenace and speech patterns assumed Archie Bunker-like qualities wholly uncharacteristic of the expressive and communicative attributes that had previously defined him, rendering him such a central, oft-returned-to hero in her fantasies. He side-tilted his meaty face, bestowed upon her the phantom vestiges of a knowing wink, locked his eyes with hers, and gave voice to the statement, "Well that's a done deal, Dovie, my Dear ~ what's next?"

Withering and shrinking back from his prolonged, unwavering gaze, still holding the fascinated, unabashedly staring, and entirely unafraid Pipsqueak in her arms, Dove found herself instantly reduced to a quivering state with which she had precious little experience. She was utterly speechless, her mind steadfastly refusing to compute the data at hand and the words he'd just spoken. So potently earth-shattering, the phenomenon of simply experiencing such a realization, that it wrenched her from sleep and unceremoniously deposited her on the doorstep of consciousness with something psychologically akin to a bone-jarring thump.

Pipsqueak was, in fact, staring intently ~ but her gaze was fixed upon the joltingly-rudely awakened Dove as opposed to the now vaporized Steve. Pip's searching eyes held Dove transfixed, the tiny creature's mind palpating Dove's own, seeking there the source of Dove's forceful jumpstart of her day. Shaking her head as much in incredulity as to gain better footing on reality's ediface, Dove tremulously arose and set about facilitating both hers and Pip's morning's demanding personal oblations.

Though her mind insisted that all had been the stuff of dreams, she found herself furtively glancing about, searching for evidence supportive of fact where only fiction was thus far in evidence. No such evidence was present, of course, and she mentally chastised herself, punctuating the rebuke with an audible, remonstrative cluck of her tongue. "You can be an exceedingly silly wench, at times, Dove. Take your Primprem and get out to your garden! Time waits for no twit!"

Self-deprecation reaffirmed, as it was wont do do, its inestimable merit being in terms of spurring her into action; Dove finished her now-cooled coffee and bustled off toward the garden...

stopping dead in her tracks at the patio door's threshold, frozen, mouth agape, and staring in stunned disbelief...
On the other side of the glass door a familiar small body was vigorously wagging its stub of a tail.

Pipsqueak barked joyfully and ran to the door. Dove opened it and the two dogs rubbed noses and sniffed each other. "Where have you been, Peanut?" Dove sat down on one of the white wicker chairs on the patio and Peanut and Pipsqueak jumped into her lap.

"Did you come home to Mama? Where did you go? Where did you go? You've been away so long! Yes you have! Where were you? Did you go on a little vacation?"

Through all this, Peanut was wagging and barking joyfully. Pipsqueak barked as well, but with a bit of jealousy in it. For a few days she had been the number one dog, the only dog, but now she had to deal with Peanut's attention-hogging tactics again. Pipsqueak wished she could use human words and tell Dove about a few of Peanut's failings, but all she could do was bark. She nipped Peanut's leg and he snarled.

Dove pulled them apart. "Oooo, I think someone is jealous. Is it a little jealous girl?" Pipsqueak had an urge to nip Dove as well, but wisely refrained. She jumped off her lap and trotted back to the kitchen to lie on the cool linoleum, her back turned to the two fools on the patio, but with one ear perked in that direction.
"Pipsqueak, you silly wee lass, come back and snuggle in Mama's lap with your sister!

Little Pip's pout, as always, proved fainthearted and shortlived as her long, plumed tail rose slowly from the floor, curled over her back, and began waving in perfect synchronicity with that of her twin, still happily ensconsed on Dove's lap. Dove watched with customary bemusement and delight as tiny Pipsqueak's ears defied her waning petulance and swivelled toward them, her eyes surrepticiously gazing in their direction even as her tiny snout remained stubbornly pointed away in waning, feigned indifference.

Moments later, the last of her resolve in tatters, Pipsqueak arose and trotted happily over to the smiling Dove, effortlessly leaping with joyous vigor into the waiting, shared hollow of Dove's soft lap. Whole again at last, Dove gathered both tiny pups close to her breast and together the three drank in the awakening day.

Serenaded by birds singing at their bath, breathing in the pungence of the garden's graced bloom, and beholding the ballet of winged dancers attired in all hues gathering nectar to spin into silk, three conjoined spirits revelled upon their white wicker throne and took note of riches bestowed.

Peanut and Pipsqueak soon snoozing in her pllowed lap, Dawn allowed her soul to unwind and her mental revelry meander at will. Wherever cast, her eyes beheld only bountiful beauty, heady with nature's perfumes and hues and gilded by the sun's first rays. The last of the dewdrops not already culled by the dawn hid in shaded retreats and, though doomed to surrender soon to the day's full birth, painted fading portraits in sparkling, prismed hues. Her sweeping gaze inventoried only awe-inspiring signatures of nature's artistry ~ until its panoramic arc brought her eyes to the woods bordering Steve's bungalowed property...

An icy chill swept the length of her steeling spine, the warmth of peaceful serentity falling
swift prey to its frosty assail. Her eyes locked, pupils enlarging, upon the emerald-feathered trees, always before a soft canopy for flora and fauna beneath. Now, to her horror, nature's once benevolent guardian had morphed into a bloodcurdlingly foreboding foe. Robbed of succor, violated by fear, Dove sat, paralyzed and silently mewling, as evil's dank embrace enfolded her and threatened to extinguish her very life's breath...
Steve stumbled through the forest, one thought on his mind: Find Dove and save her! Or was that two thoughts? The finding and then the saving? But did it matter? Conjoined in grammar and inseparable in his plan of action, they formed a unity, two into one. He relished the symbolism, but realized he was being very pedantic. Oh screw it then! Okay. Two thoughts, not one. So he made a mistake? It didn't change the fact that he was going to find Dove... AND... save her!
Unspeakable evil... there ~ just inside the shadowed wood's canopied perimeter.

Somewhere beyond that, the crashing sound of a stumbling charge ~ and breathless mumbling... "two fer one special???". Unable to clearly discern the exact words, dismissing them in favor of the menacing enemy at hand, and frozen, still clutching puppies, Dove tried ~ but failed ~ to flee...
Steve came crashing out of the woods like a low-paid stunt double for a "Here Comes the Mummy!" movie, but in that gap-flapping hospital gown it was obvious that he was nobody's mommy as he stumbled stiff-legged across the lawn.

"Dove!" he called. "Dove! Watch out for the-"

But even as the first words had cascaded out of Steve's mouth, little Peanut had performed a cascade of his own, a cascade of synchronized doggie muscles as he ran into the yard, leapt six feet into the air, and sunk his teeth into Steve's throat, thus preventing Steve from completing his warning.

Dove sat puzzled for a second, wondering, Watch out for what?. Then she jumped to her feet in horror. "Peanut! Stop that! Bad dog!"

But now Steve was on the ground thrashing his legs like a low-paid stunt double in a "My Daughter Is Possessed By A Demon!" movie, although in that revealing gown it was obvious that he was nobody's daughter. Steve yanked Peanut away from his neck and threw the snarling mutt across the lawn.

Looking at Dove, shrugging his shoulders, Steve pointed at his wounded throat, using body language to silently say, "I can't talk now. The dog ripped out my vocal chords. Please call an ambulance."
A torrent of innervated emotions showered Dove's mind as it desperately endeavored to assimilate the overload of sensory input unfolding before her disbelieving eyes. Neurons snapped like high tension wires, heralding imminent, non-compensatory overload. She had the mad, fleeting thought that her hair would surely burst into flame and her cerebrum ignite to join her locks in feuling a roaring inferno.

First, the horrifying spectre at the edge of the woods... then, the equally daunting sight of Steve, loping toward her, scantily and indelicately clad in naught but an open hospital gown (worn backwards, of course), a woebegotten misfit ambulating awkwardly on three legs, the smallest of which flacidly defied gravity with every bounce of his gait.

Pipsqueak and Peanut, sighting the profusely perspiring, entirely incoherent, next-to-naked Steve, spiked their hackles and summoned forth their rendition of optimally menacing growls, reminiscent of the utterances of rabid honey bees, from deep within their throats. The two tiny sentries arose in Dove's lap and for a moment held their ground there, huge-pupilled eyes affixed on Steve's salutory third leg, ears perked for maximum performance, every nerve ending in their diminutive bodies firing at Defcon Five.

Peanut, always the least tolerant of unidentified flopping objects and already harboring a grudge for the man who could not keep her gender straight to save his happy little imperilled behind, shot from Dove's lap as if launched by some unseen, tensile-coiled slinky. Before Dawn could react, Peanut, astutely perceiving that the offending soft and bobbing appendage presented no real threat to anyone, opted instead to hit her target where he lived and instantly went for Steve's jugular.

Dove offered the obligatory and politically correct "Bad Dog!" admonishment to Peanut, yet found irrepressible her immense pride in the valiant little canine. In the instant boundaried at genesis by Peanut's leap from her lap and at exodus by the audible pop of Steve's neck tissue as her teeth found their mark, Dawn heard Steve gasp something about a watch being out, but the time of time was monumentally insignificant to her as she observed, horrified, Steve carelessly and with wicked abandon wrench her beloved little dog away from his copiously bleeding neck and heave her with malice of forethought into the birdbath.

Rushing to Peanut's side, Dove swiftly revived the limp little dear with rescue breathing and an adaptive rendition of the Heimlich Maneuver. Minutes passed as Dawn performed mouth-to-snout CPR, and just as hope began fading, the wee little dog drew her first shaky breath, followed swiftly by ensuing, voluntary gulps of life-giving air. Dove gathered the soaked Peanut into her arms, turned, and stepping over Steve's inert, bloodied body, rushed blindly back to her bungalow. Steve gurgled something at Dove, splashing her skirts with crimson gore, and Dove made a mental note to summon an ambulance for him just as soon as she finished speaking with the vet...

"HONESTLY! Will this man's pathological bids for attention never END? When would he realize that babbling at her pansies, barf-buffetting her lap, banking south for nosedives, and bloodying her skirts with B-positive were NOT pursuits likely to win over her heart?" These thoughts soon gave way to a male voice on the phone...

"Yes! Dr. Forepaws? This is Dove Fireborn... little Peanut has just been brutally attacked! As she hastened to animatedly enlightened Dr. Forepaws with her terrifying tale, Dove failed to notice the morning breeze, surrepticiously having gained entry through the open patio door, first tickle and then wholly kidnap the Post-a-Note Dove had scribled reminding her to call an ambulance for Steve. Dove never saw, more's the pity, the errant breeze depart with the captured note now in its keep...
Steve felt a little woozy. He lay on his back, staring at the clear blue cloudless sky. He had both hands at his neck, holding down the flaps of flesh ripped loose by that little dog Peanut. What the heck is that dog's problem? Gender identity crisis?

Steve chuckled. He had to admire himself, how even in the midst of extreme tragedy he could summon up his quirky sense of humor. Dove was fortunate to have him for a neighbor. The ambulance would be here soon, thanks to her quick thinking compassionate nature. They made a good team: he, an intelligent man with a clever wit and good mechanical skills and she, a woman severely challenged by anything requiring rational thought, but kind to animals and a good gardener and probably a decent cook.

He was momentarily puzzled. Why had she never brought over any of her cooking for him to enjoy? She was a woman. Surely she must know how to cook? He would have to ask her about that after the doctors sewed him back together.

Speaking of doctors, where was that ambulance? The sky was beginning to fade from blue to black. He could hear the distant sounds of neighborhood moms calling in the kids. A cricket started chirping, then another. From Dove's house he heard the sound of the television. Was it prime time already? Geez! How long had he been lying there? Maybe the ambulance was in a wreck? He had heard of that happening. He drifted off into unconsciousness.

When he awoke, he could hear David Letterman on Dove's television. The wound on his throat was clotted and stiff. He struggled to his feet, stumbled over to his own house, found his hidden spare key, and fell through the door.
Having returned from the bustling Veterinary office (the Doctors Forepaws, Neuter, & Spray), Dove gently settled her bedraggled but valorous little Peanut on a soft pillow on the divan, offering both she and her sister a reassuring belly rub and high praise for defending Dove's honor from the inarguably emotionally challenged and morally bankrupt, gaping hospital gown-clad spectre that had emerged, hobbling on all three legs, from the menacing woods.

All in all, Peanut had survived reasonably well the onslaught of horror personified by Steve's vicious slander of her sexual identity and ensuing assault with intent to drown. Dr. Forepaws had given her a thorough examination (Peanut, that is ~ not Dove, more's the pity...) and pronounced her minimally worse for the wear, prescribing a treatment protocol of 30 minutes under a hair dryer set to "fluff", a regimen of rabies booster vaccinations (Given Steve's proclivities for naughty escapades with anything in skirts ~ including, Dove had come to suspect ~ KILTS, who KNEW where Steve's neck had been?), and a spitload of tender loving care. Dove, her cheeks harriedly hued with worry and concern, hurtled past the tepid status of mere willingness, proceeding, sans passing Go, directly to swearing on all that's holy to follow the Doctor's orders to the letter.

Upon their return home, doggie twins happily dozing in plumped down embrace, ecstacy evident upon their peaceful little pusses, Dove immediately set about preparing herself a sumptuous dinner. Her amazing talent for cooking, openly envied by Julia Childs until Julia boarded the Heaven Can't Wait Express, represented but one of a veritable plethora of uncanny abilities and mastery in a myriad of bents, not the least of which was her renown penchant for rational thinking and remarkably enhanced mechanical skills [insert pregnant pause and meaningful author's glare here]...

Could it be true? Was it even remotely possible that this man, whom she'd held in such longstanding high regard in real time and granted such exqusite and monumental sexual pleasure in the amber-illumined catacombs of her dreams, in actuality not only a pervert with a bad case of the flopsies and an errantly sported hospital gown, but ~ even more shockingly ~ guilty of Felony Impersonation of a Homo Sapien?

... The thought had certainly crossed her mind as she stepped to her patio window to gaze, deep in wandering musings, out into the starry night. Peanut and Peanut sleeping peacefully, Dove's hunger handsomely attended to by the gourmet delights she'd just deftly prepared and consumed in front of the fire, and Dave on commercial break, she'd intended to fill the ensuing two minutes with reflection and renewal. Instead, she spied Steve, crawling with intent to walk, lurching in the general direction of his cheesy, unkempt little bungalow.

The shimmering rays of the night-moon's full orb favored Steve's own orb with significantly less than flattering illumination ~ disclosing it to be full, indeed, but cracked beyond repair. Mel Gibson certainly had nothing to fear from this man, providing Steve continued steadfastly ignoring the beseechings of N.O.W.'s collective membership that he agree to an emergency butt-lift enthusiastically and happily paid for by their Beautify America Fund.

The notion of a forgotten task flitted into her thoughts... there'd been something she'd meant to do, but had forgotten in the flurry of more pressing matters she'd just addressed. She utterly LOATHED Menopausally- Induced Recollection Impairment regarding the unimportant and mundane little issues in life. Then again, perhaps menopause, then, would mercifully obliterate all painful memories of the miniscule endowment she now beheld ~ the proof would be in the pudding.

Pudding! Yes! That was it! She'd forgotten the parfait she'd deftly spun for desrt. Abandoning the pitiful scenerio before her for the epicurean delight presently chilling in the Humidrawer, she realized she'd just enough time to make a circuitous but deftly efficient jaunt from patio door to kitchen and back to her pup-bedecked divan, parfait and spoon, and dainty napkin at the ready, before Jerry Springer came on...
Steve woke up on his kitchen floor. How long had he been unconscious this time? The neighborhood was dark and silent, except for the penetrating rasp of Dove's snoring, clearly audible from her house next door.

A phone call to 9-1-1 would be appropriate, but he was incapable of speech at the moment, thanks to Dove's little rat of a dog. He was beginning to think that his efforts to save Dove from unspeakable evil were going unappreciated. That reminded him about the food issue.

Never so much as a cookie from her! And here he was out to save her at great personal cost. He resolved that there would be an accounting when this was all over, assuming that they survived it, and Dove would compensate him for his efforts.

For a few moments, he was lost in thoughts of what to charge Dove for the various services he had performed, but was stopped short by a disturbing thought. I am dying!

Yes, thanks to loss of blood his life seemed to be ebbing away. He needed an ambulance, preferably one filled with trained medical personnel. Damn that dog! If Steve could only use his vocal chords now, he could talk on the phone. Without a voice, what good was the phone? The problem seemed insurmountable.

Well, there was one solution. He would have to go over to Dove's house, wake her up, and ask her to call 9-1-1.

He dragged himself over to Dove's bedroom window, only passing out twice along the way, and pulled himself up to where he could peek inside. Her snoring was intense at this close range, making the screen on the window vibrate with a thin tinny sound. How am I going to wake her over all that racket?

Then the two little rat dogs began barking and the snoring stopped...
Dove started, rudely awakened by her keen predelective senses and Peanut and Pipsqueak's barking, the decidedly outraged, barked forth warnings Dove recognized as reserved only for dire emergencies or the looming spectre of perversity, whichever circumstance happened to apply. Rising upon bent, utterly feminine and delicate elbows and glancing toward the window, she swiftly determined the latter to be the case. There hunched Steve, leering at her, tongue lolling and slobber copiously spilling forth from a mouth drawn back in a monumentally lecherous grin. Talk about your basic unspeakable evil!

As drool continued washing away the few infinitesimally small specks of well-congealed blood at the site of his pitifully minor neck wound, Steve continued zealously ogling Dove's incredibly sensuous curves, shielded now by only the sheer, gossamer folds of her lovely ivory silk nightgown and two highly agitated, miniaturized snarling guard dogs. Hastily drawing the bedclothes over her exquisitely sculpted, perkily upturned, taut-as-a bootcamper's-bunk-blanket-and-exceedingly-more- alluring bosoms, she regarded Steve, whose five-o-clock shadow had given over to the bewitching hour and whose hair appeared to have been recently coiffed with a lawnmower. (So THAT was the racket that had assailed her ears and sanity throughout the night past! She'd assumed it was merely yet another interminable, somnulent,fingernails-on-blackboards-reaction- evoking rendition of his horrendously sonorous version of "The Elephant Flatulates Tonight".)

That just CHAPPED IT! Reminding herself to chuck the cookies she'd relented and baked with tender loving care for this maniacal, leering puddle of protoplasm, Dove reached through the dogs' snarling visages for her pastel pink bedside Princess Phone. Hitting the worn 9-1-1 speed-dial function key, she was swiftly connected with Emergency Services. "Hello... Lieutenant Bloodlet? It's Dover Fireborn again. Will you kindly dispatch the Rescue Squad... I'm sorry, what was that? Oh, ayup ~ you are SO astute! Nailed it right on the head, you did ~ it is that wacko, perverted neighbor of mine! Severely injured? Well not at the moment, but he will be by the time you arrive. Ayup, this time he has vexed me beyond the farthest reaches of human tolerance. Pardon? Oh, Lieutenant, you do say the sweetest things... angelic and saintly, I am? Well, ah do trah. Alright, since you've been so very kind, I'll give him a few yards stumbling headstart before I blast him and sick the Twins of Terror on his happy, prone behind. Say what? Oh, you wondrously thoughtful, treasure of a man! Not to worry ...Pips and Pean have both been vaccinated against whatever medical horrors Typhoid Stevie might be be harboring at present. You're just so considerate, you sexy Medico Studmuffin, you! ... So can your paramedics pencil Spader in for, say, noonish or thereabouts? Splendid! Rigor mortis can be so difficult to cope with when loading lifeless carcasses on the stretcher. Well of COURSE I'm considerate of your paramedics! Each and every endowed like a stallion one of them, bless their dear hearts and other appendages! Say, Lou - are you still seeing Esmerelda? No? Well tickle my Gezundheit and call me Sneezey! I mean ~ I'm saddened to hear that, Louie. I so hate to think of you in such emotional pain!

Are you, by any chance, fond of sumptously mouthwatering, home-made, fresh-baked almondine cookies? ...
Steve was dimly aware of the paramedics lifting him onto the stretcher. Was it daylight already? He could smell almonds and it made him hungry. It would be good to get the IV back in and receive some much-needed nourishment.

Another night spent defending the world from unspeakable evil and Steve was exhausted, but at least Dove was safe. She was waving at him now as they carried him away and the paramedics thoughtfully waved back for him. A few cookie crumbs fell on his face.

He lay on the stretcher in the back of the ambulance for a long time, waiting while the attendants talked to Dove, no doubt reassuring her that he would be okay. Poor Dove. She was probably so worried about him. Who could know what that disgusting little dog of hers may have been sniffing with it's snout? At the hospital they would probably have to dip Steve in a full-body disinfectant. Maybe that would stop the itching on his thighs.

The paramedics finally jumped in the ambulance. The taller one jokingly said, "Are you still alive?" as he climbed in the back with Steve. Steve would have laughed if he hadn't been paralyzed from being injected with a heavy dose of sedative. He blinked his eyes "Yes" as paralysis victims have done since time immemorial, but the paramedic wasn't paying any attention.

At the hospital Steve slept the sleep of the dead, almost literally when he was transferred to the morgue for a few hours until someone noticed the mistake. He dreamed about unspeakable evil and Dove and Peanut, but not so much about Pipsqueak who seemed to be a minor player in life's little dramas. He wondered about that.

Pipsqueak. Did it sound so much like a rat (to which it bore a remarkable resemblance) that Dove had named it Pipsqueak? Its annoying little yap was very much like a squeak.

Then an odd thing happened. For a moment it seemed as though he was in Pipsqueak's mind (what there was of it), looking out through her eyes, and likewise he sensed that she was in his inert body at the hospital, trying to yap in panic but prevented from doing anything much by the sedative. But at the moment, Steve found himself in Pipsqueak's body lying in Dove's lap. The smells were intoxicating.
The sensation of having her lap snuffled and stared at shot through her reveries and snapped Dove back to the present. How odd, this sensation ~ so real and persistant, despite the fact that her lap was empty at present, given that Pipsqueak and Peanut were embarking upon their bedtime ablutions just off the patio breezeway.

Arising wearily, she crossed to the patio sliding doors, still feeling an occasional snuffle and sniff where her lap would have been were she not now standing. Opening the slider, she regarded night's breathtaking display in the northern skies. The aurora borealis was already in full swing, kaledoscopic in shifting, sheering, bejewelled hues scampering amongst the moon and stars as if on invisible strings controlled by a great, unseen cosmic puppeteer. She inhaled the garden's heady perfume, carried to her upon the gentle breezes of a waning summer's night; an intoxicatingly aromatic blend of sweet nectored flowers tucking their offspring into husked cradles and burgeoning vines presenting their own progeny as full ripened fruits awaiting the harvest of a skilled hand.

"Come on in, you wee furry nighstalkers! It's nigh time for bed!" Her furry little companions raced to her eagerly, leaping over the door sill in keen compitetion, as always, to be the first favored with a stroke of the head or better still, the preferred niche within in their Mistresse's lap. Gathering both little souls into her arms, she weathered the onslaught of ensuing doggie kisses, gaze still fixed, distractedly, upon the celestial tableau on sweepingly panoramic display in the northern skies ~ for anyone to behold with the same wonderment now holding, despite her exhaustion, her own feet firmly in place.

She did, however, ultimately surrender her heavenward gaze, crossing back to the divan with her pups still in her embrace. Sitting down, she stroked them lovingly and added the last of the almondine cookies to their already protuberant little bellies. She spoke to them of many things and nothing at all, as was her custom whenever they were thus gathered at day's end. Soon their eyelids grew heavy and drooping like those of sleepy children, and not long after, both were snoozing soundly in her lap. She, too, felt the strong pull of need for sleep at seemingly every relay of her physical and mental being. It had indeed been an eventful day...

First, her rude awakening to find Steve, drooling copiously and leering at her through the bay window of her boudoir. Then, that messy little episode surrounding his attempt to flee and subsequent slip and fall in whatever that sticky, viscous fluid WAS that he'd deposited in her back yard, resulting in yet another of the innumerable brain injuries he incurred over the summer months. How fortunate it had been for her that the paramedics had sufficient fire hose and water pressure at their disposal to wash away the unfortunate fluid Steve had left at the scene of the crime before the responding blowfly population bloomed to even greater numbers!

Blowflies...

Instantly her mind replayed the fleeting phenomenon she'd spied earlier at the wood's edge. She immediately willed the phantomed recollections away, emphatically banishing them from ever again entering her conscious thoughts, for such is the way with human nature when what is suspected is also what horrifies.

For now, fatigue soundly defeated her, rendering futile any further endeavors at contemplation; somnulence lay claim to her body and soul. Borne off without protest through descending levels of consciousness, her own being joined those of her beloved pups, surrendering to slumber ~ perchance to dream...
In her dream Dove was naked. She was often naked in her dreams, which was ironic since during the day she dressed like an Amish woman with nary an inch of skin showing other than her hands and face and even those occasionally covered by gloves and a veil.

Or perhaps it wasn't ironic. Perhaps it was symptomatic of her repressive daytime costumes that in her dreams she burst free of the confines of corsets and petticoats and let nature have her way. But whether it was irony or neurotic obsession, she was naked in her dream.

She laughed as she danced in her garden in the nude. In her dream her two little dogs danced on their hindlegs and were as big as men. Big men with fur coats and big brown eyes and long pink... tongues.

"Oh, Peanut, you dawg!" Dove laughed as she pirouetted clumsily through the petunias and crashed against the grape arbor. "Woops!"

What was that humming? It was like a hive of honey bees. She traced the sound to the little shed where she kept her tools. She tip-toed to the shed and stopped.

The humming was much louder. It was an animalistic organic biological throbbing hum like dozens of hummingbirds trapped in a cage. Could they be nesting in her tool shed? Maybe she should go back and put on a shirt? It seemed incautious to be standing naked in her backyard under a full moon listening to an ominous humming... Nevertheless, she reached out, grasped the handle of the toolshed door and pulled it open.

Blowfies! The shed was full of them. They swarmed out around her and she screamed like a cat getting its tail stepped on, like a factory steam whistle, like the howl of a hurricane. like a banshee. In other words, her scream was excessive. Naturally, it awakened her and she sat up in bed, gasping for air. The blowfly dream again! My God, will it never end?

She got up, comforted the dogs (although Peanut had never bothered to wake up and Pipsqueak was no stranger to her mistress's midnight screams), then she drank a glass of water and crawled back into bed, determined not to be cheated out of her full 12 hours of sleep. She felt so much better when she was well-rested. Her eyes closed, her breathing slowed, and once again the room was filled with the heavy reverberations of her snore.
Little did she realize that the bizarre somnulent scenario from which she'd just fled unscathed, save for a fleeting episode of diaphoresis and tachycardia, was the progeny of something tanscending the reality of an errant digestive process or mind's misfile of data. Instead, it spoke to evil still chameleoned in her waking hours; undefined and undefineable ~ and somehow at the mercy of but one human being on the face of the earth.

Steve.

Interwoven with it; an integral part of it; its wholly desired champion and yet ~ for now ~ it's only true foe. Many now, it's attacks on his mind; each thwarted and yet with each, some measure of victory in the havock wreaked on his mental and physical homeostasis. He was at once its beloved and despised changeling ~ only he would do. And it's fight for his soul was now full in its fury. Only the forces of good within him stood any chance of withstanding the assault, their propensity for victory wholly contingent upon the strength and tenacity of their meld.

She was but a pawn in the battle plan; a hostage to evil's icy grasp to be mercilessly utilized as enticement for the true prey. In her innocence lay the enemy's greatest strategy and most potent advantage ~ and it would wield both at will in mindless, heartless pursuit of its basest wants and needs. It was distilled evil; corrosive, voracious, and mindlessly enraged ~ and it would have its way with Dove in order to gain a strangling deathgrip on Steve.

For now she slept, though, mercifully dreamless and cocooned in the tenuous embrace of serenity afforded by a mind that cannot fathom and eyes that cannot see...
Steve awakened.

Where was he? His mind was a confused cauldron of bubbling thoughts, a goblin's brew of frightful fragments of a shattered life. Whether his own life or someone else's he knew not, but he knew the pot was boiling, the stew was hot, and someone, or some thing, was coming to dinner.

Steve opened his eyes. That cauldron dream again! Amazing how the confusion of his everyday existence was repeated in the fantasies of his sleepy time. But although his mind was indeed like a bubbling cauldron, he knew who was feeding the fire. He knew the "goblin" that was cooking this "stew" and it's name was Peanut. Peanut must die!

He rolled out of bed and slipped on a pair of new khaki pants and a fine soft flannel shirt from LL Bean, for the weather had turned since last he experienced consciousness. Goodbye, sultry summer; hello, crispy autumn.

How appropriate to be autumn -- the hunting season. Steve cocked his shotgun. Peanut must die!

He exited his abode and surveyed his neighbor Dove's small estate. Her little cottage was as warm and cozy as a painting by that millionaire artist who specializes in painting images of warm cozy cottages. But this cottage was infested. This cottage had a termite in it. And that termites's name was Peanut. Peanut must die!

Steve drew in a deep breath of clean October air. One errant yellow leaf drifted lazily down from the maple tree. Steve stared blankly at the gun in his hands. What's this? Oh, right! Peanut must die!

Only marginally dismayed by his momentary loss of focus, Steve marched into Dove's backyard, gun at the ready, cocked and loaded. Peanut must die!
Her spine stiffended and her pointed snout and ears snapped to full attention, at once collecting and deciphering the portents borne upon the wings of the crisp Autumn night wings. Her hackles stiffened, then raised to stand erect on her back and neck; and her lips drew back in a bared-tooth grimace even as a gutteral snarl labored toward birth within the constricted passageway of her throat.

Peanut and Pipsqueak were by now moderately miffed, as well...

Evil of unspeakable magnitude was stalking them now; instinct proclaimed this undeniable fact as surely as any competing edict could ever aspire to do. Lurking out there in the darkness, drawing stealthily near, shrouding itself within the emaciated, spindly-appendaged body of her once adored neighbor, was the Bestower of Blowflies; the Purveyor of Pestilence ~ the Dispenser of Doom.

No... it was not an armed GeeDubaya who secreted himself in the deepening gloom of the moonless nightstood armed ... this was en even more obnoxious entity. And it was using Steve's body for cover as it set out on its sick mission of seek and destroy.

But little did the Evil One know ~ and less would it ever be his privilege to fathom ~ how great, the tensile bonds of love; how mighty, the power they bestow... and just how assured, in their presence, his humiliating defeat and eventual unconditional surrender would inevitably prove to be. Blood might indeed be shed this night ~ but it would not be that of a innocent puppy. It would be the life fluids of evil incarnate ~ and the hemorrhage to come would be laden with devasatating, life-altering consequences...

Steve yelled at Dove's back door. "Come out, Peanut! I know you're in there! And I know WHAT you are! It's over, monster! This is the end! PEANUT MUST DIE!"

With a blood-curdling scream, Steve charged up Dove's back stairs, kicked open the back door, and leveled his shotgun at the small bundle of yapping fury that came flying at him. He was only dimly aware of Dove's screams, "Stop! Stop! What are you DOING, you idiot? Wake up! Wake up!"



... One Year Later ......

Steve looked out the window. His new next-door neighbor was out in the yard watering her petunias. What was her name? Alice? Fiona? Fedex? Alex? That was it! Alex! He arranged his face into a friendly smile, pushed open the screen door, and walked over to her yard.
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Steve knocked on Alex's front door and she opened it unawares of what could possibly be on the other side of the door. "Hello, I would like to welcome you to the neighbourhood, my name is Steve," he said, holding out a hand to his new neighbour.

Alex took it, warmly shook it, and said, "I'd like to ask you in for a cup of coffee."

Steve sat down at Alex's kitchen table and looked around. Alex had a taste quite different from Dove's. Dove's kitchen had been painted yellow with daisy prints on everything - the chair cushions, the dish towels, the curtains. But Alex's kitchen was all in dark colors - burgundy and copper and black. And of course, in Dove's kitchen there had been the food and water dishes for those wretched dogs. Steve shivered, recalling the horror of those days.

"You've done a great job remodeling this place," Steve said. "Do you have any pets?"
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"Yes I do," Alex said. "Back, Rocky, back!" She was attempting to feed her rottweiler and her dachshund. "Now where has that cat gone to? If you find a cat at your place please tell me. She has a tendency to wander."

"Oh, of course I will," Steve said, looking at the rottweiler and seeing it for the first time. He wouldn't really want to have a battle with that! He better not do anything that Alex didn't approve of. Steve felt nervous.

"I haven't had time to unpack properly, I'm not even properly dressed!" Alex said.

Steve wondered what she meant by that. After all, she was standing in front of him in jeans and a t-shirt, relatively normal clothes for the weather they were having.

Alex looked up from sipping her coffee. "So... Why don't you tell me about the area. I'm new here you know. What profession are you in? What was your last neighbour like? Is this a friendly neighbourhood?"

Steve remembered the horror of his "last neighbour" and decided that maybe on this first meeting it was not the time to tell Alex about the problems of living next door to Unspeakable Evil.

"Oh, the neighbourhood is friendly enough, although I don't see most of them because they work so blooming much. A lot of trendy social-climbers, you know? As for me, I'm home all the time. I'm... uh... recovering from an illness, so I can't work anywhere right now."

Alex looked concerned. "Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. It was something very serious then?"

Steve chuckled. "Not really. Just my head. I mean... I wasn't INSANE or anything like that! Hahahahahahahahahaha! No... It was just that I wasn't thinking... the way people wanted me to think. You know what I mean?"

Now Alex not only looked concerned, but she felt concerned, even a little anxious. "No, I'm not exactly sure what you mean, but I think I understand. The main thing is that you're cured and you are all right now. Right? You are all right now, aren't you?"

Steve grinned. "Oh sure. I'm fine now. And it's so nice to have a great new neighbour like you! But where do you come from? How do you happen to be here next door to me?"
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"Well I was a full time social worker in New York, I really enjoyed working with the kids there but after I took more of an interest in psychology work decided to transfer to another district. This was the closest place I could get to where I now work. So tell me a little bit more about yourself, you are ok now right? Or do you still need treatment?" Alex asked concerned.

Steve smiled, even though inside his head he was frowning. A psychologist? Had she been sent here to spy on him? But his face revealed none of his suspicions.

"No! I don't need any more treatment!"

Did he say that too loudly?

"I mean... I'm just fine now. I feel fine. I feel just like you, just like a normal person. So... New York, huh? That's interesting. Do you know David Letterman?"
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Alex simply giggled, "At least I know that your sense of humour still works." Shelaughed and looked at Steve who was still looking at her with a completely blank expression on his face.
"Well it's been great having you here Steve, but I really have to unpack now," Alex said.
"Oh of course," Steve said, "I really should be getting back home myself, thanks for coffee maybe we could do it some other time?"
"Sure," Alex said, "maybe we could,"

The next morning Steve looked out his window. His new next-door neighbor was not out in the yard watering her petunias. What was her name? Alice? Fiona? Fedex? Alex? That was it! Alex! He arranged his face into a friendly smile, pushed open the screen door, and walked over to her back door.

Steve knocked, and when Alex came to the door he said, "Hello, I would like to welcome you to the neighborhood, my name is Steve."

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"Hi Steve, nice to meet you for the second time in a row," Alex said looking at him curiously.
Steve looked at her completely confused, none of what had happened yesterday was still in his mind. "I'd offer you to come in for a quick cuppa but I'm afraid that if I do I will be late for work, I work as a psychologist, how about you come with me to work and I'll let one of the psychiatrists do a check up?" Alex said.
Steve looked at her feeling a little bit nervous..he knew that he was perfectly fine and had no intention on giving her a chance to place him back inside an institution.
"How about we stop for KFC on the way?" Alex asked.

"That would be good... I think," said Steve in a cautious tone. There was something very familiar about this Alex character, as though he had seen her somewhere before. He wondered if she had been one of the doctors at that so-called "hospital" that had kept him a prisoner for a year. But if she worked for the "hospital" then why was she living next door to him now? It all seemed very suspicious. Maybe at the KFC he could put some subtle questions to her and get to the truth of the matter.

As he got in Alex's car he said, "But I just want to eat some chicken. I don't need a check-up."
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"Steve, I have to get to work. Within" Alex looks at her watch, "the next hour. Work is half an hour away. So are you coming or not?"

"I'm in the car, aren't I? But what happened to stopping for KFC on the way? Was that all a big lie? Is this some nefarious scheme to get me in your car and take me to the hospital?"

Steve's excitement grew by leaps and bounds. Suddenly he was hanging his head out the car window and screaming, "Help! Help! I'm being abducted by a mad scientist!"

Alex stopped the car. "I'm not abducting you."

"Where are we? Where have you taken me?"

"Steve, we're only a block from the house. Look over that way. See? That's the roof of your house."

Steve calmed down a little. "Oh... But what about the chicken? You promised!"

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"I said that I was going to get KFC, I didn't promise that I would sit there, eating it, taking another half hour before I get to work and go over things with you. My boss would kill me!" Alex said.
Steve looked horrified, that someone would kill someone like Alex.
"So as you can imagine, since I don't particularly want to die I would like to get there as soon as possible. If you are still interested in the chicken I can drive you through a drive through and drop you off out front, if you're not then get out of my car and let me go to work!" Alex said furiously.

Steve jumped out of the car and Alex drove off in a huff. Wow, thought Steve, that's one crazy lady. For some reason that thought made Steve feel very good. A new crazy neighbor. It felt like past times back when old "she whose name cannot be spoken" was living next door to him with her evil twin dogs, Droopy and Sambo.

Steve reached into his pocket and discovered a crumpled five dollar bill. He slapped it on the counter at KFC. "Give me a half pint of your best chicken livers, fried to perfection in your secret blend of delicious spices."

"Yes, sir," said the tall girl behind the counter. "Do you want a drink with that?"

"No, my dear. I will sip from the fountain in my abode. Are you in high school by any chance?"

"Yes," said the girl.

"Do you know why the Little Moron threw his clock out the window?"

"No, sir. Here are your livers."

"Because he wanted to see time fly."

The girl handed Steve his change.

Steve asked, "You didn't find that funny?"

"What, sir?"

"Never mind." Steve left the store and walked home munching on the chicken livers.

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Alex continued driving to work thinking about what had just happened. This man was obviously in need of a psychiatric evaluation. She decided that she would speak about it with her boss when she saw her. But for now she had to deal with clients.
"Come on in Jenny," she said at the door, "how are you feeling today?"

Jenny sighed. "Blah. Just total blah. I feel so useless, so hopeless. My life is a mess. Everything I do goes wrong. I'm such a loser." A tear sparkled in Jenny's eye.

Alex frowned. She hoped Jenny wouldn't go off into one of her crying spells again and spend the whole session sobbing and wailing.
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"Tell me what has happened within the last couple of days to make you feel this way," Alex asked curiously picking up her pen and paper. Nobody ever minded when she wrote things down. Provided that she still asked the right questions at the right time. "What has upset you?" she asks gently.

Jenny wiped her eye with a tissue pulled from the large box she carried with her at all times. "Well, right after I left you last week, my new boyfriend, Smarmy, called and asked me to go see a midnight movie with him."

Alex tapped her pen on her tablet. "Did you say his name was Smarmy? That's an unusual name."

"Is it? I thought maybe he was in the army or something. I think it's a nickname. I don't know his real name and now... now I never will!" Jenny began sobbing.
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"ok Jenny, tell me what happened," Alex said passing her the tissues. Here we go again she thought but she would never say something like that alloud. It was her job to listen after all.

Jenny dabbed at her eyes and blew her nose.

"I was supposed to meet him at the movie theater, but I was afraid to go there alone so late at night, so I aked Mister Filtner, my neighbor, to walk there with me. He's an old man, but he likes to do things for me. It was a slow walk because one of the legs on his walker was missing the rubber tip and the bare metal kept getting caught in the cracks in the sidewalk. But we eventually reached the theater.

The movie had already started and I didn't see Smarmy anywhere, so I bought a ticket for Mister Filtner so he could watch the movie. I was so embarrassed because it was not at all the kind of movie I would think he normally watched, but he seemed to enjoy it. All through the movie I was thinking, but where is Smarmy?

When the movie finished and the house lights came up, there was Smarmy sitting a couple of rows behind us! He glared at me and yelled, "Cheating on me already and we haven't even had our first date yet!"

I was surprised and shocked, of course. "But where were you, Smarmy? I wanted to see the movie with you!"

"Sure you did! That's why you brought your boyfriend with you!"

I couldn't believe Smarmy was so angry. My boyfriend! It was just poor old Mister Filtner."

Jenny paused to wipe a tear out of her eye.
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"Tell me Jenny, how do you feel about what has happened. Do you see you both reconsiliating after such an event?" Alex asked looking at her and smiling a little.

"I don't know. He hasn't called. And since I don't know his name or phone number I can't call him. I am sure we could get together if we could ever actually meet. What do you think I should do?"
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"Well that's not really up to me Jenny, you know that..but what I would like is just for you to write some of this down..you have started that journal that I suggested for you to use last week?" Alex asked.
Jenny sighed. "Yes, I'm writing in my journal, but it's not the same as talking with you, Alex. I feel like nobody will ever read the journal. And even if someone did, they wouldn't be someone like you who understands and cares about me."

Just then the intercom on Alex's desk buzzed. "Your next client is here."

"Thank you, Velma," Alex said, then stood up and smiled at Jenny. "That's eneough for today I think. You're making excellent progress. And don't forget to write in that journal."

Jenny left, still dabbing her eyes with a tissue.

Alex spoke into her intercom. "Who is my next client, Velma?"
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"Patricia O'donnald is here to see you Alex," she said.
Alex quickly straightened up ensuring that she was looking and feeling superior. She knew how Patricia's mind worked. She really lost it when Alex looked less than a superior woman fully in control of her own life and therefore capable of taking on the troubles of the O'donnald family. A very tight, christian woman.
"Send her in," Alex said.

Patricia walked in wearing one of her heavy wool suits. "Good morning, Alex. How are you feeling today?"
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Alex smiled sitting up straight, "Just fine Patricia and yourself? Why don't you tell me about your week?" Alex pressed record on her tape recorder as Patricia was one that hated to have notes taken whilst she was talking.
"It's been a good week. Alex. I didn't lose my temper at all until yesterday. Then that no-good husband of mind left the toilet seat up for the 100th time and I just lost it. I ripped the seat off the toilet, stomped into the den, and slammed it down over his head. My poor husband! I almost ripped his ear off, Alex. Five stitches it took. You have just got to help me take control of this anger thing. I'm afraid one day I'm going to lose my temper and kill someone."
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"Now Patricia, have you even tried to do the exercises that I gave you recently to control that anger of yours?" Alex askes.
"Well..yeah...I tried some..." Patricia said kind of fidding with her handkerchief. Alex knew that meant no.
"Well let's just try some breathing exercises shall we?" Alex asked smiling at her.
"Alright," Patricia said.
"Do you have the notes that I gave you?" Alex asked, noticing Patricia's red face she took that also for a no, "Here..read off this sheet what we need to do."
Patricia looked at the sheet, then crumpled it in her fist and sighed. "Alex, I just don't see how BREATHING differently is going to help my anger problem. Is this a legitimate psychiatric procedure or is it just something you dreamed up to justify taking my money from me?"
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Alex looked at Patricia completely agast. "You come to me asking for my help and I give it to the best of my abilities. Now this is a method that works for even me when I'm stressed out, so are you going to take a shot at it or are you going to leave my office?"
Patricia's face reddened. "There's no need to take that tone with me. I'm paying you for good advice, not insults and crackpot ideas about holding my breath. Maybe the Board of Review at the clinic would be interested in hearing about your so-called treatment methods. Did they check your background thoroughly? I wouldn't be surprised to find out you never even graduated from a medical school."
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"Get out of my office!" Alex stormed. She knew how thorough an interview session she went through and she wasn't going to let this woman get on top of her. Being the best in her area she was moved to here where they needed her. Not because she wasn't good enough to do so. "Get out!" Patricia looked at her and hurriedly moved out of the office saying "I'm going to tell head office about you."
"Go ahead," Alex said, "considering it was my boss that said this would be good for you I'm sure that they will enjoy hearing from you." Alex sighed sitting down at her desk almost in tears as Patricia left the room. "Velma call head office, I need her reassigned, she has made me feel bad for the last time and you remember what my boss said," Alex said.
"Yes miss, would you like to see your next client now?" Velma asked.
"Is she here yet?" Alex asked.
Velma took so long to reply that Alex's heart sank. "Oh no. Velma... It's not you-know-who?"

Velma's voice came from the intercom. "I'm sorry, Alex, but yes it is. Krazy Kathy is here."

"I don't believe it! Patricia and Kathy in the same day. Whew! I guess this is what they pay me for. What's Kathy wearing today?"

"She's all in purple, Alex."

"Hmmm... I forget what that means in her color code scheme of emotions. How did it go? Yellow for happy, blue for sad, white for purity, black for bad... Do you remember the rest, Velma?"
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"I believe purple is for nobilty, spirituality and love." She called on her mobile she says she'll be here in a few minutes.
"Here I am!" Kathy said wondering through the door, "no need to panic!"
Alex sighed. "Come right this way Kathy,"

"Thank you, Alex. I want you to know that my heart is full of love for you today."

Alex sighed. "Is it a pure and noble love?"

"Why yes. How did you know?"

Alex smiled brightly. "You're in purple today."

"Oh, Alex, you remembered! It seemed like you were not paying attention last time when I explained about the colors, but you were! I guess it's just part of your healing technique to look off in the distance with that bored expression."

Alex wondered if Kathy was being sarcastic. "Yes. That is a part of my "technique" as you call it. You're very clever to notice that. How is your life going this week?"
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"Oh it's so splendiforous," Kathy said smiling at Alex, "things are finally starting to look good for me."
"Oh really?" Alex said, "that's fabulous and how are they doing this?"

Kathy paused for a moment to build suspense, then burst out with, "I've got a new man!"

Alex nodded her head. "Good for you. I know how desperately you were searching for one. What's he like?"
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"oh Alex he's simply perfect," Kathy spun in a circle hugging herself. Alex smiled, for once maybe this session wouldn't be too bad.

"He's perfect! He's perfect!" sang out Kathy as she spun around.

Alex laughed. "Better stop spinning like that or you'll get dizzy."

"I'm dizzy with LOVE!" Kathy spun round and round until she tumbled into an end table and knocked it over, bringing a lamp crashing to the floor which she then tripped over. As she fell she grabbed the window drapes to stop her fall and ripped them off the window.

Velma came running in from the outer office. "What happened?"

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"We Kathied," Alex said, "call her doctor quick."
Velma exited the room to call Kathy's doctor.
Alex watched the ambulance drive away, then turned to Velma. "What a morning! I think I'll go home for lunch. What's on the afternoon schedule?"

"Just Ms. Bollingutty."

"Change her appointment, then. I need a rest from all this insanity and emotional disturbance. I'll be back tomorrow morning."

When Alex pulled into her driveway she was surprised to see her neighbor Steve sitting on her porch.

"Hello, Steve. What are you doing over here?"

"I've been watching your house for you. I think we may be in for a little trouble tonight. I heard several UFOs fly over."

Alex sighed. "Ahhhh, yes, the UFO problem... Well, I think I'll be alright. You go on home and I'll call you if I need you."

Steve hopped up. "Sure, but don't worry about calling. I'll come over and check on you."

"There's really no need, Steve. Don't put yourself to that trouble."

"No trouble at all! I'll see you in a little while."

Alex trudged into her house, threw her pocketbook on her bed, and wondered if she was going to have to move again. No, she was just stressed from work. Maybe a hot cup of tea would help...
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Alex sat down with her cup of tea and hoped that things would get better for her. She called in her dogs and simply spent the time relaxing. Now that her dogs were with her she knew that there was no reason for her to worry. She was safe..for now anyway. Her life seemed to be just so stressful today.
Steve flicked on the TV to watch the evening news, but there was no mention of the UFOs. Odd. Possibly a government cover-up? It was shameful the way the government suppressed UFO knowledge. He wondered how the Roswell aliens were doing these days. How long had they been in captivity? Over 50 years! They must be getting old, by now, but then... extra-terrestrials from an advanced civilization probably lived hundreds of years... so maybe they still felt like young aliens. Better check on Alex. Poor thing was probably nervous what with all the UFO activity today...
Dove, all conflict finally resolved after months of inner debate, parked her saucy little Tempo at the curb in front of her former domicile. It looked largely the same; the lovely lady she'd relinquished it to after the events of the year past (what was her name? Alice? Fiona? Fedex? Alex? That was it! Alex!) had kept it up beautifully. Even the gardens had been handsomely maintained, and Dove inhaled deeply its heady scents, carried to her on the wings of a gentle evening breeze. She turned her gaze toward Steve's cottage, observing that lights still emitted a soft glow from within. Taking a deep breath and gathering up the gift-wrapped platter of culinary delights she intended to offer him, she stepped out of the car and began her approach. She'd only traversed a few steps of the distance to Steve's front door when she spied something that stopped her dead in her tracks...

Steve, snappily clad in dockers, a crisp white sport shirt and his signature white socks and penny loafers, his hair slicked back and reeking of aftershave liberally applied in a vain effort to neutralize tenacious ghost scents of ill-gotten chicken livers, was just exiting the side egress of his home. As she stood in the shadows, she watched him, huge bouguet of flowers in hand, cut across the path to Alex's abode, where he mounted her... front steps.

Pausing a moment for a furtive visual check of the area followed by a furtive spritz of breath spray, Steve rapped tentatively on Alex's door. Dove heard the murmuring of their voices as Alex opened the door to greet him, and stood there, transfixed, taking it all in. Her vision blurring and ears filling with the building, roaring cacaphony emanating from within, she at last turned from the tableau at hand and retreated with a shaky gait into the anonymity of the night's deepening shadows...

Alex opened her door and Steve thrust forward his bouquet. "Look! I picked some of your petunias for you."

"Oh, you shouldn't have!" said Alex, thinking of her weeks of effort cut short and wilting in his hand.

Steve grinned. "No problem. Still no news about the UFOs on TV. I think they're going to keep it a secret just like they always do."
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"Um Steve...who's that?" Alex asked pointing at the woman standing transfixed in the middle of her lawn.
"Oh..that's Dove, she used to live here before you moved in," Steve said.
"Oh..why don't you go and invite her in...go on..." Alex said.
Turning in response to his hail, Dove realized to her utter chagrin that she had been spotted by both Steve and Alex. Worse yet, while concomitantly engaged in an apparently recently aquired habit of playing with his handle, Steve was fast closing the distance which had only moments before shielded her from abject humiliation. Supressing an overwhelming impulse to sprint to her saucy little Tempo as swiftly as her nubile legs would carry her, she tremulously held her ground, steeling for the awkward, anxiety-fraught encounter certain to ensue...

"Hello, Steve... nice penny loafers."

It wasn't until Steve had walked half the distance to Dove that he recognized her! Omigod! Wasn't she supposed to be dead? He stopped. What if this was her ghost? He looked back at Alex, but she just motioned him on. "Tell her to come in," Alex said.

Steve turned back to the apparition and slowly approached it. His knees felt weak and his teeth were chattering.

"Are y-y-you D-D-Dove?"
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"Yes of course I'm Dove!" she responded looking at him, "who were you expecting..the postman?"
"I thought you were..d..d..dead!" Steve said. Dove just stared at him. Noticing Alex smiling and waving at her from the front entrance of her old home Dove found herself intrigued in seeing what the old place looked like now. She smiled and waved back.
"Why don't you come inside?" Steve asked, "Alex wants you to."
Hastily quashing the myriad of musings presently swirling in her mind, (He'd even put PENNIES in those penny loafers... and had he truly embellished his handle with a shamrock???!) Dove coughed delicately and met Steve's bewildered gaze. (Had his left eye always been crossed? Hmmmm...)

"No, Steve...rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I was merely on a long sabbatical involving baldness and chemotherapy. As soon as my locks began reestablishing their former reign, my thoughts, strangely enough, turned to you. You once expressed concern regarding my failure to share my culinary expertise and the end products thereof, so I brought you this platter of goodies to say hello."

Her attention drawn by movement behind Steve, Dove looked over his left shoulder (sheesh - that EYE....!) and beheld the lovely Alex, smiling and waving her greeting from the porch of Dove's former domicile. She returned Alex's greeting in kind, thinking to herself, 'intriguing, how the old place looks now...'

Setting aside her reverie to be revisited at a later time, Dove returned her attention to the stammering Steve. "Well, I don't know, Steve, I don't want to intrude..."


Steve smiled. Haha. Not a ghost after all. "No, you won't be intruding! Come on in. We were just about to go over our plans as to what we should do if one of the UFOs lands here. Have you seen all the UFOs buzzing around?"

Dove twisted her mouth into a question mark. "Ummm... maybe. What do they look like?"

"Big! And lots of lights! How could you not know what they look like? I'll bet you've been inside watching TV. Not me. I go out every night and scan the sky for intruders. You have GOT to be alert nowadays!"

Dove stopped. "Maybe I should be getting home. It's late. I don't won't to bother you two."

But Steve grabbed her arm. "No, no, come on. Meet Alex. See what your old place looks like now."
Curiosity ultimately vanquishing trepidation, Dove allowed herself to be led toward her own former ~ and Alex's present ~ diggs, simultaneously marvelling at the undeniably delicious thrill that tingled throughout her being at Steve's touch. How odd, to be affected thus by his simple act of taking her arm...

Endeavoring to match his brisk pace, she noted his more harried than usual high color and the tiny beads of perspiration evident upon his brow. This, coupled with his distressed and somewhat distracted demeanor, led her to inquire, "What is all this about UFOs, Steve? I've been out gardening until well after dusk for the past week or so and seen no evidence of alien spacecraft. While I certainly do believe we're not alone in the vast galaxies, the only celestial lightshows I've been privy to of late are aurora borealis-generated. You've certainly piqued my curiosity, though ~ what do you and Alex know that I apparently don't?" Awaiting his reply with a generous measure of skepticism, she silently wondered if it was Steve who was buzzed rather than any errant UFOs...

What would Scully say if she found Mulder in this condition? What would Mulder say if he knew he made Scully tingle? What would Dick Cheney say if Steve's UFOs were naught but quail sporting bullet-proof vests?

Setting aside these musings for later contemplation, she mustered her courage and turned her full attention to the circumstances at hand...

"Alex, meet Dove. Dove, meet Alex." The women exchanged greetings as Steve watched, beaming like a lighthouse with a defective bulb that was in it's final stage of shining just a little too brightly before it goes dark forever.

"And now," said Steve, "I think the three of us should write down our emegency plan, just in case the UFO invasion should commence in full force tonight. There is the smell of ozone in the air and that has to mean something."

"Maybe it means a storm is coming and it's going to rain?" volunteered Alex.

"It could mean that. It could mean that. Or..." He looked expectantly at the two women.

"Or the invasion?" Dove said, squinting her eyes. Steve seemed oddly fuzzy and out-of-focus.

"Let me refill that drink for you," said Alex.

Dove glanced at the empty glass in her hand. Now how the hell did THAT get there? Cripes! Had she overdosed on the old happy juice again? She handed the glass to Alex. "Just a small one..."

Alex filled the glass. "How about you, Steve?"

Steve's eyes were glowing. "Just water for me. Thursday is my purification day. Just water. All day. Look! Was that a UFO? Over there! Near the moon!"
A Non-Existent User
Alex looked where he was pointing and her suspicions of this character she believed were right. He was completely insane. She decided to wait until a little bit later when she could ask Dove a few questions about him, maybe make it a girls night in.
Endeavoring to mask her growing concern regarding Steve's curious demeanor, Dove, a neutral expression fixed upon her countenance, took another demure sip of wine. As Steve chattered on about UFOs, aliens, quail hunting, and a veritable plethora of other loosely associated Inane Topics of the Third Kind, Dove utilized his fervored inattentiveness to slide her glance away from him and across the rim of her wineglass to that of Alex's own questioning eyes. Locked for a moment in the kind of meaning-laden, unspoken communication at which only women are proficient, Alex and Dove exchanged signals men seem powerless to perceive, let alone decipher. As the two thus shared their deepening concerns, the object of same remained oblivious to their shared reality, feverishly expounding at length upon the alien-invoked doom only he seemed aware of ~ and doggedly determined to counter with security measures solely of his design.

Though she'd always had concerns about her penny-loafered former neighbor, she'd never truly feared him ~ while the lad had always occupied a position far removed from the norm in the societal mainstream, he'd never demonstrated any discernable propensity for violence. Granted, he did have a history of pesky blackouts and psych ward admissions, but never inclusive of any overt inappropriate acts directed at others. Dover tentatively dismissed the thought that Alex, by virtue of her close proximity to him, might be in any real danger ~ save that, perhaps, of chronic exasperation.


And yet, there did remain that tenuous but tenacious Unspeakable Evil thing...


"You didn't see that UFO?" Steve gritted his teeth, experiencing the eternal frustration of the unheeded prophet. Why had he been appointed The One Who Sees The Future if no one was going to believe him? What a cruel twist of fate. It reminded him of something. "I wonder whatever happened to Chubby Checker?" asked Steve.

But Alex and Dove paid him no attention. They stared into each other's eyes, unblinking, and unaware of the flow of life around them. Steve waved his hand between their locked gazes and shouted, "Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?" but got no response. He shrugged. It wasn't the first time that he had seen one of these moments of female, meaning-laden, unspoken communication. They were disturbing to observe, but ultimately harmless, unless one of the women swallowed her tongue and choked, but he knew the Heimlich maneuver, if that was the proper thing to do? He poured himself another glass of water and waited for the two women to regain their senses.
A Non-Existent User
Alex stood up heading out to the bathroom. She simply had to use some excuse to get away from this strange man for just a few mintues and any excuse would do. She stood up from her chair and simply walked towards the bathroom entering it.

"No don't!" Steve said extravagantly.

"Don't what?" Alex asked curiously looking at him, he had taken a few quick steps to her side of the room. Dove simply rolled her eyes looking at him.

Alex knew this would be another interesting excuse.

"Alien's can come through the bathplug!" he said.
Dove, lifting her wineglass, froze with it suspended in mid-air, still several inches short of her now frowning lips. Endeavoring to neutralize the palpable tension in the room ratcheted up yet another notch by Steve's Bathplug as Alien Access Hypothesis, Dove turned her gaze to him and asserted, "I'm certain Alex will be safe, Steve. She's not going to take a bath; she simply has to go to the toidey. Besides, no card-carrying Alien worth his salt would utilize the sewer system for transportation ~ they're deathly afraid of alligators."

Steve swivelled his head, mouth agape, toward Dove, staring at her vacantly through glazed eyes and seemingly oblivious to the snickering that morphed into muffled gales of laughter as Alex sequestered herself behind the closed bathroom door. Dove met Steve's gaze calmly, fervently hoping to neutralize his near-hysteria with a substantial dose of humor laced with logic. Noting his flushed countenance, flared nostrils, and maniacally dilated pupils, however, rendered her decidedly less than optimistic that she'd succeed. Mentally searching for appropriate, anxiety-reducing words to offer, she stalled for time by plucking a Kleenex from her purse and handing it to Steve to wipe away the spittle congealing at the corners of his still gaping mouth.

"Here's a Kleenex to wipe away the spittle congealing at the corners of your mouth, Steve. While Alex is indisposed, perhaps we could catch up on things... how have you been this past year? Do you still carry a cucumber in your pocket? Did you ever get those pesky blowfly infestations under control? Have your blackouts subsided or are you still on a first-name basis with the entire staff of the Psych Ward?"

Bracing herself for the harried onslaught sure to ensue, Dove armed herself with another generous sip of liquid courage, then crossed her legs daintily and resolutely settled in for the long haul...
Steve carefully wiped the drool from his chin. It was just like Dove to tease him about his Irritable Saliva Gland Syndrome. He recalled how her gentle sarcasm had helped him get over his past emotional disturbances. Doctor Wilson had said Dove was a "triggering agent". That must be a scientific term for "kindly helper". Steve was not a brain specialist. His area of expertise was the invasion of earth by extraterrestrial beings.

"No, Dove, I do not have a cucumber in my pocket. I'm just happy to see you."

Dove giggled appreciatively... or had a mild spasm... Steve wasn't sure which. She had changed so much since the old days. Or had she? Steve had momentarily forgotten about his poor memory which rendered such phrases as "the old days" virtually useless to him. He turned his fickle hyperactively disordered attention to Alex, who was just emerging from the bathroom.

"Alex! Did everything come out all right?"

But Alex apparently didn't hear him or see his bright, friendly, questioning face. She was looking at the snack tray and saying, "I don't think we should eat any more of these cream cheese sandwiches. I'll just toss them out."

Steve looked at Dove and shrugged his shoulders, using body language to convey the complicated concept of how he was very witty and sociable but no one would give him the chance to display his interactive skills.

Dove looked down at the half-eaten cream cheese sandwich in her hand.
Truth to tell, the cream cheese sandwich cradled in her delicate grasp had been quite tasty, particularly after purloining Steve's cucumber as a relish for same, and Dove contemplated procuring yet another before Alex disposed of those remaining on the snack tray. Philly cream cheese and sour cream numbered prominently among Dove's prudent collection of sinful passions ~ not one other among her circle of friends and associates ordered triple of the latter on tacos, as Dove did every time the opportunity presented itself. She'd long ago ceased worrying about others' reactions to little idiosyncrasies such as these, opting instead to revel in her own uniqueness for as long as her slim figure remained immune to their consequences. As often happens, however, the circumstances at hand provided more interesting fodder for thought, and she swiftly set aside the cream cheese sandwich issue in favor of pursuing enviably more compelling avenues of intercourse.

Steve. What a funny duck he was. Despite all his curve balls, feints, deflections, and self-imposed boundaries, she'd always felt somehow inexplicably drawn to him. She found his mind positively fascinating and had more than once fallen victim to it; drawn as a moth to the flame of his wit, social skills, and enhanced capacity for meaningful interaction ~ only to have her gossamer wings accordingly seared to ash. Yet here she guardedly found herself once more ~ transfixed in the wake of his adorable body language...

Steve scratched his butt and wondered why Dove was staring at him with puppy eyes. Could it be that she wanted a turn in the sack? Her slim figure was enticing to be sure and combined with her soft eyes and faint odor of sour cream it was almost enough to make him forget about extraterrestrials for the few moments that it would take him to complete his passion with her. But what was more important? Saving the entire world from certain destruction? Or a few seconds of fun with a babe?

Hmmm... Careful thought might be necessary. If he failed in his quest to save the earth, then this might be his last chance for some nookie. On the other hand, the very act of going for the nookie might hasten the downfall of mankind. Geez! His mind was NOT designed to solve these kinds of problems.

"What in the world are you thinking about, Steve?" Alex asked. "You're stomping around scratching your head and muttering to yourself. Do you have a problem?"

Steve shook his head vigorously. "Aliens... sex... what to do?"

Alex smiled at Dove. "Yes, that sounds like a problem, Steve."

Dove snatched another cream cheese sandwich off the plate as Alex removed it from the table.

"I don't know about those sandwiches, Dove."

Dove mumbled between mouthfuls. "Mmf... it's okay... mmf... they taste alright to me... mmf mmf."
A Non-Existent User
Alex took a look at it and put it back down on the table.

"Alright, but it's your death wish," she said.

"Death wish! Death wish! you shouldn't say something like that she could keel over don't you know what that's alien speak for?" Steve said shocked looking at her.

"No what?" Alex said looking at him, yes, she thought, this man was completely insane.

"It means that they are going to invade us! Don't say it please don't say it!" Steve said standing on top of the table next to the sandwiches that Dove was slowly devouring.

"Get away from my sandwiches!" she said picking the plate up.

Steve just stomped his foot on the table.

"Come down from there steve you could get hurt!" Alex said.

Steve stomped harder. "How could you think of food or getitng hurt at a time like this! The earth could be in peril and close to collapsing and you don't even care!"
As had always been ~ and obviously would eternally remain ~ the case, Steve's gauche scratching of his now rosy cheeks and resulting exposure of his gluteal cleft for all the unwilling world to see doused every romantic notion Dove had foolishly entertained. His cucumber had seemed so firm ~ so ripe with promise ~ as she'd initially contemplated consuming its juices that she'd found herself uncharacteristically willing to swallow even its seeds. But now, as had proven so predictably true of like situations in the past, it lay upon her second sandwich, prematurely spent and curdling the cream cheese ~ a pitifully wilted, Gerkin wannabe at best.

When would her eternal optimism regarding this man's salvation ever reconcile with reality? The lad personified less propensity for romance than a garden slug and exerted influence over the feminine heart roughly equal to that of a butterfly flatulating in the wind. Dove noted with no small measure of pride that this round of 'Let's Watch Steve Drop the Ball', rather than rendering her psyche bruised and rebuffed in the manner of its many predecessors, had this time proved exhilirating in its finality. Far from crestfallen, Dove instead felt resolved and consummately liberated, finally and forever cognizant of the fact that Steve was a book to be judged neither by its cover nor even its Preface ~ this particular tome possessed all the appeal of its own irreparably ruptured Appendix.

Her perky breast heaving a mighty sigh of relief, Dove discreetly discarded the limp cucumber sandwich she'd so foolishly earlier sought, becoming aware of Alex's efforts to calm the ranting, spit-spewing, table-stomping Steve, who was now ranting on about aliens, personal injury, anorexia, and quickies and in imminent peril of amputating his cucumber on Alex's shattered glass-topped coffee table. Noting Alex's horrified reaction to the bizarre scene unfolding before her, wholly juxtapositioned as it was to Dove's own nonplussed state of mind, and bemusedly thought "been there, done that... using the T-shirt for a dust rag". Poor Alex ~ when it came to The Gospel According to Steven, she was as a newborn lamb to slaughter, Dove thought, and in her mind responded, "Boy, can I relate!.

Arising to intervene on Alex's behalf, Dove found her limbs soddenly heavy, rendering abulation impossible. A tide of lightheadedness washed over her, forcing her to sink back into the safety of her chair, the initially faint metallic taste in her mouth now interjecting itself into her ebbing conscious awareness. She parted her lips to speak, only to find her intended call for help held captive to by a constricting throat. Something was wrong ~ terribly, terribly wrong...

"Get off my table, Steve!" Alex yelled, but it was too late to avoid the trememndous crash as Steve and the table and everything on the table fell to the floor. "Now look what you've done!"

"I'm sorry, Alex. I got a little too excited... Hey! Look at Dove. Is she okay?"

Sitting in her chair, Dove seemed about to speak, but frozen in the moment. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes were fixed in a glassy stare.

"Dove?" Alex said. "Dove, are you alright? Omigod, Steve! Is she dead!"

Steve put his ear to Dove's mouth. There was a faint whistle of air exuding from her. It almost seemed to be playing a tune, something slow and dirge-like.

Alex wrung her hands. "Steve? What are you doing?"

"Oh! I was just listening to her breath."

"Is she alive?"

"Just barely, I think. I imagine if we don't call in some kind of medical emergency team, then I may have been listening to her last breaths."

"Oh, Steve! That's awful! I can't have someone die in my new house! I just moved in. How will I sleep at night if I know someone died right here in my living room?"

"Well, she isn't dead yet. What we should do is call an ambulance. Then maybe they can save her. And if she does die, then at least it would be in the ambulance and not in your house."

"Oh, that's wonderful thinking, Steve. You are so masterful in a crisis! I'm a nervous wreck. This is the first time I've ever been in a life-or-death situation."

Steve smiled the smile of an experienced, competent male. "Now, now, you just calm ourself down and let old Steve handle this emergency. I'll call 9-1-1 and we'll have an ambulance here before you can say, 'Mama's gonna have a baby and I need a tub full of hot water and a towel'."

Alex giggled. "Steve! Where did you hear such a ridiculous saying?"

Steve laughed. "It's a real tension-breaker, isn't it? It's actually what you are supposed to say at an impromptu birth. In this context it sounds amusing."

Alex sighed. "I feel so much less tense now. Do you want the telephone?"

Steve winked. "Yes, let's dial that emergency number and save Dove's life. Maybe our names will be on TV."
A Non-Existent User
Steve turned around and behind him was the telephone that Alex would often sit up late at night chatting to Michelle on. Michelle her boss almost always had new ideas that she wanted to tell to Alex and when would she come up to such ideas? At 2..3 maybe even 4 or 5 AM! Alex was almost always sitting up with a cup of coffee or five in the morning.

"Yes, ambulance please," Steve said into the phone. After giving the address he sat back down on the chair. "they should be here in just a few minutes."

That was when Alex realised although Dove wasn't moving physically her eyes were following her and Steve around the room. As if they were pleading for some help. "The ambulance is coming soon dove." Alex wondered if it was something to do with the house or if maybe the house just didn't like Dove all that much. She went outside to go and feed her two dogs, she had heard before that when you are faced with the extreme sometimes doing something normal can calm you in ways unexpected.

Her dogs raced up to her tails wagging when they saw the food and no sooner had she put it into their bowls they woolfed it down and were trying to jump up at Alex again. "Down guys down Jee Wizz!"

"ALEX the ambulance guys are here!" Steve called from the kitchen.

"coming!" Alex muttered.
They made such an adorable couple, Steve and Alex ~ seemingly so well suited for one another. Perhaps the sudden onslaught of this malaise was divine retribution for Dove's interference, wholly inadvertent though it had been, in the romance bloom obviously budding between them. Then again, a significantly greater than remote possibility existed that a human force was instead the underlying cause of Dove's present lamentable physical condition. Perhaps one of these two lovebirds wished to see Dove clinging by her fingernails for a foothold against the slippery slope of the Great Dark Crevice.

Could it possibly be true? And if so, which of the two was it true of? Dismissing the dangling preposition ~ one who is paralyzed and unable to speak save for intermittent simpering can surely be absolved of the occasional minor grammatical faux paus ~ Dove fixed her glazed gaze first upon the seemingly unsettled Alex. A lovely woman, indeed... but then again, so was Lizzy Borden. Could Alex have slipped something into the cream cheese sandwiches to incapacitate Dove and afford Steve the unfettered opportunity to slip something into her? Beneath that beautiful and sophisticated exterior, could there beat the scheming heart of a savvy seductress? Was her present apparent state of dismayed agitation naught but a ruse ~ coldhearted concealment of boiling passion and naked want for the allegedly alien-obsessed Steve? Dove searched Alex's countenance, endeavoring to see if her luxurious lowered lashes concealed beneath them flinty, passion-permeated eyes. Before Dove's assessment could be brought to fruition, however, the elusive Alex whisked herself off, ostensibly to feed the dogs... a perfectly normal reaction to having company suddenly collapse into a near-coma in one's front parlor.

Left with the indifferent Steve, absent-mindedly now whistling and comfortably ensconced in Alex's chartreuse Lazy Boy, as her sole companion, Dove turned her hazed attention to him. Regarding him suspiciously as he intently flipped through the latest edition of Playboy Aliens and the Women Who Love Them Magazine, Dove reflected upon the old days, though her rapidly diminishing level of consciousness would undoubtedly soon render such phrases as, 'the old days' virtually meaningless. Fleeting images flitted forth from her fading repository of memories. Steve plummeting face first into her perky-bosomed bodice, mumbling incoherently about 'unspeakable evil'… drooling and gawking unabashedly through the sitting window of her tastefully decorated boudoir as she lay somnolent upon her lace-canopied bed... slipping and sliding in cucumber dew as he endeavored to make his escape. His 'I'm Bingin' Home a Baby Bumble Bee' persona shape-shifting before her clouding eyes, Dove beheld instead an entirely different man; cloven-hooved and leering. Aliens, schmaliens! Steve's true quested expedition far more likely entailed vigorous exploration of Alex's nether-regions than those of any UFO-piloting Alien marauders. After all, had it not been STEVE who'd made sure that Dove's wineglass brimmed all evening long? Had it not been he who'd uncorked the plug and made certain the its captive juices flowed unchecked? Perhaps those very juices were the poison now coursing through her innocent veins. If these crushing albeit possibly Controlled Substance-induced suspicions were in fact correct, and were she not situationally unable to lend voice to the words, Dove longed with all of her betrayed little heart to proclaim just what a Dirty Birdie he really was. But it was not to be; for the unloved Dove was slipping inexhorably into unconsciousness...

only to be hurled back into stunned cognition by a large, sodden, kibble-scented loofa sponge being swabbed across her face. Dove opened her eyes to behold a Canine Giganticus straddling her heretofore limber little body, jubilantly bathing her countenance with a massive pink, doggie drool-saturated tongue. Then, unbidden, came an appalling epipany...

It was both of them! The beguiling, albeit betrayal-minded, Alex AND the cloven-hoofed, penny-loafered Steve! How could the hapless Dove have been so utterly naive? They were clearly in cahoots and nefariously intent upon sacrifiing Dove, a pure and innocent, middle-age defyingly nubile Vestal Virgin of the Third Kind, as appeasement to the legions of plundering and pillaging Aliens now invading the Earth in an onslaught of monumental global proportion. Salvation's singular remaining hope was the distant but ever-approaching siren whose shrill cry was insinuating itself into her rapidly diminishing, imperiled reality, and Dove prayed fervently that EMTs Rock Hard and Harry Balls were aboard the ambulance presently winging its was to her rescue ~

she was in critical condition, not dead, for Pete's sake...

The ambulance slammed on its brakes and came to a skidding stop in Alex's front yard. The siren emitted one final pitiful whoop, and then there was silence. Steve wandered over to the driver's window.

The driver was leaning over looking for something under the seat, but raised up when he sensed Steve's presence. "My partner forgot to repack the Emergency Kit! Can you believe that?"

"I can believe anything," Steve said. "I pride myself on keeping an open mind."

"An open mind, huh? Well, that can be a good thing and that can be a bad thing. You got a sick person in there?" And the driver gestured toward the house where Alex stood framed by the doorway, a silhouette against the brightly lit living room.

"Yes, we do. I think she's almost dead, so we were glad you got here so quickly."

"I made good time. There wasn't much traffic on the Parkway, so that helped a lot."

Steve laughed. "The Parkway! I try to avoid it. I usually just take the bypass. It's a few more miles, but to me it takes less time."

"That may be true for you, but you have to remember that I've got the siren going, so people are pulling over for me. That helps. But when the traffic backs up on the Parkway, even a siren don't do you much good."

"That must be exciting driving around with that siren?"

"Oh, it is! Tell you what. If your sick person in there ain't dead yet, then why don't you ride with us to the hospital?"

Steve grinned broadly. "Sure! I'd like that!"

"Now that don't apply if she's already dead because then I can't use the siren. They are very strict about that. No sirens for dead people. I reckon you can see the logic of that?"

"Of course! Well, come on then. Let's hurry up and get her in the ambulance before she kicks the bucket and spoils the ride."

The driver jumped out of the ambulance and he and Steve strode over to the porch where Alex was wringing her hands.

Steve nudged the driver. "Just like a woman to be worrying so much. You'd think SHE was the one that was hanging on to life by a thin thread!"

"Them women stick together. If one of 'em dies they ALL cry."

"Is Dove still alive?" Steve asked Alex.

"I think so."

"Good! They're going to let me ride in the ambulance and work the siren!"

The driver, who had almost reached the chair where Dove was sitting paralyzed, stopped and turned around. "Now, wait a minute, buddy. I didn't say you could WORK the siren. Just listen too it. The rules say only a qualified paramedic can operate the siren."

Steve frowned. "Aw, shucks!" Then his face brightened. "Still, at least I'll be in there hearing it and watching the cars pull over. Do you need any help loading Dove into the ambulance. Where's your partner?"

The driver shook his head in mock dismay and stomped back out onto the porch. "Fred! Get your lazy butt in here! We got a dying person to pick up! Do you want it to be your fault again?"

In a few moments they heard the sound of the gurney being rolled across the porch and Fred appeared, disheveled and grinning. "Here it is, Bob. How were you gonna get her out without the gurney. Sling her over your shoulder?"

Bob guffawed. "You kill me. Push that thing over here."
A Non-Existent User
Soon Dove was on the bed that Steve assumed was used to push her onto the ambulance and Alex and Steve watched whilst she was loaded into the back of the ambulance.

"Ok...that's about it," Fred said, "we're off."

Then getting into the drivers side of the car he started the engine.

"NO!" Steve called out! "What about me?" and he started racing towards the already moving ambulance. The ambulance stopped and waited for Steve to catch up. Puffing and panting Steve was allowed to sit in the middle seat between the driver and the passenger specifically meant for kids. "It's only a block or two away you'll manage it won't you?" Bob muttered to Steve.

Steve smiled like a school boy. "Yup!" he said.
Dove struggled mightily to break the surface of consciousness, the stimulant for her rousal provided by the wail of the Rescue Squad's cacaphonous siren. She became distantly aware that she was supine on some sort of padded surface, and her ears brought undeniable evidence that Steve was nearby. Though positionally challenged and unable to see him, she could hear him babbling excitedly, firing questions at yet another unseen individual and whining petulantly about operating the siren. Even in her compromised status and in her current predicament of utter helplessness, she found herself mildly bemused by his effusive demeanor and almost childlike sense of wonderment.

What a corker he was, this man-boy who'd once strummed the strings of her now discordant heart. How could a man so seemingly innocent and wholly out of touch with nuance be concomitantly dastardly enough to poison her cucumber and cream cheese sammiches? How could this enigma of protoplasm presently bouncing up and down in the ambulance kiddie seat possibly embody sufficient darkness of spirit to visit such devastation upon as sweet, innocent, and consummately endearing a soul as she? Was he under the influence of some unseen force ~ some unspeakable evil her usually peak intuitive powers has somehow failed to discern? And what of the beautiful Alex, now comfortably ensconsed in Dove's lovely little cottage... and in Steve's heretofore blissfully oblivious day-to-day existence?

It was the mother of cunundrums, indeed; a situation so truncated and laden with complexities that even Dr. Phil would flee for the proverbial hills for the sake of preserving his sanity. Given her present circumstances, Dove was surely no better an opponent for the assailing forces now swirling about her. Like Scarlet, she vowed to think about it all tomorrow; for now, however, she gratefully retreated into the beckoning arms of unconsiousness...

Three weeks later...

Dove stared listlessly out the window at the vast expanse of green lawn. One of the institute's gardeners putted by on a riding lawnmower. With a sigh Dove put down her copy of National Geographic, pulled her bathrobe tighter around her, and shuffled off down the hall to her room.

On the way she met Betty. "Hey, Dove! Hey, Dove, Honey! Ya got a cigarette? Please?"

Dove shook her head sadly. How many times had Betty asked her this same question? Dove formed her words carefully, hoping against hope that somehow their meaning would be imprinted on Betty's brain. "I don't have a cigarette. Nobody has a cigarette. We aren't allowed to smoke cigarettes."

Betty stared at her blankly for a moment then smiled. "Okay, honey! I'll check you later."

Dove sighed and entered the little room that was home now. In a few minutes Doctor Phil would be by on his daily rounds.

He wasn't THE "Doctor Phil" of course. This Doctor Phil was short and had squeaky shoes. He liked to play checkers with the patients, except the ones who could beat him. Once he lost a game to a patient he never played checkers with them again. So far Dove had been careful to lose, but she was feeling a bit cranky today. Who knew? Maybe today she'd let him taste defeat. But was that the quickest way out of here? She shuddered. Better just to agree with him, let him win, and hope for the best. They couldn't keep her here forever. Or could they? She shuddered again.
Perhaps they could... and perhaps that would be her best of a pitiably few available options, given the circumstances at hand. Though three arduous weeks had passed since what she'd come to regard as the horrifying Poison Cucumber Incident, they'd done little to dim the ghastly memories and unsettling overtones with which that fateful evening was now so heavily laden.

As was characteristic of all of Dove's endeavors, the events of that doomed evening found genesis in innocense and a sincere measure of goodwill. She'd returned to her old neighborhood bearing culinary gifts for a man she'd thought was a friend, only to find him babbling on mindlessly about UFO's, aliens, and playing with his handle. She hadn't wanted to intrude, but joined him and his new, rather mysterious neighbor only at their urging. And then... chaos ensued. The remainder of the evening dissolved into a cacaphonous mix of shrieking sirens, prodding probes, and rancorous retching of partially digested cucumber seeds.

Worst of all, one or both of them was responsible for Dove's involuntary commitment to this Warner Brothers Looney Toon knock-off version of a "psychiatric facility". Dove had not fallen down the rabbit hole ~ she'd been stuffed into it. And for now, she'd bide her time, tolerate the diminutive-in-every-aspect-save-that-of-ego Dr. Phil, and wrest herself free of the tangled strands of the Steve Spider (tomato, tomahto... pfft) web of deceit presently cocooning her helplessly in its clutch.

Quietly closing the stall door in the Padded Ladies' Room, she fired up an unauthorized ciggie and ruminated,

"All in good time, my pretties ~ all in good time..."

Rhonda strode into the day room. A few of the patients were sitting around chattering nonsense to each other but they grew quiet. Rhonda stuck her thumbs into the shiny black belt of her guard's uniform. "Everything okay in here?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

Rhonda smiled. It had taken a few "incidents" to straighten out these kooks, but they were a well-disciplined group now. Rhonda had a simple philosophy: "There are no crazy people, there are just people who don't know how to quickly obey an order."

Rhonda was proud of her achievement. Those namby-pamby doctors with their books and words could talk with a "crazy" for hours, days, and weeks and not accomplish what Rhonda could achieve in a few minuites with her nightstick and her stun gun. Her ward was the best-behaved in the institute.

Rhonda's nose twitched. A frown crossed her face. Was that the smell of tobacco?

Following her nose and her intuition, she ended up in the ladies room standing next to stall number three. She considered her options: Smash in the door or ask the patient to open it. Although she didn't like to take the soft way, the director had started billing her for any institute property she destroyed, so she sighed and tapped on the stall door with her nightstick.

"It's occupied," said Dove, exhaling a luxurious smoke ring that rolled up toward the ceiling.

"I know it's occupied. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Just like that jack-booted she-male to choose this most inopportune moment to conduct one of her infamous potty raids", Dove thought to herself as Rhonda's baritone voice intruded upon her reveries. Obviously, Hitler's Mistress was unaware of Dove's prior stint as a police officer, and hence clueless regarding just how little regard Dove held for the baton wielding, power-drunk, tyrannical cop-wannabe mightily endeavoring to take an intimidating stance on the opposite side of the stall door. In a battle of wits, Dove could vanquish this woman with her frontal lobe tied behind her back.

"Smell smoke, did you, Rhonda? Not to worry. I was cleaning my bazooka and it went off. Surely a stellar, remarkably kind, caring, and sensitive Mental Health Professional of your caliber must have a plethora if more pressing matters to oversee? If you squander your immense talents and people skills babysitting the bathroom, who's going to officiate the Speed Round in today's Come As You Are Electroshock Therapy Session? C'mon, Rhond ~ sadists all over the globe are counting on you! Get with the program ~ chop,chop!

Strongly suspecting that Rhonda was the product of a nightmarish 'threw away the baby and reared the afterbirth' scenerio, Dove dismissed this gender non-specific lump of protoplasm occupying space on earth and on the other side of the stall foor for reasons only a Higher Power could fathom. Dove inhaled deeply from her USA Menthol Light 100 and resumed contemplation of issues of infinitely greater import.

Why, oh why, had the nefarious Steve done this to her? How could he have simply walked away and abandoned her to this hellhole and its minions? What could possibly have motivated this act of utter treachery? Only he could provide the answers ~ she'd learned long ago not to venture unarmed into the tangled web that passed for his mind.

Ah, well ~ she'd have the answers soon enough. The card that accompanied the dozen crimson roses he'd sent her this morning said he'd be here for Visiting Hours...



Steve stood outside the massive iron gates of The Institute For Ladies Of Reduced Mental Competence and waited for the guard to shuffle over from the little wooden guardhouse where he had been roasting chestnuts over a charcoal fire. He was an old guard with a huge white moustache. His shuffling took a long time. A huge ring of keys dangled from his gnarled hand which shook so much that the keys played a little tune with their jingling. Finally he reached the gate lock, clicked the key, and the gates swung open with a long loud creak.

Dove seemed very happy to see Steve. They sat on a couple of the wicker chairs that were scattered around the veranda of the visitation building. The veranda overlooked a magnificent view of the green lawns of the Institute, stretching to the far wall topped with its glistening strands of barbed wire, and beyond that, the rolling hills.

"It's very peaceful here," Steve said.
"Looks can be deceiving, Steve", Dove replied, her large, doe-like eyes searching his countenance for even a miniscule morsel of compassion or concern.   But his expression belied not so much as a glimmer of emotion... manifested therin was only its customary evidenture of consummate neutrality.

Dove's gaze turned to join Steve's as she, too, beheld the panoramic, perfectly manicured lawns and rainbow-hued gardens undulating as far as the eye could see toward an inevitable encounter with the azure blue horizon.   Landscaping that championed serenity and calm was the sole "therapeutic" feature this hellhouse masking as an "Institution" could boast, and Dove had long since concluded that its singular reason for existence was reassuring visitors and authories that all was well beyond the locked doors that in truth separated normalcy from a surreal atmosphere of sheer torture...

Returning her thoughts to the man responsible for her present captivity, the plethora of questions she had for him churned within her, refusing to be silenced.  But silence them she would ~ she'd resolved with all of her being that, even if it took until the last breath she drew, she would possess the answers now tantalizingly lingering just beyond her grasp.

With the aroma of roasting chestnuts wafting about them, Dove summoned up he courage and gently laid a tiny, delicate hand upon Steve's masculinely muscled forearm, seeking to draw to her his presently averted gaze.   He slowly turned his head to her, eyes still darting about nervously in a failed endeavor to avoid meeting her own.  But it was to no avail; their gazes at last conjoined and were fused.

"Thank you for the lovely crimson rose, Steve.  I will always cherish it.   But tell me ~ why did you send it and why have you come?"
"I just want to be sure that you are happy here," Steve said. "I know it must be hard on you, locked away here with little hope of release."

Dove's eyes widened. "Little hope? Why do you say that, Steve? Surely the wheels of bureaucracy are slowly turning, grinding out the necessary paperwork that will lead to my inevitable day of release?"

"Inevitable? That's a very optimistic word, Dove. Not that I have anything against optimism. It's a cheerful way to live. But I think people should face reality, too, don't you?"

"Reality? REALITY? What do YOU know about REALITY with your ridiculous "UFO's" and "alien invasions" and...

An attendant rushed over with a large hypodermic needle and Dove suddenly lowered her voice. "I don't need that."

The attendant looked uncertain but Steve waved him away with a debonair flourish of his carefully manicured hand. "It's alright. I'm sure that was just a momentary outburst. Please..."

After another moment of uncertainty the white-suited attendant retreated but remained watchful.
Serendipity striking yet another spirit-crushing blow, the awful truth washed over Dove like the backwaters of Hurricane Katrina on crack, drenching her in its noxious wake.  Eyes narrowing, she now beheld Steve in an entirely different light.... neon green.  "YOU!", she cried, You devilishly dastard BASTARDO, you! YOU'RE the alien, aren't you?  Yes... YES!   That explains everything!  Your eery demeanor... your otherworldly detachment... that toothy grin, those massive ears, and that shrivelled, spiney cucumber!!!

Shrinking back from him in horror, Dove gulped, emitted an ear-splitting, beckoning whistle, and eeked out the words....

"Attendant ~ I'll have that injection now.  Bedlam, carry me off on gossamer wings!"

Steve stared at the human female. How? How? How could she have penetrated his elegant masquerade? The Supreme Council had gathered together the best Constructors and Resemblers to make him into a perfect replica of a human male. And yet this female from a Class 4 civilization was able to discover his ruse.

Well, it was no longer possible to leave her hidden away in this asylum. She would have to travel with him to Xxyanthium. The Elders of the Supreme Council could decide her fate.

Steve activated his strength glands and pumped the appropriate hormones into his bloodstream. His chest enlarged and his arm muscles swelled.

Then he swept Dove off her feet, activated the small rocket pack that was strapped to his back beneath his suit coat, and blasted up into the sky, leaving a trail of burning tatters of cloth behind them. He regretted the loss of the jacket because it was his favorite suit, but it looked like his days on earth were over now thanks to the female's female intuition. She was making those moon eyes at him again.

"Oh, Steve! This is so romantic! It's just like Superman carrying Lois Lane off into the clouds!"

Steve frowned. "I'll have to take you to Xxyanthium so that the Elders can decide your fate."

"Oh, Steve! Taking me home with you to meet your parents. I think I'm the happiest girl on earth right now."

Steve touched down neatly on the porch of his flying saucer which had been obediantly floating above earth for a long time. "Well, you won't be on earth much longer."

He strapped Dove and himself into the seats, activated the propulsors, and with a mighty whine the Befuddlement pulled away from earth and headed for the distant planet of Xxyanthium. Steve and Dove watched the stars rush by, each with their own thoughts rushing through their minds.

Steve hoped the Elders would not find fault with his performance on Planet Earth.

Dove hoped she could grow petunias on Xxyanthium.

© Copyright 2004 Steev the Friction Wizurd, Of Fire Born mourns Mama, xx-xx, (known as GROUP).
All rights reserved.
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