Kaylee

The next chapter in my attempt at a novel...for those who wanted to read more

    “It’s the only way you can become immortal.” 
    This isn’t quite what she had in mind, but it’s close enough.  She says it with that half joking, half serious smile I’ve come to know so well.  She’s gauging my reaction.  This was two years ago.  I’m telling her if I kill myself I’m dead.  How is that being immortal?  “Stop being so naive!”  She’s annoyed now.
    She asks if it wasn’t me who said how afraid I was to be forgotten.   She’s right.  She tells me my memory will last for years, decades after I’m gone.  My response is I have to go to work.
    Right now I’m a professional musician, back then I was a gravedigger, soon I’ll be nothing.  Another poor lost soul or another idiot coward, depending on your point of view.  Labels are so easy.
    The way Kaylee looked that day it was hard to say no to her.  Her long beautiful hairs slightly covering her nearly perfect completion.  Little strands hanging in front of her big green eyes.  I wish I could have taken her right there.  I could have, if I went along with her plan.  But this was crazy, and I was late for work.

    “FINE, go then!” She screams.  “Run away like you always do.”
    She calls my back a coward.  I shutter walking out the door, slamming it behind me.  What a wasted opportunity, and I get so few these days.  All I would have had to do was lie. 
    So I’m standing in the hallway of my s****y apartment contemplating.  If I had lied she would have held me to that lie until I wanted to kill myself.  She’ll get over it I’m saying to myself.  For now it’s not worth the hassle. 
    By now you’re probably wondering why I’m with this girl when she appears so obviously insane.  We’ll that’s only one side of Kaylee Givens.  Kaylee has many personalities (but not in the clinical sense.)  Other times she is sweet, supportive, smothering, caring, vindictive, motherly…so forth and so on.  Truth be told, that’s one of the things I love about her.  Beautiful and crazy, that’s how I like my women.  Sometimes just crazy will do, and visa versa, but that never lasts.  I get bored.  Kaylee keeps me on my toes, on a razors edge.
    I met her at an Evacuate Soul show.  It was before all the talk of contracts and lawyers and whatever else I have to deal with now.  It was all about the music back then and I sang with such conviction.  I miss those days.  Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do and I know several people would kill to be in my shoes. However, with all the corporate bullshit attached it has lost some of its passion, but I digress.
    I saw her sitting at one of the back tables of the bar. She was with her friends drink in hand.  A hand in which later in our relationship I discovered would always have a drink in it.  We had an hour-long set and this was the first song of the night.  I made it my mission to connect with this girl.  To me, no one in else in the bar existed.  In a half hour she had moved to the front of the stage, dancing, drunk, it was beautiful, and so was she.
    Her hair was shorter then, but still long enough to have those few strands hang in that sexy way in front of her eyes.  Knee high boots, tight black baby doll t-shirt; I remember every detail, from the glitter in her eye make-up to the shine of her lip-gloss.  Kaylee was my vision of perfection.  By the last song I had pulled her up on stage to dance.  I was in Heaven.
    After the set I introduced myself and offered to buy her another drink (as if she needed one.)  She took me up on the proposal and I told her I’d be back after I finished striking down and loading up the equipment.  She said she wasn’t going anywhere so I left to finish my band duties.
    When I returned to her table her friends were giggling like schoolgirls.  Kaylee’s glass was empty once more aside from a few ice chips she was gnawing on.  I didn’t even get a chance to open up my mouth when she asked if I wanted to get out of here.  Now I’m not one to take advantage of drunk girls (liar,) but she was irresistible. 
    On the car ride to my place, which was her suggestion, she told me her whole life story, most of it anyway.  She explained to me how her father used to touch her and occasionally take it to the next level of perversion till she was about twelve.  When she was twelve he took off for good.  “Every time someone leaves me in a relationship I get the same sense of rejection” she tells me.  This is family dysfunction 101.
    She reminisced about experiences when she was raped, which is one thing, but she became pregnant from it.  She said she couldn’t bear to keep a child from such an experience so she had the baby aborted.  The honesty was breathtaking.  I wanted her to stop but I wanted to hear more, if that makes any sense.   So I kept quiet and let her talk.  I was going to be everything she wanted me to be, her therapist, her friend, her lover, her father.  I was ready to sell my soul.  As it stands, that may have been just what I did.
    When we got to my apartment she was still talking, as well as slurring and stumbling.  I thought she seemed pretty lucid, aware enough as I saw fit to deem her.  I opened the door and as she entered she immediately started rifling through my possessions.   Books, magazines, video games, everything a bachelor needs.  She happened to reach into one of my bookshelves and grabbed a notebook of mine. 
     My eyes widened as I saw the worn, brown hardcover of one of my old journals, the suicide years.  I have never let anyone read those and I’m not going to start now.  I snatch the book back from her as she’s opening it.  I can see all the cracks in the spine swell and contract as I slam the cover shut and return it to its place among the others.
     “What the hell!” She slurs.
At this point I’m telling her it’s personal.  “And I didn’t tell you my whole life story?”
     “I didn’t ask.”
She tells me to take her home and now it’s time for damage control.  “Look,” I say, “Why don’t I make you a drink, we’ll sit down, and I’ll tell you why I reacted the way I did and we’ll go from there.”
     Amazingly this works and she calms down enough to take a seat on the couch.  She waits patiently for the ensuing story and beverage as I stall and wait patiently for her to forget the whole thing.
In the kitchen I’m mixing her drink; I’m forgetting to put in the alcohol.  I really don’t want this girl passing out and puking all over my already unpleasant smelling apartment.  As I walk out of the kitchen I see her eyeballing my acoustic guitar standing up in the corner.  She looks at me and asks if I really play.  She’s easily distracted and I’m off the hook.  I tell her I do, but not very well.  “Play me something.”  She smiles seductively.
      I’m happy to oblige.
     “This song I wrote a while back called Self-Sufficient Liar.”  I say, “Not many people have heard it but I guess I could give it a shot.”
     Something else you should probably know about me is I lie.  Not all the time but enough to where if you called me a liar I couldn’t really contest the point.  So I tune up my cheap little acoustic guitar to play the same song I play for almost every girl I have had to my apartment.  I strum a few warm-up chords and as I start the song I look right into those gorgeous green eyes and I get lost.  I sing:

Reachin out, I must have fell.
Reachin out, I must have fell.
(Strumming)
Reachin out I must have fell, I cut myself and I don’t know how.
I’m bleeding, and losing my voice,
From screaming out for someone to help.
Where am I that I’m so alone?
And how did I get so far from home.
It’s freezing, and hard to breathe.
I’m bleeding to death and no one knows.

I live for this so let me be.
I cry or help then run away.
Then one day I’ll run too far,
And I’ll wonder where you are.
Where you are, where you are.

It’s difficult to tell you now,
I cut myself and I don’t know how.
I’ll lie to you to help you sleep.
Then lie away in my silent screams.
My Screams-

I live for this so let me be.
I cry for help then run away.
Then one day I’ll run too far,
And I’ll wonder where you are.
Where you are, where you are.

I live with this it’s all the same.
Everyone wants me to change.
And today I ran too far,
And I’m wondering where you are.
Where you are, where you are.

       As I’m strumming the last chord of the song I’m looking at Kaylee’s face for a reaction.  This is my constant need of approval.  She looks solemn and I look worried.  “You don’t have to tell me your story now,” She says, “I already know it.”
     “What?”
     “I want you.”
     “Ok.”
      Looking back I could have said something a little smoother but the way she was looking at me told me I also could have said something like apples and it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
Five o’clock the next morning Kaylee starts to stir awake.  I’m fast asleep.  “I’m not a s**t,” she mumbles to me quietly. I didn’t respond, couldn’t respond. “I’m not a s**t!” She slaps me, “Didn’t you hear me!”
      At this point I’m telling her the time.  This is not what she wants to hear and it’s our first fight, how romantic.
      My first step in calming Kaylee down is waking up.  This is surprisingly the easiest part considering I have this crazy woman I brought home from the bar last night, pummeling me, at five in the morning, insisting she isn’t a w***e, harlot, hussy, chose your synonym. I tell her I never thought of her like that and she stops.  “You don’t even know me,” she squeaks with welling eyes. My heart is melting.
     Think what you will about me but the way Kaylee looked that morning I would have said or done anything to have her again.  That kind of vulnerability, that kind of passion, when I looked into those big, green, tear-filled eyes I couldn’t help but fall in love (infatuation.)  She must have seen something too, in the way I was looking at her, because she turned her eyes to the ground.  I slowly moved to put my arm around her, testing the waters.  As I just about reached all the way around her she lunged.  Clinging to me in a heap of babbling tears. 
     Kaylee, she’s afraid I’ll never call her after this.  She thinks she’s scared me off.  She hasn’t, she’s only gotten me interested.  So began our relationship.  Sealed with a kiss and so much more.   

Reviews

[The Lady Anasteja]

Ahhh, attraction to the unbalanced. I can relate with your character.

Keep it coming!

[jess]

but all great writers use long stories most of the time. very very very very good work. wait no forget that very very very very very great work. sorry bot the other one. computer cut of before i could finish.

[jess]

wow really long

[Jillian]

This has me so emotional on so many levels.... I want more