Lucy had a Broken Heart and a Superior Attitude

Lucy had a broken heart. She felt this brokenness from the time she was born. It scattered her senses into the universe and held her captive to a small teary eyed vision of who she was. When she went to feel her heart she slammed up against an invisible wall that separated her from the beauty that lived within her. No matter how hard she tried, how deep she’d dig, she could not find where she was hiding inside of her heart. She was truly lost.

Each and every morning Lucy would squint at her reflection in the large bathroom mirror and examine her deep set blue eyes, small round face, strong Jewish nose, wide lips and shiny black hair. Some saw her as an exotic beauty; others saw her as an unpredictable woman with an eccentric demeanor. Still others saw her as she was, a woman with an empty gaze detached from anything human. There wasn’t a day that went by that Lucy didn't know exactly what she was supposed to do; get up, glance at the rising sun, pop her daily vitamins with a protein drink, go to work, listen to her very rich clients who bought foreign art objects from strange lands, complain about everyone they hated in their lives, eat a lunch of salmon, rice and salad, AND go home at six. At night she would talk to a few so-called friends about whatever irked them that day, eat a plate of chocolate ice cream covered in a cool mound before bed and then sleep, a dead sleepless sleep, always and forever squelching the ache in her heart.

Lucy knew, if ever she dared to talk to anyone about her brokenness it would scare people so wildly that they would kill her on the spot. You see Lucy knew and was raised to know that humans were born to be afraid of brokeneness and could not look straight into its deep blue eyes. E Lucy herself hid herself from all types of monstrous fears, whether they were short, fat, skinny, long and so on…so nothing and no one could touch her. But that didn't stop her from stating her mind about her fears. As a result she became the object of everyone’s fear and invisible to herself.

One day, as all days, the sun rose. But on this particular morning there was a majestic redness encircling the edges of the round brightness. The shock of color made Lucy stop dead in her tracks. It paralyzed her to such an extent that she could not walk to the bathroom to brush her teeth. And nothing, I tell you nothing came before her teeth brushing, face staring and body showering or she’d feel out of kilter for the rest of the day and for all she knew the rest of her life. Involuntarily, like an ant to crumb in the grass, she was trapped by the sun’s glare. The miraculous splendor pulled her into a deep spell. A shiver went up her spine and caused her to sneeze, and sneeze, three times, four times, five, six and on and on, until she was unable to catch her breath. She threw herself on top of her carefully cornered sea green sheets and huffed and puffed until the rippling tickle in her nose calmed down. Being she had never really sneezed hard in her whole life she considered this to be a bizarre and strange occurrence.

Lucy touched her forehead to see if she had a temperature, but her skin was cool and smooth. “Oh well. Never mind. Just a trick of fate.” With that thought she jumped to her feet. A trick of fate! She did not believe in fate. What would put such an awkward idea into her head? There was no fate, just destiny. Destiny! Ridiculous thing. Who was saying these absurd things in her head. She shook her head, held her breath, and released a winded sigh. Lucy was not naïve. Life was not for the living, it was for the defiant ones. The ones who thought life was inconsequential to living. How else could our society continue? No one could continue functioning on the planet if people decided to live--virtually everything would fall apart. There wasn’t any destiny, fate, determination or will. All anyone had to do was put one foot in front of the other. This was automatic anyway. It allowed everyone to fit into the corners of one’s own mind far away from anything living and breathing. Oh yes, there were some that actually believed that they were the masters of their own fate. These poor misguided souls would make Lucy laugh herself to sleep at night. “If that was true,” she would sarcastically retort to one of those many "masters of their own fate" party poopers, you know, the ones who wore silly party hats at cocktail parties and drank till their faces looked like their skin was fitted onto a hanger, “If that was true, then we all wouldn’t be living on this non-living of a planet and be living the so-called life of Riley, whoever that moron was.” She would laugh hysterically right in their faces and up their noses, which would make all those do-gooders frown and call her a miserable bitch. But, Lucy didn’t care what anyone thought of her since she knew the average I.Q on her planet was lower than the ground she walked On. Her I.Q fell between the superior and super superior level. Anyway, call it fate or destiny it all came out the same. When you’re dead you’re dead and when you’re alive, well you certainly weren’t walking on water or drowning for that matter, you just weren’t living on this shriveled up planet with its shriveled up brains for matter. Lucy, being the superior being she was, knew that.

Having all this knowledge and insight always left Lucy in a dilemma, which was, what the FUCK was she doing on this planet? As of this time she had not figured that out, so she just kept doing what she was doing and ignoring that she was even here, wherever here was.

Lucy wiped her strong nose, which of course, defied all the laws of Jewishness being that it was short and not long, and ridded herself of the memory of all those horrendous sneezes. She dressed in her typical black suit, with her typical red shoes and her typical hair done up to keep the strands out of her eyes and left for work. She arrived at her destination, after elbowing herself on out whack trains and buses to her own special shop of art objects. The sign above the door read, “Rare and lively works of art for the hard hearted, hard headed, and for those who hardly know anything about art at all.” That drew in clients from every corner of the planet with hardly any debits, just credits. As she pushed the key into the lock she noticed that there was a slight change in the way the door stood on its hinges. A big hurrumph escaped from her larynx. This was a word she had not said since childhood. She ignored her own ignorance and struggled to put the door back to its usual way of hanging on the hinges. The door would have none of that and kept popping out of its screwed up door joints. Well! Hurrumph again! Lucy slapped her hand over her mouth. What ever was happening to her! Hurrumph twice in one minute of time. “Well, damn you to earth.” She screamed at the swaying door. She knew of course that this curse she damned the door with, no one would say to a real person since no one ever wanted to be damned to earth. That was an eternal damnation. So you knew Lucy was really angry.

Lucy straightened her lily white collar and marched through the doorways porthole into her dark and shady store that carried hardly any art objects but many hard objects of art. White dust particles spun through space falling here and there, on this frame, that stone hand, those porcelain table tops, over there in the corner on top of those rare marble heads. Lucy walked to the back of the shop and turned on the lights. Before she could reach the back wall where all the Neanderthal fish heads hung, a voice sprang out from nowhere.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Lucy turned and sneezed. “Who’s there? I’m not ready for business.”

“Business? Is that what you think you do?”

Lucy peered through the dusty light, “Who are you? What do you want?”

A strange silence made Lucy cringe. “Are you going to speak up or do I call the police?”
From between the slips of space a man walked forward. He was tall, but not too tall, slim, but not too slim. His eyes were dark with a tinge of green light, and he seemed to blend into the surroundings. The only distinct thing about him was his smell.

Lucy drew closer to get a good look at him. “Is that rose petal dew that emanates from you?”

He grinned. “No it is dew petal rose a distant cousin of the extinct and hidden flower.”

She grinned back. “You draw a curiosity from inside my head. Why did you tell me not to turn on the light.”

The man coughed. “Is that what I said? Don’t turn on the light?”

Lucy saw, now that she was up close to his chin that he was an older man. He had a soft curve to his cheeks and a slender twist in his smile.

“Isn’t that what you said.” Lucy tilted her head.

He laughed a dolphin type of screeching laugh. “I said I wouldn’t do that if I was you. You presumed I meant turn on the lights.”

She rustled her skirt in irritation. “Well it makes no difference what you said because I can see now you don’t belong here. Please leave, you’re disturbing the paintings on the walls. They are beginning to shake. Besides which you could never afford what I have for sale.”

His eyes widened. “You think your superior I.Q. makes you superior? It’s merely a number on a piece of paper. You don’t know everything my dear backwards lady.”

Lucy leaned closer. “You are a rude older moron aren’t you?”

The stranger leaned even closer. “Not as rude as the smidgen on your face.”

Lucy stomped her foot and threw her hands in the air like she was about to conduct a symphony or throw the man for a loop. “I cannot stand this anymore. You are upsetting my ethers and are throwing me off my sharpened pinhole of insight. Now get out! NOW!

The older put out his hand on her shoulder, “You shouldn’t talk to me in such a fiercely determined way. I could show you the stars and destroy your sense of reality.”

Lucy pushed him away, knelt over and slapped her bony knee. “That is priceless. You are trying to scare me. You couldn’t scare a walnut out of its shell let alone wake me out of a stupor".

The older man stood right up to her and stared. He waved his arms around like a loose wire. “Nothing up this sleeve. Nothing up my other sleeve. Now watch closely.” He held out his hand and snapped his fingers in slow and deliberate circles, then quickly, without a minute to waste, touched Lucy on the forehead in the most gentle way imaginable, then he was gone.

Lucy’s eyes skipped about from angle to angle but could not find the man hidden anywhere in between the cracks. This day is much much too odd, she thought. Much too odd! Everything was just fine a second ago and now nothing is fine. Nothing at all! Before she knew it, Lucy picked up a rare piece of art that sold for whatever price she wanted it to and threw it across the room. Its smashing sound quaked her body in a screaming rumbling way making her crave more smashing to erupt her senses. The crackling sound of broken pieces of art seemed to be music to her ears and sent a thrill into the big toe on her right foot. Suddenly the big toe began to pulsate, reverberate in such a way that it pained and ached her soul. It hurt so much she wanted to cut it off or better yet inject it with some of the pink serum the junkies in the alley shot up. She hobbled toward the back door and kicked it open. Darkness and gloom blocked out the sun’s rays and filled the narrow passage with a bleakness only mourners and liars experienced. Without much hesitancy she stalked the alley, watching, waiting, looking for a druggie to come out from the shadows. But none did. Her toe pounded in pain. Pounded so hard it made her mouth drool and her eyes squint in agony.

She hobbled to and fro screaming. “Help me. Someone help. I’m in pain!”

A tall dark figure appeared and grabbed her by the arm. “Pain? What sort of pain are you in?”

Lucy hopped on one foot, pointed at her toe. "My toe. Oh my god. The pain is crawling up into my head. I feel it will devour me. Strangle me.”

The tall dark stranger stared down. “Your toe is fine. It is not your toe. It is in your head. Somewhere in your head.”

Lucy screamed. “No. No. My toe is killing me. Can’t you see it throbbing? Beating its way into my soul. I will not be able to breathe soon. Not breathe. Help me soon. Shoot me up.”

“Shoot you up? With what? Shoot you up? Calm down. You’re near lunacy. Just breathe and think, think what happened a minute ago. Nothing really happened.”

It was too much for Lucy to bear. This man. This crazy man was telling her that nothing happened. Like a wild boar, an animal with fangs she bit at his face and pulled his pockets, tore them to shreds.
A long pink needle dropped to the floor as he ran away back into the foggy mists of the dank alley ranting as he disappeared, “You don’t know. You don’t know. You don’t know.”

She scooped the needle up, directed it toward the nearest vein in her arm and was about to dig its sharp tongue into her skin, when suddenly, a swarm of translucent pink bubbles sprouted from the eye of the needle and blurred her vision.

A voice from the afar shouted in her head, “Pain or death. Pain or death. Are you ready to die? Really die?”

A gust of wind smelling of wet sweat and dingy shoes swished her around. Words and images swirled in her mind. This shot, this one shot could kill me. Or the pain could kill me. Or not? Or not! Or not! What if? What if, Lucy thought, what if I just...?

Lucy tossed her superiority into the nearest trash can, threw the needle against the dark red bricks and ran.

(To be continued)