invisible

This morning I woke up in a crumpled ball in my bed...but couldn't remember why...I burrowed my tongue into my dreams to see if the taste of their scrim could remind me...bitterness, an acidic tang...an old nemesis who has lost his face...dark, the back of his palm, ash...it reached for me...

When I was 25, Jeremiah decided that he wanted me. I had the audacity to think that I had some choice in this and demurred. When he continued to follow me through my days, asking literally without pause would I go out with him, no, would I go out with him, no, would I go out with him, no, please, no...I finally reported him to our supervisors. God knows how he found out who made the report - he asked all the women in the office out, despite his having a wife at home - but he followed me from work that day, followed me to a near-empty parking lot, stood outside my window begging, Please, tell them it wasn't true, pleeease, I'm asking you, his voice a low steady hiss - I should have known - I can't, I said, I can't, It was true, and his arm swung out then, tried to squeeze his fat fingers through the tiny crack of window I had opened...

A few days later, I left work. I remember I walked to my car feeling free. I slid my key into the lock, settled in my seat, spent several minutes going through my purse and fiddling with the items in the passenger seat - a book, a map, a single flip-flop - how could I not have noticed? - then looked up. My windshield was gone.

Another day it was my tires. Not all of them...only 3...why just the 3? Why did the fourth escape him? To show that he had some mercy, maybe, that he could be tender...

One day I walked out of my own house to find a tiny bone garden arranged delicately on the back of my car's trunk. Originally some sort of pentagram, I think, or a sunburst, but the cats had been at it. I called the police, of course, but what could they do? Had we seen him? No. Had anyone ever seen him? No. Then there's nothing...I held up my hand. Nothing, I said, I know. Nothing you can do.

We dubbed him The Invisible Man. I began to feel eyes everywhere. But I couldn't allow myself to be a prisoner. I laughed. I worked. And then, one day, a break...of sorts. I was walking down the street near my house, approaching a stoplight. I glanced at the car waiting...and found The Invisible Man staring back. I froze. He froze. And then...I felt my spine begin to straighten. I glared at him. My hands balled into fists and crept up onto my hips. My chin lifted. I stared so hard that my eyes began to water. And a funny thing happened...as everything in my body grew straight, he began to droop into his seat. He slid down further and further until he was half bent over. He crouched behind the wheel like a little old man. And when the light changed, a miracle. He made a U-turn. He drove away.

My sighting made absolutely no difference legally. There was still no proof that he was in any way connected to my bad fortune. But...after that, it stopped. And I had been alone that day. Who knows what pleasures he had plotted, planned out meticulously beforehand, relished the thought of?

Anyway, last night I dreamed of him. A simple chasing dream. Terror. But this time...there was something else, a new presence. A wholeness, coemergence, we will call it youmedragon. An inviolate sanctity, a circle of protection. Love. It shrouded me in its folds. Those lovely thick velvet folds. And I was safe.