The air was cool and whipped with the subtle fury of autumn. The sky was dark blue with flecks of lavender. The large willow in the cemetery swayed its large web like branches back and forth and the dry leaves crackled like the embers of hot fire. She stood beneath the tree and looked up at the branches with knowing eyes. She reached her hand out from the black poncho she was wearing and placed her palm gently on the tree trunk. The wind kicked up and her long black hair danced around her face and neck as she kept her hand pressed onto the willow tree. The clouds were rolling quickly and she felt a warmth and love.
There was a brilliant glow from her palm and she remembered her life before and thought of crossing paths with Valerie. The light had been receding on the day that she arrived, and the sky was full of dark clouds and rain. She sat fetal at the foot of the willow tree with hair down to her back masking her naked body. She was motionless for a time until the light that emanated from the oak had gone and then her eyes opened. Her breathing was heavy and uneven, and the surface on which she sat was wet and crumbled beneath her. She seemed more startled to be awake than to be naked and her eyes were new to this world. There were too many sensations all at once and it was dizzying for her. She wobbled to her feet, managing a rudimentary form of walking as she left the park. The ground had gone from soft to a severe stiff and she felt pain as she walked. It became more difficult to walk as her tired bare feet bled along the road. The sound of passing cars frightened her and drivers honked and screamed things from the window. The rain had become much heavier and her black hair became a wet mask obscuring most of her face. The townspeople were more than slightly shocked at the site of the naked woman wandering past the storefronts with little care for covering her shame. Parents shielded their children’s eyes, nuns clutched their rosary beads, and men gawked and hooted, but nobody simply spoke to her and nor she to them. She felt herself weakening and wandered into a diner before she collapsed. ,
The Nightingale Diner was named more elegantly than it actually was. The patrons were people who were simple in their values. They ate their breakfast, lunch, and dinner and woke with the rooster. Save for a few delinquents, they would always press their pants and flush twice if visiting a guest’s home, but few knew how they would respond in a situation as strange as the one they had experienced that evening. A girl, who was completely nude, walked into the Nightingale. A man who was finishing his second helping of Salisbury steak sat mouth agape with the meat of his fifth bite dripping onto his slacks, and his wife would surely give him hell for that stain later. A group of teenagers giggled and gasped as they saw the woman wet from her hair to feet. The owner of the diner, Mitch, had a scowl on his face. “Alright sweetheart time to pick up and go, can’t sober up in my place. You hear me sweetheart?” Mitch said to the woman, just before she passed out.
A young waitress with pinned back rust brown hair, was spinning out of the kitchen with a tray holding a sandwich and salad combo along with the two soups of the day, all of which would be on the floor with a bowl left wobbling once she saw the girl unconscious. The waitress rushed over to the young woman and touched her wrist to see if she had a pulse. Her skin was colder than the raindrops that drenched her. There was some force emanating from her. The waitress, whose nametag read Valerie, would thought it as like a bolt of lighting that made her feel nakedly honest. The pulse shot through Valerie and the dark haired girl pulled her close and wept as her fingers coiled into Valerie’s brown hair. Valerie was stunned by what was happening and Mitch reached for the phone signaling to Valerie as if to say, “you want me to call the cops”, but Valerie shook her head. She stood helping the girl to her feet, and the once bloody soles were miraculously healed leaving no trace of her difficult sojourn to town. When asked later, Valerie could not quite say why she put the girl in her car and immediately drove her home, but she felt it was the right thing to do. They arrived to the small one bedroom apartment, about fifteen minutes from the diner and Valerie loped with the naked woman’s arm slung around her neck to the door. She struggled with her keys and the door and sat her on her couch, and regretted having removed the plastic cover only yesterday. The mysterious young woman sobbed while Valerie went to get her some towels and clothes to dry her. Valerie asked her name, but she continued to sob. Valerie was kneeling near her at the couch and was hesitant to touch her again, thinking of the strange sensation she had felt, but she reached for her hand anyway. The sensation coursed through her again, but it felt different this time, more like a stream trickling energy into her soul. Valerie was so overcome that it wasn’t for a few moments that she realized the woman had stopped sobbing and was squeezing her hand and looking at her. Valerie looked at her and felt a pure resonance. She looked into the amethyst eyes of her unusual house guest and could sense a familiar feeling from her. “You’re very unhappy Valerie.” The woman said suddenly. Valerie looked back at the woman in shock and responded “Isn’t everybody nowadays?” The dark haired girl smiled sympathetically at her. What’s your name? Valerie asked, but the woman said she didn’t have one. The dark haired woman looked past Valerie at a photo on her mantle piece. It was a photo of Valerie with two other people, a young man with freckles and a girl with no hair. The young man had his fingers in a peace sign, and the bald girl had her arms draped around Valerie’s neck. Valerie noticed the girl staring and felt the heavy drip of sadness weigh her heart down. “Who are they” the dark haired girl asked, but Valerie just sat with her head turned toward the photograph while she responded. They were my friends and they’re both gone now. The dark haired girl took Valerie by the face gently with her mouth close enough to kiss. “Do you trust me?” she asked. After some hesitation Valerie answered “Yes. Yes I do.” Then tell me who they are. Valerie took a deep breath and could feel the lump in her throat. “Jacob is the man in the picture, he was funny and a little dim-witted at times, but he was sweet. That girl is Abigail, but she made a fuss if we didn’t call her Abby and she was the kind of girl who got into fist fights with men if they did something she considered offensive. When we graduated from high school, she had said she would strip her way through college and then become a fighter pilot and after a few tours of duty, she would become a mercenary for hire. I’m sure she mentioned something equally as bizarre in that picture. It was one of the few moments after her diagnosis that we were completely happy, without everything being tainted with her disease. When she was on her death bed she told me “cheer up Val, just have a mid life crisis for me in about twenty five years.” Jacob and I swore that we would live for Abby. We eventually started dating for a while, but we were both still devastated. I would cry and Jacob would get frustrated and that’s when his drinking started.”
Valerie looked at the dark haired girl with eyes red from her tears and the dark haired girl motioned for her to continue.
“Jacob would drink and cheat and drink and cheat, but I was so numb I couldn’t get past my own hurts to see that he was still hurting too. He had gone out one night after an argument and I hadn’t even thought about how much time had passed since he left. It wasn’t until the next morning, the police came to my door and I watched the policeman’s mouth moving while he told me about the accident and the telephone pole. Listening to that news felt like listening to static, it just became noise that I couldn’t take. School didn’t seem so important when the people you loved most were dead so I quit and here I am.” The dark haired girl looked at her for a moment and pulled her in close and held Valerie’s face to her bare chest. Valerie could still feel how cold her skin was, and hear her heart beating strongly. The rhythm was calming and Valerie felt her eyes becoming weighted with sleep. She awoke to laughter, and could smell hotdogs from the bowling alley. “First one to fifty-points streaks through the football field,” Abby said. Valerie sat up staring from the hard plastic chair in the bowling alley and looked up at Abby as she twirled her long black hair around her finger grinning. “I’d do it for nothing” Jacob said with his mess of red hair falling into his eyes. Valerie’s mind went blank and she smiled and Abby and Jacob smiled back. Abby waved a hand to tell Valerie to join them and she reached out and could feel their warmth as they walked out of the bowling alley doors into the comforting light.
The dark haired girl sat cradling Valerie’s body; she was no longer there, but within the strange woman. She sat alone listening to the tick of Valerie’s clock for a moment before throwing on a poncho and boots to leave the apartment. She walked back to the cemetery carrying Valerie’s light inside of her, and as she approached the old oak she looked at the tombstone with her name; here lies Abigail “Abby” Sutton. Abby touched the oak and the light that shone out was benevolent and merciful and gave passage to Abby and Valerie on their way to see Jacob.