Nigthmare of Dust

Lucinda ran from the house. Her world was crumbling. Everything was crumbling. “What have I done?” she cried. She turned and looked at the mansion that she’d come to call home. The black Rolls-Royce that sat off to her left. Statuary. Topiary. Thompson… oh, Thompson.

She watched as the house crumbled and blew away on the breezes from the Gulf of Mexico behind it. Everything turned to dust. She knew it couldn’t be real. She knew it couldn’t really be her life. She couldn’t imagine why she’d thought her life would ever rise above the dark trailer in the run-down park… the one without warm water to shower.

But Thompson. He was the one part of this that she wanted to be real.

From the moment he’d picked her up in that Rolls-Royce… the one that was now nothing more than a memory and a pile of dust… she had thought that he must be real. His solidity.

Gone.

The wind picked up. The dust spun in little tornadoes around her, kicking up duct devils.

Devils. How appropriate. She’d tried to alter her destiny. Now the devils were coming to drag her back.

“No!”

Lucinda Melanie Hall… Stevens? Did Whit Stevens exist anymore, or was he turning to dust and blowing away, too? she thought, you’ll never rise above. You belong in that trailer. That hell.

The devils blowing around her were coming for her. She could see their faces. Lucinda thrust herself up from the spot on the manicured lawn and turned once again. Like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch in which her dreams had been drawn, everything was just disappearing.

She turned and ran through the gate as it crumbled and blew away. Lucinda ran like she’d never run before. Fast. Endlessly. Aimlessly.

Over her shoulder she saw one of the devils. Her father. His arms reached out for her. She could feel his thoughts. She wasn’t good enough, smart enough. She didn’t deserve more than someone like Whit. So what if he hit you… it was only to keep you in line.

She ran faster.

Another swirl of dust behind her carried Whit’s face. You can’t run away from reality, Luce. I’m the best you can hope for. You aren’t any better than me, she could hear him say in her mind.

She crossed the short bridge from her island community toward downtown. Her feet pounding the pavement. The wind blowing her hair around.

Oh, Thompson, of everything, I only wish you were real.

Into the canyons of downtown, she ran. The dust devils of Whit and her father fell behind. She outpaced them, running faster than she’d ever run. She had been a runner when she was in school. Her long, slender legs carrying her away from the drama and trauma that marked every moment of her childhood. Once, she’d thought they would carry her to a new life, but that hadn’t been the case. She hadn’t been fast enough to outrun her past then, and even though she was flying over the sidewalk, she knew in her heart he couldn’t outrun it now.

Her mother’s face coalesced in a dust devil that sprang up in front of her.

Where are you goin’, child? Did you really think that could be your life? Are you daft? You ain’t never been smart enough or pretty enough to be one of them people, her mother screeched inside her head.

Lucinda closed her eyes and ran straight through the devil her mother embodied.

She thought that if she’d run with this kind of purpose, she would have been State Champion for sure. How different life could have been. College. A man that loved her. Accomplishment. Children. Respect.

Instead, she was running toward a decrepit trailer that she had started to wonder had ever existed.

Faker! Whit shouted as his devil arose again.

She knew that she was a faker. From that moment when Stevens had handed her the envelope. Fraud. Lucinda knew it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t have a happy and prosperous life.

“Hell, I even failed in my dreams,” she yelled as she ran through the streets, the buildings towering over her, judging her. “It was my dream and I never told Thompson…” she trailed off.

A new burst of speed swept over her as she ran. Out of the tall buildings of the central business district into the low-rise commercial buildings that outlined the city center. Her trailer park… the place she knew she really belonged. It wasn’t much further.

***

Still she ran. It had been an hour, maybe more. She couldn’t judge time as a distinct phenomena now, but she knew that it was fourteen miles from her house to “home”… the trailer she’d abandoned when Thompson collected – saved - her. Thompson, she thought again. She pushed his face out of her mind.

She had run one marathon when she was in high school. 26.2 miles. She knew the distance. Three hours and thirteen minutes. That had been her time. It was almost a school record. Almost. Lucinda had been running to try to catch her future then. She was trying to outrun her past now. Apparently, that was a stronger motivator.

Thompson’s face crept back into her mind. She could see his strong jaw and his cheerful eyes. The jagged scar under his eye. How did he get that? she wondered. I never asked him. I never asked him how he got it.

Up ahead she saw the marquee of the trailer park. Gulf Breeze Trailer Park. There were no breezes from the Gulf. There were barely breezes at all. Still, fetid air. Mildew and the smell of decay and despair.

She turned and ran toward space thirty-five. In the back, on the right. As she approached, she skidded to a stop in front of her old trailer. Unlike the times before when Thompson had brought her, this was her old trailer. No power. No hot water. Dark and barely inhabitable.

Thompson. Why couldn’t you have been real. Of all the things that weren’t real, only you will I mourn.

She collapsed to the ground. Her head hung in front of her, staring at the oil-stained gravel. The place where the courier had parked to deliver the package. The place where Thompson had parked to… deliver her to a vision of a life she could not have.

All the fatigue she’d not felt as she ran like the wind came at her in a rush. She closed her eyes. A hundred faces swirled in front of her. They floated in and out of focus.

She opened her eyes again and looked around. The trailer started to crumble, just as the mansion had. It turned to dust and swirled into a mini-tornado. This time, though, instead of attacking her, the dust was just sucked away.

“What? What can I do?” Lucinda yelled at the top of her lungs. Nobody was there to listen. She realized that she hadn’t seen a single solitary soul all through her nightmare.

She stood, her desire to leave this place overcoming her lethargy. She turned around to survey the trailer park as it disappeared. Mrs. Solomon’s single-wide, always neat as a pin and smelling like fresh-baked cookies. The Morris’s, which always had a broken car in the process of being repaired. Mr. Cook’s, which she never wanted to walk near by herself.

Laying in the dust formerly occupied by the dirty shack she’d shared with Whit was a black book. The book. The book that had started all of this. The book she now wished she’d never seen. God could smite that book and the world would be better, she thought to herself.

Lucinda turned and walked away. But she couldn’t. She broke into a run.

There she was, still at space thirty-five, the book laying in the dust in front of her. She finally leaned over and picked it up. Holding it in her hand, she walked out of the remains of the trailer park, now just dust. Everything was just dust. She kept walking. She didn’t know where she could go now.

***

The sun was setting in the distance to her left. The color of the sky was glorious. “Must be the damn dust. Figures. The world, and everyone and everything in it turns to dust… we get a nice sunset,” Lucinda said, stopping to watch.

She sat on a rock to watch the light of the day fade into night. In her back pocket she felt something poking her.

“Where did you come from?” she said, pulling a locket free from her pocket, the heart with silver and gold filigrees glistening in the fading light.

On the side of the delicate locket there was a catch. She popped it with her thumb, the locket falling open. There was a picture of a man and a girl. She immediately recognized the man. Thompson. She touched his picture gently with the tip of her finger. A tear gathered in her eye before rolling down her cheek.

“I don’t even know your full name,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know anything.”

She turned her concentration to the girl. She looked familiar. Achingly familiar. She gazed at her beautiful smile and marveled at how her eyes danced, even in the tiny picture.

“I know you, but I don’t know you.”

She slipped off the top of the rock and leaned back against it. The sun dipped below the western horizon as the stars began to twinkle overhead. Lucinda laid her head back against the rock and stared intently at the two pictures in the locket. She was missing something.

Her eyes drifted closed, and she felt herself drifting away.

***

“Lucinda,” the voice roused her. “Are you ok?” The voice had the slightest British accent. It was deep and comforting. It was the voice she longed to hear. She felt his strong arms encircling her, holding her. She could feel the length of him against her.

She opened her eyes and light was streaming through the sheer curtains over the window. He brushed her hair to the side and kissed the back of her neck, raising the gooseflesh on her arms.

“Thompson?” she said.

“Formal this morning, my love?” he replied.

Lucinda spun in his arms, coming to face him. She kissed him, feeling his arms around her and luxuriating in the comfort he provided. After a moment, she pulled away and looked at him. Her hand reached out and touched the spot below his eye where the jagged scar had been in her nightmare.

The door burst open, and the girl rushed across the room. She dived onto the bed and hugged her parents. As her daughter kissed her cheek, everything rushed back to Lucinda. Her life. Her family.

She turned and kissed her daughter.

“Are you ok, Mommy?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been better,” Lucinda replied.

***

Lucinda sat at her desk, the notebook in front of her. She flipped it open and started reading the story. Her story. A life she lived, but not one that was real. As she turned the pages, she touched the locket that hung on the delicate chain from her neck.

The door opened and closed behind her. Her husband slipped up and laid his hand on her shoulder before leaning in and kissing her from behind.

“You need to be careful, Lucinda. I don’t want you to slip off into one of your stories and not make it back.”

She closed the book in front of her and clutched the locket. “I don’t want that, either.”

“You’re back now,” he said before kissing her again.

Lucinda's journey began in Lucinda's Choice. It was continued in Lucinda's New Life before concluding here. Feel free to read those to find out more about her.