Invisible No More

If you enjoy reading my poetry, you’ll find more poems in my novel:  A Murder of One

http://www.amazon.com/Murder-One-Patti-Keno-ebook/dp/B00UB8URJ0/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427918429&sr=1-1&keywords=patti+keno

Here’s an excerpt:

               “Are you sure that you’re ready to do this?” the tender voice beside his ear inquired.

David nodded.  “It’s the ‘anniversary’.  I can’t not do this, so I guess I have to be ready,” he replied under his breath.

“I can’t believe it’s been almost 20 years,” the voice whispered.

“Neither can I,” David agreed.  “Time just flies, so quickly now, back then it seemed to drag on forever.”  He shivered as a sudden breeze whipped through the cold January air.

“Are you cold?” the voice asked.  David nodded and adjusted the collar of his green jacket.  “I’m sorry you had to go through everything alone,” the voice said sadly.

“No, I was never alone, not ever!” David argued, smiling shyly, letting the voice know that he wasn’t angry.

“I guess this means it’s time for me to go then,” the voice whispered through what could have been tears.

David flinched.  He knew this day was coming, but he still wasn’t prepared for it.  “I know,” he mumbled through his own fresh tears.

“I love you, Pez,” the voice whispered tenderly.

“I love you too, Wolf.  And thank you… for everything,” David whispered into the emptiness of the cemetery that he was standing in.

“No Pez, thank you,” Wolf replied. David felt a kiss placed gently upon his lips, but he saw nothing.  “Good-bye, Pez,” the voice whispered, next to his ear again.

“Good-bye, Wolf,” David whispered, choking back tears.  “Wolf, WAIT!” he cried out fearfully.  “Wolf?  Are you still there?” he inquired softly into the early morning breeze.

“Yes,” he heard Wolf’s voice answer.

“Will I ever see you again?” David asked, tears flowing freely now.

“Of course you will,” Wolf’s voice answered affectionately.  The air in front of David began to shimmer; something was beginning to take shape.  A vision of Wolf slowly appeared within the shimmering air.  “But it probably won’t be for a very long time,” the spirit explained to him, smiling sadly.  David tried to suppress a sob at the beauty of the spirit’s smile, but he failed miserably.

The spirit’s smile turned into a look of concern.  “Don’t cry, David,” Wolf pleaded, shaking his head.  David lost it even more when Wolf used his real name instead of the nickname he had been given in high school.

Wolf smiled again; a sad sweet smile that made David melt inside.  He was sure he would never forget the feeling that the smile caused.  “Don’t worry.  We’ll still have our dreams,” he whispered, leaning forward and placing another cold airy kiss on David’s lips.  “See you around, Love,” Wolf whispered softly.

David nodded and watched as Wolf walked away from him through the cemetery.  He lowered his head and wiped his tears away.  He lifted his head for one final glimpse of his dead love, but sadly Wolf was gone.

David inhaled a shaky breath trying to fight back the tears again.  In a way this was harder to deal with than when Wolf had actually died, almost twenty years ago to this very day.

“Goodbye, Wolf,” David replied softly.  He watched as his breath floated away in clouds and disappeared shortly after, just like Wolf had done.  ‘Nothing ever stays the same,’ David thought.  He wiped his tears away and looked once more at the empty spot where he had last seen Wolf.  Even though it hurt him deep inside, he still felt a small bit of relief as he finally let go of the ghost that had been with him for so long.  Finally, he took a deep mournful breath and turned his back on his pain.  He forced himself to walk towards Wolf’s final resting place.

As he approached the grave, he noticed there was someone standing next to it.  The person standing there looked a lot like Wolf’s sister, Diamond.  He sighed.  He had finally said goodbye to one sibling and now the other sibling was going to haunt him?

Seeing the girl standing there reminded him of the years he spent in the institution.  It was a long time ago now, but he still remembered the years of hearing voices and seeing visions of things real and unreal… natural and supernatural.  He spent most of his time in there trying to learn what was real (even if some people didn’t believe him) and what was only in his head.

As he moved forward towards the headstones he knew that this girl was definitely not only in his head.  She was as real as the spirit of her brother had been only a few moments ago, perhaps even more real than he was, if that was possible.  The closer he got, the more he convinced himself that the person standing just between Diamond and Wolf’s graves… was Diamond; or her spirit anyway.

“Diamond?” he called out to the girl.

She whipped around, startled.  “PEZ!!!” the girl screamed, overjoyed at seeing him.

“Diamond?” he asked again.  It seemed as if Diamond was only slightly older then she had been when she died.

“No, silly!  It’s me,” She clarified laughing.  “Mokey,” she prompted, noticing his bewildered expression.

Recognition finally spread across David’s face in the form of a smile.  “MOKEY!” he yelled, running over to Wolf and Diamond’s (still living) younger sister.  He picked her up in a bear hug and spun her around.

“Jesus, PEZ!” she screamed, smiling.  “Put me down!” she said through her laughter.

“I’m sorry it’s just so good to see you,” David exclaimed, smiling the biggest smile he’d smiled in a long time.

“I know.  You too,” she replied.  “I like your hair.  It’s so… short.  I almost didn’t recognize you.”

David ran his hair through his freshly cut hair.  “Seriously?  Do you like it?” he asked nervously.  He couldn’t remember ever having short hair, not even when he was little.

“I do, Pez.  I really do,” she replied, smiling brightly.  “You’ve changed so much,” she praised.  “You’re looking good, really good!” she added, afraid he would take her statement the wrong way.

“Me?” David exclaimed in surprise.  “Look at you!  The last time I saw you… you were this high!” he said, holding his hand up to his stomach.  “Now you’re a beautiful young woman.”

Mokey blushed furiously.  “I wasn’t beautiful before?” she asked jokingly, catching David off guard.

“Yeah, you were, but you were just a k-kid then,” he stammered out.

“I was just joking,” she informed him.  Before David knew what was happening she threw her arms around his neck.  Once he recovered from the shock of her sudden display of affection, he wrapped his arms around her waist.

“I’m sorry for startling you.  It’s just so good to see you again,” she whispered, her voice sounding almost like Wolf’s.  He longed for it to be Wolf’s breath that brushed softly against his neck as she spoke.

“You too,” he replied, barely restraining the tears.  He pressed his lips together tightly to stop the tears from coming once more.

It felt wonderful to have someone’s arms around him again.  It felt even better to feel loved again.  He had shut himself off from the world for too long and the rush of feelings he got just from one little hug was almost too much for him to handle.  He sobbed once, but no tears came.

Mokey pulled back to look at him.  He nodded at her and pushed his tears away.  He hugged her tightly again, not quite ready to let go of her yet.  Mokey understood and began gently stroking his back in a sympathetic gesture.

“How long has it been?” he asked.  He couldn’t remember when he had last seen her.

“Quite a while,” she whispered hoarsely.  “Since…” She stopped talking and choked back a sob of her own.  “…the funerals,” she finished.

“Uh-uhn, before that,” he corrected, shaking his head.  He pulled back to look into her eyes.  “I couldn’t go…  I was ‘in custody’.  They wouldn’t let me go to the funer…”  He broke off before he could finish.  “I couldn’t go.  I couldn’t even say goodbye!” he uttered desperately, losing control over his tears.  Mokey cried harder with his words.  He pressed his face back into her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,”  she choked out.  Together they stood hugging and crying on each other’s shoulders.  After a couple moments of tears, Mokey pulled away from David.  She wiped his tears away with her scarf, and then she used it to wipe her own tears away.  “We don’t want to get frozen like that, do we?” she asked, smiling a quirky smile that was so unlike either of her siblings.  David found himself trying to imitate it.

“What?”  Mokey asked nervously laughing a little, blushing at the way David was smiling at her.  The smile looked entirely different on him then it did on her.  He vowed to himself never to try to smile like her again.  No smile could even come close to that smile.

He couldn’t help staring at her in wonder at how closely she resembled her sister.

“You just look so much…” David began, but Mokey cut him off.

“Like Diamond,” she finished, rolling her eyes.  “I know…  It’s really hard on my parents.  They are so overprotective of me now.  I told them I was thinking about getting my ears pierced and they totally freaked.  They said they didn’t want me to end up pierced all over like Diamond was.  She had what, like eight piercings, or something?”

“It was more like fifteen,” David corrected.

Mokey continued as if she hadn’t heard him.   “I couldn’t even go to school dances.  I had to tell them I was going to the library,” she laughed.

“We used to tell our parents we were going to school dances when we would go to raves,” David enlightened her, smirking slyly.

“That explains that then,” she exclaimed, happy to finally understand the mystery of her parent’s strange complex.  “They didn’t want me to get into drugs or parties or anything.  They didn’t want me to end up dead or crazy like y…,” Mokey cut herself off and bit her bottom lip.  She looked away from him, embarrassed by her babbling.  “Their words, not mine,” she said quietly in her own defense.

David knew she was going to say ‘like you’.  He was quite sure that he was the star of an urban legend in these parts.  All sorts of parents probably lectured their children: ‘Stay away from drugs or you could end up in the loony bin just like that Spencer boy or worse, you could end up dead just like all his friends.’  Yep, that was him; a walking, talking PSA.  Why didn’t the judge tell him to do that?  He gladly would have done any amount of public service announcements if it had eased his guilt.  It probably wouldn’t have though, nothing else did.

“Have you gone home yet?” Mokey asked, changing the subject as she slowly composed herself.

“Not yet.  I’m not quite sure I’m ready for that,” David replied, as fat snowflakes began to fall around them.

“Does your mom even know you’re back?” Mokey asked.

David chewed at his bottom lip and shook his head.  He took his arms from around her waist.  Smiling madly, he threw back his head and stuck out his tongue, determined to catch a snowflake on it.   Mokey laughed and did the same.

When David was successful at catching one, he looked back at Mokey and continued speaking, as if they hadn’t stopped.  “My flight landed and when I hit the bathroom I saw myself in the mirror and realized that I looked like a bum.  I thought maybe it was time for a new look, so I found a barber shop.”  He paused rubbing the back of his neatly shaven neck again.  “It was so long, they cut over eight inches off.”  He smiled and dug his hand into his pocket.  He pulled out the tail of hair he had kept from the barber shop.  “I feel weird without it.  Weird and cold,” he laughed.

“Do you mind… Can I have some of it, to remind me of Wolf?” Mokey asked softly, afraid he would say no.  David grabbed a small chunk and pulled it out of the rubber band.  He held it out to her.  She smiled gratefully.  She started to braid it as David finished his run down of his morning so far.

“Then I came straight here.”  He kicked at the duffel bag that he dropped when he had picked her up and spun her around.  “I had to… It’s the anniversary of their deaths,” he said, gesturing to Wolf and Diamond’s headstones.

“Actually, it’s tomorrow,” she corrected him.

“Yeah, but today is my bir… today is the day it started.”

“Happy birthday,” she whispered sadly.

“Yeah, exactly… Happy birthday,” he replied, his eyes took on a glassy look.

“Pez, are you OK?” Mokey asked softly.

David nodded, fresh tears streaming down his face.  He shivered as the wind blew across his bare neck.  He pulled his scarf up higher.

“Do you come here often?” she asked.  “I never see you.”

“No, this is the first time I’ve been back to Emmerdale since I… entered the institute.  Once I got out I couldn’t bring myself to come back, then I got the scholarship and found myself on a lecturing tour.  I guess I’ve been stalling coming home.  Emmerdale was not a kind place to me.”

“Do you think maybe…” Mokey began, but then paused.  “Can you tell me what it was like?”  She asked.

“The accident?” David asked.

“No, afterwards, your…,” Mokey stopped at a loss for words.

“My downfall?  My disintegration?  My descent into madness?” David asked laughing, but also quite serious.

Mokey nodded.  “Do you want to go get some coffee or something and talk about it maybe?” she asked shyly, staring at the ground in front of her feet.

David nodded.  “Sure. I think I’m finally ready to talk about it now,” he replied, just as shyly.  This would be the first time he told his story to anyone.

“I know the perfect place.  That is if you’re up for a bit of a walk,” she offered.

“That sounds great, but um… Can you give me a minute alone?”  He pointed at the headstones.

“Sure… yeah… oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to… hog all your time,” she apologized nervously.

“It’s OK, don’t worry about it.  I’m just glad to see a familiar face.”  He smiled, hoping that she didn’t realize he meant he was glad to see Diamond’s face again.

“I’ll be over there.”  She pointed to a large urn shaped headstone.

“Thanks,” David said nodding.  “I won’t be long.”

“Take your time, I’m in no hurry,” Mokey replied as she turned and walked away.

David sat down on the ground between Wolf and Diamond’s graves.  He was glad that none of the recent snows had stuck.  He wondered how many times in the past he had sat in this spot between his two best friends.

“I’m doing like you said, Wolf,” he whispered softly. “I am starting over… wiping the slate clean.”  He paused, pulling the tail of hair from his pocket again.  He separated it in half and tucked the rubber-banded chunk back into his pocket.  “I cut off all of my hair so that I could bury that part of myself here with my best friends.”  He took a small, newly purchased switchblade out of his pocket and used it to break into the partially frozen ground.  “I guess I could have done this in the summer time,” he said, laughing as he finally dug deep enough to place the hair in the ground.

He stood up and wiped off his hands.  He stepped on the ground to pack the dirt in around the hair.

“I love you,” he said, running his hand across Wolf’s headstone.  He turned and wiped away a tear.  “Goodbye, guys,” he whispered to the headstones.  David picked up his duffle bag and swung it over his shoulder.  He walked over to Mokey.

“You ready?” she asked.  David nodded and they began to walk out of the cemetery together.

Mokey linked her arm in his and sighed.  David smiled, even though his body flinched.  This felt more intimate to him than when they had hugged.  “Sorry, I’m just not used to this much closeness,” he remarked.

“I don’t have to,” Mokey said, beginning to pull her arm away.

“No, it’s cool, I missed it,” he said, grabbing her hand before it could slip away.

Mokey smiled in surprise when David continued to hold onto her hand.  They walked together, Mokey leading as David stared down at her hand.  He was so much like a child to Mokey; even though he was eight years older than her.  She remembered the crush she used to have on him. Her face flushed as all the old feelings came rushing back.  She realized what those feelings were now.  Hero worship… she worshipped him… had always worshipped him.  She was glad that he was still examining her hand and couldn’t see her face redden ever so slightly.

A thought occurred to her as they walked.  A thought that intrigued her but frightened her at the same time.  A rumor had gone around town after Pez had been sent away.  It spread quickly and loudly like most rumors do in small towns.  People said that Pez could see ghosts.  They said that he could talk to them and that is the reason why he had to be institutionalized.

“Pez, can you really see ghosts?” she asked quietly before she lost her nerve.  She wanted to ask him if he could see one ghost in particular, but she couldn’t seem to bring up her brother’s name.

“David, please.  Call me David.  Pez is… dead,” he requested softly, with tears in his voice.  He would have to expect to hear that name more often now that he was home.  It was going to be very hard to try and break people of the habit of calling him the name he’d had since high school.

“Well, can you?” she prompted after he didn’t answer right away.

He shrugged as they crossed the street.  “Sometimes,” he mumbled in reply.  He didn’t want her to think he was crazy, but chances were she already did.

He looked up as they reached the café, but Mokey sensed he wasn’t quite looking at the café.  In a way he wasn’t.  He was seeing the café not as it was now, but as it had been almost 20 years ago.

“I know this place,” David stated.  “The name is different, but this is the café where we used to hang out.”

“My boyfriend and I love coming here,” Mokey declared.

The café was definitely different than the one that David and his friends had loved.  His café was a large open place with lots of soft, mismatched couches.  Now, the large open space had been divided into small rooms.  It made the interior look smaller, and somehow even cozier.

“What is this place?” he asked as he noticed something that looked like a gift shop, over by the counter.  His eyes focused on a sign that read: “Mercury is currently in retrograde.”

“It’s a psychic coffee shop.  I hope you don’t mind.  I think it’s nice here.”  She paused, thrown off by his reaction.  “We could go somewhere else,” she suggested.

“No, I like it.”  David laughed.  “It’s oddly fitting.  Maybe I can schedule a lecture here.”

“Maybe you can rent a room… if you still see ghosts.”  Mokey smiled.

David stared at her blankly.  “You do know what I do for a living now, right?”

“No, people don’t talk about you like they used to,” she laughed.

“I’m a psychic medium.  I lecture, give classes on mediumship.  Ghost hunt… I was on a ghost hunting show for four years in Europe.  I don’t think the show ever made it to the States though.”

Mokey laughed.  “I guess this place is fitting then.”

“Yeah, life is like that.  It’s a series of crazy coincidences.”

“I’m starting to see that.  I’ll get two coffees, you grab a table,” Mokey suggested.

“I’ll take tea, if they have it,” David corrected.

“Tea?  You really did spend a lot of time in Europe.”  She laughed.

“No, I started drinking tea long before Europe.”  He laughed in return.

“Any specific kind?”

“Surprise me,” David looked around at the tables.  “Any specific place you want to sit?”

“Surprise me,” Mokey laughed, as she headed over to the counter.

As soon as they had their drinks, a song suddenly started playing from somewhere on Mokey’s person.  She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out her cell phone.  “Sorry, I’ve got to take this,” she explained.  “Just a second.”  She moved a little ways away from him and answered the call quietly.  Shortly after, she joined him at the table.

“Sorry,” she apologized again.  “That was my boyfriend.  I had to take it,” she explained.  David noticed that she couldn’t look at him when she said boyfriend.  “I let him know about you.  He said he’s stopping by.  I hope that’s OK?”

David shrugged.  “That’s fine.”

“Good.”  She seated herself and took off her jacket.  “OK, I’m ready.”

“Give me a minute to collect my thoughts,” David laughed.

He stared at his tea for a long while, before he finally took a deep breath and began.

“I can’t really start at the beginning.  I’m not even sure when it all started.  I’ll just pick an event and go from there.  Feel free to ask questions.”  Mokey nodded in agreement.  “My grandfather Spencer’s funeral, that’s when it started getting really bad.  Let’s see, it was 1997 and I was a senior in high school.  It was actually my second senior year, because the first one was interrupted rather violently.”

“By the accident?”  Mokey asked.

David nodded.  He closed his eyes and slipped into the memory trance that had brought him so much grief in the past.  All at once the café, Mokey, the institution, London, all of it was gone and in David’s mind it was the day of his grandfather’s funeral.

©Patti Keno