InkStains January by John Urbancik

might – only might,
there was no guarantee – see the memory of her, catch a glimpse of
an image, a reflection, an echo.
    He saw her dream image when he was awake.
First, in his apartment, in his kitchen, standing near the stove
and staring, simply staring. He blinked, and she was gone. Then in
the classroom, standing in the back of the room, watching and
listening, giving him the full benefit of her eyes until he looked
directly at her. She wasn’t there.
    Head full of wine on a Saturday night, he saw
her in the parking lot standing beside his car, waiting, smiling
mischievously, those eyes catching the light. But she was only
mist. Smoke. A wisp of nothing, and not even that.
    Eventually, he got another job in another
city, packed up his apartment, and left. He hoped to leave the
temp, too. But hope isn’t currency. He saw her on the interstate
and he saw her on the side of the road, hitching a ride, except she
wasn’t really there. No one was.
    He met a woman in the new city and they
started dating. Her eyes were arresting. She was smart and strong
and excessively real. For a time, he didn’t see the temp
anywhere.
    Then one night in a dreamt-desert, she said
to him, “I’ll never leave you.”
    “ Why not?”
    “ You won’t let me
go.”
    As he aged, the temp did not. She was a
moment of frozen time. She looked nothing like she’d actually
looked, he was sure. He didn’t remember her, he only remembered the
memory of the temp.
    He never told his wife about her. He never
told his children, though she’d been there for their births. He
wasn’t sure if he was cheating on his wife or on the temp. He tried
to convince himself he wasn’t being dishonest.
    In his 60s, a stroke struck him down. He
couldn’t see properly anymore, or think right, or speak at all. It
was unpleasant from the start, and it only got worse.
    The temp would visit him in the hospital,
after hours, late at night, after the nurse did her rounds. She’d
stare at him with those eyes. She said, “So sad.”
    It was a struggle to speak. “What?”
    “ Everything about you,” she
said. “I saw it from the start. You’d had dreams. What happened to
them?”
    “ You stole
them.”
    She shook her head. “You can’t blame me. I’m
not real. I’m not even a figment of your imagination. I’m a
misfired synapse. I’m a faulty brainwave. You got stuck on me. I
didn’t stick myself to you.”
    He tried to apologize, but words were hard
for him.
    “ Don’t apologize,” she
said. “It’s too late for that. Release me.”
    He tried to tell her he’d never had her, but
his tongue refused to cooperate.
    “ Let me go.”
    He thought that would be a good thing. He had
a family. A life. Something of a life.
    He died in the night, wife at his side.
    The temp took a long, deep breath. It was her
first in almost four decades. She shook out her hair and walked out
of the hospital. She disappeared in the night, swallowed by the
moonlight, in search of her own dreams and the girl she’d been.

31 January
     
    It is a big house built of dream stuff and
whispers and champagne bubbles. It’s at the end of a long, winding
drive flanked by mythical statuary and numerous hedges and flowers
and the occasional video camera, all behind ornate iron gates
topped with gargoyles and barbed wire. To put it simply: one does
not arrive here inadvertently, but by invitation.
    A line of fancy cars and supercars and
limousines lead up to the doorway. Bored chauffeurs lean against
their empty vehicles smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap whisky.
The good stuff’s being served inside by tall, thin models and
muscle-bound youths wearing dog collars.
    Stephanie arrive in her sporty red BMW. She
wears a mass of thin platinum strings about her neck and a gown
designed by next year’s top name. She ascends the stairs to the
front door like a movie star, but there are actual movie stars here
so almost no one seems to notice her.
    “ You look
wonderful.”
    “ Such a