I can't tell you what happened to me,
she said as she slid the sleeve of her white down filled parka up
over her elbow. All I can tell you is, they were supposed to protect
me, and they didn't. I was there to help.
She was in the seat in front of me, her
in the aisle seat and me at the window, and her window seat was
inclined back so we had an askew vee notch through which we could talk, if we both leaned forward.
Neither of us was inclined to sitting side by side.
I was married for seventeen years but
he would disappear for months at a time. He'd say he was going to Subway for a sandwich and then be away for six months. Then he'd
walk in the door and say "Hi!", like nothing strange had happened. It
came with the territory. Part of DHS.
Once you are in you are never out. If
they knew... well.... you just cant talk about it. But, she perked
up, I d love to get a job as an eighteen wheeler diver. I could
drive down to Nevada. I could live in my truck.
She spoke not much above a whisper and
the roar of the greyhound diesel engine made it so I would see her
lips moving and realize she was speaking. She never raised her voice
and forced me, in my curiosity to lean forward to hear her. She had
a gentle Quebecois voice, more toward Parisienne, I thought, but for
a woman who had to be careful what she said, her need to speak was
unquenchable, so I listened.
Yeah, she smiled as she spoke. She had
lovely dental work. I wondered if her face had also been damaged in
her traumatic incident. It had been two years ago, and her recovery
had taken place in Montreal.
They botched my arm. They are useless
there. I hate Montreal.
She had been on the Plateau.
The people there are miserable, she
declared matter of factly. They will never help you and they just
steal and damage your property. I hate it. And they come to your
house and annoy you. Over and over.
But she loved Nevada.
Of course, the Seals could not tell the
absolute truths about what they did while driving their eighteen
wheelers in the gigantic underground cities of the Nevada desert.
But in Las Vegas, and Reno, she knew these men and laughed with them as
they told the kinds of stories that only DHS military could share
among each other. They were so good looking and it was a great place
to be. She loved Vegas where, as she quoted Sheryl, she would
encourage some cross town trucker to demonstrate his might.
But along her whole life, between Maine
edge Quebec and Florida she had been marked as special. A remote
reader and employed as such. Not for pay of course, but she was
known and beckoned, since she was fifteen, and called to service.
What she hadn't seen! What she didn't know! The otherworldly was
her specialty. Most of them didn't know how to read the future so
they needed her.
She was particularly proud of her
conferences. She was aware of the work of the Andromeda Counsel, and
the Pleiadians, but mostly was proud to have been seen with writers
and leaders, the forerunners of military paranormal intelligence.
And she whispered this.
She was recognized.
You should go to these conferences, she
told me lightly and with enthusiasm after I said that I too had
abilities in premonition. She seemed to think I wanted to be
included when in fact, I want to be apart. But, she qualified her
enthusiasm, I go to check out my enemies, not to be recognized for my
abilities. I am special.
Yes, I trumpeted. So am I. And I once
had a lover, seventeen years younger than me, and he was special too,
he told me so.
At first she didn't believe I was
special, so I had to convince her. I told her of my premonitions.
Well, a couple of them. I told her of my Irishness. I told her of
my acceptance of my crop circle chasing friend. I guess I did want to
be accepted.
Oh! She chuckled as the bus rolled across the shield. I think this forest has been
flattened, just like the woven grain in the crop circles. She
knitted her fingers illustrating the phenomenon, searching for the
English words as we passed infinite black spruce between Eagle Lake
and Ignace. She gazed at the lakeside hotel in Eagle Lake. Oh!
Where are we? I recognize this. I stayed here once. As the sun
set, and the sky darkened, she laughed at the dancing lights in the
sky that looked like UFOs.
You see those exact ones on the
internet, she said, but anyone can tell it is just a reflection of
the lights from the other side of the highway, through the windows.
Lots of people fake them on the internet. But they're not the real
UFOs. We see lots of them in Nevada, every day. It's common there.
And lots of them are man made. Just by the military. But you never
know. Aliens aren't little green men, you know.
Did you see Obama's shape shifting
bodyguards? It is very cool. Check it out. Some think he's
reptilian. You never know.
Hey! Did you hear about that
underground volcano they fracked? Now houses are collapsing into the
ground everywhere, and the military is pretending they don't know
why. And they stored all of that nuclear waste down there, by
Louisiana and Alabama. There's gonna be a big explosion.
I wondered aloud, do you think it will
just be radiation, or will it be like a bomb?
Whatever, she shrugged. It will be
bad.
And everything has a training exercise,
you know. She had lovely eyes. A lovely woman, but she didn't think
so, even though she had found a lover to put rose petals and candles
in a spa bath of a Vancouver five-star hotel. But he left her there.
He never came back to the room. He never would touch her. And she'd
flown there from Vegas to meet him. Not a great date. She wouldn't
meet him again.
But nine eleven and Fukushima, they all had
training exercises. It is all part of the plan. They have to reduce
the population. That's the plan.
Do you now, some people think that it's
the reptilians behind it all. Aliens, you know. Even Obama. And
Mrs.Obama. I m not saying I think that. You should check out the
internet. Its pretty funny.
But around site fifty two, there are
lots of UFO sitings. All the time. Hey, I even saw the laundromat.
What laundromat?
Shhh. She looked over her shoulder.
There was a chap further back in the bus who had spoken to her shortly
after I got on. He had not acknowledged her since. I started to
wonder if she knew him. He did not smoke with her at the smoke break
stops.
In Florida. It was all one family and
they all married beautiful Dutch girls. They went to the laundromat
to learn to fly for nine eleven. There were maps on the walls and
they would use the dials. That's how they trained them. I knew one
of the guys. They needed me there. They said they could find me a
boyfriend and I could find the information and use my skills. I have
prevented many disasters. I have saved millions of lives, but they
don't want that anymore. They just want to see what I know so it
doesn't spoil the plan.
She paused and looked back at me, eye contact through the
gap between the seats. The third man was sitting about four seats
behind us.
You see, she continued, when it is
planned, if you give truthful information about the future, that
could screw up their plans, it will cost them trillions of dollars
and they wont be happy, not at all. They will hate you.
I was nodding. Isn't that the case in
almost anything, I asked. The bosses only want to hear what they
believe is true and what fits their plan.
Oh, no. This is different. You will
just disappear. It happens all the time.
She liked to counsel. But when I
pointed out that she did like to help people and she did have good
will, as when she did hope her long lost husband now in Laos had not
been harmed by Hiyana, she began to call me a granola. I thought
that was like being called a Pollyanna. She seemed to prefer to be delivering darker truths than hopeful ones.
It will happen in December, she was
predicting for me now. Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Northern Alberta
will be okay, but that's about it.
Last time, about two thousand people
survived, but then there were only about nineteen million people in
the world. This time...
I wondered if she was worried, and why
she would move to BC where it was destined to be a grave calamity. It's too cold. Flat and clear response. She might have said, unliveable.
Again, she was focusing on Nevada and her breath deepened. She told me about the stones that roll around in their own power and about the guy who broke the sensor wires.
If you walk in that desert, they know you are up there. The sensors are everywhere. The natives got a lot of money from the government when they built that underground city. And there are underground cities everywhere, even in Manitoba. They are ready. She seemed to have a plan of her own.
If you walk in that desert, they know you are up there. The sensors are everywhere. The natives got a lot of money from the government when they built that underground city. And there are underground cities everywhere, even in Manitoba. They are ready. She seemed to have a plan of her own.
Once I have my own truck.... You can
never leave once you are in.
I was not sure if she was escaping or
chasing her past.
It will be best to be part of the
military, she pronounced. Then her eyes lit up. They have everything
set up. The camps. For millions of people. Everyone will get a
dot. There are three colours. Red is for the military and gun
owners and known detractors. They will be taken to a special chamber
and just shot right away. Light blue is for non-violent types who
can be re-educated and yellow is for the placid ones. And everyone
will have biochips. Do you know what that is?
Yes. I nodded. I had seen the movie.
The grid will be gone. It's already
planned. They have to depopulate.
I wondered, this time silently, how the
biochip information could be shared without the grid.
She was relocating. Determined. All
the way to Vancouver. I thought she wanted to get away and told her
where she could find some pirates and survivalists but she was not
interested.
I already had to postpone it once, she
said. Frustrated. I signed up for my course for October twenty-eighth but had
to put it off. I had to get rid of my stuff. I still have a lot,
she seemed to be boasting. Five really heavy cases.
Oh! Did it cost you a lot to bring
that much luggage?
A hundred and thirty over and above my
ticket. She tisked and shook her head. Personally, I thought that was pretty cheap shipping across the country, but she seemed to think it was a lot.
With her gimp arm, I wondered how she
could manage the hauling.
I've dropped and ruined five cell phones because I
can't feel it with this hand. But in another breath, she had no
qualms about launching forward with her scheme.
I'll just put my cases in a locker and
then find somewhere to stay. My truck driving course starts right
away.
Can you drive an eighteen wheeler with
a paralyzed hand?
She used stretch rubber to exercise her
fingers, four times a day, and could not straighten her wrist. There
was no feeling in the fingers.
Oh yes. I can definitely do it. Until
I get my license, I'll work at a serre. Oh, I piped up again, I
also work in horticulture. Isn't that a coincidence! I wondered
again about her injury, knowing the heavy lifting of garden centre
work.
There was so much spilling from this
woman's mind. She hated the Bushes; father and son. She had had
every conversation.
As the bus ride was ending, I
surreptitiously wrote her a letter. She was eating goji berries and
popcorn twists and taking every cigarette break greyhound would
offer.
I didn't start smoking until 2001 she answered. I
had an apartment and they made me use it as a safe house. Do you know
what a safe house is? She asked. I had seen that movie, and I knew.
Well they sent me a room mate who needed protecting. She was
hallucinating. It was so funny. It was because of the drugs they prescribed to her. She was screaming about people she saw above and tried to cook a brownie in a tea towel. It was a lot of work, she was so noisy. Finally,
I had to tell them I couldn't keep her. She was off her rocker.
The safe house incident must've been what started
her smoking. She didn't rightly confirm that. But she did say that all
of her worldly goods had been sold off from a storage locker that
someone else had forgotten to pay for two and a half months.
Down in Vegas. Lost. Everything. But she had no qualms about
ridding her most recent home of households as she spat Montreal into
her past. Her five heavy suitcases were her life. She wanted to be
closer to Nevada.
It is only about six or eight hours
from Vancouver. My passport is not current.
Which one? US or Canadian?, I asked.
No response. I thought about her cross border trucking.
Sometimes the conversation would wane,
and I would turn back to my writing pad, or my sudoku or the
crossword puzzle. She had dark aqua green headphones and a matching mp3
player.
What are you listening to? Her
response was delayed, the only time there was a delay and no bright
eyed desire to relay critical information. I thought it might be
training pod casts or Pleiadian lectures. She'd told me that Barbara, the Pleidain vessel, was not a legitimate channeller, and I told her it was my friend who
was the big fan. I just was in the same room and let it wash me
over.
1920's and 30's Jazz she answered, "I
like that." I thought, it's not Sheryl Crowe.
Then she announced that she had brought
her cat, with her, and that surprised me as I envisioned a kennel crated and
hidden below the bus. She saw my expression. No, she clarified.
Ladygirl is incinerated. Fluffy is dead too.
Oh, ashes. Phew, I thought.
I told her of my dog, and she told me
again about how the RCMP was supposed to have protected her but they
failed. Dobermans. It was a complicated situation and she was not
alone. "I can't say anything'" she repeated. "But you must get a good pension for the injury," I rationalized. No. She hadn't been paid. She was just being helpful. They should have protected her. She wasn't alone. This might have been the trauma that destroyed her arm.
They were going to amputate it, she
said. I wondered if it was a gun injury.
She'd had a gun confiscated once. A
green air gun it was. Idiots.
So, I wrote her a letter. Just a short
letter. Then I folded it and folded it until it was the size of a
sugar cube and half as thick. Then I pulled a long hair from my head
and tied the folded letter flat with the hair and held it in my hand,
waiting for the moment. The smoke break.
Aren't you coming outside? Oh I always
have to stretch my legs. I hope I can get some clothing from my bags
below when we switch buses. I stink. I need a truck stop shower. And
she stepped off the bus to smoke with the Thunder Bay recycling
centre manager who'd left his estranged partner and their daughter in
his house to go and work the Alberta oil patch. To start over.
Another one on the bus.
As I watched them light up, standing in
the skiffs of snow on the crumbling asphalt in front of the bus, I
stood up into the aisle. I looked at the other passengers. The third man
was still on the bus, but he was listening to his headphones and
looking out the window. He wasn't paying attention to me. She had a
navy blue duffel bag on the floor in front of the window seat, away from the aisle. I
looked again at the few people who had chosen to take this break on
the bus, instead of outside. Quickly, I leaned into her sitting area
and unzipped her bag, the one at her feet, only two inches, just
enough of an opening to drop the letter in.
In the letter, in all kindness, among other things, I
reminded her that ordinaryness is the new exotica and that she should
find an old cat and make a friend. I'd written the letter before she
told me about her cat. I hadn't know she was a cat person, but then, since I'd boasted about my own paranormal abilities, I smirked to
myself about my little talents. Not pride though, moreso chagrin.
I had transposed the letter before
giving her the original. After it had been safely deposited, with my DNA, I
returned to my notebook and reread the letter. It was true. The letter had
been written to me.
Ordinaryness: The New Exotica
Dear woman,
For a special person to be ordinary is
to shed the furniture and possessions of who you have been, to cast
the exotic memories to dust and laugh in the face of the future with
others who appear not to care, and who live for today.
Trivial matters become poignant and the
simple breeze on your face becomes your raison d'etre.... next to
laughing.
Sister, find an old cat and become a
friend.
~~nel