The Woman Who Knows

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.

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