(this is post #90)

Once long ago, when he was behind the wheel, she made him stop and reverse. “Did you see that?” There was a mannequin at the side of the road, waiting in front of a stranger’s house. It was headless, legless; flawless, restless. She tried touching it — oh, surprisingly light! — and tossed it into the back of the car. He didn’t complain.

They never saw each other again.

I wish I could say that the memory of the mannequin somehow stuck in her head long after their brief encounter. But since it occured in a dark night dense with other more commanding moments, it was too easy to forget the headless legless lady. She didn’t think about whether the lady was flourishing under his sudden artsy adoption, or waiting for company outside another house.

It doesn’t matter, the forgotten lady thinks.
I will go to her.

Sure enough behind closed eyelids last night, it paid her a visit. Since they last met, she had transitioned from being solid, (surprisingly) light & real to airy, substantial, and literally the stuff of dreams. It drove straight into her subconscious with a newly-developed sense of style, quickly proven by its skill in dressing her in hot haute couture. How awkward, she thinks, and before her tingling fingers could even understand the fabric, it took her away to strut and giggle over wine all over Europe. It refused to let her drive, and she didn’t complain, because she was hardly ever behind the wheel anyway, like the beginning of this story.

Surely this felt like a beginning too. Is this even the same story? It could be new, an exhilarating prologue. She couldn’t note whether the mannequin was a good or bad driver in her bewildered state, deliriously drugged by Europe and odd company. Her senses were pounding. Rainbow flavours on her tongue, her pupils dilating with all the sights feeding all the ideas she’s ever wanted to have in her head. She could fill entire volumes of books and spools of film. And to laugh, she’s wanted to laugh the subtle way models do in magazines with rays of sunlight flaring over their heads in black and white, hinting happy secrets in their bright eyes.

What world was this?

Before she could turn to ask, the headless legless lady had seen it coming.

It ripped at her from the driver’s seat and tore right through her high fashion. I can’t go into detail, but I can say she felt chillingly cold. And maybe she tried to scream, but maybe she had turned headless too. She had forgotten his name. All her edges are blunt. Smoothed. Naked, at the side of the road. She couldn’t run after the car that sped off.
(The laugh that came from it had a new dimension.)

She had never seen this house before. If she was able to turn around to look, she would find that nobody was home.

Nobody was home to wake her up.

I found her here at dawn,
and I think she wants to see me again.