PATRICK HEARS VOICES by KATHY VIK
Copyright, 11-2-2013
**********Patrick Hears Voices, Chapters One through Four******************************
This novel is being written and posted in real time as part of NaNoWriMo 2013. Each year, writers around the world set aside November as the month they will write a 50,000+ word novel in 30 days.
This is my attempt at this bizarre feat. It is a novel for lightworkers, talking about stuff that matters to me, and it is my offering to you.
My work can be found on the web at www.deeplyawake.tumblr.com, www.lightworkers.org, www.citiyofshamballa.net, and www.templeilluminatus.com as well as patrickhearsvoices.wordpress.com.
If you are moved to support me with donations during this time of creativity, please contact me by private message. Any support at all will be greatly appreciated.
Yours, sincerely,
Kathy Vik
*************************************************************************
CHAPTER ONE
“I sat there, Ellie,” Joan continued, “ Stunned. I was just stunned. It was like the whole thing got real, real still, and I could see all the way through this problem I've had with Ken. It was the weirdest thing. I mean, I could see how I hurt him, some of it really surprised me, actually, and I could see all the outcomes neither of us expected, and I could see we really do love each other, more than we can admit, I'm afraid.”
“But the thing, is, Ellie,” Judy said, “I felt so much disappointment for all the bad, mean choices he keeps making. I mean, how long will this go on? Good night!” Judy shook her graying head slowly, thinking thoughts she was sure no one else could fathom
“I saw this last nonsense as a last straw, though, Ellie. I think I'm finally at the point of saying 'fuck it.'” Judy, quite improbably, giggled at that.
They looked over at the duck in the grass. This was their favorite park, where they usually ended up when they found time for one another. The geese waddled by, their bills making that wooden clacking sound, squeezing out an occasional honk.
“So,” Ellie asked, “He just keep repeating the same pattern?”
“I've been indulgent, been willing to be ok with him pursuing other people from time to time, I mean, it was embarrassing, but I put up with it.” Judy clucked her tongue. “I did what I had to do. But this?”
Judy had not shared the details with Ellie. Ellie was sort of glad.
“You're always welcome with us, Judy. We have four vacant rooms, now. Just consider it an open invitation. We're around if you need us, ok?”
“I know I say no to your invitations more than I say yes, Ellie, I think I’m going to take you up on it this time. I think a little time away would be good for me.” Judy surprised herself with how forceful her 'yes' felt. She turned away to look at the pond, and felt so many emotions, all at once, she found herself only being able to surrender to the moment. From her left eye, a tear bubbled and flew onto her cheek. Surprising, the force of that first tear.
“I think I might finally be ready,” she sighed, feeling oddly relieved. “ Jonathon won't be back until spring. He's in Bolivia, did you know?”
Ellie reached out and took Judy's hand.
“I thank you. I just...” She drifted into silence, and they sat in her stillness. Then they hugged, held onto each other, until it felt right to let go, which was a very long time, indeed.
Judy had been her friend for many years, but had always been held at a considerable distance. Judy was a proper lady, a saint, Ellie had thought, more than once. Ellie was devoted to her Jonathon, her son of 21, in college, happy, debt free, a junior at Denver University, studying art in a place she'd always longed to travel, mysterious South America.
She had decided when he was born that she would love him regardless. That this would be her stance, her gift to him. Regardless of his behavior. Regardless of his tantrums, regardless of really anything, really. Regardless of what she might have to do to give him what he needed to be just as fulfilled as he could be, to grow up with every advantage. Regardless. And so, perhaps it is my time, Judy thought, drying her eyes and wiping her nose on her sweatshirt sleeve.
CHAPTER TWO
Ellie was a social worker by day, and a bit of a mystic by night. She and her husband Bill lived in an ancient Victorian on Capitol Hill in Denver. They lived in the attic apartment, had made the space funky and intimate.
In the morning, they'd emerge from their happy privacy into layer upon layer of crazy house. All deep mahogany wood, brass and stained glass. It was all sort of shockingly impressive, when they first moved in.
She imagines the wood saying, “Hey, you know, you really should take me much more seriously than you do.” The sea green tweed wallpaper the wood offset often whispered to Ellie, “You know, you should listen to him. He's very respectable.”
Other things in this old house said different stuff to her, the red velvet in the dining room her favorite, because of its sense of humor.
Bill was her husband of, now, 30 years. They met in college, typical cliché. They'd clicked from the start, though, and there it was. Undeniable. Rock solid.
They had deliberately decided, as a team, after they'd landed their first jobs, that they liked and respected each other enough, trusted each other enough, to leap off the cliff that was making a big, rowdy bunch of little monsters.
They wound up having five, and there were often sometimes more than two to a room, because Bill was, at the start, a high school art teacher, and she was pulling nearly volunteer wages as a social worker.
Through the years, Bill gained recognition for his free lance projects, and his former students, and Ellie got smarter in squeezing nickels out of purses. She roamed her industry for jobs, taking weird gigs shift to shift, doing hospice, even, until she finally got in with a school district.
When things were their worst financially, the month they were closest to actually sinking financially, actually, Bill's parents had been on a ski trip. They were jet setting types, and had great fun at home, mountain hiking with senior clubs. They frequently vacationed in places his mom thought “looked pretty on the interwebs.”
There had been an accident on the way home, and although both of them survived the initial injuries, his parents both succumbed to complications. Bill took it real hard. Ellie was working hospice at the time, which helped a lot, Bill always said, when thinking on those days.
In the estate, there were many surprises. It was good, sort of healing, when Bill and his brothers sat around the table and looked at what their parents had done with all that they had. There were rental properties, bonds, donations to a number of charities none of them had ever heard of, trusts, and three old Victorians, one for each of them.
Bill, Tom and Ted were three salt-of-the-earth types. They'd pursued different interests, Tom a mechanic, and Ted a salesman. They got together “often enough,” they each said, and each had a hunch they'd be seeing less of each other now that things had changed so drastically for each of them.
Bill and Ellie and their kids soon had enough leisure to pursue hidden interests, and all of them developed a far more open attitude toward life. It was funny how knowing she had cash in her pocket, that she could afford anything, really anything at all, her focus narrowed and expanded all at once.
It became easier for each of them to just relax a little bit, and it had been, they all agreed in the end, a big fat miracle. Bill's folks were loved by their family in life, duly grieved, and nicely honored With the passage of time, things got back to a whole new normal for the Benz'.
Bill and Ellie, over time, nicknamed their humble little mansion “The Light House.” It was a happy place to be, the kids a constant wonder, a never ending loud parade of emotions and situations and conundrums and firsts. Bill added a studio to the property, and worked from home. Ellie worked part time at the nearby high school, just two day s a week.
And then, one by one, their birds flew the nest. The house was still warm and bright, but Ellie had come to see they were lacking discovery, belly-laughs, conflicts and resolutions, that only a big clan can provide. “Contrast,” Ellie muttered, thinking these thoughts from under her down comforter, in the pre-dawn moments between night and day. This was her favorite time of day, and was glad she woke up to enjoy it today.
She wouldn't wish that sort of hurt on anybody, Judy's sort of hurt. That's a hard road to walk, Ellie thought, studying the skylight that had fascinated her all these years, the tree's branches bumping up against the wall, like fingers on her skin.
To have a guest! This is wonderful!
CHAPTER THREE
Ellie was essentially a happy sort, not too brought down by things, and this trait got stronger as the years progressed. She was often asked what her secret to happiness was. The only thing she knew to say was a little story, one she only told those who asked her persistently for details.
It was her first year in college. She was burning it up, just tearing it up, gobbling up knowledge like a beggar at a feast. It was the year she came into herself, in a way, and she says to those who ask, it was one spring night on the quad, when she realized that this dream really could come true, that she could spend three more years here and then do what she really felt called to do. She had sat there and realized that everything that had led her to this moment on this quad, that it was all ok, and it was all over.
Ellie did not go into social work because she was ill adjusted and seeking help. She got into it because she had been raised in a family that was hard on her, critical and unkind, abusive. She had her horror stories, but, during her first year in college, it was as if there had been a group exorcism. Many of her peers began to see, with each success and triumph, done by themselves without help or intervention, that they were capable people.
She was surrounded by other privileged white kids, many who'd started that first year with haunted eyes and fear in their step. Day by day, her group of friends became more confident, and so it went.
Ellie sat there that night and decided to just forgive it all, to let it all go, and to be done with it. She said she imagined digging up the quad, there in her prayer, and burying every single sadness and terror she'd ever known. But the thing was, when she went to the box where all of the sadness was, and she lifted the lid, she saw a flash of silver, and then all of those problems just turned into butterflies, and floated off into the moonlight.
“I had to decide,” she tells those who ask, “Is it going to be ok to be weird, to stick out, because I love it all? Can I do this, just be ok with everything, love everything, see the good in everything?” Then, she always concludes with a shrug, and a smile.
Ellie, being a tender-hearted soul, was fortunate in meeting so bold and creative a man as Bill. He loved teaching, and what started as a study partner became the guy whose shaving goo she scoops off the sink every morning.
She'd been in deep reverie, thinking on that crisp spring night all those years ago, when waking up this morning. When be began to stir, she wrapped herself around him, greeted him joyfully and skillfully. Now they were laying side by side, holding hands, listening to morning's birds and heavy traffic.
Their thoughts went forward into the day at hand, each mentioning things they wanted to get done before they laid down together again.
Bill was lecturing at the history museum today, and Ellie was going to school.
Through the years, it had come to feel less like a war zone and more like a prison, at this high school. She'd worked prisons. She could feel the oppression when she parked her car outside of the massive school. She looked into the rear view mirror before lumbering out of her Mini Cooper, “I hold light in dark places,” she said. Then she winked, smiled, and gathered her purse and lunch.
It was gray today, ice on the ground, the first of a forecasted week of early cold. Odd, to have this sort of deep freeze in October. As unpredictable and changeable as Denver weather could be, she'd gotten used to its cycles. Things felt like they were changing yet again.
After her requisite sarcasm and banter with Doug, The Security Guy, something she did daily, she settled into her office. Her first day on the job, she thought it looked more like an attorney's than a counselor's office. She charmed a few folks, and soon enough, she had nice lighting, two old, beat up leather reading chairs, sitting at just the right angle, eastern art on the wall, and an adequate sound system. Why not.
She dealt with the usual heart breaking stuff, a lot of just dumb acting out, and then, just once in a while, she encountered someone unusual, someone she knew she was there to meet.
She'd had this experience with kids before, just a couple of times. Kids in transition, in terrible scrapes, some of them. It took finesse and discretion, and knowing how to play the game correctly, but the kids who most needed The Light House, got The Light House. She and Bill had raised what Bill affectionately called, “the strays,” kids whose story line just somehow ended, and yet, they still needed to go on.
Henry had parents who had to relocate for a job, but he was in his senior year and didn't want to leave his friends. He was living in an apartment when Ellie met him, getting stoned and shaking in his shoes, most of the time. Ellie found out he was living on next to nothing, his parents' hopes having not panned out. Henry moved in, bunked with the boys, and within a couple of years, was at Metro State. He went on to be a police officer.
There had been others, through the years, but it had always been a situation that could have but one outcome, she and Bill helping. Bill was good at negotiating things, and when the kids were underage, he did the legal things that made everything on the up and up.
The day she met Patrick had been like any other, tending to the calendar, eating lunch in the cafeteria with a handful of kids who would have otherwise probably eaten alone, but quietly.
She was in her closet, locking her file cabinet, when there was a knock on her door.
Darkening its frame was a pimply kid of no less than 6'6”, bulky, muscular. Dressed in a letter jacket, leaning slightly to the left, because of a huge, overstuffed green backpack.
“Hi,” Ellie started. “How can I help you?”
Patrick didn't say a word. He later explained it was because he couldn't.
He made his way, without invitation, into the armchair below Ellie's only window.
Ellie closed the door, and took her place.
“Can you speak?” Ellie asked.
Patrick slowly hung his head, shook it, and sighed.
“OK.” Ellie adjusted herself. “You may have heard, I am a bit of a talker. But I can see that the best thing here is to just be still. Can I hold this space for you? Is that ok?”
Patrick slowly nodded, and his head came up, his face smiling a reserved smile.
After what was an impossibly long silence, no music, no thinking, just silence, Patrick shook himself awake, and Ellie saw a spark of who this kid might be.
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Benz,” Patrick stammered. “That was really weird.”
“Can you tell me what was going on just then?” Ellie asked. “I'm just curious. You don't have to tell me.”
“No, it's good,” Patrick began. “I was at the locker, putting stuff in my backpack. And I was just standing there, and then, I just got the weirdest feeling. I felt really, really good all of a sudden. I mean, really, really, really good.”
Silence again.
The school bell rang. Day's end.
Patrick roused himself. “So, I was standing there feeling this weird, just full on weird happiness, and then it was sort of over. I didn't recognize where I was right at first, when I came out of it. Things looked sort of weird. And then,” he blushed, “I got the craziest idea that I had to come in here. I had to sit here. I didn't even know this was here, this chair and stuff. Oh God, this is weird.”
Ellie leaned over and patted Patrick's arm. “It's not as weird as you think. I know what you're talking about. I've had that happen to me, too.”
Patrick's eyes were green, with a star burst of golden yellow, surrounding his pupil. Although they were sitting in their respective chairs, they got a real good look at each other, just then. Patrick saw a short, vibrant woman, sort of a cross between Kathy Bates and Robin Williams.
He asked, “Well, besides you, do you know of anybody who has had this happen to them, this weird feeling thing?”
“Yes, I do. I have many friends who have had something like you are describing also happen to them. It's not that weird, you know,” Ellie said. “Not a lot of folks have it happen, but more do, every day, and people get hits of it, little hits of it, all the time. Some don't let it in. Some do. At least,” Ellie paused, “At least that's what I think. You were ready, that's all.”
“Well,” Patrick stirred, kicking his backpack awkwardly, “I guess that's it.”
“What is your name?” Ellie asked.
“I'm Patrick. Patrick Sweet.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Judy's room was on the second floor, across from the bathroom. Her room's recessed french doors opened to a small patio overlooking the back yard. She was glad of it. This was a busy part of town. She'd spent nearly forty years in Bel Mar, a sedate and established tiny community in Lakewood.
Judy liked her porch, with her bird feeder and cafe table and chairs. They were currently covered in snow, so she sat in front of the windows, looking at the larks. She could dumpster divers in the alley.
Judy had never worked, although she'd tried her hand at a few trades. She was a hobbyist in life, and until now, this had suited her very nicely.
She thing she enjoyed most was travel. She'd amassed scrapbooks, and now, memory sticks, full of pictures of where she'd taken her family through their time together. She had an unusual pep in her step this morning. She'd gotten the idea that the best thing for her would be a trip.
She'd recently learned there is a word describing the fluttery, excited feeling she got whenever she was planning a trip. She couldn't remember the word just now. She liked feeling this again.
Her husband was leaning toward a quick and painless divorce. It appeared she would be handsomely rewarded for putting up with his shit for as long as she did.
Ellie and Bill had made things easier than she'd expected. Most of her belongings would wind up in storage, but what was around her she enjoyed, and she felt comfortable, planning the next little bit, under their roof.
Ellie had mentioned, over dinner last night, how she wanted to go to Laughlin again someday. They both loved to gamble, penny slots and poker. Neither of them did it often, but they had, through the years had a few adventures, chasing jackpots. They had agreed, last night, that they were overdue for some fun.
Sipping her coffee, listening to ruffians flip over dumpster lids below, Judy smiled and switched on her netbook.
