Ignorance is bliss

"The Dark Stranger"

© VeGirl 2014

I wake up in my bed, the house is serenely silent, but I can't shake the feeling that there's something I'm supposed to know. With a worried glance on the clock on my bedside table, I realize I'm due for work in just an hour. A smile grace my lips, accompanied by a sigh as I throw the blanket away from me and sit on my bed. Sleepy, I stretch and wonder if I should sign up for Yoga-class.

No wonder I thought something was missing; it isn't weekend as I thought at all.

After a shower and breakfast I head out to my car. Unintentionally my eyes flicker to the house across the street as they have done for years now, and I wonder when that house will wake me one night, by falling to the ground.

My lips stretch into a temporary smile and I roll my eyes as I back my car out of the driveway and head over to work.

Eddie is the first one there today as usual, looking tired but hugging a mug of coffee. Without uttering a single word she pours another mug and hands it to me.

"Thanks'." I smile at her.

"You look like you're in a good mood." She almost scowls at me. "Did you get laid?"

My mouth falls open in surprise and I laugh out loud. "Ribald much?"

A smile brightens up her features. "You know me." Mischief is glistening in her eyes. "I had a perfectly marvelous night with Milo, thank you for asking."

"Really?" I ask surprised and am just about to prod her for details in a very un-lady-like manner, when Amelia walks in through the door.

"Good morning, you two look cheery," she smiles and walk straight the coffeemachine and pours a mug before she head to the dressingroom to change into her work clothes.

"And how is that hunk Vince?" Eddie asks with a glib smile.

"Who?"

She looks at me as if I should crack a smile and then tease her, but that smile changes into a puzzled, yet irritable face. "The guy you've been hovering over?" she probes, with the same confusion on my part.

"I've been hovering over some Vince?" I ask confused, but decide to play along. "Does he wear mirrored aviator shades and a brown leather jacket?" I tease, painting a picture of some sleaze-bag from the 70's. She looks bemused before she simply turns and leaves me. I smile, seeing I won this game. I change my clothes, braids my hair and walk to my workstation. There is something strange about my reflection, I think as I walk from the dressingroom.

The other girls are acting less weird and we talk and joke around as we continue our chores. Our bakery is filled with the same mouthwatering scent as usual, and soon it is filled with customers as well.

Mary is eyeing me curiously when she heads between the cash-register and the kitchen.

My eyebrows start to line up tight together while a crooked smile grates my face. "What?" There is clearly something that bugs her and I wish she would just spit it out.

"I can't believe you never said anything about Vincent." Her eyes glisten as she shakes her head and chuckle. "He looks like a freaking Abercrombie and Fitch-model gone rogue."

"Who?"

Her brows shoot up in surprise, almost mirroring Eddie's expression. "What do you mean who?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! I don't know any Vince and I haven't gotten laid." I snarl and turn my back on her, focusing on turning the orange sugarpaste on that counter into pumpkins for the upcoming season.

"What's going on?"

I hear Eddie's voice, but I tune out the muted discussion as soon as I hear the phrase 'that's the same reaction I got' being hissed. They have apparently been cooking up some prank on me, but I'm not falling in some pit of laughter. If they want to brighten up our day, they better pull something fun instead of feigning up amnesia-chick jokes.

Amelia put her head through the door. "Are you all on a break?"

Mary and Eddie looks like they have been busted and Mary hurries out the door while Eddie heads for the office.

"What are they on about?" Erin slams the big oven doors shut after putting the last tray of sticky buns in the heat.

"It's just another prank." I sigh, suddenly reliving that feeling of missing something vital that I woke up with that morning. "They better come up with better jokes."

Erin is the one I happen to spend my lunchbreak with that day while Mary is heading home to be replaced by Paula who usually works the till.

The afternoon is pretty much dedicated to preparing for the day to come, and to fix up dessert for the caterers the next evening. Erin and I help out with the tiny key lime pies that will be tomorrow's piece the resistance in shared silence, and I start to wish for something else than this every day struggle; some great romantic adventure that you only read about.

When the dessert is done, it is almost time to head home and I cut the day a little shorter, knowing it will be longer tomorrow. I end up by my TV with the remote in one hand while I eat with the other. Nothing seems to catch my interest.

That night my dreams are filled with disturbing emotions rather than images. I can vaguely recall the same kind of dreams when I was a child. There is something missing, and I can't figure out what it is.

In addition to the emptiness that fills my mind, I have a sequence that swirl back to me from my dream; I am in some kind of tunnel, and I can see light on the far side. Am I supposed to go to the light?

The next morning is filled with brooding and contemplating about that dream.

Was that about death?

Fear fills me and I hastily reach for my robe and get up from the bed to get my laptop. Slowly it awakes and I wait anxiously to type the word dreamreading in the search-bar and watch different services offer dreamreading at a low fee. Irritable I add the word dream in the searchbar and get what I'm looking for. Some of the sites suggest that I am exploring aspects of my subconscious; that I am opening myself up to a brand new awareness, while others said that a light at the end of a tunnel symbolizes hope.

After having searched several of the sites that tells me contradictive interpretations of the same dream, I feel more confused than I had been when I started.

Luckily none of them suggest that I am about to die though and I settle for that.

* * *

Over the next few days Eddie is threading carefully around me, trying her best to casually slip the word Vince or Vincent into our daily conversations. Her eyes scan me surreptiously as she does and I get a sudden urge to burst into a recognizable 'ah!' just to see her reaction.

I have no idea to whom she is referring.

The feeling of being on some kind of evaluation for some unknown board is eventually getting to me, and I crease up my forehead, with risk of making the vertical lines permanent.

"Would you please stop look at me like that?" I snarl at Eddie when she's standing leaned by the counter just observing me.

She snaps out of her own brooding with a start. "I'm not looking at you." She tries the defensive approach, but I just give her a pointy look. "I'm sorry, I was just thinking. I didn't mean to stare at you," she continues in a guilty mumbling.

Yeah right! is all that goes through my head.

Privately, Eddie spends her time with Kevin and we don't see one another that much. I keep trying to recall who this Vincent is and try to figure out what has caused this careful or perhaps guarded behavior around me, but comes up with nothing. I seem to get lost in threads of deductions, and contemplate the reason for that.

The calm serenity of my home makes me feel trapped rather than engulfed in peace.

Not even my new treadmill seems to being able to push my thoughts away, and I much rather pull my sneakers on and head for the calm nature instead, where I imagine deep fairytale forests with Canadian Pine trees, moss and Jasmine.

I can't rid myself of the feeling of constantly being observed and finally I start to snap at people for no obvious reason. Well that doesn't help up the careful approach my co-worker treats me with.

"Sam, get in my office!" Eddie glares at me and motions her head for me to follow.

With a sigh I put the sugarpaste down on the tabletop, wash my hands and follow her. "What is it this time?" I sigh.

"Sam, you're not feeling well and I'm worried about you." She looks at me as the best friend she is and has been for years.

"Don't; I'm fine!"

The worried expression of my friend merges into the face of my boss. "I think you should take a few days off, and that's an order."

.