• THE ENDING AGAIN IV
    By UC Poika



    Like George Oliver Davis I too was at the mall that day but I was just sitting in the center court resting on the comfortable furniture. I had run my legs off all day long and went shopping on top of it. I was really tired, to say the least. I was tired of my little brother. I was angry at my parents. And I was fed up with school and work. So it might not surprise you when I say I was sitting alone and writing their names in a notebook—not to do them in as if it were some sort of Death Note fantasy. I just do that with my problems. It helps me think.
    I wrote Joey’s name in the notebook and placed beside it the word “brat.” When I got up that morning Joey a little redheaded eight year old with freckles and an enthusiastic disposition that left him adorable at least to look at, anyway, came running into my room all excited about some anime or cartoon he had seen on television, and shooting me and everything that stood out to his eye as a potential target. I was alarmed to have him around me and so out of control. Then just as you might expect he toppled my boom box to the floor and then fell on top of it. That is bad enough but then he simply got up, ignoring his indiscreet mishap, and proceeded to go on and on about Naruto or some such character and his exploits apparently. In short it was clear he had no misgivings about what had happened and was not about to take responsibility.

    “Damn it, Joey!” I protested. “Look what you’ve done!”

    Suddenly he realized what he had done and stood quivering as if I were about to kill him, and believe me I may well have done that very thing had I had a gun at the moment. But Mom heard me swear and yelled at me for doing it, seeming not to care in the slightest what Joey had done. So I yelled back with all of my anger being vented on her.

    “Just for that you can stay in your room until after breakfast. It will give you a chance to think over whether you should talk to me that way.”

    “Okay!” I said and slammed the door as she and Joey left.
    In a minute Dad came to the door and asked if he could come in and help me with my stereo. I screamed at him to go away, but he got me calmed down long enough to come in and help me try to get the stereo to work again. But in the process he broke the CD drive tray by accident, and when I got mad he told me that just for that I could replace the boom box out of my own earnings. He was not going to have anything to do with it.
    I thought I was going to starve but I did stay in my room until my big sister Isabelle came in and told me breakfast was over, that I could go downstairs if I wanted or even leave the house. So I abruptly left and was half way to the mall when my phone rang.

    “Hello?”

    “Where are you?”

    “I’m on my way to the mall to get a new boom box, the brat broke mine remember?”

    “Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady!”

    “Yes Mom. I’m sorry. Okay?”

    “That’s better. Now let’s talk about you leaving the house without clearing it with me when you were being punished.”

    “Aw! Mom! Issy said it was okay with you!”

    “I did not!” I heard Issy protest in the background.

    “Let me handle this Dear,” Mom said to her. “Is that what she said or what you heard.”

    “What? What kind of sense does that make? She’s lying Mom. She told me I could go.”

    “Okay. Okay. I believe you understood you could leave, but you should have known better.”

    “Yes, Mom. I know that now.”

    “Well, you go ahead to the mall. We’ll deal with it when you get home.”

    Relieved I closed the phone only to hear the ringtone a moment later.

    “What Ma?” I snapped.

    “You do realize that you just cut me off. That’s rude! Don’t you think you owe me an apology?”

    “Excuse me!!” I said and closed it again and as expected heard it ring again. This time I didn’t answer, knowing full well she was going to kill me when I got home. She only tried two or three times before she gave up.

    I could just see Issy laughing when Mom wasn’t around, knowing how much trouble she had gotten me into. Mom was right about one thing though I should have known better than to listen to her. Not because I had to remember that Mom required us to personally clear it with her, but because that five foot four inch brown eyed blonde with the amazing figure had a way of getting people in trouble just because she could. I could just kill her, I thought at the time.

    “What’s up with you Georgia Anna,” Anika said as I neared her post just behind a pillar near the mall entrance. “Smoke?” she offered and today I almost took her up on it, and would have but it ruins your teeth as well as your breath. And, like Isabelle I am nothing if I am not beautiful. I admit it okay. Just don’t bug me about it. That’s just the way I am right now. Okay. Sorry to take it out on you, but as I’ve shown by now I had good reason to get crabby, and now I’m getting crabby again just thinking about it all.

    Anika’s hair is all white but there isn’t much of it so no matter what she does it clings to her head making her look like she’s almost bald, but other than that she’s a beautiful girl too. Well sort of. It’s like Daddy said once, she’s flat as a boar hog but she’s stately. “Stately”? Can you imagine? Dad is such a dweeb sometimes. I mean I know he can be really nice and all, but look at him bust my CD drive. He’s just doesn’t quite have all his poop in a group. In fact some days he’s got it spread all over the place.

    Anyway there I was sitting down at the mall putting all of this back together in my mind when I heard the shots. I knew they were shots because my dad and me had gone out target practicing a few times, and more than once I had taken my head gear off. Trust me it is not something you’re likely to forget for a long time. But you can guess what happened next probably? People were running every direction but most of them began to realize that the shooter was in the skylight and soon there was a wall of people coming down the hall towards us.

    I got up and tried to make it to a doorway, but the crowd caught me and began buffeting me around and then it happened. I lost my balance somehow and fell. People kicked me when they tried to step over me, and they knocked me down several times before I finally broke my arm. After that I just curled up in the fetal position and protected my soft undersides. And finally the crowd did seem to pass so I tried to stand one more time.
    I got up on my haunches and then poof I lost my breath altogether. I looked down and saw all of the bright red blood on my chest and abdomen, and realized I had been hit in the lungs. Well I went down and blood began coming out of my mouth, choking me as it came up from my lungs. I knew I was in trouble and I looked around but the room started spinning round and round, but kind of slow and unevenly, and I felt more like I was swimming than just being dizzy like when you fall off of a merry-go-round.

    Then I heard a voice say, “Georgia! Come here!” and I thought it was my mom but it wasn’t.

    Then I was all by myself in the mall. There was no one there. No chaos. No hoards pushing me to the floor every time I tried to get up. “Come!” another voice said.

    “Where? Where are you?”

    “Follow your heart, Dear,” the female voice said.

    “Don’t follow your heart, Georgia. Follow me,” the other voice said calmly.

    “Your heart, Dear. Remember your heart.”

    I began walking down the mall, looking at the empty but well lit businesses, first one on one side then another on the other, then back and so on. Slowly, ever so slowly, I made my way down the mall toward an exit. Then when I realized it felt safe and it looked safe I began to run. Faster and faster I ran, all the way down the mall to the exit, through the doors and out into the parking lot. It was empty. It was like I was the last person on earth.

    The last person on earth? I thought. Was this just my version of Sheol? Was the same horrible thing going to happen to me that happened to George Oliver Davis. Was I dead? Was I just to join him in forgetting everything and everyone, ultimately even to forget who I was?

    I screamed and ran out into the empty parking lot. It was night there. In the distance I could see the city lights of other stores and business complexes. And yet there were no cars anywhere, no people walking or milling about, no cabs, no cops…! No cops! Was I safe at all here?

    Then I saw it. A light blue stretch limo slowly pulled into the huge parking lot moving ever so slowly as it crossed the yellow markings on the black pavement, heading right in my direction. I thought that perhaps I should run, but I didn’t. I just stood there watching fate coming for me. As it finally came to a halt right by me a door opened and I moved towards it more than a little curious.

    “Come in, Dear,” the female voice said.

    “Are you?” I asked. “Are you who I think you are.”

    “Who do you think I am?”

    “Grandma?”

    “Call me what you will. I can be anybody you want me to be.”

    “How can that be?”

    “It is all up to you here. Why if you want I can be God? Anything or anybody. It is all what ever you want it to be here.”

    “Wow!” I said. “If I want to be God I can be God. Is that what you mean?”

    “In that other place. It was almost all beyond your control. Here it is all under your control.”

    Then I thought about the times that Issy and I had played, “pretend,” we called it when we were small. It was very much like this for we imagined ourselves to be able to be or do anything we wanted. It was great fun. But that’s just it, I thought. It was just for fun. A game, and a game that we gladly quit when we ran out of things we could be that were fun and exciting and became reluctantly bored. This was the same thing. Except that it would seem real, but it would only be for a while. Because you see we learned that what is real is only real if we are real, and that means that both the world around us and we, were something other than we were.

    “I wish,” I said therefore. “I wish that everything here was real, that I am real, and that I have only limited control over it, and it has limited control over me.”

    “I don’t understand Dear,” she said. “I give you everything you want. Why do you trade it for what you had. Don’t you like me Dear?”

    “Follow me,” the male voice said calmly and collectedly.

    “Gladly,” I smiled to myself as I woke up in ICU a tube down my throat, and tubes running all over the place. And when I saw my mom, my dad, my big sister, and even my little brother Joey I was glad to see them. So I made a motion for a pencil and a pad of paper and wrote on the paper zll that I have written here.


    THE ENDING AGAIN.