That’s All Right, Mama
Jerry and Tom were riding their bikes in the deserted community of summer homes. It was early November and just about all the fair-weather residents were long gone.
The asphalt bike path wound in all directions through the large complex, which included an 18-hole golf course. They had it all to themselves. There were little signs every once in a while showing the way to “The Nature Center” or “The Marina” or “The Amphitheater” or some other place.
It was cold, cold enough to snow. But not today. The sky above the tall trees was clear.
“Let’s go down to the river,” Tom said, not waiting for Jerry to answer.
“It’s all right with me,” Jerry said, following close behind.
It was all the same to him. He was a city kid and it was fun just being out here in the forest with his cousin.
The ducks floated on the icy waters among the reeds. The boys got off their bikes and started skipping stones, trying to reach the far shore.
“Oh, good one!” Tom said. “Boy’s got an arm on him.”
In the distance a lone wolf or coyote howled.
“We better start getting back,” Tom said. “The night comes fast out here in the forest, especially at this time of year.”
“It’s all right with me,” Jerry said again. It was a line from an old movie his father liked to watch.
Jerry looked up from the water and noticed that the sun had gone down behind the trees across the way. They got on their bikes and rode.
They passed some places they had seen coming in. Jerry could see Tom’s breath blowing behind him.
“Let’s take this shortcut,” Tom said.
“It’s all right with me,” Jerry said.
They kept peddling in the growing shadows.
After a while, Tom slowed down and then stopped.
“Wassup?” Jerry asked.
“This is real stupid right here, dog, but I think I’m lost,” Tom said.
“That is stupid, man,” Jerry said, slapping his cousin on the head and laughing. “But not as stupid as you sayin’ ‘dog’ trying to sound all citi-fied or something. Plus, you live here.”
“I know I live here,” Tom said. “But we just moved here two weeks ago.”
“C’mon, let’s find the way,” Jerry said.
They rode for several more minutes. It was dark now. Jerry had to focus hard to see where he was going.
“Can’t you see anything that looks familiar?” he shouted.
“That’s the problem,” Tom said. “It all looks the same.”
“It’s all right with me,” Jerry said, but he didn’t mean it anymore. He didn’t want to spend the night out here in the dark, chilly forest.
They peddled some more and then stopped at an intersection.
“Las Vegas, 50 feet,” a sign read.
“This is nuts,” Tom said. “I know this sign wasn’t here before. Plus we’re thousands of miles from Las Vegas, not 50 feet.”
Just then they heard music playing.
Jerry recognized the song. It was an old one his dad sang sometimes.
“Ain’t nothing but a hound dog…”
The boys walked their bikes and headed toward the music.
The forest opened into a large meadow. Bright lights and loud noises filled the air.
A nine-foot tall Elvis suddenly appeared in front of Tom.
“I’m in the mood for a peanut butter banana bacon sandwich,” Elvis said. “But you’ll have to do.”
He then leaned over and bit off Tom’s head.
Jerry started screaming.
Roland Bartholomew didn’t exist. It wasn’t so much that the 15-year-old was unpopular in school as that he went utterly unnoticed. He had no friends and no enemies. To teachers he was just another name on the roll sheet. He floated through his days as if he simply wasn’t there.
The only thing that gave Roland’s life meaning was art. He loved to study art history and he loved to paint. He spent most of his free time hanging out at art galleries and museums.
One rainy November day Roland was strolling through an exhibit of Victorian art at the Portland Art Museum. He was pretty much bored out of his mind. Roland wasn’t big on the style of romantic realism represented in the majority of the paintings. He was more into edgier artists like Magritte, Picasso, Munch, and Chagall.
“This is way too sappy,” he said under his breath.
But just as Roland was about to make a quick exit, something caught his eye.
It was a work entitled Romeo and Juliet painted in 1884 by a Sir Frank Dicksee. The two young lovers in the painting were kissing while Romeo sat atop a balcony. A flowery green vine wrapped its way up a nearby marble column. The dawn sky and the red terracotta rooftops of northern Italy could be seen in the background. But it was Juliet, in her long nightgown and downy beauty, who drew Roland’s attention.
She stabbed at his chest like a knife and all his loneliness came bleeding out.
“She’s so—” Roland whispered, fighting the lump in his throat, “beautiful.”
His heart immediately ached for her. He was filled with a kind of longing he had never known before.
Roland began spending more and more time at the museum, standing dumbstruck in front of the painting. Minutes and hours and days went by like this. During non-museum hours, he read and reread Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
Then one day while he was standing there gazing at his true love, something strange happened. Something strange and amazing.
For a second, he found himself in the painting, in Romeo’s shoes, kissing Juliet. Pressing her close to him, smelling her perfect skin, tasting her sweet lips.
At first Roland, knees still shaking, wasn’t sure what had happened. He was just grateful for the joy he had experienced and that his imagination had grown so strong.
Over the coming weeks, this scene was repeated several more times. Each kiss was sweeter and lasted longer than the last.
Roland began to live for these all too brief moments of bliss. Unable to compete, the real world drifted away. Imaginary or not, for the first time in his life Roland was happy. But time was running out. The exhibit was set to move on to another museum in another city.
Roland wasn’t sure what to do. Following Juliet around the world was not realistic. While he might be able to sneak off to San Francisco—the exhibit’s next stop—a few times, what would happen when she traveled to Asia or went back home to England? Stealing the painting wasn’t in the cards either. This was real life and he was no Thomas Crown.
At first, he bought a poster of the painting and took it home, hoping to recreate the magic. He stared and stared, but it was no use. He couldn’t duplicate the experience. It didn’t work.
Next he tried to paint it himself. Since he had never painted something in this style, he held out little hope. But in the end he was surprised that it looked as good as it did. The background was almost a perfect reproduction of the original. But try as he might, Roland just couldn’t capture Juliet’s beauty and the tender passion of the kiss the way Dicksee had. And more importantly he couldn’t transport himself inside his own painting the way he did with the one at the museum.
Then he had an idea.
Maybe if I concentrate hard enough I can stay in the painting not just for a few seconds, Roland thought, but forever.
On the last day before the exhibit was scheduled to move on to the next museum, Roland skipped school and spent the entire day in front of the painting. He pretended he was there on a field trip.
“The museum’s closing, son,” a security guard said after the sun had gone down.
“Farewell, farewell!” Roland whispered. “One kiss and I’ll descend.”
“It’s time to go,” the man said, walking up from behind and putting his hand on Roland’s shoulder.
A moment later the guard heard a girl screaming. It was a terrible, agonizing howl that shook the large room. The guard thought the sound had originated from the wall behind the painting. He took a few steps toward it.
“What was that?” he said.
When the security guard turned back around, Roland was gone.
***
Lost in the kiss, Roland suddenly felt something pull him from behind and he lost his balance. In an instant, he was falling back, head over heels, down toward the ground. The Verona sky above her, Juliet’s beautiful and haunted face was the last thing he saw. He heard her scream. In vain, his hand reached up for her. A moment later he hit the ground, breaking his neck.
Everything went black.
***
The next morning the museum was in full-blown pandemonium. One of the paintings, valued at several million dollars, had been stolen.
It was Romeo and Juliet.
The authorities were baffled. The security cameras hadn’t captured anything unusual. A teenage boy and a security guard were the last people seen near it. The only clear fact was that at some point during the night, the original had somehow been replaced with a blatant forgery.
But why would the thief or thieves bother to leave behind a fake that was so obviously different? While it was true that the new painting was quite similar to the original in most ways, it contained one glaring difference that could not go unnoticed: Romeo was missing. Juliet now stood on the balcony alone, looking down at something on the ground with an expression of grief-stricken horror.
Perhaps just as strange was the fact that tests later showed the oils and the canvas to be from the original period—almost 130 years old. And experts agreed that everything about the painting suggested that it was in fact the work of Frank Dicksee, who had been dead for more than 80 years.
The original was never found. And Roland Bartholomew was never seen again.
I had to come back.
I couldn’t let her crime go unpunished.
I think that’s why I woke up.
I woke up in the dark. It took a while for my senses to return. There didn’t seem to be any oxygen in the small box. At first I began to panic. And then I realized I didn’t need to breathe anymore. My lungs were just so much stuffing now. My heart was in pieces. A million pieces. She had seen to that. Good thing I didn’t need it anymore either.
I began to push up on the lid. It took a long time, but I finally heard the wood crack. And then the dirt poured in. The dirt was easier to go through, but there was more of it. But I had time. Lots of time.
I made it to the surface as the sun was coming up. The caretaker screamed and ran off when he saw me.
I walked down the street. The few people out at that hour crossed to the opposite sidewalk when they saw me coming.
I walked and walked and walked. I stuck to alleys and side streets when possible. I stumbled and staggered and slowed near the end. Not from fatigue but from decay. But as the first star came out, I turned on to her street.
“I’m coming, Julia,” I whispered.
What was left of my brain, my brain, my brain choked its grip around how she had told me she couldn’t love me. She had laughed at me.
“Not if you were the last creep on earth,” she had said.
That’s when I began to die.
“Creep’s coming, Julia,” I hissed as a wobbled up her driveway.
I pushed the doorbell and my finger fell off.
She answered the door. Then took a step back.
I reached for her and keeled over.
She gasped and tried to scream but her heart had stopped.
She crumbled down on top of me.
“Who’s creepy now?” I sighed, as I stroked her hair. “Who’s creepy and dead like me?”
Greer liked living out in the country. She hated those suburban developments closer to town with the houses built a few feet away from one another. Those houses only had views of other houses. Even though it was a 30-minute commute every morning and night to get to her job at the attorney’s office, Greer didn’t mind. At least at the end of the day, she had a view of trees and hills.
She was driving home from work one night. It was getting dark out on the country road, and Greer was driving fast. It had been a long day, and all she wanted to do was go home and curl up on the couch with a cup of tea and her cat, Mr. Bollers.
Suddenly, a car zoomed by, going toward town. Greer hadn’t seen it coming, and the revving of its engine jarred her.
“That was mighty nerve-racking,” she said out loud, her heart pounding in her chest.
A short time later, another car sped by, again coming out of nowhere. Greer caught the color and make. It was a green Honda Accord. Just like her car.
“Those crazy kids,” she muttered. “I have a mind to report them to the police when I get home.”
Greer kept driving.
A minute later, another green Accord came at her. But instead of some crazy kid, an old woman was behind the wheel.
Still another car came blowing past her a few seconds after that. It was the same make as all the previous cars.
This time, Greer was able to make out the license plate number as the car came toward her.
“WTF 75... 9. Wait a minute, that’s mi—”
She never finished the thought.
They had to fish the car and Greer’s lifeless body from a large pond below the road.
The driver of the Dodge she almost hit told police she had crossed the middle of the road and drifted into the oncoming lane just as he was passing.
“I was able to see her face clearly as she came at me,” he said. “It’s almost like she had been distracted by something on the road. Though what it was I could not say.
“We were the only two cars for miles and miles.”